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Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

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Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#161
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "W-we actually didn't fire that many people." > "I-it could be that she didn't actually listen to the feedback, guys. What if she had bad feedback?!" (Implying, without evidence, that the employee is at fault. The most tone-deaf part of his response.) > "Maybe she'd be a star on another team!" (Pointless sports analogy. Another tone-deaf moment.) > "W-we'll do better next time." An embarrassing display.

We’ll do better next time… …only to repeat the cycle in under a year and lay off another group in the exact same way.

It's every quarter.

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#162

Saw a variation of this during the recent bout of tech layoffs. Shortly before end of year eval time, a senior executive sent out emails questioning whether it was even possible for new hires to have made sufficient impact and suggesting they should consequently be given a poor rating as the default. It's amazing that leaders at these companies which, for years, acted as though they had all the answers and were more…

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "W-we actually didn't fire that many people." > "I-it could be that she didn't actually listen to the feedback, guys. What if she had bad feedback?!" (Implying, without evidence, that the employee is at fault. The most tone-deaf part of his response.) > "Maybe she'd be a star on another team!" (Pointless sports analogy. Another tone-deaf moment.) > "W-we'll do better next time." An embarrassing display.

But I am not sure what else he could have said to claim this may not be as bad as it looks to save face; or to remind people that the video is but one slice of all facts and any black-and-white judgement one may make solely from it may be imperfect or unfair to parties involved. He did accept blame that they did not get this one right and that it was painful to watch. What else does public with near zero stake in the…

How about apologizing. How about taking responsibility. How about not making excuses. How about saying what practical steps are going to be done.

Heck, how about telling that he personally reviewed her case and that her direct manager called her with details.

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I'm more likely to hire her. She can stand up for herself and ask good questions in a difficult spot. That's the kind of employee I want. (And several people on Twitter were saying, "I want to marry her." Indeed, that's what Jeff Bezos was looking for long ago. He said he wanted a woman who could bribe someone to get him out of a third-world prison. Well, he had that. Then he threw it away, in my completely unin…

> She can stand up for herself and ask good questions in a difficult spot. And when she asks those questions and the person across the table says "I'm happy to get those answers for you and give them all to you, but I don't have them and can't get them right now in this meeting"... ... and she just keeps repeating the same question without moving forward? That's not how you handle "a difficult spot".

This is absolutely how you handle the tough spot.

They attacked her, but she, despite being outnumbered and vulnerable, defended and found a chink in their armor. For sure the smartest thing is to try to wiggle the knife, try to make the hole bigger, or at the very least more visible (lies reiterated, repeated). At the same time making the whole process painful for the attackers, turning the knife, knowing that they can't leave and need to stay and take it. Of course they would want to continue forward, leave the situation and repeat the same thing in another 10min firing session. But why would she cooperate with dishonest NPC?

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#166
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. "Who can out-stubborn the other party versus finding common ground" seems quite helpful...

Well it seems like she fucked over cloudflare more than they fucked her over, so in that sense it looks like she won this engagement.

Now the next hope if you hire her is hoping she doesn't decide she needs to fuck you over, too?

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#167
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might want to hire this person but the question is if your boss would want them. There is a high chace they wouldn’t want to hire specifically this disobedient person.

Wrong. She's exactly who I'd want in sales . Salespeople need to face overwhelming failure and keep going. They need to ignore social cues that would cause most people to back off. They need to be aggressive and challenging. Getting rid of this salesperson seems like a big loss for Cloudflare.

She wasn't a good fit for CF, so maybe she would be a good fit at your company instead?

"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."

https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#168
post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it seems like she fucked over cloudflare more than they fucked her over, so in that sense it looks like she won this engagement.

Now the next hope if you hire her is hoping she doesn't decide she needs to fuck you over, too?

Just don't try to weasel your way out and put the blame on the person you're laying off? Doesn't seem hard.

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#169
post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well per their comment there is now such a cultural norm and it's ok to cuss out with your body language and attitude to treat customers as such. That worker does it to others per Facebook comments about that jersey mikes. 7 months later she is still there so just maybe this is the new norm ..not one that makes sense but Covid changed the game some to a lot.

No, the cultural norm is that it's respectful to the workers to not go to a sit down restaurant less than an hour before it closes or a fast casual place less than a half hour before it closes. That time is for the people currently eating in the restaurant to finish up while the staff clean the kitchen but before they're asked to leave. So someone who comes in during that time and insists on ordering food means they…

They were asked and could've said as I knew them for two years as a customer to say I cleaned things up ..could come tomorrow. As well my other example ..,Wendy's 30 minutes before closing saying do u really went to order we are closing soon.

What time is the right time to go in and get a sub or a burger when their hours clearly say 10 to 10?

Re: Cloudflare Termination Video: A Master Class in How Not to Terminate Someone

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She specifically set herself up to be recorded and then shared it across the internet. That is the problem part, not her questioning of the HR people (which was a show for the camera!) That kind of “I’m the main character” type energy would be a lot to deal with, especially for a 4 month employee.

Yes, she didn't follow the rules. Whether one views that as inherently problematic broadly follows the value-system I outlined earlier. I think her breaking (the letter of) the rules is amply justified in this case - others clearly disagree. AFAICT, she didn't violate the spirit if the rules - no confidential. information was revealed.

People's names, roles in the company, and voices were revealed. If you Google "rosie cloudflare hr", the top result is a LinkedIn profile for Rosemary J. Fantozzi, who works in GTM HR. That profile is now hidden or deleted, and it's not hard to figure out why.

I have no regard at all for corporate rules, but I do for privacy and privacy laws. Brittany may have broken the law by making the recording (Georgia is a one-party state, but she couldn't know where the other people in the meeting were -- New York is also one-party, but California for example is all-party), but either way it was poor judgment to release it without at least redacting names and roles.

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