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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

#441

Post by retinaros »

tempest_ wrote: post #240
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"

yes sure. its pure accounting and buying into the scam that genai+junior will reduce costs. meanwhile they tokenmaxing vibecoding uis for 50% of their wages cost. I will short every company making those moves.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#442

Post by organ1cwast3 »

fauchletenerum wrote: post #328
organ1cwast3 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Liquidity in the currency market. Need to propagate a lot of dollars fast, 24/7 as a moat on it remaining a reserve currency. 99% of these software startups are basic software that can be handled by a single dev; see Reddit apps and such. But that money printer was running hot and heavy. Needed to funnel it somewhere. Why not that favorite political cudgel of the elites; pointless busy work jobs! Let's invest in a bu…

All of these companies feed their workers in their posh corporate cafeterias while the restaurants around their offices remain mostly empty

Big tech, sure, but not all the startups. I can assure you having freelanced and mentored many a SWE at 5-20 person startups the last 6 years they are not all hiring pro chefs.

Have you not been reading the headlines about urban offices empty? Low taxes to create foot traffic for other businesses?

The trickle down of the ZIRP era was about spreading all the dollars they could print as quickly as possible to maintain dominance of the dollar.

SaaS apps are meaningless to future generations. We were never creating pyramids of Egypt like wonders. We were missionaries for contemporary American propaganda.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#445

Post by swyx »

CWwdcdk7h wrote: post #377
phpnode wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's about the comments / votes ratio.

To be more specific, it is a heuristic for detecting flamewars and/or controversial topics and it is quite good at that.

why exactly do we want to damp flamewars by comment count? as long as an individual comment fits the rules why do we punish comments in aggregate

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#446

Post by fithisux »

My 100% completely personal opinion.

It is not that AI is the contributing factor.

Cloudflare is transforming into yet another surveillance company.

I always see this "Cloudflare ensures you are not a bot" soon may change to "Cloudflare ensures you have a digital ID"

They will not need so many people for this and there will not exist competition to bring better products when people are fired massively and are crippled by financial problems.

AI for me is an excuse. Not the main issue.

It is a strategic transformation to ensure dominant position by killing off competition. Afterall employees are always viewed as threat.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#447

Post by anoneng »

spwa4 wrote: post #416
teiferer wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you missed that they recently sent a rocket to moon?

That happened in the reverse way. The government fired and underpaid a lot of people at Nasa ... and Musk hired incredibly experienced people, who became experienced on the taxpayers' dime, to build a rocket, for huge payrises. The biggest but not only example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Mueller (yes, lots of subcontractors involved, however, Nasa paid, with a bonus percentage provided by the US military) Note…

SpaceX has nothing to do with any part of the Artemis II crewed lunar fly-by. They were considered and rejected. It was entirely legacy aerospace contractors. SpaceX is under contract for parts of future missions including the lunar lander.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#448

Post by swyx »

Marsymars wrote: post #121
prymitive wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not like this is a factory floor where you process something coming in and AI suddenly makes the process more efficient and people are idle. Every team in tech world has infinite backlog, you don’t fire 20% the minute someone manages to close a few tickets.

> Every team in tech world has infinite backlog I have non-tech friends who struggle to understand this, because they literally clear their entire backlog of work every single day they're at work.

then they basically don't do knowledge work

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#449

Post by eptcyka »

noobermin wrote: post #426
Haven880 wrote: post #345

Earlier 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.

I'm very sympathetic to this standpoint, but an obvious retort is why don't the engineers become their own boss and do better? What's stopping them?

Managing things often requires a different skillset, some want to avoid solving meatspace problems, some are not destined to be good at it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#450

Post by strangegecko »

noobermin wrote: post #426
Haven880 wrote: post #345

Earlier 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.

I'm very sympathetic to this standpoint, but an obvious retort is why don't the engineers become their own boss and do better? What's stopping them?

Engineering and running a company are very different skill sets. Engineers are often not good at Marketing, networking, sales, ...

Even if you are good at those, for many companies, it's more about connections than about the ability to build stuff. So if you don't know the right people, it is very difficult to get a foothold.

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