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

671–680 of 1001 posts

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#671

Post by shimman »

_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).

Maybe it should be the companies job, being jobless in the US is a potential death sentence and since we don't have universal healthcare, universal childcare, or universal higher education/vocational training the onus should be forced on the companies to provide welfare for workers since they are so adamant about not paying taxes to create a welfare system that doesn't mean homelessness or death.

There is also no industry standard for severance, it's not federally mandated and not a guaranteed benefit.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#672

Post by greenie_beans »

daemonologist wrote: post #403
RSHEPP wrote: post #42

Any other engineers just living life frozen at this point. I am unable to make any life decisions because it seems like I won't have a career in the near future. I am unable to purchase a home to settle down for my family, because dad might not have a job next week. I know I am fortunate to have a job, many don't, but fuck if this career isn't the worse thing ever for my overall health and happiness.

Yes - I was thinking about starting my own business but am staying put instead and saving as much as possible.

now seems like the perfect time to start a business?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#673

Post by bluGill »

hosteur wrote: post #410
roncesvalles wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is simply a symptom that the company doesn't have good Quality Control processes in place. AI-produced code is good but it's not so good that it can replace hand-crafted (or heavily supervised) code written by the type of engineer who works at Cloudflare. What's really happening is that a few employees realized they can game the system by turning on a firehose of AI slop and pushing 10x the LOC than any other en…

> What's really happening is that a few employees realized they can game the system by turning on a firehose of AI slop and pushing 10x the LOC than any other engineer (with or without AI) Did they figure out how to game the system? Or was the system set up exactly with incitaments to produce exactly this outcome?

They figured out how. Mind you the system was setup with incentives to produce this outcome - but before AI it wasn't really realistic to produce all those lines of code even though you could and so nobody was gaming it so badly it broke. (it was always broke, but the breakage was acceptable before)

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#674

Post by shimman »

gcr wrote: post #587
antonymoose wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can't, this is the issue with an extremely unregulated industry. You want to stand out as a single individual among 10,000 similar qualified people on paper? Good luck.

This is likely an unintentional, but beneficial, side effect in thwarting labors power.

Since workers have a hard time getting interviews due to AI slop, that means they'll have a harder time developing leverage rather than being forced into accepting any job because the alternative is to become homeless and die.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#675

Post by mrits »

ttul wrote: post #227
ggoo wrote: post #18

> The packages for departing employees will include the equivalent of their full base pay through the end of 2026. Healthcare coverage is different across the globe, and if you’re in the United States, we’ll continue to provide support through the end of the year. We are also vesting equity for departing team members through August 15th, so they receive stock beyond their departure date. And, if departing team member…

They have a reputation to maintain, otherwise it will be difficult to recruit the best people in future. That being said, damn, that is a very generous package by any measure.

Meta did it based on tenure. People that were there for 10 years got about an entire year.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#676

Post by shimman »

DangitBobby wrote: post #669
_heimdall wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, it is more accurate to say that leadership at Cloudflare does not know what they are doing nor have they known what to do for a good decade now.

Acting like workers at Cloudflare have any meaningful say in how work is made or the direction of the company is delusional neoliberal fantasy thinking.

The onus of poor business outcomes is laid directly on its leadership. Saying that workers were unproductive when they were coerced to follow leadership's mandates is just straight up class warfare.

Dang it Bobby indeed.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#677

Post by mghackerlady »

lagniappe wrote: post #266
ggoo wrote: post #18

> The packages for departing employees will include the equivalent of their full base pay through the end of 2026. Healthcare coverage is different across the globe, and if you’re in the United States, we’ll continue to provide support through the end of the year. We are also vesting equity for departing team members through August 15th, so they receive stock beyond their departure date. And, if departing team member…

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.

Depends on what you specialise in. Sysadmins seem to be in demand (which isn't a programming job but is in tech still) and embedded hasn't been killed by AI yet (and I doubt it will)

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#678

Post by the_af »

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…

I know you're arguing a more general point, but it's worth pointing out in their layoff announcement, CloudFlare is claiming:

- This is NOT performance related.

- This is NOT a cost cutting exercise.

They say both things explicitly. What they don't say very clearly is what the layoffs ARE about.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#679

Post by bluGill »

punkbit wrote: post #654
bloppe wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you there are a ton of companies desperate to hire talent right now. It's hard on both sides of the market. Lots of noise, but there is demand for this supply. Unfortunately, that means personal connections are more valuable than they used to be, just to get the ball rolling.

Are you sure? Can you share some of those companies that are desperate to hire talent right now? I'd like serious teams as I need to find work. I do keep an eye on HN, Wellfound, Workatstartup, X, etc.

There are always a ton of companies looking for good talent. However there are not nearly as many as a couple year ago: there is more good talent looking for a job than there are jobs. This has happened before, it will happen again (this is easy for me to say - I still have a job, but I've been there before and I know first hand how bad it is when you need the job).

Good luck to those of you looking for a job. My company is hiring a few people, but if someone leaves today there is only a 20% change we hire someone outside to replace them so I can't really offer leads worth looking at.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#680

Post by cj »

evilduck wrote: post #661
rdtsc wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 compan…

You could also just ask directly. I think it's a totally fair question. I don't think you'd be penalized for asking about a company's layoff history. Especially if you say something like "I'm looking for my next home, somewhere I can be for the next 5 plus years".

I might not ask in the first 10 minutes of the first interview, but once you're a few rounds of interview deep, you can pretty safely ask questions like this.

Post reply on HN