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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

#931

Post by bloppe »

punkbit wrote: post #654
bloppe wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I promise you there are a ton of companies desperate to hire talent right now. It's hard on both sides of the market. Lots of noise, but there is demand for this supply. Unfortunately, that means personal connections are more valuable than they used to be, just to get the ball rolling.

Are you sure? Can you share some of those companies that are desperate to hire talent right now? I'd like serious teams as I need to find work. I do keep an eye on HN, Wellfound, Workatstartup, X, etc.

My company is hiring (small, but definitely happy to talk to you and all the people who made stuff run on your team at Cloudflare!) https://jobs.ashbyhq.com/blaxel

I know Waymo is trying to hire like a thousand engineers this year.

There are others.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#932

Post by b40d-48b2-979e »

didibus wrote: post #314
stego-tech wrote: post #32

I'm going to start calling these "Canary" moments. Assuming we take everything at face value for these sorts of cuts, it creates the following scenario: A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the efficiencies in AI while also posting substantial profit or revenue growth. The company could downsize the workforce to capitalize on short-term efficiencies and increase margins, though this will come at…

> A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the efficiencies in AI It's likely more: A company finds itself with surplus labor capacity due to the over hiring during Covid, cutting down on risky ventures, protecting margins, and narrowing scope. But I think there's also: A company wants to see if AI is making them more efficient, decides to cut people as if it was and see what happens. I also am not s…

There's STILL people propping the lie about over hiring? Just admit the economic system is not working for the workers already.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#933

Post by NewJazz »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #695
NewJazz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an investor, it sounds fucking stupid. They aren't dogfooding, they're eating all the dogs' food. They fired some talented folks. Folks who could be retrained. Folks whose experience snd expertise is valuable. Don't kid yourself.

> They fired some talented folks. Folks who could be retrained. I see this sentiment a lot on HN. To be clear, I am responding from the perspective of US labor law and general business practices. Employment is not a sacred right in the US. The US system is (larely) hire and fire easily. As a result, the US economy is mildly unstable for the middle class normies (much, much less stable that most other highly developed…

I don't care if it is or is not a common business practice. It is much cheaper than the severance package.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#934

Post by ironmagma »

ai-x wrote: post #880
ironmagma wrote: post #811

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t you just say your landscaper gets fired every year? That would mean they’re not “truly skilled.” So why hire them in the first place if they’re not skilled? Originally you were assigning zero significance to the act of being fired, now you’re backtracking saying it implies something about value.

The landscaper analogy is to explain how any firm can hire or fire at the same time (which many can't seem to grasp). A landscaper that doesn't have repeat clients is what you are comparing to, which is the signal for unskilled labor. (If we are just using the landscape ecosystem). For the Knowledge Worker ecosystem, the seasonality is not summer/winter but say Recession/Growth or Technology Waves. There is definitel…

Who do you think is publishing anti-corporation “propaganda”?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#935

Post by DangitBobby »

shimman wrote: post #676
DangitBobby wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those 20% were unproductive in the literal sense or the economic sense.

No, it is more accurate to say that leadership at Cloudflare does not know what they are doing nor have they known what to do for a good decade now. Acting like workers at Cloudflare have any meaningful say in how work is made or the direction of the company is delusional neoliberal fantasy thinking. The onus of poor business outcomes is laid directly on its leadership. Saying that workers were unproductive when they…

So you would contend it's in the economic sense. It wasn't intended as an assignment of blame, I was just saying Cloudflare either thinks they weren't doing the job or job they were doing wasn't making money.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#936

Post by encrypted_bird »

sneak wrote: post #900
bartread wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so ethically and morally odious I struggle to find the words to describe it. I’ve managed people out. I’m sure I’ll have to do it again. I’ve even let people go during probation but, on the rare occasions that’s happened, I’ve seen it as a failure of the hiring process. People have families, they have mortgages, bills to pay, and a powerful need to eat (Mal, Serenity?). The last thing I want is for someone to…

> People have families, they have mortgages, bills to pay, and a powerful need to eat (Mal, Serenity?). The last thing I want is for someone to give up a stable job that allows them to do that to come and work for me only so I can fire them and leave them up the creek a few weeks or months down the line. Literally none of that is the employer’s responsibility. It’s just a business transaction. Having sufficient savin…

A LOT of people don't make enough money to put away 6 months of savings. You can be the most financially responsible person in existence, but if you don't have the money, you don't have the money.

Seriously, just how privileged can you get?

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#937

Post by nixgeek »

beepboopboop wrote: post #904
sneak wrote: post #900

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People have families, they have mortgages, bills to pay, and a powerful need to eat (Mal, Serenity?). The last thing I want is for someone to give up a stable job that allows them to do that to come and work for me only so I can fire them and leave them up the creek a few weeks or months down the line. Literally none of that is the employer’s responsibility. It’s just a business transaction. Having sufficient savin…

It’s not the employer’s responsibility, but do you think it’s ethical to hire someone so that they can contribute to your firing metrics?

[dead]

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#938

Post by encrypted_bird »

cmiles8 wrote: post #628

These all follow a same pattern now: Vague overtones on AI savings without any hard evidence that’s happening, while ignoring obvious evidence that the company over-hired and is now underperforming relative to what would be needed to justify all that headcount. Nobody believes these narratives at this point and CEOs would garner a lot more respect if they just simply said “I screwed up, we hired too many people and f…

That would require the CEOs to admit they messed up.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#939

Post by _heimdall »

cortesoft wrote: post #805
shimman wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it should be the companies job, being jobless in the US is a potential death sentence and since we don't have universal healthcare, universal childcare, or universal higher education/vocational training the onus should be forced on the companies to provide welfare for workers since they are so adamant about not paying taxes to create a welfare system that doesn't mean homelessness or death. There is also no ind…

I don't think it should be the companies job, but I would be ok with it being paid for by taxes companies pay. Requiring companies to do all of these extra things just gives larger companies more and more advantages, since they have an economy of scale to provide go government-type services. I don't want my company to be in charge of my whole life. Let them pay taxes to a government that can provide those things equa…

What's the difference in it being a responsibility of the company and it being a program paid for by races paid by companies?

I mean this as a genuine question, in case that isn't clear. To me the latter is just socializing the cost across multiple companies, but I'm happy to be wrong here.

Re: Cloudflare to cut about 20% of its workforce

#940

Post by keeda »

artyom wrote: post #911
keeda wrote: post #857

A few people here have been impacted, so I want to talk about something constructive that could help them. As someone observing industry trends from the outside for a while, my advice to those looking to get hired these days: Build something useful from scratch – on your own –- that you can show off as soon as possible. The buzzword everyone is looking for is "high-agency." (No, not those agents, but yes, those will…

I understand that your advice comes from the right place. However "High-agency" is the "Full-stack Engineer" of the AI era. A single salary covering many disparage positions and roles. It's been reworded b/c with AI, apparently you don't even need to be an engineer (or expect to be paid as one) anymore! Nothing new under the sun.

Hmm, I think "generalist" is the more current term for "Full-Stack Engineer." But that's more about technical skills. "High-agency" is more a combination of personality traits and technical ability.

So in terms of buzzwords it would be something like generalist + self-starter + go-getter + hustler + finisher.

They won't say it, but everyone wants basically a solo founder, except one who (to your point) gets paid as an employee.

Which is why I am saying this is going to be the most important skill. If they don't pay you enough, you could just go be a solo founder for real.

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