Put another way, IANAL, but isn't there a lot of grounds to sue here?
I have been in a position like her and I have been a founder since then.
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.
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.
Edit: If i had a daughter i’d want her to be like this person.
On the flip side I worry for Britt that you can't record people in California without their consent and now she might get sued.
And sure it's a shitty situation but I'd be upset if my coworker published a call I had with them on social media, that's just as unprofessional.
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.
But I think she was extremely rude to those two people who were not required to be as empathetic as they were.
(I also don't like people who get angry at waiters for faults of the restaurant)
That's not empathy.
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.
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.
There's no basis for believing that AI took her job beyond scaremongering
She is aware, so it’s all fine
Depends on the 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.
https://arstechnica.com/google/2024/01/google-lays-off-hundr...
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”
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 ;)
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.
My guess would be either that the state where the call “originated” would control, or the state in play with the most restrictive call recording laws.
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.
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).
Although the HN ranking algo is mysterious, this is different from how it typically works in my experience.
Depending on the law that is either allowed or not.
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.
The US needs better workplace protection laws.
Take them to court.
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...
M'am, you're on the sales team. It has everything to do with your performance.
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 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.
Those both seem very worthwhile.
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 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.
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.
Cloudflare took a stupid, unnecessary risk here by trying to put this on performance when they haven't documented it.
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.
"Go get drunk?", 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?
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.
Hire her as your saleswoman then.
And mind everything you do/say or you'll end up bashed in front of all the internet.
I mean this in the nicest way possible, but this made me LOL.
You don't have the details and she had 0 sales.
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 )
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.
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.
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.)
Cloudflare did a layoff in sales that impacted ~ 100 underperforming people in May last year. It was discussed on investor day by their CEO ( https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-ea... -> section profitability ).
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.
Why is that?
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
https://twitter.com/TheTranscript_/status/165269146916406886...
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.
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".
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.
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.
Not only did she post it on social media, but it revealed that she made no sales (her fault or not).
But I guess this is Gen Z for you.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Firing means that the person is removed from the position.
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.
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.
This is some "only in the US" level stuff (in the context of "The West").
(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 :)
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.
Uh, you'll still get terminated if you skip the meeting. It's not like that's the One Big Loophole companies don't want you to know.
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.
There isn't a "good" way to do layoffs, but "being laid off by someone you've never met before" is up there with the "bad" ways.
Also, there's absolutely no reason why, in the event of layoffs, you should EVER blame the employee or point to something they could have changed.
Layoffs happen because management fucked up. Own that and let the employee off the hook.
HR exists to protect company interests.
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.
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.
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.
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.
• 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.
We should never stand for it.
Ok.
> it's important that the right people are chosen [for layoffs], for the right reasons
Um . . . unions?
> requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria [for which people are being fired!]
Unions?
> are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted
Unions only do that?
I would hope that unions are more than just ways to protect management when they make firing choices.
Unions are not supposed to be a management condom for when management f's the employees. Do people pay dues just so they "do it with a rubber?"
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.
GP said they can negotiate who gets laid off and what happens to those who do.
Unions can be an entirely appropriate and reasonable party.
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.
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.
Unions are not the answer.
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.
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".
Person in the video worked for a company for 5 months as a sales-person and closed 0 sales.
You are not the same.
Since something similar happened to me (decades ago), I basically don’t socialize with coworkers anymore, i.e. there is no emotional investment.
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.
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.
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"
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.
Sales reps so often have incentives that are terribly aligned with the company’s long term success.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Never change, America
Employees can be 100% layed off during maternity or paternity leave. The second part is the problem, making it about gender/sex.
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.
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.
How can they be certain that the person they're firing won't record that conversation?
To see what's allowed/possible, even if it gets recorded.
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.
2022: Lost 193 million 2021: Lost 260 million 2020: Lost 119 million
2023 also had big losses upwards of 150 million
It's very clear they need to cut expenses
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".
Then they should not do that job.
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 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.
Boy I sure hope so.
This is every large company
I feel like you meant for this to be a bad thing, but you're literally telling us that CF is better than a lot of other places.
Lots of places just have a google drive folder (or whatever, at scale) and you're expected to show up to meetings and pretend you're not confused.
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.
If they were sorting people by sales performance, her manager shouldn't have given her a thumbs up in each one-on-one.
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?
You won't get severance if you're fired in most cases.
You won't get unemployment if you voluntarily resign.
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.
True - and instead of admitting that, they hemhaw about how her performance was bad.
Agree the appeal to emotion isn't really helping, but on balance it's Cloudflare that looks bad here.
They talk about the performance of her and her peers.
In any case, it’s not even a conversation. It’s a notice
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".
If so, that seems to me like an unrealistically rosy view of the past.
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.
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.
That depends, there are often left over budgets and people scrambling to spend them
(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.
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.
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.
But she could experience some consequences if future employers don't feel great about this.
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.
You clearly have no experience in sales--especially enterprise sales.
1) No responsible sales organization is going to let a brand new hire alone with a client under 6 months.
2) You aren't selling shit to enterprise from Mid-November until after the first week of January.
3) She barely had a single quarter to get some company to add her to a budget and close a sale. No chance.
/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.
She also says that her manager was giving her positive reviews in every one-on-one.
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.
you can check reasoning for dismissal here https://business.gov.nl/running-your-business/staff/dismissi...
Misheard/didn’t pay enough attention. It’s about 4 months indeed
You’re right. She starts with that
I think the term is "pissing into the wind".
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.
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.
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.
Me being Don Draper in the elevator.
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.
Suggesting placid acceptance is a way of implying that it's OK.
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?
I don't work for free, and I expect the sales people to go get money to pay me.
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 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.
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.
Damn if you do, damn if you don't.
It's then better to just fire and give no motivation whatsoever.
Cloudflare lied. It’s plain and simple.
Giving an invalid reason that is unsupported by facts is generally a strong place for a lawyer to assert "wrongful termination" and invoke those laws.
They gave a reason: performance and the girl mentioned to have 0 sales + 3 opportunities.
I wouldn't bet a penny on that lawsuit to win.
Not closing a deal in your first month of sales is not exactly unheard of or even uncommon.
Either way, WT lawsuits don't generally "win or lose". They settle.
> 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.
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.
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.
Either way it's not a good look for Cloudflare.
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.
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.
Where to start? Where does it end?
What hashtag should I follow to watch more US corp internal meetings?
You are right you cant just record and out out there just ANY corporate material. But you getting fired? This aint it.
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.
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?
Once I was asked to continue interviewing candidates after I gave notice, which seemed a little odd at the time (also in Switzerland).
I think the harm meant is more about spreading negativity to other employees who might be inspired to jump ship too.
Socialism and authoritarianism are treacherous ideas because they can seem so enticing in many contexts.
"Dismiss" is a fairly common euphemism for "fire", like "let go".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
There's also a lot of missing context.
- what happened in those 3 opportunities that she tried to close a deal
- perhaps she's missing a technical background to actually close a deal, since Cloudflare is a very technical product
No one from us knows the details, so it's speculation.
4,5 months is still a bit fast though. Getting a new employee up to speed takes 6 months in a lot of cases.
But mostly you know it sooner when it wouldn't work out.
You don't need to know everything, to acknowledge that 0 sales supports a bad performance review.
Here's additionally info that you didn't knew: https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-ea... - profitability
100 people were fired and replaced, in the hope to get less underperforming sales people.
=> Facts support this situation and it's consistent to what happened in may last year too.
This is a follow up with the people that were layed off for underperforming. To see if they weren't...
Of course, power dynamics being what they are, it's the worker who pays the price.
Completely OT: I absolutely know what you mean, but ugh, corporate jargon.
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.
/S
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.
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.