Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

601–610 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#601

Post by darkerside »

strangegecko wrote: post #450
noobermin wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Marketing, networking, and sales are the job. Or a large part of it. If you don't have connections, knowing how to make connections is part of it.

Accept that there are other skills besides engineering, and they can be just as challenging to learn, and just as opaque from the outside of you don't understand it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#602

Post by nopurpose »

nickdothutton wrote: post #596
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.

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.

old sysadmin trick: create large file on a disk and in a dire situation when DB runs out of space delete it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#603

Post by wqaatwt »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #326
Snoozle wrote: post #69

"We are our own most demanding customer. Cloudflare’s usage of AI has increased by more than 600% in the last three months alone. Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done. That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our cu…

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…

That’s what they claim, though.

On its own its just words which might or might not reflect reality. The phrasing strongly indicates its the latter, however

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#604

Post by programjames »

matwood wrote: post #404
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.

> 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.

You should spend a few days thinking about how to improve your process, with more than just a final interview.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#605

Post by MontgomeryPy »

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?

2001 affected tech mainly, so a lot of folks went to other industries still hiring. And 2008 affected other industries more than tech, so the inverse.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#606

Post by cwillu »

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…

> People game companies and companies will game people in return.

You have cause and effect entirely reversed.

There have literally been movies and tv shows made about employees showing missplaced loyalty to their companies and what the companies do in spite of that loyalty, and now that the pendulum has swung to around a bit, you have the temerity to suggest it's the employees who started this trend and the poor employers are just forced to play the game? Fuck right off.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#607

Post by s_dev »

rdtsc wrote: post #589
s_dev wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

You think the naive part is the response and not that question?

My point is that you'll simply have to read between the lines on responses with leading questions not that they're going to be upfront about these things.

Also the interview isn't the only way to gauge these things, You can Google for layoff numbers as well and make determinations that way. There are some websites that are dedicated trackers of layoff announcements, both the loud and quiet ones e.g. Spotify I think were letting 29 people go per month for a while. I think the law in Europe was if was 30 people you had to announce it. I can't remember the exact detail but plenty of companies expose these loopholes.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#608

Post by sanderjd »

happymellon wrote: post #277
krooj wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My man, all these fuckers use the same parasitic management consultancies. That's why all this shit looks the same.

Time to watch Office Space again?

"I'm an agent person. I'm good at dealing with the agents! Can't you understand that?! What the hell is wrong with you people?! I'm good at dealing with the agents!"

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#610

Post by podgietaru »

jdasdf wrote: post #537
podgietaru wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My stance is this: Fine, maybe you need to restructure for profit reasons. If that is the case, then it is also beholden upon the people doing the layoffs to understand their responsibility in that. In an ideal world, a layoff of this scale would also require a shakeup of the management that let it get this bad in the first place. What's more, the higher up the chain, the less onerous the layoff for the individual ge…

Why should people who are profitable to employ be laid off as well? It just sounds like you're upset and want to hurt whoever you feel is responsible for making you upset. That's not a productive stance to have on important topics.

What an odd view of what I said.

I'm not asking for the people who hurt me to be hurt. I am asking that the responsibility of the actions that management layers took be considered in layoffs.

For instance - If overhiring happened, how is this not at least a little bit on the individual that approved of a hiring spree? Why is it that they should be able to yield a baton that hurts the workers they hired, without having to actual bare the brunt of the decisions?

If a business is still unprofitable, a business that touches so much of the internet like Cloudflare, then that is also a strategic failure and should be punished as such.

I feel like your tone in this response was also so condescending.

Post reply on HN