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

231–240 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#231

Post by fy20 »

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 always, it depends on the country.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#232

Post by strongpigeon »

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.

I’ll never forget how when I was at Google, every email with subject line “An update on X” meant X was getting axed. Like, just say so in the subject line…

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#233

Post by mountainriver »

oytis wrote: post #87
benmusch wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cloudflare stock went down, genius investors are not some nefarious monolith cheering for companies to make decisions based on how it benefits The Vibes. they're analysts assessing business decisions.

It went down on poor earnings call. Layoffs were probably an attempt to soften the blow. Hard to tell what was the effect, because the two happened simultaneously

This is the simplest and almost certainly correct answer.

I’ve seen this at a number of public companies, and is a reason I hate working for them. These decisions are always unbelievably short sighted and ruin companies in the long term.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#235

Post by aryehof »

headinthesky wrote: post #119
brandon272 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seeing who is being laid off, especially on my team, it's the people who make things run. As a Cloudflare customer, that's reassuring! .. not.

I know of 4 teams in Cloudflare One, who lost EMs, PMs and engineers in really critical connectivity systems. Our list of things we need to do is years long. Many of those are needed for reliability and scaling. They quietly stopped hiring months ago and I figured things were not good. My mistake was thinking my group would be a little safer being profit drivers and big deals...

Is it possible that the line of thinking really is that "agentic AI" will up for the capability shortfall?

It seems to be the stated expectation, but I find it incredulous that management really would believe that?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#236

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

headinthesky wrote: post #119
brandon272 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seeing who is being laid off, especially on my team, it's the people who make things run. As a Cloudflare customer, that's reassuring! .. not.

I know of 4 teams in Cloudflare One, who lost EMs, PMs and engineers in really critical connectivity systems. Our list of things we need to do is years long. Many of those are needed for reliability and scaling. They quietly stopped hiring months ago and I figured things were not good. My mistake was thinking my group would be a little safer being profit drivers and big deals...

So Sorry, And I literally just moved all my stuff to cloudflare 2 weeks ago… if it means anything it was a great product.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#237

Post by faangguyindia »

20% of the workforce is currently being utilised for testing purposes by various companies. (just like we deploy Canary to 10% traffic for test)

In reality, approximately 5-10% of the workforce is equipped with AI technology and can now autonomously manage the entire company.

I am pretty sure CEOs can already see it! Companies create a great deal about the revenue per employee.

Downvoting my statement will not alter the situation, Claude and GPT-5.5 have the potential to replace most system administrators, DevOps engineers, copywriters, support personnel, and other roles.

I have observed this phenomenon in private product companies in India, where I serve as a consultant to multiple companies. I have noticed that 5-10% of the workforce is sufficient to ensure the continued performance of products, with reduced communication overhead, faster updates, and improved reliability.

I also have several side projects that encompass a wide range of responsibilities, so I am not merely a passive executive role.

In India, it has become increasingly challenging to secure jobs in the DevOps, system administration, and frontend domains.

In my opinion, a backend engineer’s job is the most difficult to replace at present, particularly if that engineer possesses a deep understanding of market and product dynamics.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#238

Post by Imustaskforhelp »

dang wrote: post #221
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.

Yes. We've since changed the top link to a third-party article. We prefer to do this with corporate press releases* - this is probably the #1 exception to HN's "please post the original source" rule ( https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html ). If anyone sees a better third-party article, we can change it again. (Edit: it's not really an exception because the purpose of a corporate press release is usually to…

Thanks for changing this dang, I and all of us really appreciate the work that you do towards hackernews :-D

Have a nice day!

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#239

Post by rdtsc »

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…

Wonder if they'll do it like they did for Brittany Pietsch. She recorded her firing video some years ago. I think it's on tiktok but there are youtube videos discussing it as well.

Anyway, new employee at Cloudflare, just finished onboarding. Suddenly a short meeting is scheduled with two people she had never met before. She is told she is let go for "performance" reasons. She kind of tears into them with "what performance issues, I only got great reviews" just to hear the HR people squirm and backpedal, well because, they know they are lying. But of course, they're trained enough to never admit it and say "they'll get back to her on that". Needless to say, it has the same effect as a suspect being arrested arguing with the cops. But it did make Cloudflare "famous" on tiktok for a bit.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#240

Post by tempest_ »

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…

Both of those are true assuming the lay offs come from different demographics.

You lay off 1100 who are late in their career for younger people who will work more hours for less.

You're building the future with new fresh people instead of the "dead weight"

Post reply on HN