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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

#791

Post by ryandrake »

romaniv wrote: post #756
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…

This seems to be the new normal in Big Tech. They regularly announce massive layoffs, but if you look at their size over time it stays stable or grows. Cloudflare size grew every year. Microsoft size was stable for the past 4 years despite all the layoffs. Google had lost some (4%) employees in 2023, but has grown back to 2022 size last year. Meta shrunk by 22% in 2023, but has been growing in size since then and is…

Interestingly, at least on my browser, the bottom of the Y axis is not consistently zero from chart-to-chart, which distorts the message being conveyed by these charts.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#792

Post by piperswe »

deadbabe wrote: post #588
piperswe wrote: post #7

Welp, looks like I’m affected. If anyone is looking to hire a systems engineer with distributed systems and load balancing experience, shoot me an email at @piperswe.me :/ I’ll update this with a resume link tonight…

I’m curious, what was your AI usage and output like?

I had OpenCode doing most of my substantial code changes for me, once I figured out what the code changes had to be. (so, it saved me typing but not thinking) I also vibe-coded (really slop-forked TBH, that's the Cloudflare way after all) an internal tool that our team used. I definitely was not a small user of our AI tools, though I know that there are others with significantly more.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#793

Post by keybored »

konart wrote: post #752
keybored wrote: post #597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think I’m the naive one if you think those “hated capitalists” had the intention of building a bright future for the collective us.

> if you think ... had the intention of building a bright future for the collective us. Never said or implied such thing.

You shot off a one-sentence rejoinder about capitalists building a future. What does it mean? Not worth your time to explain, but worth your time to nuh-huh about your autor intent after the fact.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#794

Post by postflopclarity »

deadbabe wrote: post #579
argee wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think about investing in Cloudflare but that P/E ratio scares me off every time.

Don’t worry about P/E ratio. If you worry about P/E ratio all the time you would have missed every major tech opportunity for the past decade.

not true.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#795

Post by postflopclarity »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #551
dnnddidiej wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh less than Atlassian. Suprised.

Atlassian has a moat of features despite being expensive. You see nibbles by stuff like Monday.com but never big chunks. CloudFlare is honestly still iterating to find a moat other than 'really cheap'. High P/E means a good moat. (Too high and everyone is looking for a start-up to eradicate your product segment of course).

high P/E means good income growth prospects. a good moat is one way to achieve that, but not the only way.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#796

Post by cmiles8 »

IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #779
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 has a name, and also a poster boy. Amazon's well known "hire-to-fire" [1] https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/amazons-controversial-hire-to...

Amazon followed that model heavily until they basically ran out of top talent wanting to work for them.

That bit really hard when AI hit and all the top engineers wouldn’t even consider working at Amazon.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#797

Post by piperswe »

dang wrote: post #225
piperswe wrote: post #7

Welp, looks like I’m affected. If anyone is looking to hire a systems engineer with distributed systems and load balancing experience, shoot me an email at @piperswe.me :/ I’ll update this with a resume link tonight…

Good luck, and if we can help at all, let us know. Edit: this is a silly longshot, but please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48057989 .

I'm honored you're responding! I've received a few leads from this comment that I'm chatting with, and it's been a major morale boost for me.

At this point in my life and the economy I'm not particularly looking for such early-stage startups like Magnetic (especially w/ relocation to SF), but thanks for giving me the heads up!

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#798

Post by r_lee »

dupaslonia123 wrote: post #375
winrid wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should companies be forced to retain talent of a certain age group? Should they be forced to retain less competent people? How do you expect this to work?

China is hiring engineering talent. US is firing. Nobody forces anybody to do anything. Just pointing out the current state of affairs in the long life cycle of empire. As Ray Dalio says US is very late stage declining „financial capitalism”. While China is early stage aspiring „production capitalism”. It is not like late stage declining USSR needed as many engineers as it did when it wasnt collapsing. USA is a colla…

from what I know, Chinese engineering grads are becoming food delivery couriers because there's not enough opportunity?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#799

Post by siva7 »

sanderjd wrote: post #608
happymellon wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time to watch Office Space again?

"I'm an agent person. I'm good at dealing with the agents! Can't you understand that?! What the hell is wrong with you people?! I'm good at dealing with the agents!"

That line is so damn good i recommend everyone who doesn't get it to watch Office Space.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#800

Post by wing-_-nuts »

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.

No, it's psychopathic. Please, let's not pretend multi-billion dollar companies and your average worker are on anywhere near even footing. Companies always make a big song and dance about being great places to work. Nobody tells candidates 'you'll be expected to work 60h weeks to keep up with the workload here'. Candidates don't ask pointed questions about this because they'd be immediately disqualified. I know, I've been there.

The only company I know of that's open about their practices is netflix, and they comp appropriately for the risk. All other companies? It's basically word of mouth.

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