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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

#591

Post by swader999 »

dandellion wrote: post #430
ricardobayes wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately it feels like it's possible. Freshers in their first job are now capable of taking ownership and shipping full stack features in a few weeks. The feedback loop is definitely shortened - noone appreciates the years spent "googling and looking at stackoverflow" anymore, and frankly, they shouldn't be. Experience matters now mostly at the architecture, and decision-making levels, not at implementation.

I was reviewing some code done by a junior hire at my company last week, and it certainly didn't look like he was cramming 25 years into 2. It looked like he had no understanding of anything he had generated, because it was garbage. Meanwhile this week I've just reviewed the largest single PR I've ever seen, from a senior dev who disclosed it was mostly generated and cleaned up by him, and the code was perfectly fine…

Yeah they seem to just amplify who ever was behind it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#593

Post by konart »

keybored wrote: post #80
zb3 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The future, for those who have the capital. The rest may die, shareholders don't care.

Then we must build our own future. One where we deny the capitalists access to their own automated killer robot armies.

>Then we must build our own future.

Sure. How many of those hated capitalists have started with exactly same thought?

People should stop drop this naive act.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#594

Post by rdtsc »

s_dev wrote: post #549
StilesCrisis wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would you ask this in an interview setting? I'm baffled by the idea.

"Why is this role open"? Either they will answer directly with something solid like "We're growing the team" or they will evade it which is still a meaningful answer for you. You could probe further with questions like: "How has the team's headcount changed over the last 18-24 months?" Basically you're alluding to 'employee turnover' without saying it.

> How has the team's headcount changed over the last 18-24 months?"

“It didn’t change” and it would not be telling much. They are just hiring and firing X amount of people every year.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#595

Post by _t2kx »

oncallthrow wrote: post #541

> Matthew has personally sent out every offer letter we've extended. It is a practice he has always looked forward to because it represented our growth and the incredible talent joining our mission Who gives a shit if you treat your staff like this? I will add cloudflare to the list of companies that I’ll never work for. Shame, because it seemed like an interesting place

[flagged]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#596

Post by nickdothutton »

scott01 wrote: post #451
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…

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.

Back in the late 90s a senior Microsoft exec explained this to me, they had acquired staff and continued to operate entire divisions which he described as "ballast". In the future, once the stock price increases slowed, they would be heaved over the edge of the balloon basket so that it could continue to rise. I often think about that.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#597

Post by keybored »

konart wrote: post #593
keybored wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then we must build our own future. One where we deny the capitalists access to their own automated killer robot armies.

>Then we must build our own future. Sure. How many of those hated capitalists have started with exactly same thought? People should stop drop this naive act.

I don’t think I’m the naive one if you think those “hated capitalists” had the intention of building a bright future for the collective us.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#598

Post by rdtsc »

mmooss wrote: post #330
Analemma_ wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you're dumb enough to leave a paper trail showing that's what you did.

It seems it would be easy to show a pattern.

You would need some class action lawsuit I’d think? Need a good number of laid off people to join it and you need solid statistics that would convince a jury more than the corporate lawyers would with whatever HR covered their assess on paper have.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#599

Post by sokoloff »

echelon wrote: post #565
StilesCrisis wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would you ask this in an interview setting? I'm baffled by the idea.

> How exactly would you ask this in an interview setting? You now know which companies do this. Every company laying off now has to wear a Scarlett Letter: "we're a layoffs company".

Good luck working in tech for a company that's never done a layoff.

Just Apple (and even there only "mostly") among big tech?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#600

Post by gk1 »

redhale wrote: post #562
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…

This (from the September 2025 post) now evokes the Curb theme: > Like you, we have seen numerous reports that more and more firms are capping their total headcount in favor of leaning on more AI tools, leading to downsizing their intern and new-graduate hiring. This is resulting in increased sidelining of new college graduates. But we think this misreads the moment completely, so we’re heading in the opposite directi…

> AI tools make great team members even better

This is the predominant (public) talking point. And it’s true.

But along with that: when you have effective people becoming even more effective with AI, it becomes glaringly obvious who the INeffective people are. At which point it becomes hard to justify keeping those people around.

(That often includes people who are otherwise effective but aren’t utilizing agents and are therefore losing their edge.)

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