4 ms·

This is why we need unions. Layoffs are unfortunately, sometimes, necessary. But when they happen, it's important that the right people are chosen, for the rig

This is why we need unions. Layoffs are unfortunately, sometimes, necessary. But when they happen, it's important that the right people are chosen, for the right reasons (whether that's performance based, voluntary, protecting certain groups, ensuring fairness, etc). That requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria, and who are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted.

Aurornis 3y ago
The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months). They would be among the first to go under union rules, too. Unions are often worse at prioritizing things like tenure over performance, if anything. But even under those rules she was one of the most junior people. There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Outcome, perhaps. But a union would have likely a) given a better timeline than a 15 min call with notice sent informally around colleagues, and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. They had no signed contracts, but with onboarding, the ramp up, and holidays, it sounds like this was explicitly not an issue for their manager. You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better. People don't like things that don't make sense. In my experience, between individual advice and collective bargaining, unions do make things make more sense in this way.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that. They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative newness might have put them at an even higher disadvantage under a union. > You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better. I don't believe this at all. If this had been a TikTok where HR said "We're letting you go because you started recently" everyone would be outraged about them firing people for arbitrary, non-performance reasons.
    - bsder 3y ago
      > The employee admits having closed zero sales. You clearly have no experience in sales--especially enterprise sales. 1) No responsible sales organization is going to let a brand new hire alone with a client under 6 months. 2) You aren't selling shit to enterprise from Mid-November until after the first week of January. 3) She barely had a single quarter to get some company to add her to a budget and close a sale. No chance.
      - mroche 3y ago
        Took the words right out of my mouth. Being given a 3-month ramp up starting in August _then_ being tasked with accounts to manage in the last month and a half of a calendar year is one of the worst places to be in. The only deals getting closed are those with accounts set for a renewal that won't be questioned. That time period can not be reasonably used for performance metrics of a new hire. It's utterly irresponsible. /me -> former Red Hat Solution Architect that was given 6 months to go from hired to field ready in assisting two account managers. My RH and technical knowledge was fine, but sales is a completely different beast. I was lucky with my timeline as it gave me a lot of time to breathe, shadow my mentor, and get the two required certs. If it was three instead I would have been in over my head by the end of those 90 days. Every day was effectively being sprayed by a fire hose of information. And she honestly may have had absolutely horrible luck. I've worked with great accounts, terrible accounts, and then some *poof* accounts. I had more deals than I would have liked get suspended right as ink was about to meet paper due to internal events at the customer.
- lmm 3y ago
  They would've ensured she had support and representation, someone in that call who was on her side. Even if that doesn't change the numerical outcome, it can make a big emotional difference.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  Stop sticking up for this garbage please. Have some empathy? • Third quarter revenue totaled $335.6 million, representing an increase of 32% year-over-year Do we need to feel sorry for cloudflare or something? She says on the call, or her feedback has been positive, so why should she expect a negative outcome like this? As a junior, she should be given the appropriate and valid feedback so she can learn and improve for her future. Not this dystopian, cold bullshit. Do you have any idea what this kind of thing does to a junior employees confidence? Wow. We should never stand for it.
  - rockemsockem 3y ago
    You're kinda talking about fixing shitty human behavior in general and that is really just incredibly hard. Adding a union wouldn't fix that.
    - acdha 3y ago
      Adding a union often does because it changes the power dynamics. In this conversation, Cloudflare holds all of the cards and most people will accept their terms because they don’t want to lose healthcare or severance pay, and they probably say things confident that they will not be challenged to back those claims up. A union won’t make the managers setting policies better human beings but it puts them in a context where there’s a party who has more power to push back, and can afford things like lawyers. It also means that they have things like union contracts saying that, for example, you can’t fire someone for performance without proof and warning such as a negative review and time to improve. Simply knowing they’ll have to follow the process is often enough to rein in the worst abuses.
  - tempuser 3y ago
    Revenue is not the same as profits if you are going to bring up that point
  - romanovcode 3y ago
    I mean, not sticking to anything, but if I would hire a sales-person and in 5 months (just before the perm-contract @ 6 months) and they made 0 sales - I would fire that person as well. It's called probation-period for a reason.
- piloto_ciego 3y ago
  The anti-union pro “I can bargain for myself” nonsense sure came fast.
- krainboltgreene 3y ago
  > There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently. A union would have had significantly more notice because they're in tune with the company and prioritize the workers. Extra notice means greater better planning.
- indrora 3y ago
  > The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months). You didn't listen to what they said: * One month at speed * Three months of ramp Generally, ramp time in roles like this persons would involve tailing and listening to active areas, training for the specifics of the product that you're selling, etc. We then hit December, wherein * Nobody makes big spend choices in December. It's a dead month for sales unless you're in Retail selling toys and gadgets. Sales closing in December are fucking golden geese. * They had one possible account land pull out at the last moment. Why? Unsure. * Assuming this person is telling the truth, their management indicated they were a high performer overall. Just like very few companies hire in December, very few companies make big spending choices at the end of the calendar year. Unions can do things like * Argue that the state of the dismissal is contrived ("you didn't sell anything in the week nobody buys things") * Create mandatory minimum times of employment (e.g. "you can't lay off someone who has only recently joined" or "you can't lay off someone who moved > 100mi for the job until they have had at least one primary performance review") Unions fight the nebulous "performance metrics" that HR is citing here.
  - pinkgolem 3y ago
    > It's a dead month for sales. That depends, there are often left over budgets and people scrambling to spend them
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      But I'm not buying anything _new_ even if I have leftover budget, I can just buy more of the stuff I already have and use
      - pinkgolem 3y ago
        Depends on the budget, we got several "innovation trial period" contracts for all of 2024 in December
- Dah00n 3y ago
  The text in the video says her other co-workers have already got fired, so this doesn't seem to have anything to do with her at all.
- adjodhalen64 3y ago
  [dead]
beanjuiceII 3y ago
[flagged]
- outside1234 3y ago
  I think what the OP probably really wants is something like Germany’s workers council which is given a chance to weigh in on layoff decisions like this to make sure they make sense
  - danpalmer 3y ago
    Yep that would also be a positive step. I think unions, when implemented well, might be a bit better, but it seems like Germany gets many of the same benefits I'm thinking of from their workers council mechanism.
monero-xmr 3y ago
I have several friends who work in construction and trades and their opinion of unions is very negative. This is a blue state and blue city. A lot of HN loves unions but the blue collar opinion of them is negative, from what I’ve seen.
- fooster 3y ago
  I worked a unionized job in my first position with CUPE and we ended up going on strike after an open vote (2 against, my coworker and I, everyone else for) which is illegal. After 3 weeks out we went back to work for 1% more in the first year and 1% less in the second. Our union attempted to ruin the reputation of folks in my union who I personally knew crossed the picked line to teach so as not to violate the terms of their contract teaching positions (along with their union position). The union was stupid, corrupt and ultimately everyone who went on strike lost money. Unions are not the answer.
- danpalmer 3y ago
  I think there's a huge difference between the ideals of what a union can offer, and the practice of entrenched unions in some specific industries, particularly in the US. As a well paid software engineer who wants to work with high performing colleagues, nothing my union has said has suggested they aren't supportive of this. They are about holding companies to account, not entrenching poor performers or normalising salaries around some middle ground. Bear in mind also that there has been a near century long war of propaganda against the idea of unions. There's a lot of negative connotation built up in media, discourse, expectations, etc.
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    The specific criticism I heard my friend rant about was a colleague who did very little because they felt slighted, and they could never be fired for anything really, so because he wanted to move on with his life he just did all that other guys’ work.
    - danpalmer 3y ago
ipaddr 3y ago
The right reasons in a union are how long have you been part of the union. I don't support protecting certain groups. I don't agree with forcing fairness which is a personal judgement anyways. I don't even agree layoffs are necessary here. They are easy. A union doesn't stop layoffs it just costs everyone more. Your best representative in a layoff is a lawyer and a place with better employment notice pay.
- redserk 3y ago
  Who said anything about unions stopping layoffs? GP said they can negotiate who gets laid off and what happens to those who do. Unions can be an entirely appropriate and reasonable party.
drewcoo 3y ago
> why we need unions Ok. > it's important that the right people are chosen [for layoffs], for the right reasons Um . . . unions? > requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria [for which people are being fired!] Unions? > are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted Unions only do that? I would hope that unions are more than just ways to protect management when they make firing choices. Unions are not supposed to be a management condom for when management f's the employees. Do people pay dues just so they "do it with a rubber?"
- Ralfp 3y ago
  The difference is that with union you cant pretend you are just firing few randos because they were terrible at their job and you have to come to the union and say „we need to fire 40 people” and union can say „CloudFlare is doing layoffs” and both investors and people on the job market know its propably not a good time for tge CF, despite the CEO boasting about bazzilions made and best year ever.

Aurornis 3y ago

The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months). They would be among the first to go under union rules, too. Unions are often worse at prioritizing things like tenure over performance, if anything. But even under those rules she was one of the most junior people. There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently.

danpalmer 3y ago
Outcome, perhaps. But a union would have likely a) given a better timeline than a 15 min call with notice sent informally around colleagues, and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. They had no signed contracts, but with onboarding, the ramp up, and holidays, it sounds like this was explicitly not an issue for their manager. You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better. People don't like things that don't make sense. In my experience, between individual advice and collective bargaining, unions do make things make more sense in this way.
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > and b) a concrete mechanism for prioritising roles for elimination that should feel fair in some way, rather than an opaque "bad performance" reason that does not correlate with the employee's experience. The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that. They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative newness might have put them at an even higher disadvantage under a union. > You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better. I don't believe this at all. If this had been a TikTok where HR said "We're letting you go because you started recently" everyone would be outraged about them firing people for arbitrary, non-performance reasons.
  - bsder 3y ago
    > The employee admits having closed zero sales. You clearly have no experience in sales--especially enterprise sales. 1) No responsible sales organization is going to let a brand new hire alone with a client under 6 months. 2) You aren't selling shit to enterprise from Mid-November until after the first week of January. 3) She barely had a single quarter to get some company to add her to a budget and close a sale. No chance.
    - mroche 3y ago
      Took the words right out of my mouth. Being given a 3-month ramp up starting in August _then_ being tasked with accounts to manage in the last month and a half of a calendar year is one of the worst places to be in. The only deals getting closed are those with accounts set for a renewal that won't be questioned. That time period can not be reasonably used for performance metrics of a new hire. It's utterly irresponsible. /me -> former Red Hat Solution Architect that was given 6 months to go from hired to field ready in assisting two account managers. My RH and technical knowledge was fine, but sales is a completely different beast. I was lucky with my timeline as it gave me a lot of time to breathe, shadow my mentor, and get the two required certs. If it was three instead I would have been in over my head by the end of those 90 days. Every day was effectively being sprayed by a fire hose of information. And she honestly may have had absolutely horrible luck. I've worked with great accounts, terrible accounts, and then some *poof* accounts. I had more deals than I would have liked get suspended right as ink was about to meet paper due to internal events at the customer.
lmm 3y ago
They would've ensured she had support and representation, someone in that call who was on her side. Even if that doesn't change the numerical outcome, it can make a big emotional difference.
ChatGTP 3y ago
Stop sticking up for this garbage please. Have some empathy? • Third quarter revenue totaled $335.6 million, representing an increase of 32% year-over-year Do we need to feel sorry for cloudflare or something? She says on the call, or her feedback has been positive, so why should she expect a negative outcome like this? As a junior, she should be given the appropriate and valid feedback so she can learn and improve for her future. Not this dystopian, cold bullshit. Do you have any idea what this kind of thing does to a junior employees confidence? Wow. We should never stand for it.
- rockemsockem 3y ago
  You're kinda talking about fixing shitty human behavior in general and that is really just incredibly hard. Adding a union wouldn't fix that.
  - acdha 3y ago
    Adding a union often does because it changes the power dynamics. In this conversation, Cloudflare holds all of the cards and most people will accept their terms because they don’t want to lose healthcare or severance pay, and they probably say things confident that they will not be challenged to back those claims up. A union won’t make the managers setting policies better human beings but it puts them in a context where there’s a party who has more power to push back, and can afford things like lawyers. It also means that they have things like union contracts saying that, for example, you can’t fire someone for performance without proof and warning such as a negative review and time to improve. Simply knowing they’ll have to follow the process is often enough to rein in the worst abuses.
- tempuser 3y ago
  Revenue is not the same as profits if you are going to bring up that point
- romanovcode 3y ago
  I mean, not sticking to anything, but if I would hire a sales-person and in 5 months (just before the perm-contract @ 6 months) and they made 0 sales - I would fire that person as well. It's called probation-period for a reason.
piloto_ciego 3y ago
The anti-union pro “I can bargain for myself” nonsense sure came fast.
krainboltgreene 3y ago
> There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently. A union would have had significantly more notice because they're in tune with the company and prioritize the workers. Extra notice means greater better planning.
indrora 3y ago
> The person in this TikTok admits to having closed zero sales. They're also one of the most junior people on the team (4.5 months). You didn't listen to what they said: * One month at speed * Three months of ramp Generally, ramp time in roles like this persons would involve tailing and listening to active areas, training for the specifics of the product that you're selling, etc. We then hit December, wherein * Nobody makes big spend choices in December. It's a dead month for sales unless you're in Retail selling toys and gadgets. Sales closing in December are fucking golden geese. * They had one possible account land pull out at the last moment. Why? Unsure. * Assuming this person is telling the truth, their management indicated they were a high performer overall. Just like very few companies hire in December, very few companies make big spending choices at the end of the calendar year. Unions can do things like * Argue that the state of the dismissal is contrived ("you didn't sell anything in the week nobody buys things") * Create mandatory minimum times of employment (e.g. "you can't lay off someone who has only recently joined" or "you can't lay off someone who moved > 100mi for the job until they have had at least one primary performance review") Unions fight the nebulous "performance metrics" that HR is citing here.
- pinkgolem 3y ago
  > It's a dead month for sales. That depends, there are often left over budgets and people scrambling to spend them
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    But I'm not buying anything _new_ even if I have leftover budget, I can just buy more of the stuff I already have and use
    - pinkgolem 3y ago
      Depends on the budget, we got several "innovation trial period" contracts for all of 2024 in December
Dah00n 3y ago
The text in the video says her other co-workers have already got fired, so this doesn't seem to have anything to do with her at all.
adjodhalen64 3y ago
[dead]

beanjuiceII 3y ago

[flagged]

outside1234 3y ago
I think what the OP probably really wants is something like Germany’s workers council which is given a chance to weigh in on layoff decisions like this to make sure they make sense
- danpalmer 3y ago
  Yep that would also be a positive step. I think unions, when implemented well, might be a bit better, but it seems like Germany gets many of the same benefits I'm thinking of from their workers council mechanism.

monero-xmr 3y ago

I have several friends who work in construction and trades and their opinion of unions is very negative. This is a blue state and blue city. A lot of HN loves unions but the blue collar opinion of them is negative, from what I’ve seen.

fooster 3y ago
I worked a unionized job in my first position with CUPE and we ended up going on strike after an open vote (2 against, my coworker and I, everyone else for) which is illegal. After 3 weeks out we went back to work for 1% more in the first year and 1% less in the second. Our union attempted to ruin the reputation of folks in my union who I personally knew crossed the picked line to teach so as not to violate the terms of their contract teaching positions (along with their union position). The union was stupid, corrupt and ultimately everyone who went on strike lost money. Unions are not the answer.
danpalmer 3y ago
I think there's a huge difference between the ideals of what a union can offer, and the practice of entrenched unions in some specific industries, particularly in the US. As a well paid software engineer who wants to work with high performing colleagues, nothing my union has said has suggested they aren't supportive of this. They are about holding companies to account, not entrenching poor performers or normalising salaries around some middle ground. Bear in mind also that there has been a near century long war of propaganda against the idea of unions. There's a lot of negative connotation built up in media, discourse, expectations, etc.
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  The specific criticism I heard my friend rant about was a colleague who did very little because they felt slighted, and they could never be fired for anything really, so because he wanted to move on with his life he just did all that other guys’ work.
  - danpalmer 3y ago

ipaddr 3y ago

The right reasons in a union are how long have you been part of the union. I don't support protecting certain groups. I don't agree with forcing fairness which is a personal judgement anyways. I don't even agree layoffs are necessary here. They are easy. A union doesn't stop layoffs it just costs everyone more. Your best representative in a layoff is a lawyer and a place with better employment notice pay.

redserk 3y ago
Who said anything about unions stopping layoffs? GP said they can negotiate who gets laid off and what happens to those who do. Unions can be an entirely appropriate and reasonable party.

drewcoo 3y ago

> why we need unions Ok. > it's important that the right people are chosen [for layoffs], for the right reasons Um . . . unions? > requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria [for which people are being fired!] Unions? > are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted Unions only do that? I would hope that unions are more than just ways to protect management when they make firing choices. Unions are not supposed to be a management condom for when management f's the employees. Do people pay dues just so they "do it with a rubber?"

Ralfp 3y ago
The difference is that with union you cant pretend you are just firing few randos because they were terrible at their job and you have to come to the union and say „we need to fire 40 people” and union can say „CloudFlare is doing layoffs” and both investors and people on the job market know its propably not a good time for tge CF, despite the CEO boasting about bazzilions made and best year ever.