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In fairness, Cloudflare's public perception as a disruptor already did Cloudflare's marketing for it in 2017 onward when y'all opened your London office; Eigen

In fairness, Cloudflare's public perception as a disruptor already did Cloudflare's marketing for it in 2017 onward when y'all opened your London office; Eigen doesn't seem to have that advantage. I can imagine the sales landscape being a bit better with those tailwinds.

jgrahamc 5y ago
The 2017 date you mention is not correct. I was Cloudflare's first employee in London in 2011. Cloudflare went all in on London shortly thereafter and at one point 50% of Cloudflare engineering was in London and 50% in San Francisco. We had sales very early on in London covering EMEA. At the current time the London office is "full stack": engineering, operations, support, sales, legal, HR, finance, ...
- eganist 5y ago
  Thanks; I googled it and the press was heaviest in April 2017 for a new London office, so this is a helpful correction for me. Though deeper inspection found 2013 (https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432 https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432), so I probably should've just googled harder. It also changes the equation substantially since the rest of my assumptions were based on 2017, though I wonder how much the environment also changed between 2011 and 2021, brexit aside?
  - jgrahamc 5y ago
    Cloudflare's London office remains large and important. We've built up Lisbon as an alternative location in part to give folks a choice between London and a continental European city and in part because we are hiring so fast it's good to hire in multiple places.
    - exdsq 5y ago
      Why not just open to remote hiring across Europe then, rather than be location-dependent?
      - 46Bit 5y ago
        They're doing that as well https://www.cloudflare.com/careers/jobs/ https://www.cloudflare.com/careers/jobs/
      - jgrahamc 5y ago
        Just opening for “work from anywhere” has right to work, legal and tax implications for the employee and company. So we’ve taken an approach where people can work where we have a legal entity. We also do believe that time in the office is valuable and prefer employees be “near” the office so they can work together with other in the office as needed. But this isn’t set in stone. Maybe totally remote would be great for us, we’ll experiment and see.

jgrahamc 5y ago

The 2017 date you mention is not correct. I was Cloudflare's first employee in London in 2011. Cloudflare went all in on London shortly thereafter and at one point 50% of Cloudflare engineering was in London and 50% in San Francisco. We had sales very early on in London covering EMEA. At the current time the London office is "full stack": engineering, operations, support, sales, legal, HR, finance, ...

eganist 5y ago
Thanks; I googled it and the press was heaviest in April 2017 for a new London office, so this is a helpful correction for me. Though deeper inspection found 2013 (https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432 https://www.facebook.com/Cloudflare/posts/10151742549255432), so I probably should've just googled harder. It also changes the equation substantially since the rest of my assumptions were based on 2017, though I wonder how much the environment also changed between 2011 and 2021, brexit aside?
- jgrahamc 5y ago
  Cloudflare's London office remains large and important. We've built up Lisbon as an alternative location in part to give folks a choice between London and a continental European city and in part because we are hiring so fast it's good to hire in multiple places.
  - exdsq 5y ago
    Why not just open to remote hiring across Europe then, rather than be location-dependent?
    - 46Bit 5y ago
      They're doing that as well https://www.cloudflare.com/careers/jobs/ https://www.cloudflare.com/careers/jobs/
    - jgrahamc 5y ago
      Just opening for “work from anywhere” has right to work, legal and tax implications for the employee and company. So we’ve taken an approach where people can work where we have a legal entity. We also do believe that time in the office is valuable and prefer employees be “near” the office so they can work together with other in the office as needed. But this isn’t set in stone. Maybe totally remote would be great for us, we’ll experiment and see.