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Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

reuters.com

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Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#91

Post by fontain »

I’m finding this a little difficult to square. If things are radically changing within the company and they’re rearchitecting how the company works, wouldn’t they start with a transition period? Letting 1k people go, many of whom will be important parts of the organization, while simultaneously making radical changes in light of a radical rate of change over the last few months, seems very high risk.

Taking everything at face value, does anyone have thoughts on why this change makes sense now vs. in 6 months? Are they ripping the bandaid off or… due to the size of the org?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#92

Post by tootie »

headinthesky wrote: post #67

This really sucks. I loved this job. I'm an EM and I was trying to hire more people because we're so busy with everything we needed to do. My teams products are something like 95% profit. Really going to miss my team, they were wonderful to work with. Secretly hoping they'll have to rehire. I refuse to believe it was about AI. Coming from the inside, the bottleneck was never code. Seeing who is being laid off, especi…

In my experience, companies never value transparency. And it's doubly true for companies that boast about transparency. Obviously, it's within their authority to cut head count, but they've also obviously made some kind of major strategic shift either to cut costs or abandon some lines of business and they are not being upfront about it at all. The stock is up 111% over 12 months. They don't seem to be in any danger of crashing or collapsing.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#93

Post by surgical_fire »

benmusch wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wtf are you talking about? Investors are just gamblers with a fancier title. They absolutely invest based on vibes.

then why did the riveting stock analysis above mis-predict the market?

Because the market makes no sense. It's just vibes. Trying to make sense of it is a fool's errand.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#95

Post by dleslie »

They make it quite clear that these layoffs are in response to adapting to using AI at the company:

> The way we work at Cloudflare has fundamentally changed. We don’t just build and sell AI tools and platforms. We are our own most demanding customer. Cloudflare’s usage of AI has increased by more than 600% in the last three months alone. Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done. That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere.

The rest is hand-wringing about the emotional weight of the decision and what employees can expect from the process.

What remains to be seen is whether relying so heavily on AI will have similar outcomes to what we've seen from Microsoft and others. Which is to say, is now the time to stop using Cloudflare?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#98

Post by operatingthetan »

wavemode wrote: post #88
alyxya wrote: post #14

I dislike the title because it doesn't clearly state it's a layoff. "Building for the future" gave me the impression that it's about some major new initiative with a roadmap outlining plans.

Maybe I've become cynical and jaded, because when I saw the title I immediately thought to myself "oh, Cloudflare's announcing a layoff."

The corporate speak isn't working if people instantly know what it means!

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#99

Post by tick_tock_tick »

doggo_mate wrote: post #25
ggoo wrote: post #18

> The packages for departing employees will include the equivalent of their full base pay through the end of 2026. Healthcare coverage is different across the globe, and if you’re in the United States, we’ll continue to provide support through the end of the year. We are also vesting equity for departing team members through August 15th, so they receive stock beyond their departure date. And, if departing team member…

In Europe they’re pretty much obligated to provide this package

As a general rule USA Tech is much nicer to their employees both when working and during a layoff then Europe.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#100

Post by llama052 »

RSHEPP wrote: post #42

Any other engineers just living life frozen at this point. I am unable to make any life decisions because it seems like I won't have a career in the near future. I am unable to purchase a home to settle down for my family, because dad might not have a job next week. I know I am fortunate to have a job, many don't, but fuck if this career isn't the worse thing ever for my overall health and happiness.

Yeah I'm there with you. I got lucky as a kid with delving into this as a hobby and it turned into a professional career. Thought we could change the world for the better, what we made instead was social media cancer and LLMs that can pretend to make everyone 10x more productive. I loathe it.
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