Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#131

Post by pier25 »

stego-tech wrote: post #32

I'm going to start calling these "Canary" moments. Assuming we take everything at face value for these sorts of cuts, it creates the following scenario: A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the efficiencies in AI while also posting substantial profit or revenue growth. The company could downsize the workforce to capitalize on short-term efficiencies and increase margins, though this will come at…

If using AI had a "substantial profit or revenue growth" wouldn't it make more sense to hire more people so they can use more AI and increase revenue?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#132

Post by jbverschoor »

akomtu wrote: post #103
Snoozle wrote: post #69

"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 cu…

Of course it's a lie. Cloudflare is saying, essentially: "AI is making us so profitable that we've decided to reduce our profit by 20%, to keep it reasonable."

They’ve been pumping out products like crazy

They don’t need them. Simple as that

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#133

Post by lijok »

solarkraft wrote: post #124
lijok wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which part of that sentence was confusing? I found it perfectly clear. Their internal AI use is exploding, which is a signal that they need to structure for that, and so they’re laying people off as one of the first steps towards actioning that signal. Nowhere did they indicate there is less work to do, in fact quite the opposite.

Isn’t it funny how the measure is how much AI is used instead of how productivity has evolved?

Not really. This is all so new, noone is using it correctly, because noone knows how to yet. We’re all just kind of flailing our arms around with it, but it’s clearly a force multiplier and its increased use is an actionable signal

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#135

Post by AloysB »

This is awkward.

Exhibit A - September 2025 - "Help build the future" - Cloudflare hires 1111 interns to "help build the future" [https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-1111-intern-program/]

Exhibit B - May 2026 - "Building for the future" - Cloudflare lays off 1100 people, about 20% of their workforce to "continue building the future" [https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/]

I'll finish on this quote: "The future ain't what it used to be." — Yogi Berra

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#136

Post by cyanydeez »

AloysB wrote: post #135

This is awkward. Exhibit A - September 2025 - "Help build the future" - Cloudflare hires 1111 interns to "help build the future" [ https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-1111-intern-program/ ] Exhibit B - May 2026 - "Building for the future" - Cloudflare lays off 1100 people, about 20% of their workforce to "continue building the future" [ https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/ ] I'll finish on this quo…

The skeptical assumption is they need to pay for the AI bills, not that the AI use is actually providing the promises CEOs are making.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#138

Post by rishabhaiover »

piperswe wrote: post #7

Welp, looks like I’m affected. If anyone is looking to hire a systems engineer with distributed systems and load balancing experience, shoot me an email at @piperswe.me :/ I’ll update this with a resume link tonight…

Good luck, I'm sure you will find a great role!

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#140

Post by aniruddh__s »

mayurpipaliya wrote: post #57

Yikes, this sucks. It is ironic that Cloudflare is letting go 1100 of employees, while roughly 6-7 months ago, they were aiming to hire 1111 interns. Article: https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-1111-intern-program/

They're still keeping the interns. Feels very much like a 'replacement'.
Post reply on HN