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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

#511

Post by wesleywt »

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"

I always wonder what happens to institutional knowledge in American companies.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#512

Post by 21asdffdsa12 »

nostrademons wrote: post #488
scott01 wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve seen managers hiring people with an intent to lay them off when winds change to protect themselves and their close circle. I can only imagine they’ve had great KPIs in both cases: first for scaling the team, and then for cutting costs.

It's the natural result of "fire the bottom 10% every year". If that's the rule in your organization, and you have a core group of people that actually know the systems and get the work done, you better make sure you have 10% padding every year, lest you layoff someone important and their friends all quit in disgust. And since competence and institutional knowledge is built over time, that implies a revolving door of…

If both sides know it, working as a "churney" can be pretty chill. Like being put on the roof from the getgo.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#513

Post by wesleywt »

_carbyau_ wrote: post #317
misswaterfairy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You lay off 1100 who are late in their career for younger people who will work more hours for less. Yet management always seems to miss the institutional knowledge, and experience, that also walks out the door laying off those 1,100 people 'late in their career'... It's not possible to cram 25 years of experience into two.

> Yet management always seems to miss the institutional knowledge, and experience, If they actually miss it they can call it back to work for triple the going rate. They usually don't though. Those left behind have to figure it out again with whatever new tools they have at their disposal, thus continuing the great circle of corporate life. Or corporate death if they don't figure it out in time and it is actually imp…

It takes two years to get up to speed on a job. It seems laying off will cost the company time even if they are saving money.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#514

Post by masfuerte »

matwood wrote: post #492
onli wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is obviously lying about the layoff reason minimizing the lawsuit area? It's ripping it wide open I'd think.

Most of the US is a right to work environment where a company can let someone go at any time for any reason other than the few protected class reasons. Many companies also have 90 day probationary period where they bypass internal company processes and let someone go, again other than for protected class reasons. It's obviously hard when people's lives are upended, but no one complains when companies do a lot of hiri…

Sure, but why lie?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#515

Post by dajt »

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?

I have AuDHD - there is no way I'm running my own company. I'm a good developer but I need someone else to have the idea and run the business and I can lead a small team to bring it about.

Given I'm now in my mid-50s, things are looking grim. And I'm not getting paid SV silly money. I'm not even getting paid US dollers.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#516

Post by kypro »

throwaw12 wrote: post #495

People who lived through 2001 and 2008 crashes, did it look like this or was it even worse than what's happening these days with so many layoffs?

2008 really wasn't that bad if you were in tech...

No idea about 2001, but I've heard it was fairly rough. More recently I've seen people say now it's harder to find work today, I think in part because in 2001 it was mostly tech companies laying off talent, while corporates who were less impacted by the dot-com bubble were still building out their engineering teams.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#517

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

wesleywt wrote: post #511
tempest_ wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

I always wonder what happens to institutional knowledge in American companies.

You're expecting the country that's all-in on anti-vaxxing, climate catastrophe denial, and the disassembly of democracy to understand what institutional knowledge is?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#518

Post by faangguyindia »

5ahsgf wrote: post #439
faangguyindia wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you suggest they give out free money to people they don't need? If you believe it negatively impacts Cloudflare, feel free to start a competing company and hire all those; it's free market after all, anyone can raise money if you can show there is any point in your vision. What's funny is software guys have forever automated jobs of others. Remember? Automating e-commerce logistics? Automating taxis? Automating va…

Feel free to start an Indian company. But you don't do that. You come to the West like Nadella and Pichai and take away the jobs in Western companies, genius. And in the case of Nadella, ruin said companies.

You did same with native americans and do you remember East India company?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#519

Post by autaut »

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"

I worked in a company that did that. They couldn't rehire the senior after the junior burned with a bug 700k in 20 min by touching a part of the codebase no one had context for anymore.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#520

Post by bantunes »

kevmo314 wrote: post #166
bantunes wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're laying off the people who can't produce a minimum of 2x with AI, and keeping the maximalists with no life outside of work barely keeping up with the 100k LOC a week they're shipping to prod. Suits have an idea of what the New Model Coder should be, and it's not people who don't burn through 100,000,000 tokens a week.

That makes no sense. If that were really true then they could’ve saved a bundle and did that same thing years ago before AI.

The promise of AI gains with fewer people is what's triggering this - before, you needed ~1 coder to do ~1 unit of work. Suits now think you only need 1 coder to do X units of work because LLMs.

So no, they couldn't do the same thing years ago.

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