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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 m

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.
  - searealist 3y ago
    Do you think it's impossible to fire a sales person for performance reasons in under 6 months then?
    - arrowsmith 3y ago
      Unless you're egregiously bad at your job, getting fired for performance should never be a surprise. She says she'd had nothing but positive performance reviews until the day she was fired, so unless you think she's lying I see two possibilities: 1. Her performance was subpar but Cloudflare told her to keep doing what she was doing. 2. Her performance was fine but the Cloudflare are full of shit. Either way it's not a good look for Cloudflare.
    - bsder 3y ago
      Pretty much. Not for anything short of total malfeasance or horrible misbehavior. Layoffs happen. Welcome to tech. Just say it's a layoff, and everybody will get on with life. However, trying to fire someone for performance short of 12 months smells like somebody was told to try to claw back or limit signing bonuses, relocation allowances, stock grants, and promissory estoppel claims. It's a VERY, VERY bad look for Cloudflare who, up to this point, I had decent vibes about from dealing with various employees.
- laserlight 3y ago
  > The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that. She also says that her manager was giving her positive reviews in every one-on-one.

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.
- searealist 3y ago
  Do you think it's impossible to fire a sales person for performance reasons in under 6 months then?
  - arrowsmith 3y ago
    Unless you're egregiously bad at your job, getting fired for performance should never be a surprise. She says she'd had nothing but positive performance reviews until the day she was fired, so unless you think she's lying I see two possibilities: 1. Her performance was subpar but Cloudflare told her to keep doing what she was doing. 2. Her performance was fine but the Cloudflare are full of shit. Either way it's not a good look for Cloudflare.
  - bsder 3y ago
    Pretty much. Not for anything short of total malfeasance or horrible misbehavior. Layoffs happen. Welcome to tech. Just say it's a layoff, and everybody will get on with life. However, trying to fire someone for performance short of 12 months smells like somebody was told to try to claw back or limit signing bonuses, relocation allowances, stock grants, and promissory estoppel claims. It's a VERY, VERY bad look for Cloudflare who, up to this point, I had decent vibes about from dealing with various employees.
laserlight 3y ago
> The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that. She also says that her manager was giving her positive reviews in every one-on-one.