[CharlesW]

This 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.

[dijksterhuis]

> This is a great response

Hard disagree.

> accepting that it was handled poorly

Technically he accepted it 'wasn't perfect'. Which is different to 'poorly' (other side of average).

> reinforcing that this was purely about the person/role fit rather than the person

He hinted at three reasons (without actually stating which one applies in the individual case): poor performance, lack of improvement after communicating poor performance and "poor fit".

In the original video the the individual countered the first two by pointing out the fact their manager's communications to them were all positive. Additionally, they've only been "off ramp" for a month. In my experience one month is pretty short for expecting someone to improve when they're performing badly.... especially when they haven't been told they were performing badly.

---

my take away:

either [edit: or both]

- cloudflare needed to do some layoffs, did some quick stats and didn't set limits on when people were hired when doing the stats. this person got mixed up in it as a result.

- manager fckd up and didn't tell the individual they were performing badly. in which case, really bad individual management.

[smileysteve]

> they've only been "off ramp" for a month.

> did some quick stats and didn't set limits on when people were hired when doing the stats

> manager fckd up and didn't tell the individual they were performing badly

This is even more likely when you account for Nov 20 - Jan 2 being the most likely time of the year for extended vacations (for manager, analytics, and buyers), corporate distractions (holiday parties and team building, next year planning), and a slowdown in all sales cycles.

[epolanski]

> In the original video the the individual countered the first two by pointing out the fact their manager's communications to them were all positive.

Did she?

She literally says herself she hasn't closed a single sale since being hired there.

[dijksterhuis]

> Did she?

errrr.... yes. she does. several times.

...

> She literally says herself she hasn't closed a single sale since being hired there.

If I hire a new engineer, part of my job managing them is to communicate to them that I expect them to release a new feature/bug fix to production by the end of their three month probation, and that release must go smoothly.

If they clearly fck up their first release on the last day of probation and I say 'hey, great job, you're doing awesome' and then fire them a month later... that's poor management. that's on me.

[epolanski]

This is sales, working half an year in a company and not closing a sale, while actually even being 100% convinced of being a good performer is crazy to me.

[bko]

Sales is not engineering. Its a different culture. It has some positives and some negatives. You can become filthy rich and it's a relative meritocracy. However if you don't sell you will be let go pretty quick.

Sales is one of those fields where you can pretty directly measure someone's performance relative to others. Sure there's some noise and luck, but it's not their job to hold your hand as much as hiring a junior eng

[toomuchtodo]

> and committing to do better. Nicely done, @eastdakota

It's only nicely done if they follow through. Tweets are cheap, action is work.

[CharlesW]

Absolutely, sentiment is meaningless.

[camgunz]

The tweet says they fired ~40 people for performance, not because of bad fit, which the video seems to corroborate.

[CharlesW]

Performance 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.

[camgunz]

> acknowledges the various ways in which they failed this person during the layoff process

Acknowledgements are worthless at best, and insulting at worst. "Yes I agree we stabbed this person and woof, we should not have." The second and necessary part of any apology is making things right, which in this case is some kind of compensation and a change in policy. None of that happened. It's the definition of unjust.

It's just exhausting to watch CEO after CEO come out and be like, "look I/we goofed and we have to fire a lot of people, I take full responsibility but in truth am doing nothing and expect no consequences, except for our stock price to increase" and for people to universally say, "man they handled that perfectly" when they essentially just copy/paste Mark Zuckerberg's words. What a joke.

[ParetoOptimal]

> 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.