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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 he

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 would have been fine. What matters here is trust. I'm glad she posted the video because it really sheds a light on awful corporate American Big Tech practices. Everyone who is considering working at Cloudflare or similar in the future will see how they treated her, and let that factor into their own decisions. And I see some sexist comments about her being "emotional." If I were in the same position, I'd be pretty fucking pissed off too. I think she has every right to be angry, and these faceless corporate drones feeding her an empty list of platitudes make it worse. Edit: my comment is in response to the Tiktok video, which isn't directly linked: https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/7322301313134415134 https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/73223013131344...

pc86 3y ago
What does it matter? If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision. If they say their investors are demanding better returns (e.g. higher stock price, higher profits, wahtever that means for the particular business) you have people in here saying it's greed. There is no answer Cloudflare could give her or anyone else that would make folks go "oh, ok, I get it. Thanks!" So why even bother giving one?
- piva00 3y ago
  > So why even bother giving one? Decency? Honesty?
  - IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
    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 ?
    - Arainach 3y ago
      Awful analogy. It's far more cruel to tell someone a layoff for non-performance reasons is their fault. It's particularly obnoxious with theoretically prestigious companies that "hire the smartest people" and then blatantly lie to us as if everyone inside and outside the company doesn't see right through them.
    - otherme123 3y ago
      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.
      - occamsrazorwit 3y ago
        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.
    - piva00 3y ago
      > 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 ? It's cruel, just like it's cruel to lie to someone they are being fired due to "performance" when the real reason is just a blanket layoff scheme over a whole department. What would be more cruel: a lie "you are not performing so we are letting you go" vs the truth "the company has decided to layoff some business units we don't believe will be profitable in the foreseeable future". I believe it's a pretty good case for applying honesty instead of being another lying corporation.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    What makes you think either of those mean anything to a corporation? Legal counsel and HR will explicitly avoid stating such things.
- aestetix 3y ago
  It matters because this is about trust, transparency, and honesty. If you were in her position, would you want to know if your termination was due to something you did badly, or because of a general company policy? I agree that being honest is not going to make everyone happy, but I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons.
  - pc86 3y ago
    > I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons Probably the liability around someone saying something not accurate, or something that could be construed as approaching, even indirectly, some protected class. They've already laid her off, she's not going to be singing their praises under any circumstances, anything they do at this point just increases their liability. In a perfect world I'd love for people laid off or fired to get detailed reasons why so they can adjust course if necessary or at least know that it was nothing they did and just budgetary, but there are too many people who will want to argue the point in court that the company not only has no incentive to do it, they're heavily incentivized not to.
    - aestetix 3y ago
      It sounds like the issue here is actually lawsuit culture. It's scary how laws that were designed to improve the lives of the working class actually wound up making life a lot worse.
      - yencabulator 3y ago
        I think you misspelled "gain votes" there. Laws that were designed to gain votes.
  - satisfice 3y ago
    this is not about any of those things this is about business and legalities about business
- infotainment 3y ago
  > If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision As they should!
- el_benhameen 3y ago
  In the case of the video, the implication is that she was told she’s being fired for performance, which seems unreasonable as she appears to have just finished training. I think the days of HR giving references with any information are long gone, but I still wouldn’t want to chance having something in my “file” about being let go for performance if that wasn’t the real reason. That and it’s just common decency to not blame someone for their firing when they don’t deserve the blame, regardless of how it’ll play on some message board somewhere.
  - andsoitis 3y ago
    > having something in my “file” about being I would check your assumption here. What is this "my file" you imagine exists. What is it? Who is the custodian? Is there just one copy, if not, how are they kept in sync, etc.?
    - superb_dev 3y ago
      Presumably HR would keep some record of you after you're fired?
    - jachee 3y ago
      It’s in quotes because it’s not a literal file, per se. But HR will keep records of termination reasons. So, if a prospective employer contacts Cloudflare and asks why she was terminated and Cloudflare says “performance” when that’s not actually the case, it’s detrimental to the potential employer’s perception of her.
      - wdb 3y ago
        Never heard that a company tell the reason got dismissed. they will confirm they worked there. saying performance or similar things can cause legal issues. At least in Europe. in some countries even code sentences are not allowed.
        robjan 3y ago
        Usually companies now ask the question "would this candidate be eligible for rehire in the future". If someone is fired for performance or other cause, the answer is more likely to be "no". This works around potential libel issues associated with giving specific reasons.
BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
I assume this is done to dodge WARN Act requirements. I can't think of any other reasons that make any kind of sense. I mean, honestly this doesn't make sense either, it's just all I've got.
- tptacek 3y ago
  Doesn't the WARN act just come down to paying severance that covers at least the notice period? Sometimes I feel like comments here are premised on WARN being a magic spell that prevents arbitrary termination.
  - BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
    > Doesn't the WARN act just come down to paying severance that covers at least the notice period? Yes, but is she being offered severance? > Sometimes I feel like comments here are premised on WARN being a magic spell that prevents arbitrary termination. It's not that. I just honestly cannot think of any reason for Cloudflare to do this. What good reasons are there to lie to an employee (and presumably therefore also to that employee's future potential employers) about their performance?
  - pbreit 3y ago
    Isn’t the WARN act just for larger layoffs (50 or 75+)?
    - tptacek 3y ago
      I had assumed this was part of a larger layoff, but I don't know.
Aurornis 3y ago
> 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. In the video she says she was hired August 25th, or 4.5 months ago. She also says she hasn't "closed anything officially", or in other words zero sales. I understand this is an emotionally charged topic, but the unfortunate reality is that being past your ramp-up period with zero sales is not a good place to be when a company is downsizing. I feel very sorry for her, but I also don't think it's entirely fair to conclude that performance wasn't a factor. It's also not really fair to conclude that Cloudflare was withholding information when the call starts at 0:26 and she cut's them off with "I'm going to stop you right there" at 0:47 (21 seconds later). They offer to schedule a followup call to go over the details, but she was in such a rush to talk over them and start lodging accusations before they had a chance to talk that I can't blame them for trying to de-escalate on the call.
- aestetix 3y ago
  If that's the case, then they should just say that.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    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 them to speak, cursing, making accusations before the other party has even spoken) it's better to slow down and reschedule a follow-up meeting after some time to cool off. I know this is a difficult topic for HN, but this video is a good example of a TikTok performance designed to maximize engagement and outrage. I'm surprised to see TikTok outrage videos working their way into HN comments and that people are taking the situation as presented without stopping to listen to the facts.
    - aestetix 3y ago
neilv 3y ago
That video. The firedee did a good job on the call, considering, IMHO. (Posting the video is a different question, and hopefully won't come back to bite her, legally or professionally.) On the corporate side of the call, it's exactly what you'd expect. From a stereotypical big stodgy corporation that totally doesn't care. Just having the executioners follow a script, and fall back to usual corporate politic language.
fleshdaddy 3y ago
I think it complicates matters with her being in sales. It’s a much more cutthroat area in companies the size of Cloudflare from what I’ve seen. If you don’t perform you get cut loose really fast. I have a family member in tech sales and it blows my mind how easy it is to get fired.
- pbreit 3y ago
  I’ve seen the opposite: since AEs typically have very low base salaries, companies can afford to keep them around longer.
  - fleshdaddy 3y ago
    That’s interesting. I wonder if it has to do with size. I work at a really large company and the commissions are apparently lower but the sales jobs appear more stable. The companies my family member has worked at all fall in the 500-1000 range. Not small but definitely in the sort of high growth phase.
maximilianroos 3y ago
"In past years your performance would have been sufficient to give this more time. But conditions have changed and we're letting X% go today. So we need to make very imperfect judgements for those who are new, unfortunately including you. This isn't a definitive verdict on your abilities — instead it's the best we can do with the limited data we have." ...would have gone a long way here. It makes sense it's a surprise — they've likely been operating in more relaxed conditions — but then things change, the bar rises dramatically. Not sure why they don't just say that. It should be an _easier_ message to deliver if they can say that it's a noisy measurement because she's new...
- aestetix 3y ago
  I completely agree. Had they opened with that, I would have no objections to the way they handled it at all.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  No firing manager in a large corporation is going to say a word more than what the HR training told them to say, to minimize liability.
  - cortesoft 3y ago
    I don't think you can say that... I have been a firing manager too many times, and I have definitely said things HR didn't tell me to say.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      Sure, but then you've risked your own job. That's not the typical experience in a large corporation.
guleblanc 3y ago
I knew someone once, in the middle eighties, who got hired, got laid off with 6 weeks severance pay a week into his tenure there, got hired a second time a week later and got fired a second time, again with severance pay. This last time it seemed to have stuck. In the first two cases the companies folded.
firecall 3y ago
People really need to watch the TikTok video before commenting! :-)
PeterCorless 3y ago
Under California Law (Cloudflare is HQ'd in San Francisco), she is employed "at-will." Unless covered by a union contract, she can be fired/laid off at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. According to such law, the company does not need to provide any information as to the reason she was terminated. However, one could argue that it would be a common and professional courtesy to give straight answers. The only unlawful reasons were if she was terminated for violation of her civil rights based on a few protected classes, was harassed, or if she was retaliated against as part of a few protected activities (whistleblower, jury duty, labor organizing, safety comlaint). "When an employee feels that they have been terminated, harassed or discriminated against based on their race, religion, gender, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, marital status, age (over 40), sexual orientation or denial of family medical leave, they should contact the Department of Fair Employment and Housing at 1-800-884-1684 or at www.dfeh.ca.gov" Text in full: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/TerminationOfEmployment.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/TerminationOfEmployment.pdf
aestetix 3y ago
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.
- itsdrewmiller 3y ago
  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-Insurance-Issue-Questions#a8 https://www.vec.virginia.gov/unemployed/faqs/Unemployment-In...
aws_ls 3y ago
For those who don't have access to tiktok here is a tweet which has the video embedded: https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778 https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778

pc86 3y ago

What does it matter? If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision. If they say their investors are demanding better returns (e.g. higher stock price, higher profits, wahtever that means for the particular business) you have people in here saying it's greed. There is no answer Cloudflare could give her or anyone else that would make folks go "oh, ok, I get it. Thanks!" So why even bother giving one?

piva00 3y ago
> So why even bother giving one? Decency? Honesty?
- IG_Semmelweiss 3y ago
  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 ?
  - Arainach 3y ago
    Awful analogy. It's far more cruel to tell someone a layoff for non-performance reasons is their fault. It's particularly obnoxious with theoretically prestigious companies that "hire the smartest people" and then blatantly lie to us as if everyone inside and outside the company doesn't see right through them.
  - otherme123 3y ago
    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.
    - occamsrazorwit 3y ago
      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.
  - piva00 3y ago
    > 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 ? It's cruel, just like it's cruel to lie to someone they are being fired due to "performance" when the real reason is just a blanket layoff scheme over a whole department. What would be more cruel: a lie "you are not performing so we are letting you go" vs the truth "the company has decided to layoff some business units we don't believe will be profitable in the foreseeable future". I believe it's a pretty good case for applying honesty instead of being another lying corporation.
- yencabulator 3y ago
  What makes you think either of those mean anything to a corporation? Legal counsel and HR will explicitly avoid stating such things.
aestetix 3y ago
It matters because this is about trust, transparency, and honesty. If you were in her position, would you want to know if your termination was due to something you did badly, or because of a general company policy? I agree that being honest is not going to make everyone happy, but I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons.
- pc86 3y ago
  > I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons Probably the liability around someone saying something not accurate, or something that could be construed as approaching, even indirectly, some protected class. They've already laid her off, she's not going to be singing their praises under any circumstances, anything they do at this point just increases their liability. In a perfect world I'd love for people laid off or fired to get detailed reasons why so they can adjust course if necessary or at least know that it was nothing they did and just budgetary, but there are too many people who will want to argue the point in court that the company not only has no incentive to do it, they're heavily incentivized not to.
  - aestetix 3y ago
    It sounds like the issue here is actually lawsuit culture. It's scary how laws that were designed to improve the lives of the working class actually wound up making life a lot worse.
    - yencabulator 3y ago
      I think you misspelled "gain votes" there. Laws that were designed to gain votes.
- satisfice 3y ago
  this is not about any of those things this is about business and legalities about business
infotainment 3y ago
> If they say they overhired, you have people in here asking why the CEO (or the board) doesn't get fired for that decision As they should!
el_benhameen 3y ago
In the case of the video, the implication is that she was told she’s being fired for performance, which seems unreasonable as she appears to have just finished training. I think the days of HR giving references with any information are long gone, but I still wouldn’t want to chance having something in my “file” about being let go for performance if that wasn’t the real reason. That and it’s just common decency to not blame someone for their firing when they don’t deserve the blame, regardless of how it’ll play on some message board somewhere.
- andsoitis 3y ago
  > having something in my “file” about being I would check your assumption here. What is this "my file" you imagine exists. What is it? Who is the custodian? Is there just one copy, if not, how are they kept in sync, etc.?
  - superb_dev 3y ago
    Presumably HR would keep some record of you after you're fired?
  - jachee 3y ago
    It’s in quotes because it’s not a literal file, per se. But HR will keep records of termination reasons. So, if a prospective employer contacts Cloudflare and asks why she was terminated and Cloudflare says “performance” when that’s not actually the case, it’s detrimental to the potential employer’s perception of her.
    - wdb 3y ago
      Never heard that a company tell the reason got dismissed. they will confirm they worked there. saying performance or similar things can cause legal issues. At least in Europe. in some countries even code sentences are not allowed.
      - robjan 3y ago
        Usually companies now ask the question "would this candidate be eligible for rehire in the future". If someone is fired for performance or other cause, the answer is more likely to be "no". This works around potential libel issues associated with giving specific reasons.

BugsJustFindMe 3y ago

I assume this is done to dodge WARN Act requirements. I can't think of any other reasons that make any kind of sense. I mean, honestly this doesn't make sense either, it's just all I've got.

tptacek 3y ago
Doesn't the WARN act just come down to paying severance that covers at least the notice period? Sometimes I feel like comments here are premised on WARN being a magic spell that prevents arbitrary termination.
- BugsJustFindMe 3y ago
  > Doesn't the WARN act just come down to paying severance that covers at least the notice period? Yes, but is she being offered severance? > Sometimes I feel like comments here are premised on WARN being a magic spell that prevents arbitrary termination. It's not that. I just honestly cannot think of any reason for Cloudflare to do this. What good reasons are there to lie to an employee (and presumably therefore also to that employee's future potential employers) about their performance?
- pbreit 3y ago
  Isn’t the WARN act just for larger layoffs (50 or 75+)?
  - tptacek 3y ago
    I had assumed this was part of a larger layoff, but I don't know.

Aurornis 3y ago

> 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. In the video she says she was hired August 25th, or 4.5 months ago. She also says she hasn't "closed anything officially", or in other words zero sales. I understand this is an emotionally charged topic, but the unfortunate reality is that being past your ramp-up period with zero sales is not a good place to be when a company is downsizing. I feel very sorry for her, but I also don't think it's entirely fair to conclude that performance wasn't a factor. It's also not really fair to conclude that Cloudflare was withholding information when the call starts at 0:26 and she cut's them off with "I'm going to stop you right there" at 0:47 (21 seconds later). They offer to schedule a followup call to go over the details, but she was in such a rush to talk over them and start lodging accusations before they had a chance to talk that I can't blame them for trying to de-escalate on the call.

aestetix 3y ago
If that's the case, then they should just say that.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  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 them to speak, cursing, making accusations before the other party has even spoken) it's better to slow down and reschedule a follow-up meeting after some time to cool off. I know this is a difficult topic for HN, but this video is a good example of a TikTok performance designed to maximize engagement and outrage. I'm surprised to see TikTok outrage videos working their way into HN comments and that people are taking the situation as presented without stopping to listen to the facts.
  - aestetix 3y ago

neilv 3y ago

That video. The firedee did a good job on the call, considering, IMHO. (Posting the video is a different question, and hopefully won't come back to bite her, legally or professionally.) On the corporate side of the call, it's exactly what you'd expect. From a stereotypical big stodgy corporation that totally doesn't care. Just having the executioners follow a script, and fall back to usual corporate politic language.

fleshdaddy 3y ago

I think it complicates matters with her being in sales. It’s a much more cutthroat area in companies the size of Cloudflare from what I’ve seen. If you don’t perform you get cut loose really fast. I have a family member in tech sales and it blows my mind how easy it is to get fired.

pbreit 3y ago
I’ve seen the opposite: since AEs typically have very low base salaries, companies can afford to keep them around longer.
- fleshdaddy 3y ago
  That’s interesting. I wonder if it has to do with size. I work at a really large company and the commissions are apparently lower but the sales jobs appear more stable. The companies my family member has worked at all fall in the 500-1000 range. Not small but definitely in the sort of high growth phase.

maximilianroos 3y ago

"In past years your performance would have been sufficient to give this more time. But conditions have changed and we're letting X% go today. So we need to make very imperfect judgements for those who are new, unfortunately including you. This isn't a definitive verdict on your abilities — instead it's the best we can do with the limited data we have." ...would have gone a long way here. It makes sense it's a surprise — they've likely been operating in more relaxed conditions — but then things change, the bar rises dramatically. Not sure why they don't just say that. It should be an _easier_ message to deliver if they can say that it's a noisy measurement because she's new...

aestetix 3y ago
I completely agree. Had they opened with that, I would have no objections to the way they handled it at all.
yencabulator 3y ago
No firing manager in a large corporation is going to say a word more than what the HR training told them to say, to minimize liability.
- cortesoft 3y ago
  I don't think you can say that... I have been a firing manager too many times, and I have definitely said things HR didn't tell me to say.
  - yencabulator 3y ago
    Sure, but then you've risked your own job. That's not the typical experience in a large corporation.

guleblanc 3y ago

I knew someone once, in the middle eighties, who got hired, got laid off with 6 weeks severance pay a week into his tenure there, got hired a second time a week later and got fired a second time, again with severance pay. This last time it seemed to have stuck. In the first two cases the companies folded.

firecall 3y ago

People really need to watch the TikTok video before commenting! :-)

PeterCorless 3y ago

Under California Law (Cloudflare is HQ'd in San Francisco), she is employed "at-will." Unless covered by a union contract, she can be fired/laid off at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all. According to such law, the company does not need to provide any information as to the reason she was terminated. However, one could argue that it would be a common and professional courtesy to give straight answers. The only unlawful reasons were if she was terminated for violation of her civil rights based on a few protected classes, was harassed, or if she was retaliated against as part of a few protected activities (whistleblower, jury duty, labor organizing, safety comlaint). "When an employee feels that they have been terminated, harassed or discriminated against based on their race, religion, gender, color, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, marital status, age (over 40), sexual orientation or denial of family medical leave, they should contact the Department of Fair Employment and Housing at 1-800-884-1684 or at www.dfeh.ca.gov" Text in full: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/TerminationOfEmployment.pdf https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/TerminationOfEmployment.pdf

aestetix 3y ago

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.

itsdrewmiller 3y ago
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-Insurance-Issue-Questions#a8 https://www.vec.virginia.gov/unemployed/faqs/Unemployment-In...

aws_ls 3y ago

For those who don't have access to tiktok here is a tweet which has the video embedded: https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778 https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778