Ramsey Homsany, General Counsel for Dropbox Inc., spoke to students during long lunch today, addressing the challenges of becoming an attorney in Silicon Valley and answering questions about his occupation.

Homsany began by telling students about his background. When growing up, he imagined becoming a doctor or engineer, not a lawyer. Majoring in biochemistry, Homsany completed his undergraduate studies at Rutgers University and later received a law degree from New York University Law School. He then kicked off his career as an associate at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati.

Homsany then joined Google in 2003 and became one of its long-serving lawyers. He was the deputy general counsel of the commercial group and managed 100 different internal lawyers who dealt with the company’s partnership and commercial relations. In 2011, Homsany resigned from Google and was the first lawyer hired by file sharing startup, Dropbox.

“[Dropbox] is another technology that is changing the world and making people’s lives easier. I wanted to be able to build something like [what I did at Google] again,” Homsany said regarding his decision to join Dropbox.

Dropbox Inc. is a file hosting service that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, and software for clients. It is available on most major platforms, such as Windows and Mac, and even mobile devices like iOS and Android devices.

Many students currently use it for a variety of purposes, whether it be for educational use of storing debate evidence or class presentations, or for personal storage of photos and videos.

“Dropbox is an amazing program because you can access your files from anywhere and on any device,” Zabin Bashar (10) said. “I no longer have to use a physical flash drive in order to transfer my files, making life much easier.”

After talking about the benefits of Dropbox, Homsany spent most of his time opening the floor for questions about his career and current job.

When asked about the employee hiring process, Homsany, who is also in charge of Human Resources at Dropbox, said that the company has stacks of resumes but only hires the “A+” people. An “A+” person, according to Homsany, does not necessarily mean the smartest person; rather it requires “intellectual flexibility, a humble attitude, and team spirit.”

Many students revealed that they learned a lot from Homsany’s insights and advice.

“I thought that Mr. Homsany’s talk was very informative and gave a unique inside perspective on not only his roles at Dropbox and Google, but also on the current legal climate of the tech industry as well,” Vikas Bhetanabhotla (11) said.

Homsany plans to stay at Dropbox for a long time as he says the company has many more innovative products in the pipeline.