[Aurornis]

They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it.

Did you watch the video? She cuts them off several seconds into the call and doesn't let them even speak before she starts talking about her situation (hire date, no sales closed). They didn't even have a chance to say anything.

Once someone reaches this level of intensity (cutting people off, not allowing them to speak, cursing, making accusations before the other party has even spoken) it's better to slow down and reschedule a follow-up meeting after some time to cool off.

I know this is a difficult topic for HN, but this video is a good example of a TikTok performance designed to maximize engagement and outrage. I'm surprised to see TikTok outrage videos working their way into HN comments and that people are taking the situation as presented without stopping to listen to the facts.

[tiew9Vii]

> Once someone reaches this level of intensity

Not sure if I watched the same video shared here as you did.

It obviously came as a surprise but she seemed calm given the circumstances and was asking straight direct reasonable questions given the circumstances with the people on the other end responded back with gobbledygook avoiding answering straight direct questions.

In no way was she loud, abusive, threatening. At best she got agitated she wasn’t being given any real answer, just meaningless words avoiding answering a simple direct question.

[Aurornis]

> Not sure if I watched the same video shared here as you did.

> but she seemed calm

She only let them speak for 21 seconds before "I'm going to stop you right there" and you she also referred to their words as "bullshit".

I don't know what level of business discourse you're accustomed to, but if someone is cutting you off 21 seconds into the conversation, speaking over you, and calling things "bullshit" then it's time to slow down and let them cool off.

[tiew9Vii]

I dunno. That didn’t even register as a one on a scale of one out of ten of heated business discussions.

The word bullshit didn’t even register, never mind offensive in its usage or delivery. If anything it was direct and succinct. She was being given generic spiel which where just words with no information likely from a script to close the call meeting minimal obligations as soon as possible then forget about that person.

The woman had just lost her job with others unexpectedly, she was shocked but calm and wanted a clear simple answer. If that was classed as heated the people delivering the news were clearly out of their depth and unprepared. There response served nothing other than agitating the woman as they wanted out of a hard conversation instead of having and managing a hard conversation.

They could have been honest “We’re sorry, we don’t personally know you, we’ve never met or spoke before. We’ve been given a list of people to call the company has had to make redundant which has come as a shock to us as much as you. We personally do not know the information you are asking as it hasn’t been provided to us personally at this time, we know as much as you. We’ll try to provide and find the information you are asking and contact you as soon as we have it, in the meantime here are my contact details feel free to contact me if you have and questions in the meantime”.

Straight talking honesty goes a long way instead avoiding hard conversations at all costs.

[fma]

It wasn't a surprise. She knew it was coming because others on her team were let go (she says this). She would have had a calendar invite with 2 random HR attendees...she also had her video recording setup.

Totally not a surprise.

[tiew9Vii]

Totally a surprise if you wake up and hear from a colleague they’ve been made redundant, minutes or hours later you get the same call when they day before everything was business as usual and the company is doing well.

A non surprise would be previous negative performance reviews, poor company performance, prior reorg announcements, announcing voluntary redundancies at a company meeting.

[aestetix]

That's not entirely true. She did cut them off when they were giving out corporate speak. She asked for details, and they didn't have any details for her. I would have expected them to have a list of specific reasons, possibly prepared by her manager, and if she wanted to challenge them, then schedule a follow up meeting. But the "follow up meeting" is often just a way to make the complaint go away, rather than addressing it.

[Aurornis]

> She did cut them off when they were giving out corporate speak.

She cut them off after 21 seconds and then went into a heated complaint, including calling what they're doing "bullshit"

> She asked for details, and they didn't have any details for her.

Once someone becomes this heated, the only real option is to reschedule a followup call after the person has had time to cool down. Nothing good would have come from delving into details of her performance, even though she already admitted and acknowledged that she hadn't closed any sales.

I don't think anything will make HN commenters happy, but what would you actually have wanted to hear? If they had instead said "We're cutting you for no good reason" the comments section would be complaining about that instead.

[wonnage]

You've made this same comment in multiple threads, genuinely curious why you feel so strongly about this. I can only imagine you're relatively new to the working world or have never been in a layoff situation.

Her reaction is perfectly normal and as a manager or HR rep you're basically there to be yelled at on behalf of the company, as the company is not actually a person and it's not satisfying to yell at the abstract concept of Cloudflare that just fired you.

Scheduling a followup call feels like an incredibly low-EQ move

[bitcharmer]

Yeah, GP's comments are completely bizarre. My guess either a troll or an HR drone.

[jlawer]

> She cut them off after 21 seconds and then went into a heated complaint, including calling what they're doing "bullshit"

It was Bullshit, textbook bullshit : https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691122946/on....

[aestetix]

A few things.

First, if they are doing layoffs, shouldn't they expect people to be pissed off, and be prepared to handle that? I don't think the call was heated at all, but maybe it's a cultural difference. It could be that American corporate drones in general are less tolerant of conflict.

Second, why not include someone she knew on the call, instead of two people she had never met before? It's a total power move. If they had her direct boss included, or started out with a reason why it was just the two of them, that probably would have helped.

Third, the fact that others were getting laid off besides just her tells me that it was not solely a performance issue. It was a corporate level cost saving measure, combined with a performance issue. Had they admitted to that, instead of laying the blame on her, it would have been fine for me. She probably would not have been happy, but I personally would not agree with her posting a video where they said that.

Finally, I'm not sure what this stereotypical "HN commenter" is, but if you bring it up again, I may have to consider that you're not actually trying to engage with my arguments and instead dismissing me as a sockpuppet or something.

[baumy]

First - Cultural differences are almost certainly at play here if you're not American. My only exposure to non-American workplace culture is a single German friend, and familiarity with how Linus Torvalds operates. Suffice it to say, cutting across someone to say "bullshit" would be considered "heated" in most American tech workplaces, no matter how calm your tone of voice and body language is. I'm struggling to find a way to say this without sparking a discussion I definitely don't want, but this kind of goes hand in hand with all the inclusion and sensitivity training that was very popular in American corporations until very recently. You can't really emphasize the importance of always being kind and inclusive and butterflies and rainbows without creating a culture that's a bit more sensitive about people acting in any way pissed off.

Second - I'm not sure I'd call the choice of call participants a "power move", just standard American hyper-legally-conscious practice. Surprise layoffs or pip firings are usually done with an HRBP you've probably never met before leading the call. Sometimes the manager may be there but frequently they won't talk much or at all.

Third - Not necessarily. The others may have been struggling to close sales as well. The only things I know about this whole thing come from reading the text in the OP and watching the tiktok video so I could easily be missing it, but is there any evidence that this is anything other than letting go of sales people who aren't performing? I think this is extremely common in sales, it's pretty cutthroat. You close deals or you don't, and companies are always asking "what have you done for me lately?"

[allarm]

> cutting across someone to say "bullshit" would be considered "heated" in most American tech workplaces

Oh, you poor things.

[pwb25]

i mean if you need "sensitivity training" or have a job that is called "HRBP" that proves the point of the guy you reply to? It's just a lot bullshit speak with no honesty in it

[cstrahan]

Before I respond to your comment: I was laid off two days ago (not at CloudFlare), and while I'll greatly miss what I was working on and everyone I was working with, and I also don't like the stress of not having an income, the news was broken to me with sincerity and tact, very much unlike how CloudFlare handled the termination in this video.

> She cut them off after 21 seconds and then went into a heated complaint, including calling what they're doing "bullshit"

There's nothing "heated" about confronting deception -- that's just setting healthy boundaries and, hopefully, giving the other person room to grow as a human being.

She established that her supervisor's feedback for her was that she had done "a great job". If that was not the case, the people letting her go would have asserted that this claim is false.

If I try to interpret their words charitably (that is, if I pretend that when they said "you have not met CloudFlare's expectations for performance" they really meant was something quite different), it would seem that they are letting her go because:

1) CloudFlare has decided that it is financially in their best interest to layoff enough people to reduce payroll by $X, and

2) They tried to pick some objective criteria (even if misguided and/or unfair in practice) to pick who to let go, and she met that criteria. For all we know, they may have taken a spreadsheet of everyone with her job title, sorted by sales per month, then sorted by name to break ties, and then laid off the bottom people.

In this scenario, saying "we're letting you go because of your performance" is not only untrue, it's also an incredibly insensitive, tone-deaf cop out.

Yes, performance may have been involved in the calculus of who to let go, but the actual underlying cause of her termination is that they have decided that it's in CloudFlare's best interest to reduce payroll. She wasn't under-performing, so it is, in fact, bullshit for CloudFlare to use that as the reason for her termination, and then equivocate when asked for a single example of her not meeting expectations.

> Once someone becomes this heated [...]

Again, she's not "heated". She is (reasonably) offended that they would lie to her face to deflect responsibility for her termination onto her.

> [...] the only real option is to reschedule a followup call after the person has had time to cool down.

No. The only thing to do is take ownership of the situation they have put her in and the incredibly offensive way they broke the news to her.

> [...] but what would you actually have wanted to hear? If they had instead said "We're cutting you for no good reason" the comments section would be complaining about that instead.

No. If they said that, it would also be a lie.

The appropriate thing to say is pretty easy: you speak the truth.

I can give a condensed, paraphrased version of what I was told two days ago (and, admittedly, what I was told verbatim was more tactful than what I'll produce here, but this is infinitely better than the schlock she was told):

"We regret to inform you that we will be terminating your employment. It's not fair. It's not a failing on your part. We want to be clear that this termination is not a firing; your role is being eliminated as part of layoffs. Ultimately, we have decided that we have over-hired with respect to the current economic climate."

You've probably noted that I didn't mention performance indicators at all, despite them (probably) being used to sort some spreadsheet and layoff people that met and/or exceeded the expectations of their title yet sorted at the bottom (vs a random sampling). Why? Because it's irrelevant in that conversation. What would mentioning it achieve? For new hires, it says nothing, as they hadn't been there long enough. For others, the implication is that if they had overworked themselves then maybe they would still have a job, which is a dick thing to imply. So really, the only positive thing that can come out mentioning it is that the people informing her that her income is about to be $0.00 can feel justified, thus soothing their conscience -- but anyone with a shred of social skill and empathy would know that this isn't the time nor place.

Being laid off sucks, but the problem here isn't that she was laid off. It's clear that isn't what upset her. What's wrong in that video is one (or both) of:

1) These people copping out with bullshit, trying to spin a layoff as a firing, and/or

2) These people having such piss-poor empathy and communication skills that they can't see that what they said was a slap in her face

[occamsrazorwit]

> She established that her supervisor's feedback for her was that she had done "a great job". If that was not the case, the people letting her go would have asserted that this claim is false.

FWIW, the HR people did assert this claim was false but said they weren't able to go into specifics. That's the central issue that makes this somewhat murky. If companies prioritized employee wellbeing, then they'd release this information, but they prioritize not getting sued or opening themselves up to criticism.

Honestly, I think the manager deserves more criticism here. There's a world where both sides are telling the truth. It's pretty common for managers to give positive feedback to underperforming employees (as part of empathetic communication). Also, managers do have a say in layoffs. The excuse is always that managers didn't know until right before the layoffs, but they still have input at that stage. They're not laying people off or firing them behind the manager's back.

Edit: I'd also point out that she says she's been receiving positive feedback despite not meeting standards. Her reasons for such are that one deal died through no fault of her own and that the holidays are tough for deal-making. She is making the argument that the standards say one thing while the expectations (feedback) say another. Aligning standards and expectations would fall under the manager's duties. Because, again, HR drones aren't going to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of sales.

[bb88]

> Also, managers do have a say in layoffs.

Not always.

The manager might completely disagree on the termination.

The manager might be being punished for not terminating underperformers so higher ups stepped in.

I guess my point is don't underestimate the amount of dysfunction in management.

[occamsrazorwit]

True, there are some very dysfunctional cases. In general though, if a manager disagrees strongly enough, they can protect their reports. Yes, it might impact their personal career, but it's weird to criticize HR for just following orders and not apply the same criticisms to the manager (something I'm seeing a lot of in these discussions). The manager is much more familiar with the laid-off employee, their work, and the criteria used to judge them. Ultimately, the manager has much more final say than HR people who are essentially just messengers to shield management.

[cstrahan]

Before I respond to individual points made in your comment, I'd like to address the general notion that her termination was an honest firing and not a thinly veiled layoff.

She said that multiple coworkers had been let go earlier that day. Also, this is happening just as news breaks about layoffs at CloudFlare.

So I will invoke Occam's razor: which is more likely?

- CloudFlare decided to layoff employees while also firing multiple employees on the same day, back-to-back

- They somehow came to the conclusion that these people were under-performing all around the same time, and that they should all be fired at the same time.

- Her boss decides not to participate in her exit call.

- Despite her receiving positive feedback, she was actually not meeting the expectations of her role.

Or this:

- When her boss said she was doing well, she was actually doing well

- CloudFlare wanted to layoff employees, but they didn't want to pay out severance and assist with benefits.

- But that doesn't look good, so in order to save face they try to justify everyone's termination by claiming they under-performed. Now they can say that these employees were fired.

- However, they are fully aware that it is common knowledge that layoffs are usually conducted as one massive group meeting with all parties at once (this is usually done because, with everyone being let go all at once, this minimizes the window where a vengeful employee could try to harm the company using their internal access -- trying to have one-on-one exits with each person's manager would be infeasible here, given the many-to-one relationship).

- To keep up appearances CloudFlare chose to have small, rapid-fire exit meetings (conducted by HR) with those being let go, instead of meeting with their boss. (I would bet money that they probably conducted these meetings in parallel to try and quickly clear out employees before word could spread far, to further minimize the window of possible vengeful reaction.)

It's incredibly plain to me that the latter is so, so much more likely. I'm already disgusted enough by the objective details (that is, leaving all interpretation aside), it's only that much worse if it truly is a regular occurrence for CloudFlare to hire a bunch of individuals, praise their work, and then later decide that they weren't all that great (which is an admission that CF is both incompetent at hiring and management), terminate them (with no PIP) all without their boss present.

Are you making the case that CloudFlare is really that incompetent and mismanaged?

> FWIW, the HR people did assert this claim was false but said they weren't able to go into specifics.

Making a contradictory assertion is very different than asserting that her claim is false. It doesn't matter that logically, sure, the latter is implied by the former -- they are still two very different things when it comes to human communication.

For instance, if you say "Wow, what a lovely blue sky!" and I respond with "Yeah, never seen a better green sky before. Love it.", and then you respond with "Green? What? It's clearly blue. And apart from sunset/sunrise and pollution resulting in a a red or orange sky, it's always been blue. So... I'm confused." to which I respond "I get that you feel that way. Totally understandable. All I'm saying is, you know, I love this glorious green sky over our heads right now."

In that hypothetical, I've managed to equivocate around the contradiction with non sequitur. That's not me claiming that you're wrong, which would then require me to provide a reasonable argument. Instead, I leave you to wonder if I don't see the apparent contradiction, or if I do but I'm just not engaging with you for some reason, etc. It's a shitty way to communicate with someone, and really isn't much better than simply stonewalling.

> I'd also point out that she says she's been receiving positive feedback despite not meeting standards.

I don't think that's what she was doing. My reading of the situation, if I put myself in her shoes: her execution was perfectly acceptable and she got only positive feedback from her boss, and so she felt deeply wronged by the incongruent claims made during her exit. Given the asymmetric power dynamic (they can just hang up on her at any point and happily go on their way, leaving her with zero closure), panic set in -- time is ticking, and she wants to have them verbally recognize they were in the wrong; to not have them admit to wrongdoing before the conclusion of the call would further emphasize their power to mistreat her, which would likely crater her emotional state (as it would mine). While she should have probably left it at "my boss, who is responsible for assessing my performance, thinks (and has told me) that I've done a great job, so could you provide any justification for telling me anything otherwise right now? No? Alright. You've admitted to not acting in good faith, and it wouldn't be fruitful to discuss this with you any further, so I won't." she instead tries to provide objective details in hopes that they'll actively address something that she's saying: she was on a 3 month ramp (where sales are not expected) followed by maybe three weeks to make a sale in a month where making one sale would be extraordinary, and despite all of that she still almost managed to make a sale.

I don't see that as under-performing and then making an excuse for doing so, and I'm not entirely sure how anyone can see it that way. My best guess is that evidently, in her panic, she gives excessive details and she has adrenaline jitters from the panic she's feeling (from both the aforementioned timing/power aspect, but also because most people find it incredibly stressful to engage in even mild mannered, respectful confrontation -- my pulse shoots up to around 150 bpm just thinking about it), which some seem to interpret as her being "heated", "emotional" and/or making excuses, but I'm not entirely sure.

> Aligning standards and expectations would fall under the manager's duties. Because, again, HR drones aren't going to be knowledgeable about the ins and outs of sales.

That's already enough of a problem. The thought of that is incredibly offensive, and it would also be the height of cowardice for a boss to have someone else fire one of their reports for them. I hope that isn't what you see as the norm, as that certainly isn't what I have seen in practice.

Again, the simpler explanation is that CloudFlare wanted to have its cake and eat it too: decrease payroll, minimize risk of harm to the company, and try (in vain) to save face by passing off a layoff as firings (to justify not giving severance and minimize negative sentiment for more layoffs).

[occamsrazorwit]

That's a wall of text, but I think you're misreading the general context.

> this is happening just as news breaks about layoffs at CloudFlare.

Err, you have this backwards. The news broke that there weren't layoffs at CloudFlare (keep in mind, their spokesperson publicly stated this to the news, and there are legal consequences for lying about this). The CEO stated that <3% of the sales team was fired for not meeting standards, and that that's a normal rate for each quarter [1]. Sales in general is attrition-heavy, and rank-and-yank is a relatively common, if employee-unfriendly, strategy. So, yes, the former situation is much more likely when you strip out points 1 and 2, since points 3 and 4 correspond to each other and the latter situation is illegal in two different ways.

> it is common knowledge that layoffs are usually conducted as one massive group meeting with all parties at once

This is common knowledge? I've literally never heard of a layoff conducted like this, only the reverse. The major tech layoffs this week (Google, Twitch, Unity, Discord) were conducted in the reverse fashion.

> That's not me claiming that you're wrong, which would then require me to provide a reasonable argument. Instead, I leave you to wonder if I don't see the apparent contradiction, or if I do but I'm just not engaging with you for some reason, etc.

Occam's Razor: It's clearly a social problem, and it makes much more sense for it to be on one end than the other.

All HR has is a record saying that she was underperforming. HR doesn't know what went on in the meetings between the manager and their report. Even if they were to show her a piece of paper that says she was underperforming, you end up back at square one. There's obviously a paper trail (true or fabricated), and she doesn't believe what it says. The only person who could solve the problem is a person who isn't there.

> I don't see that as under-performing and then making an excuse for doing so

I was pulling in info from elsewhere in the thread where account executives were agreeing that that was under-performing. I'm not making that judgement call, as I've never worked in sales for B2B software.

> it would also be the height of cowardice for a boss to have someone else fire one of their reports for them.

This is my entire point. The difference between our opinions is that (to me) all the signs indicate that the manager fucked up. The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

[1] https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501

Edit: TL;DR: Either it's a complex, multi-level conspiracy that's somewhat dysfunctional but not in a way that would lead to the conspiracy falling apart... or someone has a poor manager.

[satisfice]

So what? Grow up. It doesn’t matter if they were “copping out.” Although I didn’t hear them doing that.

It just doesn’t matter. Arguing with HR gets you nowhere. It’s self-destructive drama for likes.

[cstrahan]

Where was she “arguing”? Did you misread her interaction as her trying to maintain her employment there?

If you genuinely believed that you were being let go for something that was completely fabricated, would you not confront them? Is there ever an appropriate time to speak up? For instance, if they also attributed the fruits of your labor to someone else, and then compared you to that other person to justify your termination, would you just remain silent?

I don’t see how having a backbone is self-destructive.

[satisfice]

Yes, I would remain silent. "Backbone" in that situation means either collecting data for a possible lawsuit or else having the spine to know when you aren't wanted. Now, this video just makes her employment prospects bleaker.

There is no possible good that can come of complaining to a chair on which you have just stubbed your toe.

[infamia]

> They did. They said it was for performance reasons and offered to book a longer, second call to talk about it.

Who shows up to fire someone without any specifics at all? That is utterly incompetent and completely unprofessional, even for a very large company. Who shows up this unprepared and 100% scripted? HR knows good and well that after being terminated that almost no one will want or will have time for such a follow-up call.

edit: I would also note, that when a company gives an employee positive checkpoints like her manager did throughout, and then you lay that person off, you should expect them to react strongly -- cos said company messed up very badly. Do better Cloudflare.

[itsdrewmiller]

The bigger the company the less likely anyone will attempt to give you specific information about why you are being terminated during the termination meeting - I think your expectations of how things should work don't match the reality of how they do work. Competent organizations will have given longer term employee more prior feedback about their performance issues, but in this case the employee was likely still in their probationary period. Even then you'd expect them to get SOME feedback about not hitting their numbers, but we only have one side of the story here - she may have gotten feedback and ignored it.

[infamia]

> The bigger the company the less likely anyone will attempt to give you specific information about why you are being terminated during the termination meeting - I think your expectations of how things should work don't match the reality of how they do work.

I don't doubt that has been your experience, but that's a terribly low bar that only some companies fail to clear. I've worked for several very large organizations, and had the exact opposite experience. They were all way more thoughtful and compassionate during terminations than what we saw from Cloudflare (who is supposedly a modern and innovative company). Being too forthcoming is a risk, but as we've seen by this video and lots of other situations, going to the extreme of being an impersonal robot is a reputational risk. Any decent HR Department would be able to handle this situation with more grace, and general reasons why it didn't work out without introducing risk to the company. Cloudflare was so risk averse during this process, they damaged Cloudflare's reputation. This is doubly troublesome since Cloudflare positions themselves as an exceptional and innovative company. They should be a lot better than this, and the CEO has said as much. [1]

> Even then you'd expect them to get SOME feedback about not hitting their numbers, but we only have one side of the story here - she may have gotten feedback and ignored it.

Thanks for mentioning that. It's a definite possibility! However, based on the employee being generally aware of at least one of her deficiencies (not closing a sale), the operational incompetence of Cloudflare in this instance, and particularly the manager not being present, I genuinely wonder if it is reasonable to give Cloudflare the benefit of the doubt? It is possible she ignored warning signs, and I'm open to new information. That said, I haven't seen anything to make me feel like the person being terminated is the problem.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38969065

[valval]

After spending some time on HN, I’d be terribly surprised if the reaction wasn’t exactly like it is in these threads. If there’s one thing I’d bet big money on in the world, it’s the gullibility of HN users. Or Reddit users, since this is just a Reddit clone with the same user base (despite the rules pointing out that saying this is totally lame and not even true, dawg).

[bitcharmer]

> I know this is a difficult topic for HN, but this video is a good example of a TikTok performance designed to maximize engagement and outrage.

You're either trolling or work in HR.

The process was completely dehumanised and they conducted mass layoffs under the guise of performance driven workforce correction to avoid paying severance. Let's call a spade a spade.

[6bb32646d83d]

There would have been no follow up meeting. That's the meeting where they need to be prepared to give answers. Her account most likely was being scheduled to be disabled by the end of that meeting