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Cloudflare CEO responds to viral termination video
- epolanski 3y agoWhat was the viral termination video?
- superhumanuser 3y agoScroll to the top up the Tweet or click here: https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778 https://twitter.com/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778
- Zetobal 3y agoOof... in all regards absolutely abysmal. That not only hurts that's systemic failure and I'll take the response with a grain of salt now. If something like this happens in your organisation you just plain suck at management. You can read it between the lines that he really believes stomping his foot one time will fix it as he thought before that such a thing wasn't possible in his org. It's management blindness the whole org talks about it but the ceo never hears of it because the yes man are busy laughing at his bad jokes.
- SpicyLemonZest 3y agoI’m not sure why you assume he should have known or a good manager would have known. If you made a list from scratch of the most important things for the Cloudflare CEO to keep track of, would the HR script in layoff calls even make the top 100? I‘ve also seen bigger things than this change with one stomp of a CEO’s foot.
- Zetobal 3y agoYour argument is the point I am making. He didn't know he thought it was impossible.
- camgunz 3y agoYeah the tweet starts out with: > We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go to market org. That’s a normal quarter. When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Which sounds like they have an implicit probationary "we'll fire you in <= 3 mos. if you don't make a sale" that--according to the video--isn't communicated by managers or written in hiring contracts.
- singhrac 3y agoOr any number of other ways to keep track of employee performance that don't rely on an inherently random outcome in an enterprise sales cycle? For example, responsiveness to inbound emails, outbound volume, demonstrated (lack of) knowledge of the product or market? I don't think we should just give Cloudflare the benefit of the doubt here but man, we can do better than generic bad assumptions.
- antiraza 3y agoI'm having a hard time seeing your take on this. As far as what the two off-screen folks said in this recorded video, this seemed pretty textbook. It's as humane as it can be while maintaining both correct amounts of information compartmentalization, privacy and not leaving any openings for legal comebacks. It's less direct than it would be in a perfect world, but I can't fault anything they said. In contrast, the employee who made the recording has recorded a company meeting while they were an employee of that company, and revealed it online. I know nothing else of this employee but already can see why Cloudflare, a company for whom security and privacy must be internal values if they are going to use them to define their external products, might not be a good fit for them.
- Zetobal 3y agoPost hoc ergo propter hoc and if my colleagues would have told me about their abysmal experience I would've recorded it as well probably wouldn't have released it but I would've recorded it.
- epolanski 3y agoThanks for the link. Not sure what was the point of her arguing though. Just for the Tik Tok video? It's not like you will argument yourself out of being terminated. I also find her argument forced. "Just because I haven't closed anything, it doesn't mean my performance hasn't been good", that's nonsense, it's sales, performance is valued on sales. Not closing a single sale in 5 months does not qualify as good performance, and you don't need 1v1s with your manager to find this.
- V-eHGsd_ 3y agofrom the video, I got the impression that cloudflare has a pretty standard 3 month ramp up period which, for her, ended right about thanksgiving. so it's not 5 months with no sales, it's a little over a month. and that month has two (three) major holidays that knock out ~2 weeks. so 5 months is suddenly more like ~3 weeks. and, if every 1:1 with a manager has been glowing and then you get fired 'for performance', there's been a massive failure somewhere.
- diggan 3y agoNot to mention that the last few weeks of any year is famously slow when it comes to most things, including sales and purchasing decisions.
- klipklop 3y agoAgreed. Nobody is closing deals near the end of the year. Also it takes time as a sales person to worm your way into a company to sell them on a product. This takes good leads to follow up on. No idea if the sales agent even had that. Were there even any so close to the holidays? Sales can be hard because you have to build relationships with companies/people. If you compare a green sales agent against an entrenched veteran they will always look bad. The veteran sales person has contacts, revolving sales from existing companies and people they can hit up to drive new sales. The newb has none of that. The amount of time she was employed was not enough to determine that.
- itake 3y agoI'm curious why she knew to record this video if she thought she was performing well.
- justinclift 3y agohttps://nitter.net/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778#m https://nitter.net/SMB_Attorney/status/1745609324544536778#m
- yumraj 3y agoThe fact the she posted this video to TikTok tells me that Cloudfare did a good job laying her off. Asking those questions is fine, recording and posting on TikTok, or any social media platform, is not. I hope this doesn’t may her unemployable.
- epolanski 3y ago+1 In fact, it makes me even doubt her account to some extent.
- jlat123 3y agoHey great idea you have there, let's keep crappy companies a secret so they can screw future employees...I very seriously doubt you care one bit for her employability. By the way has anyone ever told you would have made a great "Lemming".....
- r721 3y agoDiscussion of that video: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38963678 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38963678
- yasp 3y agotldr: please believe us, she had it coming
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- CharlesW 3y agoThis is a great response — accepting that it was handled poorly, reinforcing that this was purely about the person/role fit rather than the person, noting that layoffs in general are business as usual, and committing to do better. Nicely done, @eastdakota.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago> and committing to do better. Nicely done, @eastdakota It's only nicely done if they follow through. Tweets are cheap, action is work.
- CharlesW 3y agoAbsolutely, sentiment is meaningless.
- camgunz 3y agoThe tweet says they fired ~40 people for performance, not because of bad fit, which the video seems to corroborate.
- CharlesW 3y agoPerformance in the role they were hired for, which is person/role fit. The response spotlights that the person might be "really, really great" somewhere else, possibly in some other role. This is one of the reasons @eastdakota's response is really well done — he doesn't say a single bad thing about the person who (unprofessionally) shared video of the event, but instead owns that the company doesn't/can't hire perfectly, and acknowledges the various ways in which they failed this person during the layoff process.
- ParetoOptimal 3y ago> he doesn't say a single bad thing about the person who (unprofessionally) shared video of the event Accountability isn't unprofessional, though companies would like to convince employees that is the case.
- nine_zeros 3y agoIf employees were to do ruthless "business as usual", people would join a company, not work much, jump ship to another within a few months. Wasting everyone's time, energy and money. How does that sound?
- jerf 3y agoYou speak as if this is a hypothetical thing that literally no employee is doing? What it sounds like to me is how a certain segment of the employee population is already behaving, so you hardly need to hypothesize about how it sounds when you can just consult reality.
- nine_zeros 3y ago> What it sounds like to me is how a certain segment of the employee population is already behaving It is time for a larger share of the employee population doing this. Just keep hopping without producing much of value.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lulznews 3y agoThat sounds optimal. The game is the game.
- rmorey 3y agoAs an employee I think every time you do that you are burning some credibility (assuming you are honest about your work history)
- nine_zeros 3y ago> As an employee I think every time you do that you are burning some credibility (assuming you are honest about your work history) You are, but like you said, only if you are honest. But why are you being honest in a game where the rules are "business as usual"?
- 3y ago
- aestetix 3y agoHonestly, his response was terrible. "We've done a lot of bad things, and we'll try to improve in the future." Based on the impact that video is having, the only way I see that he could "fix" this is to reach out to every employee who was just fired and offer them all unemployment benefits. Given the market share that Cloudflare has, this should not be too much of a burden for them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nytesky 3y agoThey don’t get unemployment benefits or severance? Harsh Cloudflare is still not profitable right, so payouts for what seems like a routine layoff process probably will remain low to conserve capital.
- fransje26 3y ago> "We've done a lot of bad things, and we'll try to improve in the future." Standard procedure. And they will change nothing in the future. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15HTd4Um1m4
- justinclift 3y agohttps://nitter.net/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501 https://nitter.net/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501
- mthoms 3y agoOff topic: How does nitter continue to work despite the recent Twitter/X API changes?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- moritzwarhier 3y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37699022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37699022 https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-1683134811 https://github.com/zedeus/nitter/issues/983#issuecomment-168...
- dang 3y ago(We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970252 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38970252 - there's nothing wrong with it, but I wanted to pin the workaround link to the top.)
- pyuser583 3y agoEarlier last year (1st or 2nd quarter) the company had a big problem with low performing sales people. It wound up in the quarterly statements, and caused some anxiety in the markets. They said they would reevaluate/replace many sales positions. Seems that’s still going on.
- infamia 3y agoThe first time I read Prince's response, I felt it was OK-ish with some problems. However after a second reading, I have decided that it's terrible. 1. He starts by trying to minimize the issue instead of apologizing talking about how small the number of employees they fired relative to their total department size. I want to know how many people were fired vs. retained over the past 60 days. 2. Prince then goes completely tone deaf and says it is normal for Cloudflare. You should be well into apologizing at this point into the tweet. Also, if you do this often, why are you so terrible at it? 3. Then he talks about how watching the video made him feel. It is not about you, it's about how your actions impacted other people and how you will attempt to make up for it. Seriously, this is Apologies 101 and Prince failed miserably. F- 4. After that, Prince word salads some possible reasons why people are let go, injecting the possibility that maybe she just wasn't listening. Really??? 5. Then Prince somewhat begrudgingly admits that they were far from perfect. Ok, I guess? You should have led with that in any case. 6. Then he gives a very non-specific affirmation that they are committed to doing better. This is a meaningless CEO sweet nothing. What is notably absent is any attempt to make amends to the people Prince's team harmed. "We will reach out to the employees to see how we can best offer additional support through placement/training services or additional severance", would be a good start. Instead Prince offers a vague, non-committal response that they will better in the future, which is cold comfort to the folks who were screwed over by Cloudflare's garbage termination processes. Ugh.
- ergocoder 3y agoMy perspective on this kind of things is that there's no win from responding to it. People were being fired. They will be angry. There is no response that would make it better (of course, unless you give them more money).
- johnsand11 3y agoTrue, few are thrilled at getting fired. But if you are told you're being let go due to performance they should be able to say how they determined your poor performance. Not being able to give metrics or manager feedback makes it seem like that's not the true reason. If you want to make fired people even more upset, lying to them is a good way to do it.
- bogomipz 3y agoCan Cloudflare not afford a communications director that could have maybe edited this for the CEO before he put this tone-deaf screed out on the internet? >"We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go to market org. That’s a normal quarter." If firing 40 people every quarter is normal for you then your company culture is fucked. >"Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly." Oof. It's bizarre to me that any CEO would read that second sentence and think that's some kind of virtue worth extolling publicly. >"Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player." Comparing now unemployed folks with an elite NBA athlete who makes 28 million a year? It's hard imagine that statement made anyone affected feel better, assuming they understood the reference.
- n2d4 3y ago> If firing 40 people every quarter is normal for you then your company culture is fucked. Turnover in sales is often 25-40% across industries, some are voluntary, but just as many aren't. If about half of all departures are firings and Prince's numbers are accurate, then Cloudflare is significantly below the industry average. Though, he does say "go to market org" and not "salespeople", so it might include other professions as well.
- hysan 3y agoRandom aside, but when Chris Paul first joined the Suns, he was actually a good fit in my opinion and as evidenced by their success. It was his age and injuries that eventually made him a bad fit (roster age, timelines, etc). I found that random comparison pretty bad.
- monocularvision 3y agoHa! Glad I wasn’t the only one bothered by this.
- ses1984 3y agoI'm curious why this isn't on the front page when it seems to have a pretty high points and comments to submission ratios, definitely higher than other things. I guess it was flagged?
- n2d4 3y agoA high comments-to-points ratio is bad on HN because it triggers the flame war detector.
- knorker 3y agoIf the employee is not aware of performance shortfalls, then that's a performance shortfall of their manager, not the employee.
- JazCE 3y agoThe problem with judging any of this is the same as knowing your history lessons and sources. All we've really got to go on is Brittney Peaches account and Matthew Princes account and neither are going to be reliable sources. We'll never know if what Brittney Peach said is reliable and we'll never know if what Matthew Prince says is true.
- jlat123 3y agoShe made a video of the whole conversation??? What else do you need to make a decision?? You heard both sides, take a position, (by the way, Milk Toast is not a position)....
- xhkkffbf 3y agoExactly. Much of the debate is about how HR handled this so poorly and that's what we can all hear on the video. It's not really about whether her performance was worthy of getting fired. Nor is it about the Cloudflare bottom line.
- jlat123 3y agoIt's obvious this company has zero care or compassion for it's employees. Their company culture starts with the CEO and co/founder Matthew Prince and he doesn't have the slightest clue of what that is. When you lead a company your primary role is to lead and care for the employees and in return profits will follow. Matthew has no leadership skills, his HR Department has no leadership skills. This will eventually be the eventual downfall of this mediocre company run by a less than mediocre CEO. Brittney should have chosen a better company to work for, starting by doing a little better background research on the company she chose to work for.
- mhss 3y agoIt’s not true you can always choose who to work for. Is not a perfect job market. Some people often take whatever they can get to not starve.
- bsdmeister 3y agoI see this a lot in tech companies. Amazingly skilled engineers, people that convert ideas into code quickly but completely lack interpersonal skills and are emotionally very immature. The response could not be worse (well, in fact it could... but nevermind). Not humble, not compassionate, kind of arrogant and no clear action plan. Well, Cloudflare entered the red flag companies list. As employer and as product. Personally I would expect no response at all or a response admitting they were in fault, admit the failure from top down management and set some concrete measures to be taken. In the end companies - still - depend on people. Big image damage!
- 6R1M0R4CL3 3y agothey fucked up the firing because the people in charge of doing it has no info and did a royal bullshit of explaining it to the people getitng fired. seeing the ceo now come and drop more bullshit shows all you need to know about cloudflare. good luck finding the best engineers cloudflare, because you won't.
- sourpus 3y agoApparently, Most of the people here doesn't understand the sale process. Most corporation only gives you 90 days to meet your goals for sales only. After the 90 days then you expect to be let go. Given she was there for 5 months, she said she had 3 contracts in hand, which she had to be reporting as closing, every sales person that I see always predicts that the sale will close at an 100% probability as soon as they put an contract in a person's hands. Most will predict an 50% chance of a sale if they walk down the street and see someone walking on the sidewalk. This is about sales. Technically, I'm suprised that they will give her any severence at all with her recording this and posting it publically. Most if not severance agreements has it in that you can not talk about the severance. Do i support the way the layoffs occured? NO.. but companies makes business decisions based off of the market. And someone without 4 or 5 months of any sales, and no contracts in consideration would normally be let go. Given this is my opinion which may differ from most. Some companies I worked in you had less than 90 days to get a signed contract. Whats not being talked about is what was her goals that she agreed to when you signed on as a sales person.