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Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

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Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#171

Post by downWidOutaFite »

photonbeam wrote: post #132
koito17 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say so. This video is a perfect demonstration of America's "at-will employment" culture. It's extremely asymmetrical, too. Companies can fire you at any moment, for any reason (with or without cause!)... yet it is considered rude for employees to not provide ample notice when deciding to voluntarily quit.

This needs to change, no more notice

I prefer giving a notice but then doing absolutely no work besides chitchatting with the people I liked and planning my goodbye party, while still collecting a paycheck.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#172

Post by tky »

I have to wonder why CF bothered to say it was performance related in the first place, even if it was. The decision to let her go was made long before that call, and no explanation is going to make it go any smoother. All they needed to say was that they were parting ways, get her email address, and offer the hollow sentiments standard for being the messenger of bad news.

It is always good to understand why you’re being let go, and humane companies will sometimes allow managers to communicate certain details so as to help but not get sued. These were not those people and you could tell by the corporate buzzspeak alone.

Thinking about this from the employer side, they set themselves up for an adversarial conversation that had no possible means of redemption.

I hope she finds work soon. While I don’t think posting a clandestinely recorded video to social media is the best idea, I now think more highly of her than I do of her former employer.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#173

Post by stemlord »

computershit wrote: post #111
anon_cow1111 wrote: post #92

Um, is it appropriate to request a link to this video that isn't hosted on Tiktok? (I must be becoming crotchety old man or something because even typing that name fills me with disgust. I still find it amazing that it has any more legitimacy than a random scam or phishing site)

Nah, I'm with you. Maybe don't post direct links to psyops platforms, regardless how many users it has.

Even aside from the shadiness of it, it's just becoming a progressively terrible predatory user experience that's crippled for non-account holders, like Instagram.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#174

Post by wolverine876 »

judge2020 wrote: post #87
IvyMike wrote: post #25

I get why Brittany's mad: Cloudflare appears to be handling this about as bad as possible. But those two HR randos aren't gonna have anything worthwhile to say, either. I don't want to be judgmental of Brittany because it's a sucky call to have to take. But my recommendation in this situation is to say "I disagree with that assessment of my performance, but I understand you are terminating my employment. What details…

Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. As far as I'm aware, evidence of good performance could be used to strengthen their case to collect unemployment (if Cloudflare tries to fight Brittany's unemployment claim); it could also be used as evidence in a discrimina…

> legally they can't give them any more specifics

Either a misconception or just misspeaking, but legally they can tell the employee everything. The employer doesn't want to tell the employee, simply to CYA.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#175

Post by teeray »

jbverschoor wrote: post #148
teeray wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s in a one-party state. There are many all-party states, where you need to have consent from all parties. Even if the video call is being recorded (very likely), you still need to seek consent for your recording. Of course, IANAL, but I’d be interested if there’s an additional distinction about the purpose of the recording (internal records, public broadcast) and whether the consent would also need to extend to…

While I was not aware there are state level laws for this, she appears to be from Georgia. Not sure how this would work with inter-state conversations. Georgia is not on the list: California, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

> Not sure how this would work with inter-state conversations.

My guess would be either that the state where the call “originated” would control, or the state in play with the most restrictive call recording laws.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#176

Post by sahila »

koito17 wrote: post #112
kqr wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a US thing where the company doesn't want to give any reasons for firing someone because that can be used in a lawsuit against them?

I would say so. This video is a perfect demonstration of America's "at-will employment" culture. It's extremely asymmetrical, too. Companies can fire you at any moment, for any reason (with or without cause!)... yet it is considered rude for employees to not provide ample notice when deciding to voluntarily quit.

Respectfully I disagree that this being a good example - when I quit I give two weeks (which sometimes I'm asked to just stop working today and take two week pay) or when they dismiss you like this video, they give you several week pay too.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#177

Post by bsder »

Aurornis wrote: post #89
danpalmer wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outcome, perhaps. But a union would have likely a) given a better timeline than a 15 min call with notice sent informally around colleagues, and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. They had no signed contracts, but with onboarding, the ramp up, and holida…

> and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that. They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative n…

> The employee admits having closed zero sales.

You clearly have no experience in sales--especially enterprise sales.

1) No responsible sales organization is going to let a brand new hire alone with a client under 6 months.

2) You aren't selling shit to enterprise from Mid-November until after the first week of January.

3) She barely had a single quarter to get some company to add her to a budget and close a sale. No chance.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#178

Post by sanderjd »

gumballindie wrote: post #103
IvyMike wrote: post #25

I get why Brittany's mad: Cloudflare appears to be handling this about as bad as possible. But those two HR randos aren't gonna have anything worthwhile to say, either. I don't want to be judgmental of Brittany because it's a sucky call to have to take. But my recommendation in this situation is to say "I disagree with that assessment of my performance, but I understand you are terminating my employment. What details…

Nah, she did well by frustrating the process. Next time they’ll think twice before gaslighting and humiliating an employee. Telling her she was getting fired due to her own performance is just that. In my books she did well, hope she starts a gig on her own to never have to deal with NPCs such as those two. They feed on people’s misery.

Who, exactly, do you think is going to "think twice" next time?

It's a bummer, but this is how this has been done for decades (generations?) and everybody knows it's how it's done, and that has in no way made companies "think twice" about business leaders assigning fairly low level employees or consultants to do these meetings just like this.

There was a whole gag about exactly this in one of the last few episodes of Succession just recently. There have been popular movies about this ("Up in the Air", with George Clooney, is about this, if memory serves). It's not, like, a secret that this is how it works.

It sucks, but no, this video going "viral" is not going to change anything.

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#179

Post by YeahThisIsMe »

judge2020 wrote: post #87
IvyMike wrote: post #25

I get why Brittany's mad: Cloudflare appears to be handling this about as bad as possible. But those two HR randos aren't gonna have anything worthwhile to say, either. I don't want to be judgmental of Brittany because it's a sucky call to have to take. But my recommendation in this situation is to say "I disagree with that assessment of my performance, but I understand you are terminating my employment. What details…

Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. As far as I'm aware, evidence of good performance could be used to strengthen their case to collect unemployment (if Cloudflare tries to fight Brittany's unemployment claim); it could also be used as evidence in a discrimina…

Why does the company have a say in whether or not a former employee can collect unemployment?

Re: Cloudflare employee posts layoff call with HR and goes viral [video]

#180

Post by sanderjd »

dylan604 wrote: post #169
ajmurmann wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to dehumanize anyone

Why not? It is precisely what these HR people are doing to every person they call.

Because they're people who are also just trying to do a job. I'm sure there are some sadists out there who take pleasure in this kind of meeting, but I'm just as sure that for every one of those, there are a hundred (or a thousand) people for whom this is the worst part of their job, who go home and hug their kids with watery eyes at the end of a day that was horrible for them.

You aren't mad at them, you're mad at the people making the decisions that are upstream of these meetings.

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