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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

#811

Post by ironmagma »

ai-x wrote: post #759
ironmagma wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your snow plower and landscaper don't get judged for having 5+ different customers in 5 years. They don't show up in ATSes as job hoppers.

I haven't met any truly skilled person constantly being fired. Sure they may get unlucky once or twice, but talent shines through

Didn’t you just say your landscaper gets fired every year? That would mean they’re not “truly skilled.” So why hire them in the first place if they’re not skilled?

Originally you were assigning zero significance to the act of being fired, now you’re backtracking saying it implies something about value.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#812

Post by jjtheblunt »

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...

I took one of those seasonal hire to fire Amazon roles, having thrived in Apple engineering for many years, and not needing to work really at all.

It was laughable that the manager thought he could brainwash me (who used to report one level away from Steve Jobs) into learning how to write code, etc. He was from country X and would protect another wildly inappropriate employee also from country X despite her being a geography graduate in an SWE role, I'd have to teach her, then she'd report to him she taught me what i know.

Unbelievably corrupt org, but amusing i had to admit. it wouldn't be amusing if i had been dependent on working there.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#813

Post by therealdrag0 »

throwaw12 wrote: post #501
therealdrag0 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI is a fraction of cost of an employee though right? I have an 1000$/mo AI budget which is a fraction of my salary, and most people don’t hit their limits.

Curious to know why are they not hitting their limits. In the organization I work, things are crazy at the moment, we are drinking tokens as if we are in hot desert and 1k is barely enough for a week for some people

On heavy coding days it can go up. But most people aren’t coding all day. And research and docs tend to be pretty gentle on the tokens IME. Only time I hit my limit was coding for 80 hours in a war-room. (Also I mostly use cursor which is more efficient with its implicit use of light models and indexed workspace).

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#814

Post by Ray20 »

misswaterfairy wrote: post #288
tempest_ wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both of those are true assuming the lay offs come from different demographics. You lay off 1100 who are late in their career for younger people who will work more hours for less. You're building the future with new fresh people instead of the "dead weight"

> You lay off 1100 who are late in their career for younger people who will work more hours for less. Yet management always seems to miss the institutional knowledge, and experience, that also walks out the door laying off those 1,100 people 'late in their career'... It's not possible to cram 25 years of experience into two.

> seems to miss the institutional knowledge, and experience

Or the exact opposite. Not every institutional experience is good and useful. Some are quite the opposite. I mean, term limits are one of the most common democratic institutions for precisely this reason. We WANT some knowledge and experience to walk out the door.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#815

Post by aniruddh__s »

carefulfungi wrote: post #786
aniruddh__s wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're still keeping the interns. Feels very much like a 'replacement'.

Am I math-ing right that this creates a 1:4 employee to intern ratio? (5000 x 20% layoffs = 1000 redundancies; 4000 employees and 1000 interns?)

The 1111 interns are spread throughout the year, so this summer there will be about 500 interns among 4000 employees.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#816

Post by Pwntastic »

Plywood1 wrote: post #384

TBH I'm surprised people don't see the obvious result of this collective madness: 1. Force every engineer to use agentic AI to the max. 2. Constant anxiety at work due to the threat of job loss and unreasonable expectations from management/business. 3. Engineers start yoloing everything using AI while wasting tokens. 4. Speed goes up in the short term, while quality and expertise degrade little by little, all while b…

6. ceo/cto see the writing on the wall and exit before any blame sticks, receive a nice exit package, find another company to ruin

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#818

Post by usefulcat »

erulabs wrote: post #785
RHSeeger wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees can and do choose these companies completely of their own volition. Except for the part where, some of the time, it's "this company, or I can't buy food or pay my rent".

I think you have to squint pretty hard to think that's the case in software engineering. LA Times suggests there are 6.9 million job openings (1). I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that anyone who wants a job in tech should get one otherwise its a humanitarian crisis. In fact, I'd say it's beyond unreasonable to suggest that. Still, I do feel bad for younger folks trying to break into the industry - but "work…

> Cloudflare is paying out terminated employees thru the end of 2026

That's great that they're doing that, but it's absolutely not guaranteed, either in this particular case (prior to this announcement, i.e. when these people were hired) or in general.

But all of this ignores the more general point, which is that--for reasons which may or may not be their fault--some people are not in a good situation financially and for them being laid off is a big deal with very real risks. Just because that's not you doesn't mean it's not a real thing.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#819

Post by bpicolo »

pm90 wrote: post #690
bpicolo wrote: post #529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

At Amazon managers absolutely are not in the loop for layoffs. I would very much doubt they are at meta.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#820

Post by _heimdall »

danaw wrote: post #774
_heimdall wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very hesitant to throw out so many of the fundamentals that made America into what it has been for the last couple centuries. The goal, at least here, is to expect individuals to mostly take care of themselves rather than depending in the state or some other authority to do it for them. Universal healthcare, guaranteed indefinite severance, universal childcare, etc are completely antithetical to our system. Ma…

you mean that system that has created the most wealth inequality in many decades if not ever?

Empires often create increasing wealth inequality as they begin to fail, that's not unique to the US.
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