I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.
The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.
And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.
(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)
Wrong again. It very much matters what they tell you because by law they’re not required to tell you anything. They can terminate employment for no reason. Giving a reason is citing cause.
The employer might not fight an unemployment claim but if, for example, they cited performance in the termination meeting and then the employee finds out the employer had made age discriminatory comments, kind of like you did, about them, there’s grounds for wrongful termination.
You seem intent on ignoring the fact that the conversation during a termination from the employee perspective is crucial because companies can, and do, lie to protect themselves.
There’s also special conditions and requirements that go along with a reduction in force (layoffs due to overstaffing) that companies try to sidestep by listing a different reason for the termination.
Pointing out the truth is not “age discrimination”. It’s obvious that she is very upset in the video, and that this is probably the first time she’s been in this situation. It’s also obvious that the manager and HR person have gone through this conversation many times already. There is nothing that they could say that would satisfy her. The HR person literally says that. They are giving her the response they were told to give her. Yes, its bullshit, but it doesn’t matter until it’s written down. This video isn’t the “gotcha” that she thinks it is. Without the video, it’s her word against written documentation. And of course the company is going to protect themselves, that’s why they won’t report it as with cause. All this video did was show her inexperience. Unfortunately we’ll never see the update where she tells us what they reported on the written documents.
Hmm, but the HR people said they didn’t have any documentation, and if she hasn’t had a bad performance review prior to this meeting then there isn’t a paper trail showing poor performance.
If they generate some documentation after this meeting that shows poor performance, wouldn’t that kind of be a smoking gun for a fraud case? Because it seems pretty clear that the intent is to defraud her of unemployment benefits by claiming that she was fired with cause.
Yes, if they do that. And then she’ll have more evidence for a wrongful dismissal lawsuit. But they won’t. They’ll report that she was fired without cause. Speculating on the official cause does nothing but allow people to feel upset about it.
The point is, laying all these people off with performance as reason protects Cloudflare in not having to pay extra (which would be legally needed if the employee was not at fault).
This is probably not any kind of proof she can use, but it does make people aware of how Cloudflare operates.
It’s understandable companies have to fire people and as an employee you’d probably do best to accept the harsh reality of a business. But if they really communicate fake causes with lay-offs (not only hurting the employee mentally, but also financially bypassing rightful compensation by law), this should be known by the public.
To be fair though, we cannot confirm her statements to be true either. But I think it’s an interesting share nonetheless.
The point is that is still comes down to what’s written on official documents. Yes, what they told her is bullshit and can have a negative mental health effect. But her mental health is not their responsibility. The two people telling her that she was being let go are simply relaying exactly what they are told to by upper management.
The video was smart to record, just in case. But publishing it was just for other people to feel rage. This is have absolutely no effect on Cloudflare. A few less people may apply, but there is no shortage of people looking for jobs right now. With all the layoffs happening at every company, it’s almost like the Dot Com Bust again. I got through it and stayed in IT for another 16 years. She will get through this too.
“This is have absolutely no effect on Cloudflare.”
It appears to have gotten the CEO worried enough about brand damage that he felt he had to post some bullshit.
"Matthew Prince, the CEO and co-founder of the technology company, has reacted. “We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go-to market org. That’s a normal quarter. When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly,” Prince wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Acknowledging that they were “far from perfect” in this case, Mr Prince said, “The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right.”
More here…
Acknowledgement, “we’re sorry”, and then quickly forgotten as the news cycles moves on. This will have no lasting effects. Everyone will have forgotten this by next week.
Edit: You also left this out…
People said that the API revolt on reddit would change nothing and yet here we both are discussing the terrible behaviour of yet another corporation on a completely different platform to reddit that I would never even have known about if it weren’t for exactly this kind of story. I believe things do change and I certainly won’t forget that Cloudflare did this and I suspect you won’t either.
Cloudflare isn’t a social media site where all the users discussed the revolt on the site. Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists. A lot of people don’t even know what Reddit is.
“Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists.” They do now ;)