novamdomum

Looks like something changed so let’s review. The conditions were that this would have no impact on Cloudflare or Brittany. Apart from Cloudflare looking like dicks in the most public and embarrassing way imaginable, Brittany’s landed a nice new job most likely thanks to all the visibility she generated. I would imagine she was offered a ton of jobs the minute she went viral and is only now officially able to announce the one she picked. Well done her. You mentioned being used to being 100% right so you must know the feeling well. I have to say, I see why you like it so much cos I’m certainly enjoying this ;)

Ok, let’s see.

Yeah… seems like you didn’t read the conditions of the test I proposed. See you in 3 months ;)

Ok, let’s see.

Alright, let’s play this game. Firstly a week is nothing so let’s make it 3 months and let’s begin by being clear about what “no impact” means. It seems to me twofold. On the one hand there’s the impact on Cloudflare’s share price and then more directly the impact on Brittany Pietsch. If she gets no more job offers than she would have if she’d kept quiet then I guess that would be “no impact” number one. Cloudflare’s share price has risen since November last year from 54.95USD to its current price of 79.37USD. If there is no great change in three months then that would be “no impact” number two. Let’s see what happens ;)

“Now she has nothing” - You shouldn’t underestimate the impact of going viral. If she’d kept quiet no one would have ever known about the way Cloudflare behaved. Now she’s gone viral globally and her 1 day old LinkedIn post about this situation has (so far) collected 4,260 reactions, 547 comments and 128 reposts. You can bet your bottom dollar that Matthew Prince is not sleeping soundly tonight. It’s going to be rather interesting to see what happens next…

I’m finding this confusing. On the one hand you are adamant this will have no impact for them but then also say this could have huge legal connotations for them. Which is it? It can’t be both.

If it was nothing why brush it?

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.

“Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists.” They do now ;)

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.

“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…

I like to shower in as dark a possible a bathroom. I find it enhances the creativity effect by a huge amount. Also the slight risk of an accidental, life altering fall from not being able to see keeps it spicy!