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Cloudflare lays off new hires

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Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#231

Post by forward1 »

SantalBlush wrote: post #203
forward1 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly, it is difficult to "address" a subjective opinion without having been given the criteria for a satisfactory answer. But I will try: being a responsible adult includes contributing to national defense.

Your original statement, that "Each capable adult must be held accountable and responsible for themselves in this world," is a subjective opinion--unless you meant it merely in the sense of a truism--and you did not give me any criteria for a satisfactory "counter-argument". Regarding this: >being a responsible adult includes contributing to national defense you are equivocating between two separate definitions of th…

I believe it is you making the false equivalence.

> you did not give me any criteria for a satisfactory "counter-argument".

I had. Many times. I asked for examples of ethical businesses. None were materialized. Therefore my assertion remains unchallenged and likely true.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#232

Post by Ekaros »

caeril wrote: post #226
BlackjackCF wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how tech sales work so I’m speaking from an uneducated place here - but is 4.5 months enough time to close any sales? I imagine that at least a month of that 4.5 months is spent onboarding and shadowing someone else to see how the company handles sales. I also imagine that any tech sales right now are difficult to close given the shrinking customer base due to the number of startups that are folding. And…

For Cloudflare specifically, it makes sense. Why they even have a sales team is beyond me. Everything we need is available by dashboard and API. When we need to add a zone, or upgrade a zone, or buy more load balancers, or upgrade TLS on a zone, or literally anything that could be counted as a new "sale", we can do it ourselves. We ignore their "we noticed you may benefit from Enterprise, call us today!" spam, we nev…

And somehow they have 1500 people in sales... One wonders...

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#233

Post by cafard »

whatyesaid wrote: post #215
tlogan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The layoffs are widespread. For example, Dominos just laid off 1,200 drivers. However discussions about the economy's health become particularly politicaly charged during an election year. So any conversation about the state of the economy, whether it's perceived as good or bad, inevitably carries political implications in this context. Edit: it is not Dominos it is Pizza Hut https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/pizza…

In that link it says they are required to pay all restaurant workers $20 an hour due to new laws. From my understanding that job gets a lot of tips in America so they don't want to cough up $20 an hour. the idea of having in-house delivery people for any place is outdated compared to gig apps probably. You only lose a bit of money by not having your own people.

My experience as a pizza-delivery guy is about 50 years out of date, but tips were few and small.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#234

Post by Aurornis »

tiew9Vii wrote: post #163
Aurornis wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it. Did you watch the video? She cuts them off several seconds into the call and doesn't let them even speak before she starts talking about her situation (hire date, no sales closed). They didn't even have a chance to say anything. Once someone reaches this level of intensity (cutting people off, not allowing t…

> Once someone reaches this level of intensity Not sure if I watched the same video shared here as you did. It obviously came as a surprise but she seemed calm given the circumstances and was asking straight direct reasonable questions given the circumstances with the people on the other end responded back with gobbledygook avoiding answering straight direct questions. In no way was she loud, abusive, threatening. At…

> Not sure if I watched the same video shared here as you did.

> but she seemed calm

She only let them speak for 21 seconds before "I'm going to stop you right there" and you she also referred to their words as "bullshit".

I don't know what level of business discourse you're accustomed to, but if someone is cutting you off 21 seconds into the conversation, speaking over you, and calling things "bullshit" then it's time to slow down and let them cool off.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#235

Post by 6bb32646d83d »

caeril wrote: post #226
BlackjackCF wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know how tech sales work so I’m speaking from an uneducated place here - but is 4.5 months enough time to close any sales? I imagine that at least a month of that 4.5 months is spent onboarding and shadowing someone else to see how the company handles sales. I also imagine that any tech sales right now are difficult to close given the shrinking customer base due to the number of startups that are folding. And…

For Cloudflare specifically, it makes sense. Why they even have a sales team is beyond me. Everything we need is available by dashboard and API. When we need to add a zone, or upgrade a zone, or buy more load balancers, or upgrade TLS on a zone, or literally anything that could be counted as a new "sale", we can do it ourselves. We ignore their "we noticed you may benefit from Enterprise, call us today!" spam, we nev…

Once a company reaches a certain size, all products used like Cloudflare go through a sales process to negotiate terms, SLA, compliance etc.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#236

Post by occamsrazorwit »

cstrahan wrote: post #223
Aurornis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She did cut them off when they were giving out corporate speak. She cut them off after 21 seconds and then went into a heated complaint, including calling what they're doing "bullshit" > She asked for details, and they didn't have any details for her. Once someone becomes this heated, the only real option is to reschedule a followup call after the person has had time to cool down. Nothing good would have come from…

Before I respond to your comment: I was laid off two days ago (not at CloudFlare), and while I'll greatly miss what I was working on and everyone I was working with, and I also don't like the stress of not having an income, the news was broken to me with sincerity and tact, very much unlike how CloudFlare handled the termination in this video. > She cut them off after 21 seconds and then went into a heated complaint,…

> She established that her supervisor's feedback for her was that she had done "a great job". If that was not the case, the people letting her go would have asserted that this claim is false.

FWIW, the HR people did assert this claim was false but said they weren't able to go into specifics. That's the central issue that makes this somewhat murky. If companies prioritized employee wellbeing, then they'd release this information, but they prioritize not getting sued or opening themselves up to criticism.

Honestly, I think the manager deserves more criticism here. There's a world where both sides are telling the truth. It's pretty common for managers to give positive feedback to underperforming employees (as part of empathetic communication). Also, managers do have a say in layoffs. The excuse is always that managers didn't know until right before the layoffs, but they still have input at that stage. They're not laying people off or firing them behind the manager's back.

Edit: I'd also point out that she says she's been receiving positive feedback despite not meeting standards. Her reasons for such are that one deal died through no fault of her own and that the holidays are tough for deal-making. She is making the argument that the standards say one thing while the expectations (feedback) say another. Aligning standards and expectations would fall under the manager's duties. Because, again, HR drones aren't going to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of sales.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#237

Post by 6bb32646d83d »

Aurornis wrote: post #151
aestetix wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that's the case, then they should just say that.

They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it. Did you watch the video? She cuts them off several seconds into the call and doesn't let them even speak before she starts talking about her situation (hire date, no sales closed). They didn't even have a chance to say anything. Once someone reaches this level of intensity (cutting people off, not allowing t…

There would have been no follow up meeting. That's the meeting where they need to be prepared to give answers. Her account most likely was being scheduled to be disabled by the end of that meeting

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#238

Post by occamsrazorwit »

otherme123 wrote: post #211
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowning when to apply honesty is also important. If you tell an ex you left them because they are (fat?), is it honest or is it cruel ?

In fact, they are saying that the relationship ends because she's fat, while the most probable cause is that they have more girlfriends than they can handle. I.e. they do the cruel thing when the honesty would be better.

To continue the dubious analogy, having too many girlfriends isn't a sufficient cause by itself. There's a metric used to determine which girlfriend is dumped, and that's the real reason that specific relationship ends.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#239

Post by itsdrewmiller »

infamia wrote: post #209
Aurornis wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it. Did you watch the video? She cuts them off several seconds into the call and doesn't let them even speak before she starts talking about her situation (hire date, no sales closed). They didn't even have a chance to say anything. Once someone reaches this level of intensity (cutting people off, not allowing t…

> They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it. Who shows up to fire someone without any specifics at all? That is utterly incompetent and completely unprofessional, even for a very large company. Who shows up this unprepared and 100% scripted? HR knows good and well that after being terminated that almost no one will want or will have time for such a f…

The bigger the company the less likely anyone will attempt to give you specific information about why you are being terminated during the termination meeting - I think your expectations of how things should work don't match the reality of how they do work. Competent organizations will have given longer term employee more prior feedback about their performance issues, but in this case the employee was likely still in their probationary period. Even then you'd expect them to get SOME feedback about not hitting their numbers, but we only have one side of the story here - she may have gotten feedback and ignored it.

Re: Cloudflare lays off new hires

#240

Post by itsdrewmiller »

aestetix wrote: post #217
aestetix wrote: post #84

I don't understand why Cloudflare can't just be honest and say the reason she got laid off, instead of making up some garbage about her performance. That was her main complaint, and I side with her completely. She was not asking to keep her job, or asking unreasonable questions. If they just explained that it was because the company overhired, or because they needed to reduce costs to keep the company afloat, that wo…

I can't edit the main post, so I'll add here: apparently the reason they refuse to give her a non-performance related reason is so they don't have to pay out unemployment benefits. Makes total sense, and is a very sleazeball tactic.

What is your source for this? In Virginia you will only be denied unemployment if you are fired for misconduct - https://www.vec.virginia.gov/unemployed/faqs/Unemployment-In...
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