I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.
The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.
And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.
(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)
The point is that is still comes down to what’s written on official documents. Yes, what they told her is bullshit and can have a negative mental health effect. But her mental health is not their responsibility. The two people telling her that she was being let go are simply relaying exactly what they are told to by upper management.
The video was smart to record, just in case. But publishing it was just for other people to feel rage. This is have absolutely no effect on Cloudflare. A few less people may apply, but there is no shortage of people looking for jobs right now. With all the layoffs happening at every company, it’s almost like the Dot Com Bust again. I got through it and stayed in IT for another 16 years. She will get through this too.
“This is have absolutely no effect on Cloudflare.”
It appears to have gotten the CEO worried enough about brand damage that he felt he had to post some bullshit.
"Matthew Prince, the CEO and co-founder of the technology company, has reacted. “We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go-to market org. That’s a normal quarter. When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly,” Prince wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Acknowledging that they were “far from perfect” in this case, Mr Prince said, “The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right.”
More here…
Acknowledgement, “we’re sorry”, and then quickly forgotten as the news cycles moves on. This will have no lasting effects. Everyone will have forgotten this by next week.
Edit: You also left this out…
People said that the API revolt on reddit would change nothing and yet here we both are discussing the terrible behaviour of yet another corporation on a completely different platform to reddit that I would never even have known about if it weren’t for exactly this kind of story. I believe things do change and I certainly won’t forget that Cloudflare did this and I suspect you won’t either.
Cloudflare isn’t a social media site where all the users discussed the revolt on the site. Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists. A lot of people don’t even know what Reddit is.
“Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists.” They do now ;)
And by next week, they’ll forget because they don’t ever plan to apply there for work. The small percentage of people that will avoid applying there because of this is a small drop in the bucket of people that will still apply. This is no where near as important as some people make it out to be.
Yet the CEO felt the need to try to do some damage limitation. Clearly he doesn’t share your confidence about the lack of impact this could have on the company’s reputation.
Again, a little PR to brush it aside is all that was. Come back to me next week and show me the impact.