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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

#171

Post by pier25 »

ianm218 wrote: post #157
pier25 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It depends if your market has room to grow. If it’s saturated it’s just about COGS.

If the market had been saturated then there wouldn't have been any (hypothetical) revenue growth which is what the comment above was arguing.

Personally I don't think there was any revenue growth to begin with. They are spending a lot on AI and haven't seen any ROI but for reasons they prefer to fire people and keep investing on AI.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#172

Post by ignoramous »

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.

> "Building for the future" gave me the impression that it's about some major new initiative...

If you'll believe them, it indeed is:

   ... [the Leadership at Cloudflare] have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era ... reimagining every internal process, team, and role across the company.

  ... [This layoff is] not a cost-cutting exercise ... [but] Cloudflare defining how a world-class, high-growth company operates.

  ... We don't want to [mass layoff] again for the foreseeable future. 

  ... [Cloudflare] cannot rest on the workflows and organizational structures that worked yesterday. We're confident that [Cloudflare] will be even faster and more innovative [after layoffs] ...

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#173

Post by piperswe »

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…

CV link: https://piperswe.me/cv.pdf

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#174

Post by stack_framer »

pier25 wrote: post #139

Bill and Upwork also have announced layoffs today. https://www.upwork.com/press/releases/upwork-ceo-hayden-brow... https://www.bill.com/blog/a-message-to-bill-employees-may-20...

Wow, the way Upwork is handling this seems really bad. They announced the layoffs today, but nobody will know who is being let go until next week! Sheesh.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#175

Post by cfthrow96765 »

rcatcher wrote: post #159
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…

> Seeing who is being laid off, especially on my team, it's the people who make things run. How did the company decide who to lay off? They didn't even ask EMs?

My boss had no idea layoffs were even coming, so who knows how they picked.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#176

Post by WatchDog »

johnbarron wrote: post #150
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…

Are they taking the piss by hiring and firing the same number as their public DNS IP ?

Their main DNS is 1.1.1.1 but their secondary is 1.0.0.1 not 1.1.0.0, so close but not quite.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#177

Post by FeteCommuniste »

operatingthetan wrote: post #98
wavemode wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Even so, "Daddy needs a new yacht" might sound too insensitive.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#178

Post by Snoozle »

lijok wrote: post #90
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…

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.

The sentence is not confusing, the sentence doesn't mean anything. There's nothing confusing about it, but there's no information either. "We're making great strides in AI" and "We need to cut 20% of people" are simply two statements without any connection aside from the fact that they are next to each other in the sentence.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#179

Post by apitman »

SebRollen wrote: post #47
davidcelis wrote: post #33

I know it's probably automatic because of the similar titles, but hitting the bottom of the layoff announcement only to be recommended that article about hiring 1,111 interns in 2026 is a reaaal bad look

Kind of makes me wonder if the "more than 1,100 employees globally" actually means "1,111" employees. Talk about committing to the bit

All 4 bits

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#180

Post by headinthesky »

rcatcher wrote: post #159
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…

> Seeing who is being laid off, especially on my team, it's the people who make things run. How did the company decide who to lay off? They didn't even ask EMs?

I really don't know. My org now has 40+ engineers with 2 managers. Down from 6. I really don't know how they will do it. Each one of us were handling critical shit, and desperately needed more engineers. PMs made things run and they got hit even harder

No one had any idea. My director got the same email

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