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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

#661

Post by evilduck »

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.

Do they need to own up to it directly? Interviews are always about both sides of the table putting their best self forwards. If it's a big enough company to implement stack ranking and the resulting games played then GlassDoor, LinkedIn, Reddit, even HN all serve this purpose quite effectively.

You can also just ask indirect questions: "how often do you hire new team members?", wait a bit and then, "how is the company measuring growth?" and then at a later opportunity "what's the tenure of those on the team I'd be working with?". If nobody with 1 -2 years is on the team but they admitted to hiring frequently and that growth is meager or stagnant (or they can't answer the question), you have your answer.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#664

Post by the_af »

tlogan wrote: post #625
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…

Why do we need to complicate here? cloudFlare is not making any profit. They are losing money. The board probably wants profit now (they predict less growth) so the management needs to cut the costs. This AI story is a just an excuse. If there is not AI they will say “high gas prices”. Or “inflation”. Or whatever … It is true that the companies like Meta, Oracle and Microsoft are laying off due to AI but because they…

> so the management needs to cut the costs

I love it that they explicitly say in their blog post "this is not a cost cutting exercise".

Of course, every "regrettably..." letter from company execs is understood to be an entirely performative ritual.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#665

Post by 999900000999 »

orf wrote: post #480
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes the degree is needed in order for the company to be allowed to pay him over a specific amount/scale.

Any company that does this doesn’t seem worth working for

This rules out a lot of government jobs. I personally finished my bachelors after I was already making 6 figures, but it’s a complex issue.

I seriously dislike degrees as a signaling mechanism. Maybe you just didn’t have parents who could afford to front $100,000 for you to attend college. Maybe you didn’t want to take on student loan debt.

It shouldn’t matter at all if you can get the job done.

If you want to explore immigrating later it’s probably worth having.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#666

Post by zarzavat »

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…

It's weird to fire people instead of giving them training.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#667

Post by the_af »

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?

Well, this is not something you can safely ask in most interviews. Also, while there's some sort of HN/hackerdom fiction that the job seeker holds some power during the interview, for most job seekers the interview is strongly imbalanced towards the interviewer. So asking clever questions during the interview is risky if you're desperate for a job.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#668

Post by bluGill »

rozap wrote: post #286
stego-tech wrote: post #32

I'm going to start calling these "Canary" moments. Assuming we take everything at face value for these sorts of cuts, it creates the following scenario: A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the efficiencies in AI while also posting substantial profit or revenue growth. The company could downsize the workforce to capitalize on short-term efficiencies and increase margins, though this will come at…

Excess labor would only translate to increased revenue and new products if these companies had a product vision to begin with. But they don't, so people get sacked.

You are on the right path, but I think you are off by a bit. Every company has more work they want to do than budget allows. However some of those things won't pay off fast enough. That is they have product vision but are smart enough to realize that those extra things they won't be able to do are not things customers are willing to pay extra for today.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#669

Post by DangitBobby »

_heimdall wrote: post #571
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 don't read this as employing 20% was twiddling their thumbs and sitting around. If it means anything beyond economic issues, I read the implication as their LLM expenses have gone threw the roof and with the choice of cutting LLM use or cutting headcount, well we see what mattered more to them.

Those 20% were unproductive in the literal sense or the economic sense.
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