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Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they

by judge2020 3y ago

Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. As far as I'm aware, evidence of good performance could be used to strengthen their case to collect unemployment (if Cloudflare tries to fight Brittany's unemployment claim); it could also be used as evidence in a discrimination lawsuit. But given that Brittany said that many other team members also got invited to 15 minute calls with HR, there's good evidence that CF didn't discriminate, but it's also evidence that this could've been a mass, quiet layoff. Although it sounds like the simple fact that her clients backed out at the last minute could be enough evidence for poor performance, even if the sales were entirely managed properly before that point.

CaliforniaKarl 3y ago
> … legally they can't give them any more specifics. Could you please provide a source for that? That can be an important distinction for an employee. For example, when answering the question "Why did you leave your previous job?" It's important for the now ex-employee to have accurat information.
- judge2020 3y ago
  I elaborated on that - mainly just that anything HR says can be used as evidence in wrongful termination lawsuits; even if nothing happened, it could be enough to trigger further discovery, which ultimately means spending tons of money for the company in legal fees. Being a top performer then getting fired for poor performance is suspicious in any case.
- alephxyz 3y ago
  they're wrong. Employees in California have the right to request their HR files including performance reviews and anything used to determine their termination. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_righttoinspectpersonnelfiles.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_righttoinspectpersonnelfiles...
  - judge2020 3y ago
    This is a good thing to have, but Brittany seems to be Atlanta-based - or at least used to be in 2020. Cloudflare does have an ATL-based sales opening right now: https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudflare/jobs/4094720?gh_jid=4094720 https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudflare/jobs/4094720?gh_jid=...
Teever 3y ago
> but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. Why is that?
- NicoJuicy 3y ago
  Because it's online and the entire call can be recorded?
  - Teever 3y ago
    I don't get it, are you saying that they can only give this information in a face to face setting? How can they be certain that the person they're firing won't record that conversation?
    - NicoJuicy 3y ago
      They'll talk to legal for the follow up meeting and present the specific case to them. To see what's allowed/possible, even if it gets recorded.
kqr 3y ago
> It sounds like her clients backing out last minute is evidence of poor performance, even if the sales were entirely managed properly before that. Certainly not without more details. Good sales is far more complicated than closing deals. It's like in poker: you'd much rather fold a good hand (unclose a good deal) than shove all in and then lose to an even better hand (close the deal and then discover the customer was a bad fit, which has negative second- and third-order consequences.)
- Throwawayh89 3y ago
  The big caveat here is “good sales for the company” Sales reps so often have incentives that are terribly aligned with the company’s long term success.
Aurornis 3y ago
> Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. HR only talked for 21 seconds before she said "I'm going to stop you right there" and started talking over them. She goes on to admit she closed zero sales, even past her ramp-up period. It's unfortunate, but if they sorted people by sales performance she's at the bottom of the list (by definition) I think a lot of people in this comment section are responding to the emotional nature of the TikTok and ignoring the fact that she had zero sales during a downsizing.
- laserlight 3y ago
  > It's unfortunate, but if they sorted people by sales performance she's at the bottom of the list (by definition) If they were sorting people by sales performance, her manager shouldn't have given her a thumbs up in each one-on-one.
  - sentientslug 3y ago
    Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep? I'm generally on her side here but this is a weak argument.
    - laserlight 3y ago
      > Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep? Yes, because every company has their own management strategy. Therefore, what is expected of sales reps, and employees in general, is different. If her manager can't communicate the company's management strategy and expectations, how could she align her work?
      - op00to 3y ago
        If your colleages are closing deals, and you're not, the company needs to find reps that do close deals. I don't work for free, and I expect the sales people to go get money to pay me.
NicoJuicy 3y ago
I don't think it's a mass layoff. Only new hires are probably affected. Cloudflare did a layoff in sales that impacted ~ 100 underperforming people in May last year. It was discussed on investor day by their CEO ( https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-earnings-review/ https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-ea... -> section profitability ). They actually hired 100 other people to get average sales people around the same time, instead of underperformers. The expectation was that those new hires ( ~ May 2023 ) would see results that year => december 2023. Probably the new sales hires were also being graded and those layed off were underperforming versus their peers. The only thing I'm wondering, is that the performance review was fair for newer hires, but that's speculation. There are a lot of other ways to know if someone is underperforming ( eg. Feedback from 1 of the 3 sales she didn't close, too little general IT knowledge since all of Cloudflare products are very technical, ...) And if you're in sales, there's only 1 metric that counts...She mentioned to have 0 sales...
wolverine876 3y ago
> legally they can't give them any more specifics Either a misconception or just misspeaking, but legally they can tell the employee everything. The employer doesn't want to tell the employee, simply to CYA.
YeahThisIsMe 3y ago
Why does the company have a say in whether or not a former employee can collect unemployment?
- judge2020 3y ago
  Typically [in the US] you can't collect unemployment if you're terminated with cause - something like not showing up to work or not doing your job. Given they terminated for poor performance, this is typically not a scenario where the employee could collect unemployment. In Georgia, for example, she should be given DOL-800 which indicates the reason and explains what her unemployment options look like. If she has evidence this is more of a layoff or that her performance was not bad, she could provide that evidence to her state's Department of Labor to prove that Cloudflare is lying about the reason for termination and thus she deserves to receive it. However, she likely received some amount of severance, which would mean she would get less or no unemployment income, depending on how much it is in relation to what she would've received from filing for unemployment.
  - cjbprime 3y ago
    (Severance often comes attached to non-disparagement clauses.)
rcarmo 3y ago
She does point out it was holiday season. Sales slow down.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Wouldn't pre-holiday season be exactly the time when company like cloudflare would have more sales?
  - rcarmo 3y ago
    If I recall the timeline correctly, she was in training during pre-holiday season. But in case we're talking about different things, just FYI, in telco and networking _nothing_ happens after Thanksgiving--it's essentially "quiet" time as customers go into holiday breaks and network freezes. If you meant Cloudflare customers would make heavy use of their services during holiday season, yes -- but nobody deploys that kind of solution _during_ sales, all online retail pre-plans for that months in advance (cloud resources, inventory, security, etc.), so they wouldn't _buy_ those services then.

CaliforniaKarl 3y ago

> … legally they can't give them any more specifics. Could you please provide a source for that? That can be an important distinction for an employee. For example, when answering the question "Why did you leave your previous job?" It's important for the now ex-employee to have accurat information.

judge2020 3y ago
I elaborated on that - mainly just that anything HR says can be used as evidence in wrongful termination lawsuits; even if nothing happened, it could be enough to trigger further discovery, which ultimately means spending tons of money for the company in legal fees. Being a top performer then getting fired for poor performance is suspicious in any case.
alephxyz 3y ago
they're wrong. Employees in California have the right to request their HR files including performance reviews and anything used to determine their termination. https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_righttoinspectpersonnelfiles.htm https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/faq_righttoinspectpersonnelfiles...
- judge2020 3y ago
  This is a good thing to have, but Brittany seems to be Atlanta-based - or at least used to be in 2020. Cloudflare does have an ATL-based sales opening right now: https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudflare/jobs/4094720?gh_jid=4094720 https://boards.greenhouse.io/cloudflare/jobs/4094720?gh_jid=...

Teever 3y ago

> but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. Why is that?

NicoJuicy 3y ago
Because it's online and the entire call can be recorded?
- Teever 3y ago
  I don't get it, are you saying that they can only give this information in a face to face setting? How can they be certain that the person they're firing won't record that conversation?
  - NicoJuicy 3y ago
    They'll talk to legal for the follow up meeting and present the specific case to them. To see what's allowed/possible, even if it gets recorded.

kqr 3y ago

> It sounds like her clients backing out last minute is evidence of poor performance, even if the sales were entirely managed properly before that. Certainly not without more details. Good sales is far more complicated than closing deals. It's like in poker: you'd much rather fold a good hand (unclose a good deal) than shove all in and then lose to an even better hand (close the deal and then discover the customer was a bad fit, which has negative second- and third-order consequences.)

Throwawayh89 3y ago
The big caveat here is “good sales for the company” Sales reps so often have incentives that are terribly aligned with the company’s long term success.

Aurornis 3y ago

> Presumably these Cloudflare HR employees do have the data for why this person was laid off, and they might even have it in front of them, but yeah legally they can't give them any more specifics. HR only talked for 21 seconds before she said "I'm going to stop you right there" and started talking over them. She goes on to admit she closed zero sales, even past her ramp-up period. It's unfortunate, but if they sorted people by sales performance she's at the bottom of the list (by definition) I think a lot of people in this comment section are responding to the emotional nature of the TikTok and ignoring the fact that she had zero sales during a downsizing.

laserlight 3y ago
> It's unfortunate, but if they sorted people by sales performance she's at the bottom of the list (by definition) If they were sorting people by sales performance, her manager shouldn't have given her a thumbs up in each one-on-one.
- sentientslug 3y ago
  Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep? I'm generally on her side here but this is a weak argument.
  - laserlight 3y ago
    > Do you need your manager to tell you that closing zero sales in half a year is probably not great performance for a sales rep? Yes, because every company has their own management strategy. Therefore, what is expected of sales reps, and employees in general, is different. If her manager can't communicate the company's management strategy and expectations, how could she align her work?
    - op00to 3y ago
      If your colleages are closing deals, and you're not, the company needs to find reps that do close deals. I don't work for free, and I expect the sales people to go get money to pay me.

NicoJuicy 3y ago

I don't think it's a mass layoff. Only new hires are probably affected. Cloudflare did a layoff in sales that impacted ~ 100 underperforming people in May last year. It was discussed on investor day by their CEO ( https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-earnings-review/ https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-ea... -> section profitability ). They actually hired 100 other people to get average sales people around the same time, instead of underperformers. The expectation was that those new hires ( ~ May 2023 ) would see results that year => december 2023. Probably the new sales hires were also being graded and those layed off were underperforming versus their peers. The only thing I'm wondering, is that the performance review was fair for newer hires, but that's speculation. There are a lot of other ways to know if someone is underperforming ( eg. Feedback from 1 of the 3 sales she didn't close, too little general IT knowledge since all of Cloudflare products are very technical, ...) And if you're in sales, there's only 1 metric that counts...She mentioned to have 0 sales...

wolverine876 3y ago

> legally they can't give them any more specifics Either a misconception or just misspeaking, but legally they can tell the employee everything. The employer doesn't want to tell the employee, simply to CYA.

YeahThisIsMe 3y ago

Why does the company have a say in whether or not a former employee can collect unemployment?

judge2020 3y ago
Typically [in the US] you can't collect unemployment if you're terminated with cause - something like not showing up to work or not doing your job. Given they terminated for poor performance, this is typically not a scenario where the employee could collect unemployment. In Georgia, for example, she should be given DOL-800 which indicates the reason and explains what her unemployment options look like. If she has evidence this is more of a layoff or that her performance was not bad, she could provide that evidence to her state's Department of Labor to prove that Cloudflare is lying about the reason for termination and thus she deserves to receive it. However, she likely received some amount of severance, which would mean she would get less or no unemployment income, depending on how much it is in relation to what she would've received from filing for unemployment.
- cjbprime 3y ago
  (Severance often comes attached to non-disparagement clauses.)

rcarmo 3y ago

She does point out it was holiday season. Sales slow down.

Ekaros 3y ago
Wouldn't pre-holiday season be exactly the time when company like cloudflare would have more sales?
- rcarmo 3y ago
  If I recall the timeline correctly, she was in training during pre-holiday season. But in case we're talking about different things, just FYI, in telco and networking _nothing_ happens after Thanksgiving--it's essentially "quiet" time as customers go into holiday breaks and network freezes. If you meant Cloudflare customers would make heavy use of their services during holiday season, yes -- but nobody deploys that kind of solution _during_ sales, all online retail pre-plans for that months in advance (cloud resources, inventory, security, etc.), so they wouldn't _buy_ those services then.