I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.

The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.

And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.

(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)

  • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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    6 个月前

    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. Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right. And sometimes under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten before we let them go. Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player. And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them. We definitely weren’t anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who aren’t performing off. That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did. And that’s something @zatlyn and I are focused on improving going forward.

    -Matthew Prince
    Co-Founder & CEO, Cloudflare

    Nitter / Mirror | Twitter

    • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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      6 个月前

      If he thinks it’s painful to watch then he should apologize personally to HER and her coworkers for traumatizing them, and give them a good severance pay. The way he phrases this as if he’s just shrugging and saying “we’ll do better at some unspecified point in the future, I’m sure” makes him come off as an inhumane piece of garbage with no empathy.

    • Fades@lemmy.world
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      6 个月前

      This is the same piece of shit ceo trying to force their workers back to office too. Fuck this asshole

    • ChrislyBear@lemmy.world
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      6 个月前

      This asshat is also just beating around the performance bush that doesn’t exist, only to avoid calling the firing a layoff. Disgusting.

      • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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        6 个月前

        under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten

        What feedback?

        • hexortor@lemmy.zip
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          6 个月前

          Tbf

          1. we don’t know if she’s got feedback before getting fired or not

          2. he does address that:

          No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right.

          • Lemminary@lemmy.world
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            6 个月前

            She claims she had not and raised it to the people firing her. She says she was constantly reassured that all was going well and even her review periods were good, but not even her manager was present to attest. She wasn’t even put on an improvement plan, or ever told that she was underperforming when she was actually performing above her peers (according to her) which is why she was so upset that they couldn’t give her a concrete reason to let her go. Neither point really applies.

      • FuzzChef@feddit.de
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        6 个月前

        Did he though? I mean he perfectly sticks to individual shortcomings as the reason and even implies that she ignored feedback.

        • kralk@lemm.ee
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          6 个月前

          implies that she ignored feedback.

          I missed that the first time and now I’m angry all over again 😡

      • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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        6 个月前

        Dude, he didn’t really admit to any mistake.

        That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did.

        He’s literally saying firing her was not the mistake. He still believes she should’ve been fired and not laid off. He also believes firing her based on nondescript performance metrics was right. The only thing he believes was wrong was how the firing was carried out. The only thing he’s admitting is that the firing wasn’t “PR friendly”, which is an indirect way of saying the mistake was getting caught.

        • Whirlybird
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          6 个月前

          You’re literally just making stuff up here.

          As you said, he said firing here wasn’t the mistake. They determined that she wasn’t working out there so they fired her. That’s within their rights. The “nondescript performance metrics” aren’t non-descript, we just don’t know them because we don’t work for cloudflare. Her job seems to be to bring in clients. She admits herself that she hasn’t brought in a single client, and lost one at the final hurdle (could be because of her, might not be).

          The mistake was her manager not being in the call. That’s pretty much the only “mistake” they made here. HR did their job, which was to tell her she was fired and to walk her through the next steps.

          • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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            6 个月前

            As you said, he said firing here wasn’t the mistake. They determined that she wasn’t working out there so they fired her. That’s within their rights.

            Maybe were you live at. For instance where I live at the employer cannot fire anyone without an explicit stating why that person is getting fired. What they did is illegal where I live at.

            The “nondescript performance metrics” aren’t non-descript, we just don’t know them because we don’t work for cloudflare. Her job seems to be to bring in clients. She admits herself that she hasn’t brought in a single client, and lost one at the final hurdle (could be because of her, might not be).

            I agree, we don’t know the metric and we don’t need to know. They however should know their metrics and should be able to present them. Even you were able to come up with a least 1 possible metric and you don’t even work there, but the HR who works there and should be aware of the metrics can’t even name a single one. The fact that they couldn’t even bring up a single specific metric is a pretty clear indicator that the metrics are nondescript.

            The mistake was her manager not being in the call. That’s pretty much the only “mistake” they made here.

            Have you wondered why her manager isn’t on the call? The CEO seems to make it pretty clear that firing people is a pretty regular process there so it’s not like they’re doing it the first time and simply forgot. Maybe the manager simply wasn’t available at that time? But they do regularly so they should be aware that it’s important the manager be present which means it’s also important to plan the call when the manager is available. What is the good-willed reasoning the manager couldn’t attend? Because I can name a few nefarious reasons why the manager wouldn’t be in that call.

    • Zink@programming.dev
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      6 个月前

      This isn’t the first time I’ve heard “we need to fire people right away because it is GOOD for them!” from a corporate type, and it’s not getting any less ghoulish sounding with repetition.

    • TheHarpyEagle@lemmy.world
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      6 个月前

      What feedback?? The feedback that said she was doing well from the people familiar with her work? Or the mysterious metrics she was failing to meet but also had no idea about? God, what an out of touch douche nozzle.

      Also, if they’re not a fit but still a good employee, LAY THEM OFF. But who wants to pay for all that messy extra stuff when you can just grind through the workforce?

      • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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        6 个月前

        The way this whole thing went down is absurd.

        That said, I had an underperforming colleague who never picked up that feedback was negative. They only latched onto the positive statements. This is either a failing of the receiver to hear the negative when also getting positives or a failing of the feedback giver to be direct.

        It’s impossible to say in this situation, though it caught my attention that she mentioned she was close to closing a deal and lost it last second. If we take the CEOs statement at face value, perhaps she didn’t actually meet their metrics.

        I can’t say if this is justified or not, but what is abundantly obvious to me is 1) their feedback system likely sucks 2) the hit squad was under prepared with the justification for a termination for lack of performance, 3) she called them on their shit justifiably.

        I also agree that it should be expected they give a reasonable severance if this is their hiring model… If you by rule whack people.after three months, they should compensate for another three as people were not looking for new work.

      • Whirlybird
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        6 个月前

        What feedback?? The feedback that said she was doing well from the people familiar with her work?

        You’re taking the angry, emotional, disgruntled employees words as fact. She could have been a terrible employee and gotten bad feedback multiple times. Some people just don’t take it on board. She could have been the worlds best employee in every way other than making sales, which seems to be her main task.