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)
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.