this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Cloudflare Employee records her final meeting where HR tries to fire her (ody.sh)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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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)

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (7 children)

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, Cloudflare

Nitter / Mirror | Twitter

[–] [email protected] 81 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago

an inhumane piece of garbage with no empathy.

He is a CEO.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 10 months ago

This is the same piece of shit ceo trying to force their workers back to office too. Fuck this asshole

[–] [email protected] 54 points 10 months ago

This asshat is also just beating around the performance bush that doesn't exist, only to avoid calling the firing a layoff. Disgusting.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's a massive wall of text to say "sorry we got caught"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten

What feedback?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Tbf

  1. we don't know if she's got feedback before getting fired or not

  2. he does address that:

No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

She claims she had not and raised it to the people firing her. She says she was constantly reassured that all was going well and even her review periods were good, but not even her manager was present to attest. She wasn't even put on an improvement plan, or ever told that she was underperforming when she was actually performing above her peers (according to her) which is why she was so upset that they couldn't give her a concrete reason to let her go. Neither point really applies.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Shocked they actually admitted a mistake here. What will really matter is if they actually change anything.

[–] [email protected] 62 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Did he though? I mean he perfectly sticks to individual shortcomings as the reason and even implies that she ignored feedback.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

implies that she ignored feedback.

I missed that the first time and now I'm angry all over again 😡

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yeah, it reads like "our mistake is that there is always room for improvement"

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] Zink 3 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

The way this whole thing went down is absurd.

That said, I had an underperforming colleague who never picked up that feedback was negative. They only latched onto the positive statements. This is either a failing of the receiver to hear the negative when also getting positives or a failing of the feedback giver to be direct.

It's impossible to say in this situation, though it caught my attention that she mentioned she was close to closing a deal and lost it last second. If we take the CEOs statement at face value, perhaps she didn't actually meet their metrics.

I can't say if this is justified or not, but what is abundantly obvious to me is 1) their feedback system likely sucks 2) the hit squad was under prepared with the justification for a termination for lack of performance, 3) she called them on their shit justifiably.

I also agree that it should be expected they give a reasonable severance if this is their hiring model... If you by rule whack people.after three months, they should compensate for another three as people were not looking for new work.