Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce • Hacker News Board

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#701

Post by ptdorf » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:13 PM UTC

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…

First politics. Now businesses. This sounds like a wildly poorly written parody by teenagers.

"reduce Cloudflare’s workforce by more than 1,100 employees globally."

Are they 1) halting all the 1111 interns, 2) keeping the 1111 interns, now armed with AI, to replace mid-level/senior institutional knowledge or 3) a mix?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#702

Post by xp84 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

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 reads to me almost like saying “Why are pigs not avoiding the most problematic slaughterhouses?”

A. We have to work somewhere, and in 2026 honestly it’s actually the employer’s market which is kinda new to me, as someone who always just passively waited until an interesting job offer fell in my lap.

B. They all pretty much work the same. Everywhere is “like a family” and “cares about sustainability” and all, until either your VC money starts to run low and you sell to PE or liquidate, or, for your big techs, layoff season comes around and you need to show that you’re willing to cut costs with the best of them, so you pick a random 4-5 digit number to lay off for the investors.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#703

Post by throwaway2037 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:17 PM UTC

sunrunner wrote: post #457

throwaway2037 wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the United States (where most Cloudflare employees work): > The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) forbids age discrimination against people who are age 40 or older. To answer your question: Probably not. Even so, it is incredibly hard to prove workers 40 and older were laid off as a result of age discrimination.

So you can’t be discriminated against if you’re less than 40, but that seems somewhat discriminatory (maybe you wanted to be), but that means that you are being discriminated against, but that’s meant to be forbidden. I sense a paradox.

Yes, from a legal perspective this will always be true: in-group vs out-group. Age discrimination is a special category because everyone will be in the out-group (when young) the age into the in-group. In this case, it is probably legal to fire someone for being too young. It sounds weird, but that is not a protected class of employees.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#704

Post by ai-x » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

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…

[flagged]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#705

Post by jameshart » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:18 PM UTC

nopurpose wrote: post #602

nickdothutton wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Genuine kubernetes scaling strategy: add a do-nothing container that runs with a lower priority than your real workloads, that requests half a machine’s worth of mcpu.

When you deploy a new container, and all your nodes are fully allocated, that low priority container will get evicted, and your container will immediately get scheduled in its place. Then k8s will try to find somewhere to put that half-machine container. If it finds somewhere it fits, it’ll schedule it. If not, it’ll trigger your cluster auto scale to add a new node where that task can run, making sure the next container you want to deploy has some readily available capacity to drop on to.

Basically the same sysadmin strategy, automated.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#706

Post by jameshart » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:20 PM UTC

StilesCrisis wrote: post #550

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.

Absolutely not--the printer is capex, so it's preferable to the humans who are opex.

No no, this quarter we’re trying to shift from capex to opex. Try to keep up.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#707

Post by mrkramer » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

I feel like they overhired over the years and now they reap what they sow. AI just accelerated their awareness of overhiring. I think if Cloudflare or any other well established software company stopped hiring this year, they would be doing the same as they did last year. At the end even the management will be replaced by AI.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#708

Post by magnetometer » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

StilesCrisis wrote: post #550

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.

Absolutely not--the printer is capex, so it's preferable to the humans who are opex.

Usually, companies value opex more than capex - opex is much more flexible. That's one of the reasons why printers, coffee machines, companies cars and other things are typically leased.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#709

Post by qu8n » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

Not sure how to feel about this. On one hand, the transparency about the layoff and the severance package for the employees are positive things.

But seeing the intern hiring count the year before basically offsetting the layoff headcount makes me think they've been planning to replace their employees with interns and plug the expertise gap with AI.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#710

Post by fzeindl » Fri, May 08, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

scott01 wrote: post #451

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…

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.

The term for this is „buffer hiring“.