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

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#831

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:34 PM UTC

tootie wrote: post #92

headinthesky wrote: post #67

This really sucks. I loved this job. I'm an EM and I was trying to hire more people because we're so busy with everything we needed to do. My teams products are something like 95% profit. Really going to miss my team, they were wonderful to work with. Secretly hoping they'll have to rehire. I refuse to believe it was about AI. Coming from the inside, the bottleneck was never code. Seeing who is being laid off, especi…

In my experience, companies never value transparency. And it's doubly true for companies that boast about transparency. Obviously, it's within their authority to cut head count, but they've also obviously made some kind of major strategic shift either to cut costs or abandon some lines of business and they are not being upfront about it at all. The stock is up 111% over 12 months. They don't seem to be in any danger…

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#832

Post by [deleted] » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:38 PM UTC

eunos wrote: post #463

curioussavage wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. I got two weeks notice and then got shown the door with nothing. And now I get to compete with all these people who are going to be so much less stressed

> compete with all these people who are going to be so much less stressed Well many of these folks then would prefer to decompress and chill for a few months instead of hitting the recruitment process early.

[deleted]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#833

Post by rco8786 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:46 PM UTC

dfxm12 wrote: post #638

curioussavage wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Damn. I got two weeks notice and then got shown the door with nothing. And now I get to compete with all these people who are going to be so much less stressed

Proper layoffs require at least 60 days of notice or 60 days of pay. Maybe you weren't part of a proper layoff, but if you think you were, check out the WARN act.

In the US??

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#834

Post by bijowo1676 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

rdtsc wrote: post #589

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…

> 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.

the deal you are signing is that if you show top percentile performance, it wont be you who will be laid off

Hunger Games basically

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#835

Post by mmooss » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:48 PM UTC

knollimar wrote: post #711

mmooss wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems it would be easy to show a pattern.

Is it not fine to just cut for pay rate? That should be easy

Is it legal to cut pay rates based on age? I doubt it. 'We didn't fire them, we cut their six-figure salary to minimum wage'.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#836

Post by SpicyLemonZest » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:49 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #413

kortilla wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HR doesn’t squirm because they are lying. They squirm because they minimize lawsuit surface area as much as possible. I have been on the giving end of performance layoffs in big corps and there is an extremely strict script you have to stick to (both HR rep and me as the manager). I saw the video you’re referring to and it’s completely unsurprising they clam up further when she became confrontational. You’re not gonn…

How is obviously lying about the layoff reason minimizing the lawsuit area? It's ripping it wide open I'd think.

The point is that HR declining to engage with her questions does not prove that they were lying. Even if they have 100% ironclad proof that they're in the right, what possible value is there in having an argument about it? Will she feel any better, and will they look any better to social media, if they deliver a 5 minute lecture on everything the company feels is wrong with her and her work?

(What is true, and what the Cloudflare CEO did acknowledge at the time, is that the manager who she felt was giving her only positive feedback should have been the one delivering the news.)

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#837

Post by bijowo1676 » Fri, May 08, 2026, 5:57 PM UTC

wesleywt wrote: post #511

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"

I always wonder what happens to institutional knowledge in American companies.

what institutional knowledge exactly? all they know is politics and intrigues. zero useful knowledge there

anything thats useful is documented. If its not documented, there will be incident/outage and it will be documented later as a lesson

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#838

Post by shimman » Fri, May 08, 2026, 6:04 PM UTC

jdasdf wrote: post #537

podgietaru wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My stance is this: Fine, maybe you need to restructure for profit reasons. If that is the case, then it is also beholden upon the people doing the layoffs to understand their responsibility in that. In an ideal world, a layoff of this scale would also require a shakeup of the management that let it get this bad in the first place. What's more, the higher up the chain, the less onerous the layoff for the individual ge…

Why should people who are profitable to employ be laid off as well? It just sounds like you're upset and want to hurt whoever you feel is responsible for making you upset. That's not a productive stance to have on important topics.

No, it's more like we have undemocratically elected people in positions of power that want to act like dictatorships when in reality these people made a mistake that is costing the company billions of dollars and their ineptitude means they should be removed from these positions.

I thought Silicon Valley was all about meritocracy? Why should corporate shills that does not know how to profit from entity that controls 25% of internet traffic be allowed to keep their jobs but the actual people providing real value, the workers, aren't?

That is a system that doesn't benefit humanity. It selfishly benefits the few.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#839

Post by dboreham » Fri, May 08, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #751

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.

Totally. In companies that routinely layoff people for lulz, executives collect business units for layoff fodder to protect their key players. It’s the proving ground for the sociopaths who rise up.

See: "The B-Ark".

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#840

Post by moregrist » Fri, May 08, 2026, 6:06 PM UTC

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…

While you can't really ask "will I be layed off next year," it's pretty common to ask some version of "why is the role open," usually split among a few questions (that you'd tailor based on the role):

- "Which of my skills do you think are most valuable for this role?"

- "How would you measure success in this role?"

- "Can you tell me a little more about the product lines we'll be developing / supporting?"

- "How is the current team planning to grow?"

These are the kinds of questions that let you feel out what the manager envisions for the role. If the answers seem vague, that tells you something about the role / manager / org. If it's not clear how you impact the product and they can't clarify, that also tells you something.