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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

#681

Post by ahaferburg »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #230
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…

Here, I translated it for you ( https://translate.kagi.com/?from=linkedin&to=en_us ) "We’re basically using our own staff as guinea pigs. Our AI usage has spiked 600% lately, mostly because everyone from HR to marketing is leaning on bots to do their actual jobs. We’re forced to restructure the whole company around these agents just to keep up with the hype, hoping it actually helps us ship something useful and justi…

[dead]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#683

Post by OtherShrezzing »

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…

> When was the last time you saw any job seeker seriously enquire about such practices in interviews or at the application stage?

There’s some kind of reverse-survivorship bias here. I’d never apply at Meta because their management does the “hire a bunch of excess people in the good times, so when Zuck‘s next inevitable efficiency-drive happens, the team is able to layoff lots of people while still staying operational” approach.

So I’d never make it into the Meta interview to ask that question in the first instance, and neither would anyone else who thinks of Meta in that way.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#684

Post by tlogan »

the_af wrote: post #664
tlogan wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One smart old guy once told me that the only language you need to speak in the financial world is spreadsheets. No words needed.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#685

Post by albedoa »

threetonesun wrote: post #627
lkvoid wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that people just lie regardless of the real intent behind hiring right? That's not how that works... Please stop being delusional

This is a bizarre take, I've always asked questions like this when interviewing, and if a manager doesn't have a good answer I ask for follow up conversations with the team before taking a job. Has it worked out? No, but usually they were all being lied to by upper management. Can't do much about that.

> Has it worked out? No

It's a bizarre take because you have always done it and it has not worked out. What.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#686

Post by Ray20 »

camillomiller wrote: post #499
nostrademons wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the natural result of "fire the bottom 10% every year". If that's the rule in your organization, and you have a core group of people that actually know the systems and get the work done, you better make sure you have 10% padding every year, lest you layoff someone important and their friends all quit in disgust. And since competence and institutional knowledge is built over time, that implies a revolving door of…

Workers as cattle. This is utterly disgusting and the way it’s normalized is even more revolting

> This is utterly disgusting

This is effective. Therefore, normalization of this plays into the workers' hands, gives them information, and gives economic advantage to honest agents.

I mean, you could compare it to any non-capitalist society, where such treatment of workers is declared unacceptable. But what does this translate into in reality? Such strategies are still effective and provide an advantage to those actors who adhere to them. But since firing workers for their relative effectiveness contradicts the proclaimed ideology, such workers are simply accused of random crimes against the country and executed.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#687

Post by pm90 »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #389
pm90 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost 99% sure that They hired a consultant firm (MBB) that told them who to cut; this is pretty standard practice now at public tech corps. Especially if EMs weren’t in the loop. This looks like purely a margin improvement exercise thats hiding weaknesses in the company’s financial performance.

I’m sure they don’t know what they are doing or necessarily care, but I’m still curious what the consultants even claim to be looking at to make the list? Job description, git activity, team level profitability, salary, etc?

Employees are treated as a cost which is why you often see the strongest performers inexplicably laid off (since they are likely compensated higher). In situations like this they don’t care about productivity; leadership is given a list and they can move a few people around but for most its game over once they’re on it.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#688

Post by skeeter2020 »

the_af wrote: post #667
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…

> 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 interview…

agree - every time you ask a "clever" question you're increasing the risk it will be mis-interpreted, and also giving the interviewers a chance to pass. You may think you're being intelligent, honest or candid but it can easily come across as cocky, confrontational and (for lack of a better term) "off". I've passed on candidates for all of these reasons.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#689

Post by pm90 »

punkbit wrote: post #656
pm90 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost 99% sure that They hired a consultant firm (MBB) that told them who to cut; this is pretty standard practice now at public tech corps. Especially if EMs weren’t in the loop. This looks like purely a margin improvement exercise thats hiding weaknesses in the company’s financial performance.

Wow! Is there any good read on that, like even if a "YouTube" show or something? This is quite interesting.

If you know anyone that works at MBB they would be happy to share this with you; if you’re in SF just hit any bar for a weeknight happy hour and you will 100% find someone.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#690

Post by pm90 »

bpicolo wrote: post #529
pm90 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost 99% sure that They hired a consultant firm (MBB) that told them who to cut; this is pretty standard practice now at public tech corps. Especially if EMs weren’t in the loop. This looks like purely a margin improvement exercise thats hiding weaknesses in the company’s financial performance.

EMs are never in the loop for layoffs for companies of this size, because the whole company would just get forewarning of the layoffs

Thats usually correct for these “surprise” layoffs. For the ones that are announced in advance there is a bit more coordination (like the meta/amazn ones).
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