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Cloudflare lays off new hires

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Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#111

Post by pc_edwin »

Spivak wrote: post #7
sneed_chucker wrote: post #3

I wonder if the US will ever get first-world tier labor laws that prevent companies from screwing people over like this. Doesn't seem likely any time soon, but it's so insane how healthcare and everything is tied to an employer and in most places they can just fire you on a whim and not offer severance or anything.

I don't know why you're being downvoted. Strong labor protections and a generous social safety net with the goal of making it so that being fired isn't the end of the world would be a huge net positive for the labor market. Guilt free firing means you can allocate labor efficiently where it's actually needed specifically because you're not dealing with people's livelihoods. And right now our social safety net for sit…

At some point you have to pay the pied piper.

All the collectivist projects ("safety nets") are just shifting liability/cost/risk from one part to another at the extreme detriment of the system a whole.

Its causes massive distortions and disincentives. In the case of collective bargaining and labor protections, I'll speak about my country, the UK. These laws have crippled the country, especially as of recent.

Its so sad to see a nation that used to be full off dynamism, ingenuity and so much life now turned into a lifeless bureaucratic hellscape..

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#112

Post by giancarlostoro »

bamboozled wrote: post #80
grepfru_it wrote: post #39

Hey this is very similar to my story 2 years ago! (different company) It's only going to get worse, but protip: if you don't want to deal with the interview circuit like I did, set your salary expectations hilariously low and at least you will still collect income. Good luck to everyone in our shoes!

When hiring, I'm suspicious of qualified people with low income expectations, I don't think this is a winning strategy personally and I'd take this advice with a grain of salt.

In my case, every time I ask for high pay, they expect me to give them the world in an interview or to be some manager or principal / staff engineer, I just want to write code, I don't want to be stuck in meetings all day, I've been there, it's not me.

Look, if you pay me enough I'll meet your standards for your company, I think a more productive interview is a culture fit interview that covers at a high level the things you care about with your team, grilling people with verifiable years of experience is an insult. Most developers learn on the job. Every job is a new learning experience. Chances are high if you don't have onboarding documentation, I'm your guy writing it because its absurd to me that any project lacks such documentation.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#113

Post by strix_varius »

candiddevmike wrote: post #9
strix_varius wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am absolutely for decoupling healthcare from employment (via universal care), and for mandated severance. However, there's a reason that so many - I'll pick on Germany here - German tech leaders move to the US. When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky. If you're a very capable software engineer, it's better to…

> When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky. I don't follow this conclusion at all.

It seems self-evident, but maybe that's from managing teams that span countries and seeing the difference firsthand. Here's a concrete example:

Congratulations, you're now an EM! You get +1 headcount for your team this quarter. Your interview pipeline winds up with two candidates who get exactly equal recommendations.

One of these people (A) lives somewhere that, if they turn out to have neutral or negative value on the team, you can easily let them go. The other (B) lives in a place where, based on your management training and company policies, you have to first make a request through the legal department, then go through at least six months of PIP to (maybe) get rid of them.

Which of them do you hire?

If the answer (A) is too obvious here, let me add one more detail: A wants to come in at the role's max level, whereas B would accept one level lower (less comp). Does that change your answer?

Almost certainly not. You're a line manager. The cash for this isn't coming out of your pocket! There's no reward for getting folks to agree to less than market value. On the other hand, a bad hire makes you look bad, and a bad hire requiring working with legal over a protracted period in order to avoid liability - even worse. If your hiring decision results in an employment action against your company? A managerial nightmare!

Meanwhile, your top performers are asking you why the hell they're working so hard and contributing so much when it seems like performance doesn't matter for retention on your team. You're legally barred from sharing information about the in-progress coaching of the negative-impact teammate.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#114

Post by pc86 »

baryphonic wrote: post #98
candiddevmike wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring is risky, giving people broad latitude is risky, and compensation suffers because high comp is risky. I don't follow this conclusion at all.

> > When firing employees becomes too hard, hiring becomes risky If a firm has severe restrictions on firing anyone, then it must be extremely diligent with hiring, because employees will be around as long as they want to be. If an employee is unproductive, lazy, or just a bad fit, then the firm will be stuck giving a paycheck to someone who really ought not to be there. Thus firms will simply delay hiring. > > givin…

Since Germany was mentioned specifically, I'm curious what the laws are around decreasing pay, if it's as hard as firing someone, if some threshold or percentage would be considered a constructive firing, etc. This could eliminate some of the risk of high compensation if, for example, you could hire someone at $100k/yr USD equivalent and then after a reasonable review cycle lower the pay for bad performance.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#115

Post by joecool1029 »

frfl wrote: post #85
irjustin wrote: post #58

Possibly stupid question - why are so many companies laying off? According to Wallstreet, the majority of the recession scare isn't a scare. Inflation, while not fully at target, is getting better. Unemployment is at an all time low. So many companies are laying off like it's the worst times ahead. Obviously layoffs aren't taken lightly so there must be some internal signals that really push them to take these measur…

If you read the layoff threads from the last 24 hours a few common reasons are theorized - Investors pressuring for profits, cut costs (too many people hired during Covid, total salary bill too big to justify right now). One company does it, other companies may be pressured to drive up stock prices - Money is expensive, - Section 174 possibly, companies can't write off entire salaries for engineers as easily to offse…

I wonder if antitrust litigation/regulation has some effect here as well? Axe divisions/workers on things that could appear to abuse market position.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#116

Post by declan_roberts »

minicoz wrote: post #93
gizmo385 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The company wants to try and make more money and one way is eliminating your job. Why is that so personal? God forbid we expect people to be treated with a bit of dignity and given the opportunity to actually say goodbye to their friends and colleagues. Millennials grew up being told over and over “be loyal to a company and they’ll treat you well” and have largely began their careers in an era where it’s clear comp…

I'm a millennial and I'm not naive enough to believe a company has my best interest at heart. This is year 2 of rough layoffs in tech. anyone that didn't see January coming as layoff month is dumb.

Unfortunately still a lot of people with nice cars and expensive rents and other consoomer waste who have been living like the good times will never end.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#117

Post by kingnight »

neom wrote: post #53
KyleSanderson wrote: post #2

Plenty of these on LI today unfortunately. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/skoroleva_opentowork-techsale... https://twitter.com/BowTiedPassport/status/17451497589921956...

Yikes on that second link, I seriously hope she told them she was recording the call or she may run into some two-party consent issues.

Zoom was probably already recording on behalf of the employer

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#118

Post by frfl »

joecool1029 wrote: post #115
frfl wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the layoff threads from the last 24 hours a few common reasons are theorized - Investors pressuring for profits, cut costs (too many people hired during Covid, total salary bill too big to justify right now). One company does it, other companies may be pressured to drive up stock prices - Money is expensive, - Section 174 possibly, companies can't write off entire salaries for engineers as easily to offse…

I wonder if antitrust litigation/regulation has some effect here as well? Axe divisions/workers on things that could appear to abuse market position.

Haven't come across this theory, but sure, it's a theory.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#120

Post by pc86 »

aestetix wrote: post #108
pc86 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does it matter? If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision. If they say their investors are demanding better returns (e.g. higher stock price, higher profits, wahtever that means for the particular business) you have people in here saying it's greed. There is no answer Cloudflare could give her or anyone else that would make folks go…

It matters because this is about trust, transparency, and honesty. If you were in her position, would you want to know if your termination was due to something you did badly, or because of a general company policy? I agree that being honest is not going to make everyone happy, but I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons.

> I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons

Probably the liability around someone saying something not accurate, or something that could be construed as approaching, even indirectly, some protected class. They've already laid her off, she's not going to be singing their praises under any circumstances, anything they do at this point just increases their liability.

In a perfect world I'd love for people laid off or fired to get detailed reasons why so they can adjust course if necessary or at least know that it was nothing they did and just budgetary, but there are too many people who will want to argue the point in court that the company not only has no incentive to do it, they're heavily incentivized not to.

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