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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

#861

Post by californical »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #320
akomtu wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it's a lie. Cloudflare is saying, essentially: "AI is making us so profitable that we've decided to reduce our profit by 20%, to keep it reasonable."

I am confused by this post. No trolling: You wrote "reduce". Did you mean to say/write "increase"? If you layoff people to reduce costs, then your profitability should increase.

That’s a very MBA way of thinking.

If we extend the logic, if we have 0 employees then profitability is maximized right? Then shouldn’t every company have 0 employees?

Obviously hiring increases profitability, otherwise some of the biggest headcount companies wouldn’t have hired so many people

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#862

Post by badc0ffee »

cmiles8 wrote: post #796
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #779

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I feel like Amazon isn't a FAANG anymore. (What's the new A? Anthropic?)

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#863

Post by dang »

swyx wrote: post #445
CWwdcdk7h wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be more specific, it is a heuristic for detecting flamewars and/or controversial topics and it is quite good at that.

why exactly do we want to damp flamewars by comment count? as long as an individual comment fits the rules why do we punish comments in aggregate

Because it's a global optimization problem and HN gets less optimal* when there are flamewars on the frontpage.

Do you have a different approach in mind that we could do instead?

* https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#864

Post by marcosdumay »

s_dev wrote: post #549
StilesCrisis wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly would you ask this in an interview setting? I'm baffled by the idea.

"Why is this role open"? Either they will answer directly with something solid like "We're growing the team" or they will evade it which is still a meaningful answer for you. You could probe further with questions like: "How has the team's headcount changed over the last 18-24 months?" Basically you're alluding to 'employee turnover' without saying it.

Software is an industry where most people stay 2 years at a job. The reason they have the position open is because the previous person quit.

In fact "we're growing the team" in a large company is the one that is a red flag.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#865

Post by keeda »

headinthesky wrote: post #294
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do the world a favor and take your institutional knowledge out the door to enjoy greener pastures.

The pasture is pretty crowded and full of shit. But thanks, friend. I appreciate it

I've been laid off from every job I've held (and once I was even re-hired a month later!) so I know the feeling. There seem to be others here who are also impacted and I fear the overall trend will only continue, so I wrote up my thoughts on how to future-proof your job search. I do think the GP comment about institutional knowledge could be a key part of it. Hope this helps: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48067459

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#866

Post by platevoltage »

cullenking wrote: post #764
gcr wrote: post #587

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can humans stand out to companies like yours? I’ve considered writing informally and putting subtle typos in my cover letters, for example, to signal humanity. Is this a good idea or do recruiters look down on it?

The people I hired in my last round, with over 600 slop and fake applicants, had honest and informal cover letters that stood out. I’m sure I passed up on real decent people as a result, but there’s no perfect way to avoid this right now. It helps that we have something closer to a lifestyle business, where I can ask for a brief paragraph about your relationship to the outdoors and cycling, but that just means I had…

I'm glad I read this. Pre AI, I've always wanted to tell the company about myself using my own language instead of this fake corporate LinkedIn style language, which seemed like was the norm, and was expected. Now it seems like employers are looking for some hint of humanity. I guess I'll remember this if I ever decide to apply for a job again.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#867

Post by ok_dad »

draftsman wrote: post #636
_heimdall wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't read this as employing 20% was twiddling their thumbs and sitting around. If it means anything beyond economic issues, I read the implication as their LLM expenses have gone threw the roof and with the choice of cutting LLM use or cutting headcount, well we see what mattered more to them.

Unfortunately I think we’ll see more and more of this as companies continue to encourage their employees to use LLMs everywhere and for everything. Eventually they will have to come to terms with the cost of such mandates, and it’s either ask your employees to “use AI less,” or it’s let some percentage go and continue to let the rest burn tokens.

I am perplexed at how it can cost so much. I have been using AI every day, all day for a few months now and I have not even gotten to spending $300 a month. I use Cursor for teams, so we get ~$80 of usage for our ~$40 per member, then we pay Cursor's upcharged API rates from there, and I STILL don't spend more than $300 a month, if that. What the hell is everyone doing with their fucking tokens?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#868

Post by irq-1 »

duped wrote: post #845
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #781

Earlier quoted context omitted.

META is doing* it . The main RIFF has yet to happen.

RIFF = an awesome chunk based binary format RIF = a really shitty way to run business

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Interchange_File_Form...

Interesting

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#869

Post by platevoltage »

therealdrag0 wrote: post #312
luckman212 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This will surely end well

They have been hiring like crazy year after year. Undoing 1 year of hiring is not the end of the world.

I'm sure it probably feels like the end of the world for some people.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#870

Post by marcosdumay »

idontwantthis wrote: post #844
magicalist wrote: post #763

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which is a F500 company. And used to be an F5 company.

The easiest way to become a F500 company is to start as an F5 company, then financialize your whole business, stop innovating, fire anyone effective, and give the executives huge bonuses.

Well, if you also put barriers to integration and hire more executives you can turn it into 3 or 4 F5000 companies instead.
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