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)
Dang that sucks, I always wanted to work there and recently applied eagerly because I haven’t seen much controversy from them.
More than half of the Wikipedia article for Cloudflare is made up of a Controversies section
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. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. 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. And sometimes under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten before we let them go. Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player. And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them. We definitely weren’t anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who aren’t performing off. That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did. And that’s something @zatlyn and I are focused on improving going forward.
-Matthew Prince
Co-Founder & CEO, CloudflareShocked they actually admitted a mistake here. What will really matter is if they actually change anything.
Did he though? I mean he perfectly sticks to individual shortcomings as the reason and even implies that she ignored feedback.
Yeah, it reads like “our mistake is that there is always room for improvement”
implies that she ignored feedback.
I missed that the first time and now I’m angry all over again 😡
Dude, he didn’t really admit to any mistake.
That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did.
He’s literally saying firing her was not the mistake. He still believes she should’ve been fired and not laid off. He also believes firing her based on nondescript performance metrics was right. The only thing he believes was wrong was how the firing was carried out. The only thing he’s admitting is that the firing wasn’t “PR friendly”, which is an indirect way of saying the mistake was getting caught.
If he thinks it’s painful to watch then he should apologize personally to HER and her coworkers for traumatizing them, and give them a good severance pay. The way he phrases this as if he’s just shrugging and saying “we’ll do better at some unspecified point in the future, I’m sure” makes him come off as an inhumane piece of garbage with no empathy.
an inhumane piece of garbage with no empathy.
He is a CEO.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard “we need to fire people right away because it is GOOD for them!” from a corporate type, and it’s not getting any less ghoulish sounding with repetition.
What feedback?? The feedback that said she was doing well from the people familiar with her work? Or the mysterious metrics she was failing to meet but also had no idea about? God, what an out of touch douche nozzle.
Also, if they’re not a fit but still a good employee, LAY THEM OFF. But who wants to pay for all that messy extra stuff when you can just grind through the workforce?
That’s a massive wall of text to say “sorry we got caught”
under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten
What feedback?
This is the same piece of shit ceo trying to force their workers back to office too. Fuck this asshole
love how its hey we will fire you today as a surprise after you’ve been told something completely different but we promise to tell you why later. I really this was just taken legally as an illegal termination. Because if it’s for performance that means you have data, if you have data you should be able to give me graphs and charts, stick figure animations, poorly acted corporate videos.
Fr. If my performance was bad the entire time, why wasn’t I told until now? If I am doing a crappy job but told I’m doing great, why would I ever do better? Either it’s bullshit that my performance is poor, or they’ve set me up for failure from the beginning. Either of which makes them a piece of shit.
Fuckingcapitalists
They need a union.
why can’t corporations just do things in a reasonable and rational way?
Why do they constantly make so many extreme changes all the time? When they need to hire more people, they hire way more than they need, when they need to downsize…or rather when they’re tired of paying so many people, they fire way too many.
Why would they care, people are just tools to them.
Because the guy who makes the big risky splashy changes to his department gets the promotion. The one who makes small continous improvements without fucking things up along the way flies under the radar.
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She did really good! Almost drove it home, she was so close… As a former manager in HR, here are my two cents. Note that I’m from canada, might not apply as I have it in mind in the US. If they’re trying to frame a layoff as a firing for cause and poor performance, her first way of handling it is excellent. Ask pointed specific questions on what about your performance was lacking and more importantly can you demonstrate to me that I’ve been communicated clear quantifiable and Timely objectives that I’ve been communicated means and ways to be coached and trained to meet those objectives and that I’ve been communicated milestones of me not meeting objectives, with proper corrective measures and coaching to then change course before a firing for poor performance.
If you can’t communicate any of these to me, the objectives, my performance against his objectives, the milestones, and the coaching I received to meet objectives when I did not, then this is not a poor performance related firing. If you’re missing any of these information then I am not yet terminated and I am at your employment until a subsequent meeting where you can come back with that information. On the other hand if what you meant to say is that this is a layoff because you have hired too many people, and that this letting Go has nothing to do with my performance, okay no problem, let’s talk, but in this case it will be with X months of severance and a glowing recommendation letter.
Lastly I want to make you aware that I’ve recorded this conversation, in which it’s now clearly documented that you have no clear tangible indication of any notion of documented poor performance about me, and thus I am still at the employed of my employer until you either provide those, or provide me with coaching that I then fail to put into practice to meet objectives, or until you come back with the severance package for a layoff that has nothing to do with my performance.
Something along those lines…
Yeah sure, if she has no emotions I’d say that’d be a great way to handle it.
Unfortunately she’s trying to keep herself composed while going through an extremely traumatic event in her life. A layoff is something that may seem routine for you - but for me I still process through my layoffs years later. She’s holding back tears. I held back tears. I’d say she did remarkably well while having her life plans crumble around her.
I put 100% of the blame on HR and the company - even if it’s completely her fault for getting fired I wouldn’t put any blame on her for not using the perfect wording.
Please allow me to offer a nuance on the topic of HR. I see a lot of hate about HR on this thread and quite a bit is founded… But on the other hand, two things:
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the HR folks themselves are not to blame for the fact that the company overhired, are cutting people, or even to some extent some shitty strategies like pretending people are fire for cause instead of laid off. It’s decided by executives ans the CEO, and HR operationalizes. I’ll fully grant though that they sometimes (often) operationalize shittily.
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and more importantly, HR is shitty in a shitty company, and pretty decent in a (quite rare) decent company. Fundamentally HR’s job is to help manage humans as a resource, and among other tasks it means to protect the company against human-related risks. There are different fundamental beliefs and philosophies companies can have around how to avoid that risk - and their HR strategy is set accordingly.
Some decent (rare) employers believe that to avoid risks like being sued or unionizing, the best strategy is to provide employees with a healthy work environment, competitive pay and to remove toxic managers and executives quickly. In these companies HR plays a very strong policing role ensuring that managers don’t cause human related risk by abusing workers. I know it sounds idealistic and I’ll 100% grant that it applies unfortunately to a very small sample of employers, but it’s true.
Of course way more common are companies with the philosophy that to avoid these risks you need to squash people, back your managers at all cost, never admit a fault, etc - and that’s the shitty strategy operationalized by shitty a HR department.
Lastly the governmental labour laws framework of a country plays a big role too - in some countries where those laws are super weak like the US, particularly if your employer is your only way to access half decent healthcare, you can’t afford to change employer - and the shitty strategy becomes a much lower cost than the decent one (found a bit more often in Canada, way more in Europe and even more in Scandinavian countries)
Sorry for the walltext rambling
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The worst thing is that there are many bootlickers out there. Worker rights are a joke and companies have infinite ways of fucking you over.
In this instance the HR snakes were caught with their pants down and looked like imbeciles.
But for example many people get placed on PiP with unrealistic goals, or harassed by management over petty mistakes. The only goal being saving the corporation some money by claiming low performance.
A lot of people out there need to get their head out of their asses if they think this is ok.
I know they’re not trying to be but that HR speak is so fucking condescending. “I’m sorry for how you’re feeling.”
The “non-apology”
Somebody needs to tell Brittany Pietsch and her laid off coworkers about the WARN Act and its state counterparts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraining_Notification_Act_of_1988
Just because Cloudflare really really needs for Brittany and her laid off coworkers to believe that it’s all individual firings based on performance and related measurements, in order to avoid the legally mandated costs of laying off a group of employees, that desire to avoid fair payment does not make this anything less than a layoff.
While there are certainly exceptions to the WARN Act and similar laws, chances are excellent that if Ms. Pietsch and her coworkers take a look at it in light of their own specific experiences, they can come to a MUCH more equitable resolution than the shit on a plate with a side of material misrepresentation handed to them by the HR and legal reps at Cloudflare.
EDITED TO ADD: Should she ever see this, I am in awe and nothing short of proud of how she handled this from beginning to end, and the balls it took to post this exposé to TikTok. Wishing her, and everyone taking an unfair corporate dicking, the very best.
The ridiculous thing is they try to frame this as a performance issue when the reality is the company is just doing layoffs. Why even frame it that way? How fucking awful.
It is a performance issue. The company performed poorly in hiring too many people
At least in my state, if your employment is terminated for poor performance, the employer can deny unemployment insurance claims. If you’re just laid off, they must pay out unemployment insurance claims.
By blaming the victim, the company saves money. It’s such scumbaggery.
At least in my state, if your employment is terminated for poor performance, the employer can deny unemployment insurance claims.
Which in itself is a total bullshit rule. What, so people who are bad at a certain job don’t deserve help while they find a job they’re better at?
There’s a lot of good evidence that helping people is pretty un-American.
This is a USA problem that is both illegal, and extremely hard to game, in most of the developed world… Elsewhere employers can generally fire you during probation, or within the first 6-12 months, without severance, but they have no reason whatsoever to lie to you about your performance — they tell you straight up that your position is no longer required, pay out the mandatory 2-4 weeks notice period, and that’s the end of it. Beyond that they cut their losses and pay severance, because the legal and financial implications for lying about performance are not worth the crime.
I find it ridiculous that people blame Cloudflare for this situation. EVERY for-profit company will choose this path IF given the opportunity to avoid fault or severance, and any that don’t will be less profitable and eventually fail on the uneven playing field — 99% of the blame for this situation falls on the US political kleptocracy and their corruption; a political system “BY the capital, FOR the capital”.
They don’t have to pay unemployment if you are fired for performance.
That said, my understanding is that you should always file for unemployment and file an appeal when it’s denied. Chances are higher that it will get overturned on appeal.
A story from back when I worked in HR. Finance handed HR a list of teams to reduce. HR saw who had lowest performance metrics or was most recently hired and earmrked them to be fired. Then HR emailed the managers and said, ‘we want you to follow around Angela and Brian today, the first mistake they make, write it up and terminate them’. The company had laid off too many people and several states it operated in warned the company they would seek payment if too many more ex-employees filed for unemployment insurance.
Most employees skewed right politically and wouldn’t dream of fighting the company for their rightfully due unemployment benefits since they legitimately thought it was their fault, and many thought UI was socialism anyway.
After witnessing this I immediately began switching careers.
Remember folks, HR is not your friend, HR exists to protect the company from employee related lawsuits.
HR is IT for people. Do you think the IT guy cares about all the laptops in the company? No, it’s a resource he manages. Do you think HR cares about all the people in the company. No it’s a resource they manage. Companies try so hard to make HR look like high school guidance counselors instead of the ruthless hatchet men they are.
It guy here, I care more about the computers and tech than HR cares about people. Fuck HR
You can see first the fear, then the thrill of battle in her eyes. Don’t take any guff from these swine, Brittany.
If anyone ever thinks differently, this video should convince you.
If you work for a corporation, you are not a person with a name, you are a number. And that number is the amount of money given to you as pay and benefits.And when the corporation no longer likes your number, you can be unceremoniously shown the door, regardless of your past performance.
