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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

#821

Post by _heimdall »

sofixa wrote: post #737
_heimdall wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be very hesitant to throw out so many of the fundamentals that made America into what it has been for the last couple centuries. The goal, at least here, is to expect individuals to mostly take care of themselves rather than depending in the state or some other authority to do it for them. Universal healthcare, guaranteed indefinite severance, universal childcare, etc are completely antithetical to our system. Ma…

> Universal healthcare, guaranteed indefinite severance, universal childcare, etc are completely antithetical to our system. I don't see how that follows. How is your system that different from e.g. the UK, which manages to have all of those things (severance is not indefinite and is unemployment).

Unless I'm drastically misinformed, the UK is dealing with a mountain of issues including immigration, economic problems, and quality of the healthcare being provided.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#822

Post by _heimdall »

bluGill wrote: post #659
gcr wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in tech. Larger severance packages are common. Going forward, I wonder if severance packages should be a point of competitive recruiting advantage

They are for CEOs and have been for decades. We call them "golden parachutes", and a lot of people hate them.

I assumed we weren't talking about CEOs though. Can't say I've ever heard of a CEO being impacted by layoffs.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#823

Post by eng1n0ir »

"We are our own most demanding customer. Cloudflare’s usage of AI has increased by more than 600% in the last three months alone. Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done. That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere."

So basically, there were too many people burning too many tokens lol

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#824

Post by eng1n0ir »

"We are our own most demanding customer. Cloudflare’s usage of AI has increased by more than 600% in the last three months alone. Employees across the company from engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent sessions each day to get their work done. That means we have to be intentional in how we architect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value we deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better Internet for everyone, everywhere."

So basically, there just were too many people using too many tokens LOL

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#825

Post by usefulcat »

fauchletenerum wrote: post #335
GalaxyNova wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

by laying people off they increase their profit, at least in the short term (which is all that shareholders care about)

Not with the severance package they're offering, which is why their stock was down between 15-18% after announcing this

Look at the chart of their stock price over the past couple of months. There was a huge run that started literally just over a week ago. Even after this 20% drop, the price today is only slightly below where it was before that run.

Their stock price has been pretty volatile for a while now (6+ months), so even with a swing of this magnitude I don't think it's valid to see it as much more than a correction.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#826

Post by Muromec »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #812
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...

I took one of those seasonal hire to fire Amazon roles, having thrived in Apple engineering for many years, and not needing to work really at all. It was laughable that the manager thought he could brainwash me (who used to report one level away from Steve Jobs) into learning how to write code, etc. He was from country X and would protect another wildly inappropriate employee also from country X despite her being a g…

Country X is India, isn't it?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#827

Post by Muromec »

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.

When I hear about Amazon, the first thing that comes to kind is "PIP[0] culture" even zo I don't know anyone who worked for them.

[0] Performance Improvement Plan aka the chapter where manger together with HR build up the convincing paper trail to fire a person.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#828

Post by geodel »

cwillu wrote: post #606
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…

> People game companies and companies will game people in return. You have cause and effect entirely reversed. There have literally been movies and tv shows made about employees showing missplaced loyalty to their companies and what the companies do in spite of that loyalty, and now that the pendulum has swung to around a bit, you have the temerity to suggest it's the employees who started this trend and the poor emp…

I see it all the time companies keeping people out of loyalty despite employee being grossly incompetent. But it would be hard of hear about it because what kind of news that'd be.

Hiring is event, firing is event. Not hiring or firing are not the event to cover.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#829

Post by RHSeeger »

erulabs wrote: post #785
RHSeeger wrote: post #780

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Employees can and do choose these companies completely of their own volition. Except for the part where, some of the time, it's "this company, or I can't buy food or pay my rent".

I think you have to squint pretty hard to think that's the case in software engineering. LA Times suggests there are 6.9 million job openings (1). I don't think it's reasonable to suggest that anyone who wants a job in tech should get one otherwise its a humanitarian crisis. In fact, I'd say it's beyond unreasonable to suggest that. Still, I do feel bad for younger folks trying to break into the industry - but "work…

> Cloudflare is paying out terminated employees thru the end of 2026, imagining this is a case of people going hungry requires some very serious ideological capture

We were talking about the people interviewing and picking jobs in general, not specifically ones that had been laid off from CF.

> I think you have to squint pretty hard to think that's the case in software engineering.

Maybe not right now (though I imagine that varies a lot even now). But I've been there. I've gone from making plenty of money to 100k+ in debt and having less money in the bank than I need to pay the rent + buy food next month. Admittedly, that was after the dotcom bubble; but it left me with a mindset of not assuming everyone has a choice to work at the company they want to. Sometimes you need a job, and being picky about which one you choose isn't always an option.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#830

Post by red_admiral »

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.

S tier interview strategy (I'm not being sarcastic here).

They open the interview by asking why you want this position, at the end in your questions time, you ask why the position is open.

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