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)
She did really good! Almost drove it home, she was so close… As a former manager in HR, here are my two cents. Note that I’m from canada, might not apply as I have it in mind in the US. If they’re trying to frame a layoff as a firing for cause and poor performance, her first way of handling it is excellent. Ask pointed specific questions on what about your performance was lacking and more importantly can you demonstrate to me that I’ve been communicated clear quantifiable and Timely objectives that I’ve been communicated means and ways to be coached and trained to meet those objectives and that I’ve been communicated milestones of me not meeting objectives, with proper corrective measures and coaching to then change course before a firing for poor performance.
If you can’t communicate any of these to me, the objectives, my performance against his objectives, the milestones, and the coaching I received to meet objectives when I did not, then this is not a poor performance related firing. If you’re missing any of these information then I am not yet terminated and I am at your employment until a subsequent meeting where you can come back with that information. On the other hand if what you meant to say is that this is a layoff because you have hired too many people, and that this letting Go has nothing to do with my performance, okay no problem, let’s talk, but in this case it will be with X months of severance and a glowing recommendation letter.
Lastly I want to make you aware that I’ve recorded this conversation, in which it’s now clearly documented that you have no clear tangible indication of any notion of documented poor performance about me, and thus I am still at the employed of my employer until you either provide those, or provide me with coaching that I then fail to put into practice to meet objectives, or until you come back with the severance package for a layoff that has nothing to do with my performance.
Something along those lines…
Yeah sure, if she has no emotions I’d say that’d be a great way to handle it.
Unfortunately she’s trying to keep herself composed while going through an extremely traumatic event in her life. A layoff is something that may seem routine for you - but for me I still process through my layoffs years later. She’s holding back tears. I held back tears. I’d say she did remarkably well while having her life plans crumble around her.
I put 100% of the blame on HR and the company - even if it’s completely her fault for getting fired I wouldn’t put any blame on her for not using the perfect wording.
Please allow me to offer a nuance on the topic of HR. I see a lot of hate about HR on this thread and quite a bit is founded… But on the other hand, two things:
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the HR folks themselves are not to blame for the fact that the company overhired, are cutting people, or even to some extent some shitty strategies like pretending people are fire for cause instead of laid off. It’s decided by executives ans the CEO, and HR operationalizes. I’ll fully grant though that they sometimes (often) operationalize shittily.
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and more importantly, HR is shitty in a shitty company, and pretty decent in a (quite rare) decent company. Fundamentally HR’s job is to help manage humans as a resource, and among other tasks it means to protect the company against human-related risks. There are different fundamental beliefs and philosophies companies can have around how to avoid that risk - and their HR strategy is set accordingly.
Some decent (rare) employers believe that to avoid risks like being sued or unionizing, the best strategy is to provide employees with a healthy work environment, competitive pay and to remove toxic managers and executives quickly. In these companies HR plays a very strong policing role ensuring that managers don’t cause human related risk by abusing workers. I know it sounds idealistic and I’ll 100% grant that it applies unfortunately to a very small sample of employers, but it’s true.
Of course way more common are companies with the philosophy that to avoid these risks you need to squash people, back your managers at all cost, never admit a fault, etc - and that’s the shitty strategy operationalized by shitty a HR department.
Lastly the governmental labour laws framework of a country plays a big role too - in some countries where those laws are super weak like the US, particularly if your employer is your only way to access half decent healthcare, you can’t afford to change employer - and the shitty strategy becomes a much lower cost than the decent one (found a bit more often in Canada, way more in Europe and even more in Scandinavian countries)
Sorry for the walltext rambling
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Pretty good, although really difficult to vocalize under stress. I’d say if you’re given a chance to provide a written statement, there’s a good opportunity to be precise like this.
Also, as an aside, many states have laws about recording conversations. Some require consent of all parties, some two, some one (yourself). And almost all require consent before the action. I feel like if you ask, they will say no, and you’ll get an overnight letter letting you know about your termination.
100% on the recording, fair pt.
On the letter: that’d be good - go ahead and give me written evidence…
Generally virtual meetings in companies like these are being recorded anyway, so there was likely a prompt before joining that everyone got.
While they can totally do that in some states (like where I live in California) that letter/email/alternate contact doesn’t absolve them from having to prove they did their due diligence in warning you and trying to fix your performance
You are fully within your rights to demand that proof from them and to not let up, though talking to a lawyer immediately is probably the wisest move. And by immediately I mean when they say “no” to the recording
This really fucked up thing this layoff streak is to send a message to investors that they are cutting back, mass laying off sales people is not a good sign for your business model.
why can’t corporations just do things in a reasonable and rational way?
Why do they constantly make so many extreme changes all the time? When they need to hire more people, they hire way more than they need, when they need to downsize…or rather when they’re tired of paying so many people, they fire way too many.
Why would they care, people are just tools to them.
Because it’s easier that way. Rather than protracted recruiting processes that really dig deep into the current needs of the company after detailed evaluation of current projects and current manpower, just hire anyone who looks halfway decent and fire the ones that don’t seem worth it whenever is convenient.
Because it’s easier that way.
In the short term, easier. But for long term sustainability, no…But what does that matter when you get a bailout every time you fail?
What about the way we’ve seen markets operate makes you believe they care about the long-term? Long-term is someone else’s problem.
capitalism.
Because their bottom line is improved in the short term by firing people
Youre right. Because their bottom line is improved in the short term so that they can say “Look at how much revenue we made last year!”
“And now look at how many people employed to gain that revenue!”
“No, don’t look over the whole year! Just look at right now!”
It’s all about maximizing profit.
It’s about maximizing the bonuses for the executives. A bigger bonus than what they got last year.
Yeah in the kind of was that a shitty gambler plays when the “table (market) is ‘hot’” they feel overconfident and go all in, ignoring that the pieces they’re playing with are people’s lives
Quarterly bonuses. Some jackass sees that labor budget is going to go over and he won’t get his bonus.
Because it improves short term profits, so the stock goes up, so both shareholders and execs are happy with their big payouts. The rest is just collateral, they don’t care.
Last I checked the average tenure of a CEO was less than 2 years.
As long as the problems only properly start getting felt a couple of years later, all such “save a bit now, pay a lot later” strategies are ideal for CEOs as they optimize their bonuses.
As for other people, well, these types are usually far into the sociopath side of the spectrum so they don’t feel the pain of others, don’t worry about the harm for others, and have no shame whatsoever.
The rest is just collateral, they don’t care.
I know.
Because the guy who makes the big risky splashy changes to his department gets the promotion. The one who makes small continous improvements without fucking things up along the way flies under the radar.
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I only saw the start and the emotional vibes are pretty bad, and not just for Brittany (though, of course, even in the beginning she’s clearly already hurting).
At least somebody actually directly got in contact with her, personally, rather than firing-by-email.
If there is a lesson I learned way back at the beginning of my career in Tech back in the mid 90s is that you shouldn’t really go for the whole loyalty to your employee when they’re anything but a little company were everybody works together, because they will screw you over if its in their best interest, sometimes casually so, and those making the decision will never be in calls such as this one and instead send some poor sods like the HR lady and that director guy to do the dirty work for them and fell the hurt from the person on the other side if they have any empathy (which most people do have, which is probably why both the HR Lady and the guy were uncomfortable from the start).
Also beware of the company trying to manipulate you as an employee to have your workplace be your entire social circle of friends and even like a second family: the whole point of that is to “retain” employees without having to actually pay what the market says they’re worth. This is actually a pretty old trick in Tech HR, dating back to the original Internet Boom.
The whole loyalty of the companies to employees thing died in the late 80s early 90s and you should be skeptical when it comes to what the company “does for you” and ponder on what’s in it for them: for example, “free pizza dinners” are not at all about being nice for you, they’re about you working long hours for free (which would cost them way more than that free pizza if they had to pay for them) to enhance that company’s profits.
It’s sad and it’s the World we live in: one were the real power of the land is Money and it’s mainly in the hands of Sociopaths.
My first job out of college was for an global company. I was there just over one year when they announced they were outsourcing us. On the day of announcement, there were two meetings. One way getting hired by the outsourcer, the other was being let go at some point in the next year (after turnover). Since subset of the let go group was booted that day.
It was a great lesson to learn early in my career.
My loyalty to my employer extends to the 40 hours they pay me. I accept my on call week three times per year, because I’m in IT and that’s just how it goes. But past that, I don’t care. I do, however, appreciate and enjoy my coworkers. We are friends, and no one abuses that friendship. I would miss working with them if I left, but that’s not enough to keep me where I am. I’ve been looking, but not terribly seriously. For the most part I’m left to manage my stuff, and I don’t get too much hassle from above. There is, however, a ton of corporate BS these days.
I think what we do is called “professionalism” rather than “loyalty” - they pay us for our time and it’s a questions of professional pride and moral obligation that we are there doing the work for them, in a reasonable professional way to the best of our abilities, but no freebies.
They might decorate it with “we appreciate your work” hypocrisy and bullshit, but they treat it as a “supplier” business transaction hence I’ll treat it from my side as a business transaction too, which means what’s in the contract is what’s in the contract and if I find a better “client”, I’m off.
After less than a decade as an “employee” I actually became a freelancer and it has served me well and I never regretted it, even though I was in the middle of each of the industries worse hit by the last to major crashes, first Tech and after that Finance. Job security is an illusion, so you have to build your own security by making sure you’re well paid for your work and hence can fall back on your savings even when the whole Economy plunges and even the few genuinelly good companies to work for still end up firing most of their people.
Since when does professionalism include lying about the person’s performance metrics as the reason for the layoff? She professionally asked for receipts, they had none. These people seems to think gaslighting is part of being professional.
I think you misunderstood my point if you think I’m defending the people who accepted to work in a job, HR, were they’re going to be firing people whilst trying to misportray it in such a way that the company saves money.
Also, Professionalism and Morals are mostly separate things (though it has been my experience that those who are ok with working a job were they’re screwing other are also ok with screwing those who pay for their work).
Sure, I can see how somebody in their first job might go into HR thinking its fine, but somebody with a couple of years doing the job either is a complete moron or has figured out what it really is all about, and that’s not about treating people well or even just fairly.
It sucks to get fired but it was 4 months not 4 years. You will be able to bounce back and pivot
4 months or 40 years, no employer should treat you this way.
I’d also say it’s potentially worse to get fired this early on. You have to restart any waiting period for health insurance or 401k, deal with any potential life-changing accommodations you had to make to work there, and live off what little you could make between two periods of unemployment.
Holy fucking shit American corpospeak is pure fucking cancer. Just fucking talk normally.
I understand how you are feeling, and nothing I can tell you today is going to be able to change that.
“I hear what you’re saying, feebl, and those feelings are valid today. But unfortunately American corpos will not be able to change the outcome of how fking stupidly soulless they are today mmk?”
You’re absolutely right. It is a cancer, and stupid trends like this spread until there’s no hope of escape and even a freaking gas station manager tries to talk to you like this.
This is, no joke, not trying to exaggerate, exactly the kind of language-as-weapon stuff Orwell was always talking about.
Honest, authentic communication and doublespeak look the same on the surface, but the way they’re generated is completely different. One enhances perception and information processing using a shared semantic context built in the air between people trying their best to accurately describe what they see. The other degrades the quality of the language model in everyone’s heads, due to continually violating the relationship between words and reality, making everyone in the room less capable of understanding literally anything.
Unless the person in the room doesn’t put up with it. Brittany stayed on task and didn’t accept bullshit answers, and so even if there were some consequences to speaking up (in this case it sounds like she had nothing to lose) they’d be less severe than the literal brain atrophy that results from swallowing bullshit with a smile.
The thing that really sticks out is “I understand how you feel”. They never accept that they may be unfair, that her criticism is valid, just “sorry you feel that way.”
I only know American culture from the internet, and knowing all of the memes and blog posts and everything, it’s still mindblowing to see it in action to this degree and in a situation that is probably representative for so many.
As an American it’s a relief to hear there’s a place left on Earth where this behavior would still be unexpected.
Fucking Amen dude. I’ve traveled to other countries and actually cried a little at how straightforward things are there. It’s so easy to forget. This doublespeak shit creeps up on a people.
Seriously. I’m an American who has traveled all over this bigass country of ours, but very little internationally. Last year I got to go to Scandinavia of all places, specifically Sweden.
Obviously I already knew how their culture (and much of Europe) does things with a lot more focus on, you know, the people that live there. However, spending a few days there in person, and seeing the respect for self & others, and the dignity that brings, it changed something in my brain.
Our culture is just fucked, and so many our people actively resist improvements or don’t even believe they exist.
It’s not just in America.
This kind of thing is one of the main products of the new style MBAs from the late 80s forward - it’s all about appearances and emotionally managing other people (notice how she says something and the guy goes “I understand”, “100%” or something like that and then just proceeds to not actually answer her question: it’s all about making her feel she’s being heard without that at all being the case, and he’s not even very good at it).
The same perspective into managing companies that brought us calling employees as “human resources” and firing employees as “letting go” (or in this case, “recallibration”) normalized a whole discourse technique of half-truths, evading the question and in general use of Conversational Jiu-Jitsu (anything that comes your way, you just deflect it to the side) to manage a conversation.
You see the same kind of think in modern Politics.
Mind you, I’ve now watched more of the video and it’s really cringey how all sides are behaving: the guy clearly has no power whatsoever, she’s nervous as fk and doesn’t get it that whatever she says makes no difference at all (clearly the decision was already made well above that guy who go given a shitty task to do) and the HR lady is just doing the smart thing which is keeping out of it as much as possible.
In her position I would’ve focused on extracting as much compensation as I could from them (not necessarilly money: something as simple as a great letter of recommendation that makes it clear it wasn’t about ones own performance specifically could be useful) or gone completelly around these people to make my case (for example, via my own director) as that meeting is at best a discharging of fidutiary responsabilities and the people talking to her are definitelly not empowered to keep her on and even if they did, they’re not going to risk their own careers for somebody they don’t know (it’s actually part of why she’s not getting her own director: she has chance at all appealling to these anonynous randos). It’s not by chance that the guy is going so heavy on “I hear you” kind of messaging: she’s supposed to feel listenned to so that she doesn’t cause any problems but whatever she says here makes no difference)
Honestly, it’s not just corpo talk.
My mother talks the same way. “I understand that you don’t feel well. But you still have to do this completely brain-dead thing that everybody else is doing.” “Why? Because I tell you so. Do children not respect their parents anymore? I’m your mother. You must do what I say. Once you grow up, you can do what you want. But as long as you live in my house, it’s my rules. No, you can’t keep your door locked. Privacy? I’m your mother.”
doesn’t get it that whatever she says makes no difference at all
She’s well aware she’s being fired. She’s trying to get them to admit that it’s not about performance and that she’s actually being laid off. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the HR goons are shitting their pants.
Well yeah, the recording of it does make it seem like she’s trying to extract something out of that meeting, but I’m unfamiliar with American employment legislation so I only have some vague that over there might be a legal/compensation difference between being “fired” and being “laid off”.
Basically, companies are required to pay for unemployment insurance that funds the government’s unemployment benefits system. If you lay someone off, the employee files for unemploent, and gets paid a portion of their weekly salary while they look for another job (the amount you get paid and whether there’s any additional requirements varies from state to state, with Democrat-controlled states usually being more generous, but generally you have to show you’re actively seeking a new job), and the employer pays a bigger unemployment insurance rate to compensate for the additional burden the former employee is now placing on the government benefits system.
However, if you’re fired for cause–say, you get caught stealing from the cash register–then the employer can contest your unemployment. If the employer can show you were fired for a good reason, the employee can be denied unemployment benefits, and the employer doesn’t have to pay extra unemployment insurance. This meeting is the company trying to cook up a justification for firing with cause, and the employee trying to get them to admit they’re just being laid off, because if the company admits during the exit interview that she’s just being laid off without cause, it’s nearly impossible to contest her unemployment benefits claim later.
Yeah, I can now see why the whole thing is basically the groundwork for a legal fight.
That said she’s an amateur “lawyer” facing pros so the situation is stacked against her, plus she’s very nervous because she’s young and taking it personally, none of which are good for her side of the outcome.
It is extremelly unlikelly that a nervous amateur with a massive stake on the outcome will manage to get anything useful in a legal sense from a professional lawyer for whom the whole thing is just a job.
This might be one of those situations were the right strategy is to refuse to discuss it with the company’s legal team without your own legal advice present, or at least getting some legal advice upfront about what to get from them (say, documentation they’re obligated to provide).
As with everything, not being the “easy pickings” increases your chance that they’ll just give in and pay up simply because it’s not worth the risk - it’s a lot better to pay somebody and have her sign a non-disclosure agreement on the whole thing than risking it going to court, their claims of “for cause” being trashed in a way that affects the entire strategy for laying all those people off and other ex-employees use that to get summary judgements against them or similar.
Amateur trying to get them to admit she’s not really being laid off with cause probably counts as “easy pickings” for the lawyer on the other side.
If there’s something life has taught me (in a very painful way) is to lawyer-up as soon as there are legal implications (fortunatelly, over here firing “for cause” - i.e. laying off - has quite a higher standard of proof for the company and can’t just be on them making claims of underperformance). Mind you, she was there for a short while, so it’s maybe not worth the legal costs.
Basically in a nutshell, if they can claim it’s “performance reasons”, they likely wouldn’t have to pay her a severance if that was part of the contract, and there’s a chance she wouldn’t get unemployment insurance either.
I’m in the US and I’m not even 100% sure how much unemployment the company is liable for paying, but I know it’s a common strategy for any employer to abuse you into quitting on your own so they don’t have to pay it.
If she’s laid off, she gets some support until she finds a job elsewhere. If they admit that, then she wins justice rather than letting them get away with theft.
This is probably why these goons were sent in with zero data. They’re probably telling the truth that they don’t have these mystical “metrics and data points.”
It’s as she said: company hires a bunch of people, probably makes a bunch of promises to them, and then decides they don’t want to pay for them.
These are the kind of sociopaths that can justify just abandoning animals they’re tired of, and society rewards them for it through profits.
Here in Europe being fired “for just cause” does not impact unemployment benefits but does require quite the standard of proof (it’s can’t be just done on “your performance evaluation was not high enough”, and the company has to, for example, prove that somebody stole from it) but they can then avoid paying compensation. Also firing without just cause (i.e. laying off) is not generally possible outside the trial period unless in exceptional circumstances (say, the company has provenly been losing money and hence is firing a fraction of its employees).
This does vary from country to country and is part of the basic employment law, so in places with strong Unions it’s even more strict.
So this kind of situation in this video does not apply because to fire for cause the burden of proof is on the company, not the employee: she cannot be just fired “for cause” merelly because the company claims the underperforms.
They’re snakes. Dox them.
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love how its hey we will fire you today as a surprise after you’ve been told something completely different but we promise to tell you why later. I really this was just taken legally as an illegal termination. Because if it’s for performance that means you have data, if you have data you should be able to give me graphs and charts, stick figure animations, poorly acted corporate videos.
I expect and demand a puppet show demonstrating my poor performance
“Snape… Snape… Severance Snape…”
Internet peaking early today. This is great
Okay, you got me thats a good one
“Dumbledore!”
Interpretive dance or GTFO
And it has to be done using the Ride Of The Valkyries as music.
Fr. If my performance was bad the entire time, why wasn’t I told until now? If I am doing a crappy job but told I’m doing great, why would I ever do better? Either it’s bullshit that my performance is poor, or they’ve set me up for failure from the beginning. Either of which makes them a piece of shit.
Only watched her initial verbal volley and fuck that is some strength. I heard the emotion right under the surface but it was emphatically not in her voice, I’d have been shitting myself if I were on the other end of those questions
I have an interview scheduled with CloudFlare for later this week. Guess what topic is going to come up.
Looks like I’ll miss this bullet. I’m still pretty happy in my current role so I’ll only jump for something spectacular.
Between us, I think it’s still okay to vet them out, but yeah you have the benefit of knowing they need to sell the job to you. Are there layoffs happening, “I read articles where layoffs are still happening, why are you hiring?” and knowing that HR is going to be impersonal and callous when you’re dealing with them. All important factors.
And hey worst case, it’s good interview prep for yourself
Yeah, still attending the interview but don’t really think I’m going to go anywhere with it. As you said, it’s good game practice.
But really though. If CF is this brazen on
letting gorecalibratingfiring the people closest to the money (sales) then how am I supposed to think they’re going to treat their engineering talent? R&D is typically the first to get the blunt end of the axe, not the last.I’ve seen it hit both ways tbh, sometimes it’s engineering, sometimes it’s support. Depends on if the company views engineering as “they’ll save us money” or not.
But yeah, it’s a good chance to work out the first interview jitters, probably do some stupid technical questions on the whiteboard like “write out binary search perfectly in the whiteboard from memory”, and see how it goes.
Yikes. This kind of thing is happening all over the industry as it pulls back from COVID over-hiring. https://layoffs.fyi
I hear that phrase a lot like it means something. What is “COVID over hiring”? What does that even really mean?
Monetary policies and cheap loans from the government that stimulated the economy to counter the effects of the recurrent lockdowns. The opposite of what’s happening now (high interest rates to counter inflation).
Content unavailable :(
Well, Cloudflare did fire some of their best employees recently.
Video won’t load for me, website seems dodgy so I’m not going to bend over backwards to make it work.
Odysee is one of the biggest distributed video hosting platforms, equivalent to PeerTube. It’s not sketch, but the embed isn’t working for some reason. That is on the instance admin.
I wouldn’t expect a website like this to be embedded, not from a url to the page.
The website absolutely is sketchy, there’s plenty of dodgy connections eg Facebook and Google. Why use an alternative to YouTube when you’re’ still connecting to Google??
Some people care more about driving adoption than being a federation absolutist my dude.
If you haven’t watched a YouTube video in the last year I’ll give you $20.
Again, I ask, what’s the point of a YouTube alternative if you’re still connecting to Google?
I’m all for driving adoption of alternatives, and I’m not a federation absolutist. My issue here is purely that this site has a lot of scummy connections that it should not have. Why does it include Facebook cookies??
Being a 9-5 sucks. Never be loyal to an employer especially millenials and coming generation. You have lost everything so do what you get paid for and leave. Don’t let them tell you how boomers and the generation before that did the job.
Build loyalty to an employer only after they prove they are worthy of it. Some employers do warrant loyalty, because they are good employers. A company that does this dirty work using mercenaries instead of their own hearts is cowardly, and therefore dangerous.
Also their inability to stomach doing it themselves is evidence to them that it’s the wrong thing to do, but they don’t care. They want the thing done, the fact that their conscience seems to deflate them every time they think about doing it themselves should indicate to them they haven’t really thought it through, that there are complex outcomes that will not go well for them if they proceed.
So do they steel themselves and proceed anyway? No they hire Mitch and Melissa to doublespeak-handwave their way through it because they’ve mastered the vapidity required to fire someone with zero questions asked and take ten minutes saying “I understand how you feel” (as a psychopath I understand the feeling of fear).
They do not understand Brittany’s feeling of injustice. That’s the feeling they don’t understand, and don’t even realize she’s talking about.
As far as I’m concerned, this video is evidence that they fired her without reason. Why? Because she asked for a reason and the HR ghoul said “We can’t give you an answer for that”.
don’t be loyal to your employer, be loyal to your union
