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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

#581

Post by simianwords »

NewJazz wrote: post #342
throwaway2037 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will reply here assuming that you posted with good intent. I think that their PR statement is reasonable from an investor perspective. Try to detach yourself from the personal effects of layoffs. In short, they are saying: Thanks to AI, we don't need as many people to run our business. It is pretty clear to me. Sure, you can be angry about the layoffs, but the economics are clear: AI is increasing profitability fas…

As an investor, it sounds fucking stupid. They aren't dogfooding, they're eating all the dogs' food. They fired some talented folks. Folks who could be retrained. Folks whose experience snd expertise is valuable. Don't kid yourself.

this is a low quality comment that doesn't address the simple explanation: more productivity means fewer people are required.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#582

Post by efficax »

losvedir wrote: post #575

Wow, and I had thought they would be one of the winners in the AI era. A lot of SaaS's can be recreated with an agent and some tokens, but I thought the more infra-y companies would be the beneficiaries. I've vibe coded a few Cloudflare Workers and thought it was a great experience. And Claude knew how to use wrangler to do a lot itself.

layoffs are winning in the short term. investors love them, and if you cut staff but keep revenue that’s profit.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#583

Post by _t2kx »

cortesoft wrote: post #147
pcdevils wrote: post #8

When you announce 639m USD revenue for q1 Then lay off a thousand people because you love the smell of your ai farts.

Yes, their revenue was $639m but their expenses were $702m. It doesn't matter how much revenue you have if you are spending more than that.

Expenses were more on purpose, they amortized a bunch of hardware depreciation now instead of over 5-7 years with the new tax changes. This is pure greed

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#584

Post by sethops1 »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #509
camillomiller wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Workers as cattle. This is utterly disgusting and the way it’s normalized is even more revolting

In management terms a human and a printer are the same. Both resources that need to be managed. I hate it.

We don't send 10% of our printers to the landfill every year just to motivate the other printers.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#585

Post by gcr »

_heimdall wrote: post #570
lagniappe wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to agree, however, it will take every bit of that time for some to find new placement. These AI cuts aren't just making it harder to keep a job, but harder to get a job as well.

For better or worse, it isn't a company's job to pay laid off employees until they find a new role. The industry standard for severance is 1-2 weeks pay per year at the company, paying out roughly 7 months is a big deal (and yes, an acknowledgment of how rough they know the job hunt will be).

Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common.

Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#586

Post by simianwords »

Snoozle wrote: post #178
lijok wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "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.

Huh? How is it not connected? More productivity means fewer people are required. I'm not sure how you are not able to connect these obviously connected statements.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#587

Post by gcr »

antonymoose wrote: post #491
matwood wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but harder to get a job as well. I just tried hiring someone and received over 200 resumes that looked mostly fake. Thinking about adding a final in person interview in an attempt cut down the garbage when I repost.

Use a good recruiter to do the dirty work for you, it’s not cheap but it’s worth the lack of hassle. With that said, at my firm we switched to using an in-house non-technical HR recruiter using nothing but a LinkedIn Job listing and the results are exactly as you’re experiencing. Perhaps 1 in 100 is a real human with a real resume, the rest are AI being fed our job description to generate a resume. Onsite final inter…

How can humans stand out to companies like yours?

I’ve considered writing informally and putting subtle typos in my cover letters, for example, to signal humanity. Is this a good idea or do recruiters look down on it?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#588

Post by deadbabe »

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…

I’m curious, what was your AI usage and output like?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#589

Post by rdtsc »

s_dev wrote: post #542
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.

This is completely acceptable. When was the last time you saw any job seeker seriously enquire about such practices in interviews or at the application stage? A lot of people here and in the industry in general seem to optimise for compensation package and put blinkers on themselves for other factors that are definitely relevant. Companies aren't penalised by candidates for such practices. I'm not saying it's good bu…

> When was the last time you saw any job seeker seriously enquire about such practices in interviews or at the application stage?

- “Are you hiring people just to fire them a year later to protect yourselves?”

- “Yes we do”

It’s a bit naive to think they’d just own up to it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#590

Post by konart »

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…

11 interns did okay.
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