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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

#611

Post by moron4hire »

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"

You know what's way more expensive than an old senior developer? The 10 interns you try to replace them with.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#613

Post by malfist »

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…

> 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?

To put it another way: she shouldn't have been dressed like that, it's her fault for being raped.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#614

Post by hnlmorg »

sethops1 wrote: post #584
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I take it you haven’t seen the printer demolition scene from Office Space?

/s

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#615

Post by otikik »

ricardobayes wrote: post #561
otikik wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Freshers certainly can give the appearance of taking ownership and shipping full stack features in a few weeks. The problem is that "I copied the issue on claude code and then committed the code it produced" is not actually taking ownership. > noone appreciates the years spent "googling and looking at stackoverflow" anymore, and frankly, they shouldn't be. Well, I do, and I hard disagree with you there. If the human…

I'm not talking about some hypotethical scenario - but what I observe. When I started out, us interns were tasked with "nothing". Now the skill floor is so much higher, and I'm seeing freshers accomplish tasks that were previously thought of strong mid-level or early senior ones.

Well that is not my experience. My first task as an intern, decades ago, was performing a useful task for the company that hired me. I did a mediocre job at it and it took me way longer than it would take one of the experienced engineers there, who would have done it better. That was expected because I was an intern.

With the tools available now, I would have been able to produce things of higher quality and faster, I don't deny that. But putting that code in production without an experienced developer reviewing it thoroughly would have been reckless. And they would have been the owners of that code, not me.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#617

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#618

Post by expedition32 »

xmcqdpt2 wrote: post #558
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?

That's basically the meme, right: You rail against corporations and yet you work for one. Curious. Anyway in general, corporations are sticky. They save resources through scale and collaboration. Famously this is a problem for free market true believers because if you believe that the market is the most efficient mean of organizing people then you would expect firms to operate internally as free markets (or disappear…

Most people in fact do not work for corporations. But small companies rarely get into the news do they?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#619

Post by thrownthatway »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #414
thrownthatway wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this text not rendered as expected.

If you type 2 asterisks it's rendered as one, it's an escape character mechanism: This text has one asterisk on each side *This one has two on each side*

Obvious now

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#620

Post by aaa_aaa »

gk1 wrote: post #600
redhale wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Losing what edge?
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