I get why Brittany's mad: Cloudflare appears to be handling this about as bad as possible. But those two HR randos aren't gonna have anything worthwhile to say, either.
I don't want to be judgmental of Brittany because it's a sucky call to have to take. But my recommendation in this situation is to say "I disagree with that assessment of my performance, but I understand you are terminating my employment. What details do we need to handle with any severance, and where do I send my laptop." And then, as is tradition, go get day drunk.
I get that this type of situation is emotionally difficult, but advice for anyone willing to take it: if the point is getting information, a confrontational "you can't do this to me" type tone is probably less helpful than a curious "you owe me nothing but if you want to brighten my day a little here's what I'm curious about" attitude.
There was obviously no information to get. There were just two clueless people who were paid to fire people they didn't know for reasons they didn't know, and repeat platitudes until they can successfully end the call.
> But those two HR randos aren't gonna have anything worthwhile to say, either.
companies explicitly construct situations like this such that the person being screwed doesn't have access to anyone making a decision, just other peons implementing them.
I've had to fire people before. One time it was performance, but performance can be very hard to measure sometimes, so all I had was a vague "making too many mistakes" etc. This person had been on a PIP for a while, and had over a year to get it, but it just didn't work out. But I didn't have anything more concrete. The other one was literally just "our boss told us we had to fire one person, and it's you. Sorry. No better reason."
I feel like companies should just be more upfront about things like "hey, we over hired. This sucks. But you're fired. Here's a generous severance."
Layoffs are “supposed to be” non-performance based. “Our widget didn’t sell so we’re laying off the widget makers”. That’s the generally accepted idea.
In the US you totally can sue if they fire you for a protected reason (“we noticed you were missing meetings on maternity leave, men would never do that”). Some people would sue over anything I’m sure.
If you’re a salesperson and you didn’t sell anything for 5 months, that’s performance based and it’s “reasonable” to fire them. They’d probably not sue. You can tell someone they were a poor performer without legal repercussions, assuming you’re not being shady. Typically HR and legal put together some sort of evidence just in case.
It’s just mean, but maybe fair, to lay off the entire sales team and call each person and tell them they were a bad performer. Bad look to do it after the Cloudflare CEO went around a press tour last year bragging about how they won’t do layoffs and now’s the time to invest in talent.
It's not limited to just filing lawsuits. There are federal agencies you can file complaints with that will then tip off investigations and you can do that for free.
These types of firings, where the employee was given no negative feedback, there is no paper trail, evidence, etc. creates the type of gray areas that can easily lead to findings in favor of the employee if she were to file something for say sex discrimination. Cloudflare may have to go and find other instances where they fired non-protected class employees in a similar fashion. At the very least, it's going to be a PITA for their HR/legal team and may cost them some fines as well.
>There are federal agencies you can file complaints with that will then tip off investigations and you can do that for free.
More evidence that we need to dismantle much of the federal government, I don't want my tax dollars funding crap like this.
The government should build bridges, highways, manage defense, control the border, manage trade policy etc. All of this extra stuff is scope creep to the extreme.
I would say so. This video is a perfect demonstration of America's "at-will employment" culture. It's extremely asymmetrical, too. Companies can fire you at any moment, for any reason (with or without cause!)... yet it is considered rude for employees to not provide ample notice when deciding to voluntarily quit.
I’ve lived a very different culture than you in the U.S. - to the degree I’m surprised to see you express this sentiment.
In days of yore, people gave notice. But then a meme policy of “don’t poison the well” did the rounds. Roughly, the philosophy went: when someone is leaving they can only do harm; they are leaving, they have a convincing reason for leaving, and you don’t want that convincing reason to sour your other employees on you.
The result was that, when you gave notice, you were immediately dismissed on the spot.
In my career, I’ve seen a few people give very generous (months) notice. They were expecting to be _paid_ for the period of time they’d given notice for. But they found themselves terminated that day.
The result, in my circles, is that people often hide their intention to leave until the day they’re leaving. When they send their notice, they’ve already quit. Any time they get paid for is gravy, but they’re out the door.
That's horrible and very different from what I experienced in Switzerland.
It's a concept in Swiss law that obligations are symmetrical, and the periods are quite long (three months, and not only for employment, but for other contracts as well, like renting).
If you are dismissed on the spot, you'll get three months of pay. On the other hand, if you give or are given notice, you are sometimes expected to continue work. This happened to me ten years ago. My employer expected me to explain to my coworkers how some things work during that time.
Looking back even I found that a bit strange because I understand the thing with doing only harm when someone is leaving. For example by leaving backdoors?
It really depends on the company and why you are going. I gave 6months notice when I worked at Apple (FIRE) and slowly offloaded all my responsibilities. I documented many things for whoever would come in to replace me. They gave me a going away dinner and I still connect with former colleagues.
I left a shitty job with no notice, and still got a going away dinner! The key is to be a good coworker, not be an asshole, and try not to leave a total mess for the next person. Oh and don't work for psychopaths.
> Looking back even I found that a bit strange because I understand the thing with doing only harm when someone is leaving. For example by leaving backdoors?
I think the harm meant is more about spreading negativity to other employees who might be inspired to jump ship too.
I don't think a required severance period for long term employees would have a notable impact on economic growth. And making it easier to give notice is good for individual liberty and the ability to change jobs when desired.
And while we're looking at the intersection of socialism, employment, and freedom, moving health care away from employment and toward the government would be a big boost to individual liberty.
Meaning they said "i'll work another 3 months, but I found a new job" and their current employment said "nah, today's your last day". I've seen it happen first hand.
I gave something like 6 weeks notice at my last job and by mutual agreement spent most of that time doing presentations and updating docs to sunset my bus factor. The mistake isn't on the part of the worker who has the courtesy to minimise the disruption of their departure, it's the employer who poisons that well.
Of course, power dynamics being what they are, it's the worker who pays the price.
Returning to add: the benefit to employers of acting like their (ex-)employees are human is that we finished off with a very friendly "if you're interested in coming back, the door is always open", and indeed during my time there I had more than one ex-colleague who became a colleague again. Often at a much higher level and salary bracket, tech promo being equally broken everywhere.
Personally I find "bus factor" to be one of the less egregious pieces of corporate jargon. It's a problem that mainly hurts the rank and file and is utterly irrelevant/invisible to management until it becomes very visible and we inevitably take the blame and eat the consequences. Learning to speak their language to communicate a very real problem is a key deliverable.
I do feel a bit ashamed of unironically using "sunset", although in my case it was more in the sense of "ride off into the ~". It was my last corp job (hopefully) ever.
Everyone says this as if it's not also considered rude/bad behavior for a company to lay off people with no notice. It's rude either way. Both employer and employee can opt to do it without the usual graceful phase out, but they risk backlash from other employees. Either team members getting a bad impression of someone leaving suddenly, or getting a bad feeling about the company after unexpected layoffs.
Even worse, some companies will terminate you at some point during the (customary two) weeks before you quit, throwing off your schedule and potentially pay.
Isn't severance basically said notice? If you still receive pay and benefits for a period of time, it's almost like you're still employed while the company minimizes potential damage from laid off employees. It's also considered rude for companies to not provide severance in these sorts of jobs.
When a large company fires you, you usually get at least two weeks severance. This is better than notice. You get the notice and don’t even have to work.
When an employee quits, it’s expected they give two weeks notice.
This is rather balanced. Of course there’s the issue that you are 1/N * 100 percent of their workforce and they are 100% of your income.
Respectfully I disagree that this being a good example - when I quit I give two weeks (which sometimes I'm asked to just stop working today and take two week pay) or when they dismiss you like this video, they give you several week pay too.
You can totally do this (within the bounds of your contract) but from a career point of view, it's not wise to burn bridges.
There's a lot of talk about "networking" to find jobs or opportunities (like your own startup or freelancing) but one thing networking means is building relationships with people you have worked with in the past. That doesn't mean sucking up, but just being known to be reliable and dependable makes you a safer bet if that person is in a position to hire or recommend you.
That manager or coworker you did a project with a few years ago might have moved on to another company and is someone you can reach out to. If you dropped out of a project mid-way without cause leaving them in the lurch, that's something they are going to remember.
Sometimes of course a job or project can be a nightmare and you want to have nothing to do with those people ever again, which is understandable. But otherwise I would try to be professional as possible and leave options open, and if that means giving your notice and coasting a few weeks, then do so.
I prefer giving a notice but then doing absolutely no work besides chitchatting with the people I liked and planning my goodbye party, while still collecting a paycheck.
I mean, you can do that. There's literally nothing stopping you except the opinion of your team of you. I generally give notice, not because I give a single fuck about the company, but because I like my coworkers and want to make sure I tie off my work before leaving so I don't make their lives harder.
Worker solidarity doesn't mean you fuck over capital any time you can, even if it makes your fellow workers' lives harder. The company cares way less about you quitting suddenly than your coworkers do. That's exactly why they don't care about laying people off with no notice.
You may get faux revolutionary warm fuzzies by quitting to screw the man, but you're probably screwing your friends more than your foes.
Meh, in my view, this is sort of a "two wrongs don't make a right" situation. I don't want to leave without notice. Not for the company, but for me. Those final weeks are nice, useful. I can tie up some loose ends that have been bugging me, say goodbye to people, all that good stuff. And I keep getting paid during that time, for honestly very easy (low stakes and low stress) work. It's win win for me.
Of course I know the company might escort me out when I give notice instead of letting me serve out the time, and of course that would hurt my feelings, but when I regained my composure I would see that it reflects poorly on them, not on me, if they do that lame nonsense.
So I think it's really sad for companies (and also employees) that for whatever reasons they don't feel they can give notice in this same way.
But I certainly don't want to give up something that I value for myself, out of spite. That makes no sense to me.
In EU it would be illegal to fire someone randomly for performance reasons. Note the word randomly, if you want to fire for performance reasons, you need to give formal warnings and provide chances to improve.
On the other hand, mass firings could be much easier. There might be some rules you have to follow about who to let go first. And you might need to stop hiring for a certain amount of months. But at least you could empathise the economic situation and provide empathy when firing.
It may be a legal issue but companies handle it the same way in France: make impossible demands as part of a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP), and then fire without giving a real explanation.
Yeah, you can terminate them with absolutely no reason, and then get sued. Read up on how employment laws actually work. There are all sorts of factors you aren't considering, which play into the legal realm at hand here. Factors like employee count. Yes, even in at-will states. You think that major corporations do PIPs and pay severances out of kindness?
In California, you sometimes have to announce layoffs. This strengthens a class action lawsuit that this is a layoff and not a termination for performance. There will be penalties associated with that.
You can simply say "We are terminating your employment." However, that generally means that you cannot demand back relocation, bonuses, stocks, etc. and you're going to have to cough up equivalent severance to everybody else--otherwise you're staring at a discrimination lawsuit.
> At will employment is a thing. You can terminate people with absolutely no reason if you want, most of the time.
In which case fire them with no reason. If however you waive that choice and offer a specific reason then you probably should make the chosen reason true unless you want to be sued for wrongful dismissal.
Or maybe they did and she didn't tell in the TikToks?
Don't believe everything you see on the internet. Be smarter than that, form opinions based on as many facts as possible, not only partial, biased, information.
Given the information, and given what I know about Cloudflare’s internals and how they have behaved, and given how Matthew Prince has been in the past. It is unreasonable to think Cloudflare is in the right here.
Right? I mean who is more likely to be shady and do crooked things? Some person or a business? Can anyone even name a single time when a company has fired someone without real cause and lied?
Companies are made of individuals, and individuals can be shady and crooked. In a vacuum, it’s probably somewhat as likely that the person getting fired and the company doing the firing are scumbags. I’d personally argue that companies have more of a reputation to uphold for profitability reasons, and will therefore be incentivised to act less scummy than individuals.
In this case, the company has nothing to gain no matter how they sever the contract. They’re simply getting rid of an employee who was either costing them money, or getting rid of many employees at a time to navigate a difficult economic situation.
The person making the TikTok on the other hand has a lot to gain from making a controversial and attention-grabbing spectacle out of this.
You went from "the facts supported the reason" to "we don't have all the facts necessary to know if the facts supported the reason." to "from the facts we know, the reason seems sus."
If she's doing all the things she should do ( as she mentions), but lacks technical knowledge for a technical product.
Than if she asks feedback, she'll get points for the effort.
But concerning technical knowledge, there's not much to do in a short period to get an employee profitable in a lot of cases. Definitely with a product like Cloudflare.
And saying you lack basic knowledge, is very hard to do/fix. Because the knowledge is not solely Cloudflare related. It's development, website, networking, ... There's a difficult gray area on what training someone needs for technical things.
Even if the employee is motivated. They won't be profitable within a year.
To me it sounds like excelent video for making a legal case againts Britanny, I'd be very upset if someone would be secretly recording a meeting with me as a HR person. Guess that depends on a state, but good luck finding another corporate job.
I live in a one-party consent state. And, Apple Watches have a GREAT and discreet microphone; I record whenever I have the slightest feeling something "important" is going to be said.
(And from a technical POV, using OpenAIs Whisper I can very easily convert those recordings to searchable transcripts)
You want to be a little HR god of your fiefdom. Still, unsurprisingly, intelligent people don't like people above them going on power trips, especially in America, where employers have a one-sided power-relationship with workers.
She's in Georgia, and Georgia, like most states, is a "one-party consent" state for purposes of making audio recordings of conversations. They'd have no case at all.
If it's a legally-made recording -- and thus the property of that person who pressed the "record" button, free and clear of any obligations -- what could be illegal about posting it publicly?
As others have already mentioned, she could have signed an NDA, but those are typically narrow and only apply to technical data, marketing data, sales data, etc. There could be something in there about "internal processes," but it's a stretch.
She could have signed a non-disparagement agreement, but there's nothing in the video which constitutes disparagement.
So I'd assume that she's probably okay. And she did a good thing by posting it.
Besides, legal action would need to come from Cloudflare, which would be an extremely bad look for them.
People sacrifice a lot of personal time to ramp up in a job. This is why she is emotional. Then she was told she was doing well..by her manager. Now her investment is bogus and it sounds like she will not be compensated at all for it? I mean you're advocating she asks for compensation, when they tell her no? Then what?
Not sure who you are but you're delusional if you think this is ok.
Not sure who I am either, but in no way did I say "this is ok".
I'm saying there's nothing to be gained to prolonging the talk with two drones from HR. Maybe I'm missing something. What's your best case scenario for how the call goes? What is the biggest potential upside?
Emotional well-being? Being able to show love to yourself through the knowledge that you stood up for the value of your labor and dedication when it was being unfairly dismissed? Job loss is significantly traumatic, especially in the US where it is linked to the ability to receive medical care.
There's a class of response that sounds like "there was no point in doing this, you should just never trust a company, that's what I do". I am not saying you are being that person. But when someone does do that, it gives me the feeling that I am experiencing a much less healthy response than this one.
Showing myself love by not wasting time arguing with two human brick walls in HR. I guess based on the comments here, giving the drones who were uninvolved in the decision a piece of your mind makes some people happy. To me nothing else could be more frustrating.
Advice that is "go get drunk" to deal with a horrible situation is bad. Maybe this is what she needs for closure and not looking for answers in the bottom of a bottle.
"Looking for answers in the bottom of a bottle", seriously? In my own experience, drinking with friends at a spontaneous "fuck that job" party after a massive layoff is one of life's great pleasures. To each their own, I guess.
The upside is an emotional one: not feeling saddened from letting someone easily walk all over you.
In the case of this woman's termination, they have lied to her face about her performance, and would presumably also lie to anyone that asked about the cause of her termination (they would say she was fired, when it was a lay off). They probably expected her to just silently take it. By calling them out on their lies, it makes it clear that she knows where she stands, and it makes them look and feel incompetent as they have no concrete evidence to back up their lies, so they must resort to pathetic equivocation. And, since such people often feel that they are in the right if they are met with zero resistance, this also helps them see that they are actually wrong.
If that doesn't make sense, consider: what would you do if someone walking by shoulder checked you? Would you do absolutely nothing and keep walking?
I would stop them and first ask if that was intentional -- it's possible that was an accident, and we can laugh about it. If it was intentional, I would tell them that I am sorry for their condition: that they feel that the only way to be seen is to bug people in indirect ways (as they are clearly too chickenshit to resort to outright violence) because they are too worthless a person to pay any mind to otherwise. I would wish them luck with that and then go on my way.
The only reason I would be silent is if I felt weaker than the other person, so the downside of just taking their abuse is that some core, subconscious part of me would lose respect for myself. I generally find nonviolent confrontation -- when warranted -- to not only be satisfying, but also crucial for how I perceive myself, though I suppose maybe not everyone is wired that way.
> If it was intentional, I would tell them that I am sorry for their condition: that they feel that the only way to be seen is to bug people in indirect ways (as they are clearly too chickenshit to resort to outright violence) because they are too worthless a person to pay any mind to otherwise.
I’m not entirely sure if I follow, but my guess is that the comparison to a fictional character known for being aggressive is intended to (maybe playfully?) tease me.
I don’t see it as exceptionally aggressive to call people out on their bullshit. If you have the ability to humble someone being an asshat, they just may learn it’s in their best interest to chill out, which could possibly spare someone else - maybe someone else that doesn’t have the strength to stand up for themselves.
Companies should be legally required to provide feedback and data if they're firing someone based on "performance" reasons.
This isn't about the conversation, it's that your attitude means we should just let corporations off for doing bad / stupid things at scale. This is not going to result in a good society.
This company has seen 30%+ year on year growth, there is no need to treat people like this, especially when they're doing so well.
This type of thing can be very violating, do you not understand that?
Nah, she did well by frustrating the process. Next time they’ll think twice before gaslighting and humiliating an employee. Telling her she was getting fired due to her own performance is just that. In my books she did well, hope she starts a gig on her own to never have to deal with NPCs such as those two. They feed on people’s misery.
Who, exactly, do you think is going to "think twice" next time?
It's a bummer, but this is how this has been done for decades (generations?) and everybody knows it's how it's done, and that has in no way made companies "think twice" about business leaders assigning fairly low level employees or consultants to do these meetings just like this.
There was a whole gag about exactly this in one of the last few episodes of Succession just recently. There have been popular movies about this ("Up in the Air", with George Clooney, is about this, if memory serves). It's not, like, a secret that this is how it works.
It sucks, but no, this video going "viral" is not going to change anything.
> It's a bummer, but this is how this has been done for decades (generations?) and everybody knows it's how it's done, and that has in no way made companies "think twice" about business leaders assigning fairly low level employees or consultants to do these meetings just like this.
No, avoiding the words "we're laying you off" by lying about your performance and telling you that you're instead being fired is not "how this has been done for decades".
I’m well aware that bad behavior is a thing. Some driver’s cut each other off in traffic, weaving in and out of lanes. Some customers condescend to service workers, knowing they can’t retaliate without losing their jobs. And some reprobate employers do shitty things like we’re seeing here.
Are you really arguing against me when I say that this is exceptionally abhorrent?
That’s all I’m saying: that this isn’t the kind of thing to shrug at. There are plenty of companies lead by grade A people that treat their employees well instead of heartlessly throwing them under the bus.
Yes, I'm arguing against you when you say that it is "exceptional", though I agree that it is "abhorrent".
> There are plenty of companies lead by grade A people that treat their employees well instead of heartlessly throwing them under the bus.
I agree. But I also think companies aren't static things, founders can't stay forever, management always turns over eventually. I believe companies that are permanently incapable of looking for loopholes to reduce staff at the lowest cost to themselves are vanishingly rare.
I don't think relying on companies to not do things they are incentivized to do, on the strength of their principles, is an ineffective strategy. But maybe I'm arguing against myself here; if publicizing this kind of behavior results in bad PR that actually breaks through into being a problem for a company, then that changes the incentives, which I do think is good.
So yeah, even though I don't think this is new or unusual behavior, shaming it nonetheless could potentially have a positive effect.
That's fine and all, it's your choice, but I think it's a mistake to conclude from a single viral video that this is a problem that is in any way specific to this one company.
If your goal is "I never want to work for a company that might let people go in this manner", then that's going to be a lot more difficult to accomplish than not applying to Cloudflare.
I guess if this has been an eye opening experience to people - as it seems to have been for many in this thread - then that's a good thing. But a lot of people seem to be drawing a very narrow conclusion about Cloudflare's corporate culture, when, to me, this just seems like a video of an interaction that could have happened at pretty much any company at pretty much any time.
Software developers are used to being docile, but in oder industries being brave is a virtue. She’d make an excellent lawyer or leader. I dont understand why fellow workers are so angry at her if not the fear and terror at being in her shoes. Anxiety is common among keyboard operators. Watching this video is a great tutorial on how to change that.
I mean youre wrong. Anyone worth their salt is going to see that she clearly laid out what she was doing right, how fast in a 3 month time period she was ramping up to the product and had already made inroads with her customers. You want sales people who are that assertive.
Sales is not "fair", like engineering is "fair". If a salesperson fails to make the sale, everyone else in the company suffers. If enough salespeople suck, then no one has jobs.
The problem here is that they didn't demonstrate sucking. Nobody is asking for companies to keep employees that suck. And lots of departments can bring down a company if enough of the employees suck.
Because they're people who are also just trying to do a job. I'm sure there are some sadists out there who take pleasure in this kind of meeting, but I'm just as sure that for every one of those, there are a hundred (or a thousand) people for whom this is the worst part of their job, who go home and hug their kids with watery eyes at the end of a day that was horrible for them.
You aren't mad at them, you're mad at the people making the decisions that are upstream of these meetings.
If my employer tells me to call a person and tell them they are fired because they did a bad job, but it's clear that this is not the reason, I would say: sorry, but I'm not going to do that. Remember, it's an "employer", not a "boss".
I totally agree that people should strive to have an ethical center in their work and refuse to do unethical things when asked by their employers.
(But for what it's worth, this doesn't seem to me like a cut and dry description of what happened here; sales is a very cut-throat quota sensitive profession in my experience.)
But nevertheless, I empathize with people who also have to figure out how to put food on their own family's table, in a profession (HR) that is itself very sensitive to downturns.
The comments in this thread read to me like software developers who have not faced a world where it is not easy get a better new job easily after quitting one that sucks, and / or who are young and unattached with very few expenses, and struggle to put themselves in the shoes of someone for whom a principled resignation could have devastating consequences.
It just seems to me like a classic case of shooting the messenger.
In this case, it's not clear that this isn't the reason. That's something the laidoff employee calls out herself; the HR people aren't familiar with her KPIs or work. They don't have any expertise in her industry, and it's unreasonable to expect that.
What do you suggest for making this statement realistic?
People who work in HR do useful things. I have leaned on "people operations" support in most companies I've worked for, they do recruitment and policies on employee behavior and performance management and a bunch of other things. This is all valuable work. I'm glad it's not what I do for work, but it would be a much suckier world if nobody chose to do this work.
But they are also asked by company leadership to be the buffer, to be the messenger that gets "shot", when bad or even necessary but incredibly painful decisions are made. It's part of the expectations of the people who hire them, that they'll do that.
So what do you suggest? Do all the other useful stuff, but then when asked to be that buffer in these shitty moments, they should quit and find a new job? What should they say when asked why they quit? Is it ethical to lie about it, or do they tell a prospective new employer that there is an expected part of the role they're applying for that they are not willing to do?
Or is your suggestion something better? Like perhaps there could be a professional guild for HR professionals, and they could have a code of ethics that makes it clear that this is not something they will do. I think that would be pretty great! But that would be a much bigger and entirely different project that individuals quitting in protest.
Or perhaps your suggestion is, actually, that there should be nobody working in HR, that it is not a useful function. In that case, no, that's wrong, I've worked with many smart technically inclined people who think this, and I've worked at companies that are led by people who believe this, and it sucks.
I'm all for shifting the expectation of who has the responsibility for delivering the news of shitty decisions onto the management that made the decisions, but there has to be some theory of the case for how to get there from here.
You're basing yourself on a TikTok video, with someone who knew it was being recorded and acted accordingly.
Eg. Cloudflare 's products are very technical and perhaps she has too little general IT knowledge to be able to close a deal ( she mentioned to have 3 chances and closed 0 )
As someone very close to an ex-CF employee, I can state with authority that the company does very little to help it's employees come up to speed.
Their training process is essentially a bunch of CF employees doing unimpressive powerpoint presentations. Their internal documentation is a huge Wiki and it's not really very well maintained. Their internal config management system is absolute trash and I'm convinced that the only reason they stay in business is they've got a few long-time internal employees who know how everything REALLY works.
So, I can understand how someone without the experience inside of the company can come to the conclusion that this is justified but CF's process is essentially a broken recruiting and training pipeline connected to a woefully unimpressive sales and support org. The dysfunction is endemic to the organization and nothing short of a major calamity or a change of leadership will expose it.
For my part, I've warned off high-performing colleagues who knew of my connection and wanted the inside scoop after getting called by CF recruiters. Nobody to my knowledge ever accepted a role there after talking to me privately. I'd imagine part of the problem at CF is that the real 100x engineers know better than to suffer in a poor work environment. I was sent this Tiktok link by someone who reached out to me to thank me for the culture warning.
If I was a strong candidate I'd be very wary of a CF promise. Caveat emptor.
Based on contact with their support + social media + communication here + being a customer + discord + attending, although infrequently, community calls.
Since you posted the link and I see very little history here, I can't acknowledge your claim of authority yet and I can only suspect, without certainty, personal grievances or conflicts of interests.
Additionally, I find the correlation between the video as a proof of "culture warning" severely lacking.
The details about underperformers in sales and related company actions were explained on investor day around May 2023. This seems correlated to those events...
I didn't get to be a (retired) 100x engineer by posting on HN. I don't post stories regularly but did in this case because a friend sent me the link.
I did post it to warn others about CF.
> Since you posted the link and I see very little history here, I can't acknowledge your claim of authority yet and I can only suspect, without certainty, personal grievances or conflicts of interests.
Suspect away. When someone you care for is treated badly by a corporation I think that's fair game to relay to others and amplify the message.
But since we're on the subject:
> Based on contact with their support + social media + communication here + being a customer + discord + attending, although infrequently, community calls.
Maybe you just don't want to believe a corporation you believe in so strongly could be awful to their employees or have an internal culture that sees individuals as disposable.
Maybe it's you that has the undisclosed conflict of interest. Maybe CF cares about what HN thinks of it.
> Their training process is essentially a bunch of CF employees doing unimpressive powerpoint presentations. Their internal documentation is a huge Wiki and it's not really very well maintained. Their internal config management system is absolute trash and I'm convinced that the only reason they stay in business is they've got a few long-time internal employees who know how everything REALLY works.
That's the whole point right? They are firing someone with 0 details.
If you can't tell someone why you are firing them you are just incompetent and those HR people should be ashamed of themselves.
You should be able to say something like: Look, we have a rule that you have to make a sale in your first three months. You failed that. Also from what we've seen our feeling is that you are not going to make it in 4 or 5 months so we think extending that period is not going to help.
I also definitely don't understand how you can fire someone without having their direct manager in the call.
There is just a lot of sugar coating and hollow words without any meaningful information.
Yes, this would be the optimal vulcan way to take this. In the human world, peoples stake a chunk of their identity with the company they work for, and when they get fired, that part of their identity is lost. The right, human way to deal with this as the employer is to say that you're sorry and to truly empathize with the people they're firing. Unfortunately, HR doesn't want to do this anymore, maybe for legal reasons, or maybe because they're just emotionally lazy.
>that you're sorry and to truly empathize with the people they're firing
Serious question: what should have been said on this call to do that? There was a lot of "I'm sorry you feel that way" seeming to come from the HR representative, but it seemed to miss the mark.
They missed the mark because "I'm sorry you feel that way" is the pseudo-apology equivalent of giving someone the finger. It's attempting to shift the blame onto the recipient for feeling bad, rather than the speaker actually admitting fault.
Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics.
As far as I'm aware, evidence of good performance could be used to strengthen their case to collect unemployment (if Cloudflare tries to fight Brittany's unemployment claim); it could also be used as evidence in a discrimination lawsuit. But given that Brittany said that many other team members also got invited to 15 minute calls with HR, there's good evidence that CF didn't discriminate, but it's also evidence that this could've been a mass, quiet layoff.
Although it sounds like the simple fact that her clients backed out at the last minute could be enough evidence for poor performance, even if the sales were entirely managed properly before that point.
> It sounds like her clients backing out last minute is evidence of poor performance, even if the sales were entirely managed properly before that.
Certainly not without more details.
Good sales is far more complicated than closing deals. It's like in poker: you'd much rather fold a good hand (unclose a good deal) than shove all in and then lose to an even better hand (close the deal and then discover the customer was a bad fit, which has negative second- and third-order consequences.)
They actually hired 100 other people to get average sales people around the same time, instead of underperformers. The expectation was that those new hires ( ~ May 2023 ) would see results that year => december 2023.
Probably the new sales hires were also being graded and those layed off were underperforming versus their peers.
The only thing I'm wondering, is that the performance review was fair for newer hires, but that's speculation. There are a lot of other ways to know if someone is underperforming ( eg. Feedback from 1 of the 3 sales she didn't close, too little general IT knowledge since all of Cloudflare products are very technical, ...)
And if you're in sales, there's only 1 metric that counts...She mentioned to have 0 sales...
Either a misconception or just misspeaking, but legally they can tell the employee everything. The employer doesn't want to tell the employee, simply to CYA.
If I recall the timeline correctly, she was in training during pre-holiday season. But in case we're talking about different things, just FYI, in telco and networking _nothing_ happens after Thanksgiving--it's essentially "quiet" time as customers go into holiday breaks and network freezes.
If you meant Cloudflare customers would make heavy use of their services during holiday season, yes -- but nobody deploys that kind of solution _during_ sales, all online retail pre-plans for that months in advance (cloud resources, inventory, security, etc.), so they wouldn't _buy_ those services then.
Typically [in the US] you can't collect unemployment if you're terminated with cause - something like not showing up to work or not doing your job. Given they terminated for poor performance, this is typically not a scenario where the employee could collect unemployment. In Georgia, for example, she should be given DOL-800 which indicates the reason and explains what her unemployment options look like. If she has evidence this is more of a layoff or that her performance was not bad, she could provide that evidence to her state's Department of Labor to prove that Cloudflare is lying about the reason for termination and thus she deserves to receive it.
However, she likely received some amount of severance, which would mean she would get less or no unemployment income, depending on how much it is in relation to what she would've received from filing for unemployment.
> Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics.
HR only talked for 21 seconds before she said "I'm going to stop you right there" and started talking over them.
She goes on to admit she closed zero sales, even past her ramp-up period.
It's unfortunate, but if they sorted people by sales performance she's at the bottom of the list (by definition)
I think a lot of people in this comment section are responding to the emotional nature of the TikTok and ignoring the fact that she had zero sales during a downsizing.
Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep? I'm generally on her side here but this is a weak argument.
> Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep?
Yes, because every company has their own management strategy. Therefore, what is expected of sales reps, and employees in general, is different. If her manager can't communicate the company's management strategy and expectations, how could she align her work?
> … legally they can't give them any more specifics.
Could you please provide a source for that? That can be an important distinction for an employee. For example, when answering the question "Why did you leave your previous job?" It's important for the now ex-employee to have accurat information.
I elaborated on that - mainly just that anything HR says can be used as evidence in wrongful termination lawsuits; even if nothing happened, it could be enough to trigger further discovery, which ultimately means spending tons of money for the company in legal fees. Being a top performer then getting fired for poor performance is suspicious in any case.
I resent the judgmental attitude being expressed in some of the top comments. In the US at least, we’ve
been socialized into believing workers need to “watch their manners” while corporations can get away with murder.
Here, a worker is clearly being wronged and some random HR goons want the whole thing to proceed as a normal, matter-of-fact 15-minute meeting. They’re going to email severance and equipment return info anyway. Take advantage of these opportunities to make them miserably uncomfortable. In Britt’s case, they never even knew her, so it’s not like she’s going to reach out to them for a recommendation.
Older generations wonder why younger generations are "quiet quitting" and using all this anti-capitalist rhetoric when in the same breath they're sending HR goons (great term for it) to do their dirty work.
Layoffs are unfortunately, sometimes, necessary. But when they happen, it's important that the right people are chosen, for the right reasons (whether that's performance based, voluntary, protecting certain groups, ensuring fairness, etc). That requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria, and who are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted.
The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months).
They would be among the first to go under union rules, too.
Unions are often worse at prioritizing things like tenure over performance, if anything. But even under those rules she was one of the most junior people.
There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently.
Outcome, perhaps. But a union would have likely a) given a better timeline than a 15 min call with notice sent informally around colleagues, and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience.
They had no signed contracts, but with onboarding, the ramp up, and holidays, it sounds like this was explicitly not an issue for their manager.
You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better.
People don't like things that don't make sense. In my experience, between individual advice and collective bargaining, unions do make things make more sense in this way.
> and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience.
The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that.
They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative newness might have put them at an even higher disadvantage under a union.
> You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better.
I don't believe this at all. If this had been a TikTok where HR said "We're letting you go because you started recently" everyone would be outraged about them firing people for arbitrary, non-performance reasons.
Took the words right out of my mouth. Being given a 3-month ramp up starting in August _then_ being tasked with accounts to manage in the last month and a half of a calendar year is one of the worst places to be in. The only deals getting closed are those with accounts set for a renewal that won't be questioned. That time period can not be reasonably used for performance metrics of a new hire. It's utterly irresponsible.
/me -> former Red Hat Solution Architect that was given 6 months to go from hired to field ready in assisting two account managers. My RH and technical knowledge was fine, but sales is a completely different beast. I was lucky with my timeline as it gave me a lot of time to breathe, shadow my mentor, and get the two required certs. If it was three instead I would have been in over my head by the end of those 90 days. Every day was effectively being sprayed by a fire hose of information.
And she honestly may have had absolutely horrible luck. I've worked with great accounts, terrible accounts, and then some *poof* accounts. I had more deals than I would have liked get suspended right as ink was about to meet paper due to internal events at the customer.
Unless you're egregiously bad at your job, getting fired for performance should never be a surprise. She says she'd had nothing but positive performance reviews until the day she was fired, so unless you think she's lying I see two possibilities:
1. Her performance was subpar but Cloudflare told her to keep doing what she was doing.
2. Her performance was fine but the Cloudflare are full of shit.
Pretty much. Not for anything short of total malfeasance or horrible misbehavior.
Layoffs happen. Welcome to tech. Just say it's a layoff, and everybody will get on with life.
However, trying to fire someone for performance short of 12 months smells like somebody was told to try to claw back or limit signing bonuses, relocation allowances, stock grants, and promissory estoppel claims.
It's a VERY, VERY bad look for Cloudflare who, up to this point, I had decent vibes about from dealing with various employees.
> The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months).
You didn't listen to what they said:
* One month at speed
* Three months of ramp
Generally, ramp time in roles like this persons would involve tailing and listening to active areas, training for the specifics of the product that you're selling, etc.
We then hit December, wherein
* Nobody makes big spend choices in December. It's a dead month for sales unless you're in Retail selling toys and gadgets. Sales closing in December are fucking golden geese.
* They had one possible account land pull out at the last moment. Why? Unsure.
* Assuming this person is telling the truth, their management indicated they were a high performer overall.
Just like very few companies hire in December, very few companies make big spending choices at the end of the calendar year.
Unions can do things like
* Argue that the state of the dismissal is contrived ("you didn't sell anything in the week nobody buys things")
* Create mandatory minimum times of employment (e.g. "you can't lay off someone who has only recently joined" or "you can't lay off someone who moved > 100mi for the job until they have had at least one primary performance review")
Unions fight the nebulous "performance metrics" that HR is citing here.
They would've ensured she had support and representation, someone in that call who was on her side. Even if that doesn't change the numerical outcome, it can make a big emotional difference.
> There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently.
A union would have had significantly more notice because they're in tune with the company and prioritize the workers. Extra notice means greater better planning.
Stop sticking up for this garbage please. Have some empathy?
• Third quarter revenue totaled $335.6 million, representing an increase of 32% year-over-year
Do we need to feel sorry for cloudflare or something?
She says on the call, or her feedback has been positive, so why should she expect a negative outcome like this?
As a junior, she should be given the appropriate and valid feedback so she can learn and improve for her future. Not this dystopian, cold bullshit. Do you have any idea what this kind of thing does to a junior employees confidence? Wow.
Adding a union often does because it changes the power dynamics. In this conversation, Cloudflare holds all of the cards and most people will accept their terms because they don’t want to lose healthcare or severance pay, and they probably say things confident that they will not be challenged to back those claims up.
A union won’t make the managers setting policies better human beings but it puts them in a context where there’s a party who has more power to push back, and can afford things like lawyers. It also means that they have things like union contracts saying that, for example, you can’t fire someone for performance without proof and warning such as a negative review and time to improve. Simply knowing they’ll have to follow the process is often enough to rein in the worst abuses.
I mean, not sticking to anything, but if I would hire a sales-person and in 5 months (just before the perm-contract @ 6 months) and they made 0 sales - I would fire that person as well. It's called probation-period for a reason.
The difference is that with union you cant pretend you are just firing few randos because they were terrible at their job and you have to come to the union and say „we need to fire 40 people” and union can say „CloudFlare is doing layoffs” and both investors and people on the job market know its propably not a good time for tge CF, despite the CEO boasting about bazzilions made and best year ever.
The right reasons in a union are how long have you been part of the union. I don't support protecting certain groups. I don't agree with forcing fairness which is a personal judgement anyways. I don't even agree layoffs are necessary here. They are easy.
A union doesn't stop layoffs it just costs everyone more. Your best representative in a layoff is a lawyer and a place with better employment notice pay.
I have several friends who work in construction and trades and their opinion of unions is very negative. This is a blue state and blue city. A lot of HN loves unions but the blue collar opinion of them is negative, from what I’ve seen.
I think there's a huge difference between the ideals of what a union can offer, and the practice of entrenched unions in some specific industries, particularly in the US.
As a well paid software engineer who wants to work with high performing colleagues, nothing my union has said has suggested they aren't supportive of this. They are about holding companies to account, not entrenching poor performers or normalising salaries around some middle ground.
Bear in mind also that there has been a near century long war of propaganda against the idea of unions. There's a lot of negative connotation built up in media, discourse, expectations, etc.
The specific criticism I heard my friend rant about was a colleague who did very little because they felt slighted, and they could never be fired for anything really, so because he wanted to move on with his life he just did all that other guys’ work.
I have heard this criticism. I've also heard from my union that they know there is that image, and that's not a culture they support or want to create, and that they want to promote an effective and fair performance-based team environment.
Fundamentally, a union for software engineers is just not going to work the same as a union for, say, manufacturing. There's a lot that mostly doesn't apply to us like physical safety, but a lot more that does like whistleblowing.
I live in a country where unions are a de-facto standard. They actually negotiate with the government for stuff.
Firing "lazy non-performers" is easy, you just follow the steps.
1) warning about performance, in written form with someone present
2) second warning
3) fired.
The American way where a boss can just come in and say "you're fired, gather your things and security will escort you out" will never fly here.
The process is there to make sure the reason for firing is explicitly stated and understood by both sides. It also gives some safeguards that just a personality conflict between people can't be used to fire someone, there has to be a proper reason beyond "I don't like your face"
Companies can also fire people when they hit a downturn, but there's a catch. If they claim it's for "economic reasons" (there's a specific turn of phrase they need to use here that doesn't translate) they then need to primarily re-hire the people who they fired if they start hiring for the same positions again.
If my choice is between being let go for any reason under the sun, including the reasons that aren't real and also being told I'm bad or having a lazy coworker I know what I'll take.
Different union structures for different types of careers. Some people don’t like paying taxes and dues.
Factory unions protect the collective uniformly because each person is interchangeable. This is a “raise the minimum” type environment. They make it hard to fire because they need to hold the line.
Some unions are structured to support highly skilled and differentiated labor. Like in Hollywood. They protect workers like camera-men but still allow skilled actors to be well paid and properly audition for roles.
I worked a unionized job in my first position with CUPE and we ended up going on strike after an open vote (2 against, my coworker and I, everyone else for) which is illegal. After 3 weeks out we went back to work for 1% more in the first year and 1% less in the second. Our union attempted to ruin the reputation of folks in my union who I personally knew crossed the picked line to teach so as not to violate the terms of their contract teaching positions (along with their union position). The union was stupid, corrupt and ultimately everyone who went on strike lost money.
I think what the OP probably really wants is something like Germany’s workers council which is given a chance to weigh in on layoff decisions like this to make sure they make sense
Yep that would also be a positive step. I think unions, when implemented well, might be a bit better, but it seems like Germany gets many of the same benefits I'm thinking of from their workers council mechanism.
cloudflare comes off as absolutely cowardly in this: they don’t even have the person’s manager on the call, they claim it’s a personal performance issue but when pressed it’s actually the whole department getting canned. It’s a bad look
Yeah, that was a terrible way to do it -- don't tell someone their personal performance is why they got fired, when in reality it's the company's performance.
Though maybe her manager is getting canned too and either didn't want to make those calls or they didn't want him on those calls.
Yep, this is a very bad look and if it goes seriously viral, is a PR disaster for hiring going forward. At least for me, it only takes a few of these stories to destroy the perception that a place is a good place to work (and that it isn't run by HR).
It's been at the top of r/sales for almost 2 days now and the comments section is just savage. Real shame, I like cloudflare a lot and it makes me sad to see stuff like this.
Right, and management (the lady's boss) has the perfect pretext for firing her himself :
"look, it's a layoff and my bosses', bosses' boss decided that they were using the closed deals metric to rank people and cut the bottom . Ibdont have a say in who I staying and who is leasing, but ill help you in everything I can"
Managers: grow the balls to fire your employees. Theres always a reason. And talking with your people may make you maintain a good relationship with them.
I have personal wiki pages for companies, where I record things like interesting HN posts about them, notes about their products, and a log of recruiting interactions. All on one page.
Were I to pull up this company's wiki page while talking with a recruiter, this video is like, on a first date, someone being rude to the waiter, while they smile at you. Strong signal about what they truly are.
In this case, a stereotypical big corporate-bureaucratic drone company that absolutely doesn't care, and will toss you aside in an instant, in a Kafkaesque manner, while blaming you. With the effect of beating you up and stressing you more, on your way out -- disrupting your job-hunting, possibly unemployment insurance, and health.
Sounds like they claim to have a problem with 100+ under-performing salespeople.
For the sake of argument, let's say that blaming sales numbers on the salespeople was correct, and that culling was the right response. Then maybe the recent hire person in the video was included inadvertently, or indifferently.
But I wouldn't take it as a given that the salespeople were the root problem. (Someone hired those people, mandated the framework in which they operate, designed the products for which they have to find buyers, etc.). And the tone with which a company is discarding its people tells you how they think about their people.
Nope, the personal notes are necessarily personal. For example, confidential communications with recruiters. If I had to distinguish personal from public somehow in this, it would be more work, and decrease the utility to me.
Also, most of it wouldn't be useful to anyone but me.
Maybe doing personal wiki/notes like this is best thought of as an exercise for the person doing it. Rather than thinking of the artifact of that exercise as "content".
A similar situation happened to me after 7.5 years at a company where I had been given consistently good feedback and promotions. I was fed the lie that my position was being eliminated when there were active public postings for the same position (Staff Engineer). My access to corporate systems was cut off at 8am with no warning or explanatio. I got a similar cold call from an HR person I had met once by chance. No involvement of my manager or director, who both reached out apologetically on linkedin after the fact. Not being able to say goodbye to my coworkers I had known for years was emotionally traumatic. Such is corporate life.
If there is anything I have learned is that Corporate bend over backwards to project a face of "family" and "values" and "ethics".
What really matters is money and saving ones own skin.
A corporate job is transactional. Pure and simple. But, when it is transactional, the outlines must be in start contrast. Many a time, people stay late and spend more time than designated working hours. The company justifies this in a million ways. But when it comes to layoffs, yeah. We know it.
Over a decade ago, a data center hired me as "an apprentice electrician." The economy wasn't doing well, so layoffs lead to me "covering" displaced workers' non-electrician tasks (NEVER VOLUNTEER to assume such work). When the full-time janitor was fired [1], you could find me tidily sweeping and restocking toilet paper...
Eventually I was promoted to a more-technical role, but was required to "train my replacement before leaving the department" [this took MONTHs!]. Meanwhile, the facilities manager decided to schedule me for all the confined spaces work, without OSHA-approved monitors ["due to staffing shortcuts"].
Under loud & written protest, I refused such dangerous placements [2]. This ultimately led not to my promotion/transfer, but being constructively terminated. The suddenness and disrespect was as obvious as when they "fired" the janitor [1]... one second I'm filling out TPS Reports, the next second I'm seeing that my access has been restricted.
[1] They just disabled his entrybadge, without even telling him beforehand (he showed up "to work" and wasn't allowed on-site!).
[2] During the OSHA investigation, company claimed "he volunteers to do everything, often without approval".
I'm confused by both of your replies. Of the very few colleagues I consider friends, we interact outside of work and more importantly exchange texts. In fact most of my friends are from previous jobs. If you had no private contact info to use after a layoff, I would think you're either very shy or these people are forgettable.
This is clearly what brainless managers would want... In reality if you're hoping to create something innovative and different as a team, guess what: you will need to have emotions, likes and dislikes, reach into your intuition.
So the status quo is everyone loses.
Why did HR lead with it being performance based? It makes no sense given that this is very clearly part of a layoff. And especially so since they had no details. All they did was set themselves up for a very bad conversation with anyone who asked why. It comes off doubly worse because they kept repeating the same “we got nothing” reply because it removes all perceived empathy from the interaction.
To be clear, I don’t see this as a fault of the messengers. I see this as a reflection of the company leadership and/or culture. I’ve experienced multiple layoffs in my life (on both sides). Surprisingly, only one went poorly and was a clear reflection of leadership’s historical behavior. So I’m leaning towards believing that this is on Cloudflare’s leadership.
On paper, she probably scored very low on the performance metrics they referred to. As she said, she was in a 2-month ramp-up, and had one potential contract and it fell through (through no fault of her own, she says). She was reviewed at the same time as everyone else who had been there for years, and they determined (perhaps with flawed methodology and a bad time for review) that she wasn't going to be a high-performer.
She wasn't surprised that she was called and knew she'd have to be defensive about the situation. You could chalk it up to bad luck, or CloudFlare not wanting to take a chance with her when they were already going through the trouble of getting rid of longer-term low performers.
Also recording it, posting it unredacted, and acting like you've been greatly aggrieved when you've only been there 3 months is idiotic and not good business savvy.
A stronger employee would've said: "I disagree with your assessment and would've hoped that CloudFlare was able to provide clearer communication, and I believe you're in the wrong, but I understand you wish to part ways and I personally wish you the best in your firing meetings."
Frankly she sounds like a pain in the ass and doesn't understand the cold reality of the business-employee relationship.
It's almost as if she's pissed at the prospect of doing other pain in the ass things, like looking for a new job. People being a PITA when getting surprise fired is such a weird thing, right ?
> doesn't understand the cold reality of the business-employee relationship.
Looks like Cloudflare's HR will now understand the hot reality of having their firing meetings scrutinized on social media.
Absolutely terrible way to handle it Cloudflare. Their CEO is quite adept at social. IF they're smart, they'll advise him to directly address this, apologize for the way it was handled. Nevermind her recording of it, probably not the best move, but neither is being fired on the grounds of performance, only to later (seconds) come out that is not at all the reason. Any reasonable person and future potential CLoudflare employee would be pissed too.
I swear I've seen one of the cloudflare CXO level employees show up during a previous divisive HN article, I wouldn't be surprised if someone shows up here.
Uploading a private conversation with HR to TikTok surely isn't going to help her job hunting. Prospective employers might view such behavior as a red flag... It might even be illegal given that the HR people are likely located in California, a "two-party consent" state.
I generally agree with this sentiment, but I'm uncertain about its relevance in this specific case. CloudFlare decided to terminate her employment, what's wrong with that? Unless there's evidence to suggest otherwise, it seems reasonable to assume that their decision was based on letting go of employees who were perceived as the least valuable or lowest performing.
I’m glad she did. I don’t remember seeing a video like that “behind closed doors”. Goes to show for anybody considering working at Cloudflare to look elsewhere. They’ve mishandled this situation so badly they did more damage than her video ever could have.
Besides, it takes serious guts to do what she did. If CF were honest with her from the get go the video may not even exist. She will be able to find another job but the PR hit and lack of trust in this company will be more difficult to repair I suppose.
I totally see how a company could go after her in a legal battle to punish for that behavior, so it's definitely not a recommended move.
But on prospective employers, perhaps she doesn't need future employers who'd be pissed at their shitty HR drones getting exposed on social media ? She might not need to go work at a Fortune 500 company lawyered to the teeth, and could find a nice place that is willing to commit to higher standard of communication with their employees ?
I had a coworker go shout insanities at the CEO at a meeting after the company pushed a few of his buttons, it was totally unprofessional and a hot headed move, but I'd still see him as a good hire in a different setting. People can have flaws and bitch too much publicly and still be valuable workers in the right contexts.
The video is on TikTok. It is useful to know this is done by Gen Z. While hiring it is important to remember that quitting/fired employees will do something similar. Gen Zs also act like the world owes them an apology for every small issue they encounter and act irrationally. Maybe a Gen Z reading these comments will think twice before posting something that can damage their future job hunting irreparably.
The thing is... Those two people on the call, I mean... They are just doing their job as well. Don't understand what is the point to actually argue with them. Nothing they can do or change.
And yes, Brittany is going to be internet famous for a day. But a lot of people going to watch this video and recognize her on the next loop of interviews. Just not the best solution for this situation.
It is just sad to see. And I am sorry for anyone who is going through those hard times.
They are, but we could say similar things about cartels, drug smugglers etc.To you they're just criminals, to them, they're trying to survive and just doing their jobs. It doesn't mean it's a noble thing to be doing for a job.
Noble jobs are rare. Doing any job with honor is absolutely possible.
I found the exchange very much "outsourced". The not manager were trying to convey the message. They have no skin except delivering the message in their best manor. They likely were given a script. They didn't make the decisions and were hired to be the buffer for emotions that would naturally develop.
I'm thinking the best way is to quick rip the bandaid. "Your position has been eliminated. Your severance is four months. Your check will be direct deposited today"
I believe it is unfair to treat people in HR like that. To think about it, they got their job the same way we did (say engineers, or in case of the person on the video sales). I am sure some of them also got fired. More than that people who worked in HR went through hell during COVID and hire freeze.
So yes, the job of HR is to hire and fire people. And of course doing some human resources things, but in reality protect the company.
And please don't compare HR to cartels, cheez. What the actual F? In the current state of everything, I more mad at the software engineers and not at anybody else in this world. The amount of crappy software, services and products available right now is absolutely gigantic, most of us work for corporations that don't value personal lives and privacy and ready to sell your data to anybody.
Please don't put yourself above the people who worked in HR.
It is like being mad at the nurse/doctor at the hospital, that can tell you that she cannot do something for free, just because it is policy of the hospital. Sure, if she refuses to cure a dying man - that is one thing. But in this case they just let go a few people from the company, not like they throw them under the bus.
>I believe it is unfair to treat people in HR like that.
If people do a job that is shitty to other people — including doing this zombie dance — they are absolutely part of the problem and should be called out for it.
>It is like being mad at the nurse/doctor at the hospital, that can tell you that she cannot do something for free, just because it is policy of the hospital.
If what the nurse cannot do is normal human decency, then yes, the nurse should be called out on it too and there's every reason to be mad at the person. You are using the “I'm just following orders” defence. It is a poor excuse and not a defence at all.
HR in every country attracts people that do not have really qualifications in most cases to even work in HR.
Aside from that there is a visible gender discrimination in the sector towards men as well the education discrimination. When these two are combined, they act as gatekeepers, which makes the whole sector worse.
Less psychologist and more law and economy graduates was how it was before. For them the communication is the key aspect of their careers, so most of them have it under their thumb. No one really complained about old Personnel Departments and the info was there and they were actually knowledgeable about their job.
The education really can make difference sometime. As we can see, these two do not know how to handle situation, and are repeating the speech that most of the people probably already heard, without thinking.
Hell, I think that someone could make HR AI that would do the better job.
This rational easily applies to sales positions as well, yet were all capable of having empathy with the woman in the video, regardless of the merit of her job.
Joking aside, drug smuggling isn't murdering people. It will often be mostly run as a very bland and boring transportation business, the same way people go back and forth across countries to go buy locally produced artisanal accessories to sell to select shops.
Funnily enough the first thing that came to my mind for "cartel" was bog standard market collusion among dominant players.
Many horrible people are 'just doing their jobs'. Think about it a little longer before justifying a persons actions, or assuming they're above repute.
I’ve been here. It sucks. I had a similar, shorter conversation, but I was deflated by the corporate stink of half-answers and weasel words after every questions.
Like her, I was doing awesome up until suddenly, I had no job. Fortunately I was given okay severance. I hope she lands okay.
This a strong signal for me to never work with Cloudflare. I doubt that matters to them, but hopefully this PR convinces someone who matters there to reconsider their handling of these situations.
Companies do not give a fuck about you. Companies do not appreciate any sacrifice you make for them, so make none. Never do more but just what they pay you for. You owe them 40 hours and they only owe you a paycheck. You're employment is temporary. HR is there to protect the company from you. Save your money, Network and have a plan b.
Another old guy here. At it's core you are right, but it's also a very negative way to view the situation. Here is how I view it:
You are selling your service to the company, so it's a win-win on both ends. You deliver a service and get paid for it. If you can't deliver, or they don't need your service, or can't pay for it, there is no win-win anymore.
I'm a freelancer, but even when I was employed I looked at it like this. It's the best way to neither live in fantasy land where "your" company is your family, nor have a negative view on companies.
In some countries yes. In the UK if you want to make 20 or more roles "redundant", you have to group employees by reasonable groups, rank them by reasonable measures, and then let go those at the bottom. You also have to consult with employee representatives at each stage. Then, employees are entitled to minimum compensation amounts and that isn't taxed in the normal way. Much of Europe has similar or stronger processes.
I think another key aspect of "redundancy" in the UK is that it is a claim that the person's role is no longer needed, and hiring someone else for that role soon afterwards can be seen as invalidating that claim and thus invalidating the dismissal.
Which is why new roles are (or should be) advertised as slightly different - for legal protection against former employees taking you to court for fake redundancies.
Legally, they are supposed to treat mass firings differently than just individual firings. WARN act would require advanced notice for firing of 50 or more persons from a location. The location of travel/remote employees would be their nearest office.
Wrong. The WARN act does not differentiate between mass firings and mass layoffs of full-time workers. Requirements change once certain firing thresholds are crossed. Firing enough people to cross those thresholds, telling them individually that they are being fired for performance reasons, and not giving advanced notice would be a clear violation. https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/ETA/Layoff/pdfs/Worke...
Thanks, I see it now. The document you linked describes three applicable situations for layoffs, but then goes back and says those situations also apply for a bunch of things which are not layoffs.
You do unless you did something illegal or ethically wrong. Not meeting some company goal or expectation isn't enough. Killing a system with a rookie command isn't enough. Being an asshole isn't enough.
In some circumstances there absolutely is a difference in the amount of money you will be entitled to in the case of being fired vs. being made redundant. It can be on the order of several months of pay. You will also see employers simply make the working conditions incredibly miserable for their employees on the hope that they'll quit instead of the business needing to make them redundant.
It’s harder to successfully sue for wrongful termination if they were laid off as one of many. Perhaps deceptively firing under the guise of layoffs opens the door to greater scrutiny.
You won't be getting unemployment benefits if you are fired. Also professional reputation, negotiation of severance terms, getting a positive reference, rehireability.
No, you don't. Oregon Unemployment, Claimant Handbook, Section 6. Source: I helped a friend through unemployment. He was fired from work, and his employer provided a false reason for the firing, triggering denial of benefits. We looked at his options, and it would've been cost-prohibitive to retain a lawyer to fight it, which would've been required.
Have you gone through this process? You do not just get your benefits. You might need a hearing, a letter, a lawyer. Being fired is handled very differently with regards to unemployment than laid-off. Are you claiming otherwise.
I got him a job at our company, he got very good feedback from his manager for 3 months, and then, suddenly, they fired him because he was not fulfilling the expectation, even tho he had been praised for exceeding them some weeks ago.
Of course he took it personally, because they were saying that HE is not good enough.
One week later they announced massive layoffs and then we understood that it was because of this upcoming layoffs that he got fired, which is very unfair, because they blamed him (and made him feel guilty) when the company already knew the _real_ reason to fire him.
Oof. Somehow, I thought Cloudflare was a decent place to work at — well, I don't think that anymore. Even if it's 100% performance based or totally not so (layoffs), empathy is non-negotiable. You don't know what situation you're putting people in by laying them off. Sure, you can argue that “overpaid tech workers should have tons of savings so they should be fine” but it's not always the case. Not to mention the emotional side of things...
All they had to do was say: "You're being laid off. It's not due to your performance and it is due to economic conditions affecting cloudflare. We're sorry, here's how your benefits etc. will work out." That's it.
They don't need to hug her or be touchy feely. Just be PROFESSIONAL. Tech companies instead try this creepy middle ground (uncanny valley) of quasi-niceness instead of giving it to her straight. Now it's blown up in their face.
Netherlands you could have 3 month probation (I think??) or most companies may start employees on fixed-term employment contracts (6/8/12 months) before becoming permanent which is very common
(Netherlands had a rule where you could have 3 fixed term contracts, up to 24 months total, before becoming a permanent employee)
so they could've hired her on a 6 months contract and simply not renew it :)
yup. i was hired on a 1y contract, and because i did a good job, got a permanent one after 9 months (which is quite common where i work).
also, you can't be just fired for performance reasons right away -- you need to first do a documented improvement plan and you need to at least try to move the employee to a different part of the company.
if she was in the netherlands, she could easily sue CF for wrongful dismissal.
She says that she was doing a 3 month "ramp" - which I can assume is the induction period. She'd only got out of the ramp and started "proper" at the beginning of December, which is what (I think) you heard
Takeaway seems to be if you receive an invite from a rando HR person, decline that meeting.
Edit: Also PR speak is one of the most unbecoming things I've heard in my life. I know there's HR people here in this thread, so to them: Try to at least act like your human.
That’s been my policy for a few years - if HR drop a meeting in my calendar, no matter what it’s for, ignore it until I’ve spoken to my direct manager.
Most of the time it’s been harmless, but there have been a couple of instances early in my career where I really should have had a legal representative before agreeing to anything.
It seems like they're trying to pass off the layoffs as with cause so they can avoid unemployment, severance and other legal requirements that will vary by state.
She's not arguing to change the outcome, she's arguing to call out the hypocrisy/bullshit. In some sense it's pointless, yes; in some other sense, you deserve an argument if you don't deal straightly with the person you're laying off.
She's asking for an explanation that they can't give her, and also trying to use some bizarre appeal to emotion by mentioning "trauma" and how much this will upset her life.
Arguing (also known as: pushing back) is how you communicate that what happened was wrong. It won't impact the decision; they're just the messengers; but it might impact how the messengers feel about what happened, which might create change. The messengers are also human.
The two randos were just given a list of names to fire for "performance reasons".
They were probably also being evaluated by how many people per day they let go.
Nobody, even those two, believes that she had a bad performance either.
Sad situation to be in.
Never work so hard that you'd be that frustrated and almost crying once fired for no reason. Corporations are no friends. They'll let you down without any reason, you're just a number. Spend your energy on them accordingly.
Once fired, go away with dignity and smile, while knowing that you had Plan B for the whole time. Many people compare relationship with company they work for with the relationship with their partner, but it's a totally different thing. Abundance mentality is crucial and always think about Plan B and build your career to be able to leave the company anytime.
Brittney posting video of herself getting fired while acting a bit desperate and frustrated won't help her in her future career (she also probably recorded them without them knowing).
I find that suspicious too. I only found this post by using the search functionality. There are other cloudflare related posts as well not showing up, with 200+ pts as well.
Although the HN ranking algo is mysterious, this is different from how it typically works in my experience.
Legalities aside, I think everyone should record interactions with their boss whenever possible. HR is there to protect the company not the employee, so the employee hast to do things to protect themselves.
Just because an employee who worked 4.5 months with zero sales gets laid off? This is the problem with social media, now people think whoever makes the most noise is right. I've seen people getting fired for far less and they didn't make a fuss about it anywhere.
Nobody actually makes many (or any) enterprise sales in Q4, also in the video it’s made clear that the whole departments getting a culling. Which makes it a really botched layoff.
It is every company in the United States. They are not supposed to say anything to avoid getting sued. Watch similar videos. You will hear HR not giving any information because any word is a risk of getting sued.
Here in Canada you require a cause (under most contracts) and this would be a disaster for the company if the employee took legal action. I guess in some states you can fire people without cause?
Not true at all. You can be fired anytime for any reason. You just are required to pay notice/severance. Unless you are unionized or part of a protected class.
Right, I think I read into this that she was being let go with no compensation, but I’m realizing now that I have no idea. I hope she got some kind of severance.
Also if her manager has been giving her good feedback, then this is just wrong. How would you supposed to know you're not meeting expectation if you're not getting appropriate feedback. If this is all true, and I there is no reason to believe it isn't, then these companies are just scum.
This is sad "outrage porn". Regardless of how you feel about Cloudflare or their HR, this was really unprofessional of her and I suspect she'll come to regret posting this publicly. Posting an emotional attack on HR may feel cathartic, but this isn't healthy for anyone involved, including the viewer.
Don't you think it's also a problem of the corporate-kindergarten culture, where everyone and everything is considered great, even though, as a salesperson, they haven't closed any deals in the last four months?
We don't have any context to assess that. Depending on the complexity of the product and target customer sales cycle it can be perfectly normal to not close a deal in your first 4 months (one of which is December).
It is an incredibly awkward feeling watching colleague after colleague just disappear from Slack all day. People start talking and getting stressed, waiting for a mysterious calendar invite.
Going viral against an employer, where she acknowledges to have 0 sales...
And pressing to give details multiple times, while they can just remind her about a, just scheduled, upcoming meeting. Since they don't have the details at hand ( probably related to internal policies from the legal department)
I do agree that they could provide more info though. But they repeated multiple times about a new meeting with more details...
She was the only one that knew it was being recorded and she acted accordingly...
Tangentially -- pretty weird world we live in where a video of someone going through a huge personal moment in their life lives two clicks way from them dancing to JACKBOYS with their cousin... https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/68375862566925...
The way tech companies have been doing layoffs is appalling. This would be my 26th year in the industry if I had a job or could get another one. I have little desire to go back. I hope there's another big developer shortage someday but with developments in AI it seems unlikely.
Um, is it appropriate to request a link to this video that isn't hosted on Tiktok? (I must be becoming crotchety old man or something because even typing that name fills me with disgust. I still find it amazing that it has any more legitimacy than a random scam or phishing site)
Even aside from the shadiness of it, it's just becoming a progressively terrible predatory user experience that's crippled for non-account holders, like Instagram.
I genuinely believe the experience would be better if Chat GPT was answering. At least if it said "I don't know why you got terminated" it would be absolutely honest.
Just drives home that HR people are soulless twats.
And Cloudflare... fuck. I mean, they won't even own up to the real reason they want to shed headcount. Tried to pass it off as being the employee's fault. So damn shady.
I liked Cloudflare but y'know... any chance I get to use something else, I'm going to take it. Way to tank their reputation with a 5-minute video.
All they had to do was say, "Yeah, we over-hired. Thanks for playing."
Instead... man... 0 respect for Cloudflare watching this.
i don't see what's the big deal here and why she felt like having to put her entitled attitude on display. laying off is like breaking up. no matter how you do it it's always wrong. at least with laying off the process can be greased with a little money and a good reference. and i'm pretty sure she'll get both. instead she gets all railed up about it as if she just discovered that life is not fair. meaning: yes, fight for your right but don't get too hung up about the ethics and details like whether the boss is there or not because who cares?
This is ridiculous. More people should be following Brittany's approach and record these things. These HR shit shows are only going to end when people make them public and hurt the image of these companies. You did great Brittany.
Being antagonistic from the start, barely letting them say anything, isn't a good start. The further through the video the more I wonder if it was personality rather than performance or anything else.
Also our layoffs were done similarly, HR picked the people, we never found out the exact reasoning, and it was handled by our manager's manager instead of our direct manager.
Honestly, I don't get why HR should be allowed to take such calls independently, or even be granted any independent function as such. Granted, most of my work experience was at (relatively) small companies (although one was a multi-billion dollar asset manager). HR is mostly a redundant department that folks from admin and legal can and should easily do. In fact, this was exactly the case at one of my internships in Japan at a billion dollar corpo.
HR has two jobs - managing the supply and outflow of talent, and preventing a bad look of the company while doing so. On both fronts, HR fails miserably, so imo they should be the ones to be axed first.
Wow. This person is amazing! I like how she stood her ground despite these two people accusing _her_ of not performing well, when in fact the company was letting people go after hiring en masse without a plan. Just wow. Also, cloudflare, bro, get rid of those two people and whoever decided to use them as tools in gaslighting employees.
Edit: If i had a daughter i’d want her to be like this person.
I do not know any company that would hire this person after this viral social media video. Employers do not like aggressive candidates who record and share on social media when they are angry.
I have to wonder why CF bothered to say it was performance related in the first place, even if it was. The decision to let her go was made long before that call, and no explanation is going to make it go any smoother. All they needed to say was that they were parting ways, get her email address, and offer the hollow sentiments standard for being the messenger of bad news.
It is always good to understand why you’re being let go, and humane companies will sometimes allow managers to communicate certain details so as to help but not get sued. These were not those people and you could tell by the corporate buzzspeak alone.
Thinking about this from the employer side, they set themselves up for an adversarial conversation that had no possible means of redemption.
I hope she finds work soon. While I don’t think posting a clandestinely recorded video to social media is the best idea, I now think more highly of her than I do of her former employer.
I understand your opinion. On the other hand, I don't think that a restaurant situation really compares to the feeling of getting laid off and it's more understandable to see the person being laid off being emotional. I don't think we invest that much in a meal. It's probably not uncommon for people being laid off to get upset and I feel like HR people are trained for this as you can tell by this clip.
a waiter is a frontline employee, who has to do what "the man" wants, the crummy, unseen company, which can screw them over at any moment
HR is "the man", coming to screw them, the reaper incarnate.
sometimes judges can be such dicks whispering under their breaths that it makes violent defendents leap onto the stand to try to assault their pompus jerk asses.
just because you're passing judgement doesn't mean you should be an overt arse about it.
It's illegal to record others without their consent! Thats the law. Definitely sucks being laid off but doing such and then posting it online showing your face not very smart!
> It's illegal to record others without their consent!
That's highly contingent on jurisdiction. I don't know where she's recording this. I'm assuming that she's US-based, and even in the US, the laws vary by state.
Florida, where I'm based, is also a two party consent state.
The specifics of case law get quite thorny. Sometimes, consent is implied. Other times, a simple and vague message like, "for quality assurance, this call may be monitored" is enough. If you live in a two party consent state and hear that message, this is why. Consider yourself informed, and know that everything you say is being recorded for future playback.
With the US the law varies. A minority of states require both/all parties to consent (California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington) the others only need one party to consent.
There's no basis for believing that AI took her job beyond scaremongering
That’s in a one-party state. There are many all-party states, where you need to have consent from all parties. Even if the video call is being recorded (very likely), you still need to seek consent for your recording. Of course, IANAL, but I’d be interested if there’s an additional distinction about the purpose of the recording (internal records, public broadcast) and whether the consent would also need to extend to that.
While I was not aware there are state level laws for this, she appears to be from Georgia.
Not sure how this would work with inter-state conversations.
Georgia is not on the list:
California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.
So the correct answer isn't so clear but maybe she did break the law (maybe she didn't) if HR called from one of those 11 states. Cloudflare is based in San Fran but per their LinkedIn many employees are spread out.
Overall I'm being downvoted for my post which I've learned is wrong. I've also learned the correct answer is very nuanced and those downvoting saying my post is 100 percent incorrect well we just don't know unless someone does a deep legal dive. As well we know where the originating calls came from and we can assume properly she was in Georgia. Again very nuanced but an interesting discussion.
lol and Umm have you ever been on a zoom call before ..ones that's being recorded. Before you join you must give your ok that you are going to be recorded. Everyone has to do the same who joins. You probably haven't been on a business zoom call yet!
Federal law (18 U.S.C. § 2511) requires one-party consent, which means you can record a phone call or conversation so long as you are a party to the conversation.
The Federal Wiretap Act
This law prohibits the secret recording of an oral, telephonic, or electronic communication that other parties to the communication reasonably expect to be private. However, if at least one party to the conversation consents to the recording, the recording is lawful.
Want more slaps? Enjoy your malware rootkit zoom calls which had nothing to do with “the law”
No slaps for learning as I see in this thread we both are and more importantly the correct answer is very nuanced. Unless someone does a deep
Legal dive and we have all the facts neither of us can say who's right or wrong. Overall doesn't matter as it's an interesting discussion.
As well I live in and do business in two out of the 11 US states where all parties must consent so I was speaking from experience and that Zoom button is official.. Dutchman ;)
I don't want to be judgmental of Brittany because it's a sucky call to have to take. But my recommendation in this situation is to say "I disagree with that assessment of my performance, but I understand you are terminating my employment. What details do we need to handle with any severance, and where do I send my laptop." And then, as is tradition, go get day drunk.