Surprised that this isn't part of a "journey"…
Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
381–390 of 1001 posts
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
Isn’t this illegal?
In the United States (where most Cloudflare employees work): > The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. To answer your question: Probably not. Even so, it is incredibly hard to prove workers 40 and older were laid off as a result of age discrimination.
> Even so, it is incredibly hard to prove workers 40 and older were laid off as a result of age discrimination.
The only way for this to happen is by leaked private conversations, I think.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#383[dead]
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#384TBH I'm surprised people don't see the obvious result of this collective madness:
1. Force every engineer to use agentic AI to the max.
2. Constant anxiety at work due to the threat of job loss and unreasonable expectations from management/business.
3. Engineers start yoloing everything using AI while wasting tokens.
4. Speed goes up in the short term, while quality and expertise degrade little by little, all while bleeding money due to AI usage.
5. One year down the line you have a company full of engineers that don't care and a bunch of slop-bloated, bug-ridden products that the customers don't want, and a massive bill.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#385This 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"
Surely they wouldn't keep all of the new hires.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's AI but not in the way you think. AI usage is getting expensive since Anthropic et al are turning the screws, and that money has to come from somewhere. Reducing AI usage is blasphemy of course, so cutting headcount is the only path forward.
Is there no one figuring out ROI on AI spend vs human payroll? I can't make sense of this idea that companies are firing productive employees because they're spending too much money on AI that isn't doing anything for them... they still hope chatbots will be worth it in the future?
> ROI on AI spend
You say that shit like that at the top table and you will be gone within the hour.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#387Earlier quoted context omitted.
This isn’t my experience, but I think it depends highly on the segment. We have mainly senior C++ devs (database company), and it’s still a challenge to find great engineers. I think the current job market isn’t “one size fits all”. Having said that, obviously if they’re getting laid off, they may very well be in the segment that’s less desirable.
Very regional as well, Eastern europe is supposedly doing well, western europe (UK/NL) is doing alright, north america seems significantly worse
I've got a couple of friends that left London to go back to Poland during covid. They first continued to work remotely, but ended up switching to Polish companies because the pay was better.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#388Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the time, management don't even know what they don't know. As a result, entire America lost engineers and builders and now don't even know how to build rails, factories and rockets to moon.
Have you missed that they recently sent a rocket to moon?
This is the internet. You can’t expect HN or Reddit to be positive, especially around America. It was the same way before Trump was around.
These people and bots have no idea what they are talking about. They’re parrots.
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#389Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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?
Almost 99% sure that They hired a consultant firm (MBB) that told them who to cut; this is pretty standard practice now at public tech corps. Especially if EMs weren’t in the loop. This looks like purely a margin improvement exercise thats hiding weaknesses in the company’s financial performance.
I’m sure they don’t know what they are doing or necessarily care, but I’m still curious what the consultants even claim to be looking at to make the list? Job description, git activity, team level profitability, salary, etc?
Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very regional as well, Eastern europe is supposedly doing well, western europe (UK/NL) is doing alright, north america seems significantly worse
I've got a couple of friends that left London to go back to Poland during covid. They first continued to work remotely, but ended up switching to Polish companies because the pay was better.
Yes I think salaries are still a bit lower, but the gap has closed a lot. And cost of living is lower in Poland plus there is some tax break for self employed contractors that means you only pay ~20% tax compared to ~40% in the UK.
With those two factors you could easily end up better off overall, especially if you have kids