With her releasing this I would fully expect her also not taking any feedback well or even making that also public. And the positive feedback is her own words. Not from HR, so we do not even have proof that it actually was positive.
BUT, having worked in tech for well over a decade now, you should absolutely 100% not believe any feedback that's given to you. She's in sales. She should understand that there's exactly 1 metric that matters, closing deals. I'm not saying it's her fault she got fired, but this should really be a lesson for everyone watching this video. Do not believe what they tell you.
So let's say a manager tells their sales rep to focus on understanding well what the customer needs, before closing the deal. Sales rep doesn't give credit to the manager and rushes for a close. Customer turns out to be a bad fit for company's products and services. Now, the company has a liability.
Management exists for a reason. There cannot be “exactly 1 metric” in any job, unless it's paper clip maximization.
In her own words, and seems like its the way the company works, she had a 3 month ramp - which I presume is along the lines of training, mentoring, pairing, learning the ropes by example etc - and then let lose to get stuck in, which as she says has been only one month that overlaped a holiday period.
It sure seems like Cloudflare are just culling staff to me, or her manager has no managerial abilities and doesn't know how to give genuinely useful feedback.
If it was her performance that was in question, there would be a trail, maybe even a car crash worth of evidence to back up that claim.
I don't think she will have issues finding work, unless having high standards, conducting yourself in a professional manner, and fighting for yourself and for your peers are considered a bad things.
I think Richard Branson (Virgin) once said, "Treat your staff how you would like them to treat your best customer." - unfortunatrly that doesn't appear to be the mantra at Cloudflare.
She was in sales and sold nothing. 3 months is a long time to be unproductive.
People complain about corporations sending out emails to notify people they have been fired or laid off. This person posting a hit video is a prime example why companies make things as brief as possible with no interaction available.
Sales people generally (in sensible firms) aren’t expected to sell anything in their first quarter while they learn the ropes, the product, etc.
It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1 - those are usually dead times of year.
Unless your sales org is a puppy mill/boiler room… which many are.
Also, in this case they cut a huge amount of the sales org, this seems more like a “shit we over hired and need to lay people off without it being a layoff, let’s use performance…” shenanigans.
> It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1
I've worked at a few enterprise software companies in the US, and Q4 is always the busiest time for sales. Having a deal roll into Q1 is very undesirable, so sales people do what they can do close before the end of the year. Q1 is incredibly quiet.
On the Engineering side, yes - Q4 and Q1 are super quiet as sales is driving the economic machine in Q4, and everyone's doing planning in Q1.
Yes, but not if you're still ramping. The sales cycle for Cloudflare is probably 6-24 months. Unless you've stepped in on a deal that's basically about to close, you're not going to be closing just because it's Q4.
I worked in quite a few sensible firms. A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of because they would have been fired long before that. A 3 month ramp doesn't mean produce zero results. In case anyone is wondering, results for a salesperson means selling things.
That she goes on to try and rub their noses in her shortcomings tells me all I need to know who was at fault here.
Q4 is a dead time of year? I swear some of you have never had jobs.
> A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of
It's funny that you say this then go on to accuse others of never having had jobs.
I've worked around enterprise sales for years and it's entirely possible for reps to go 3 quarters without closing business if they're in a strategic patch or they're trying to build a new vertical/geo. Sales cycles run anywhere from 6-24 months of you're selling enterprise software of any substance or scale, and unless you're getting hot deals from the last person, you're going to be starting most of those at 0. That's why we have ramps.
That said, there are definitely metrics you can look at to see if someone is on the right path at the 3/6 month mark. It's just not necessarily closed business.
Corp sales isn't like low-margin, high-volume sales where you're expected to always be closing right from jump.
The deal sizes are usually much higher; consequently, you need more people with authority to be in agreement that the purchase is worth it.
To do that, you need to make relationships, navigate corporate hierarchies, get on calendars, etc. All of that takes time.
It is possible that this person wasn't doing any of that, hence the termination. This is very unlikely if this was a bulk termination. Doubly so given that she was hired so close to the holidays.
The 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.
We might never know if it was "justified", but we have everything we need to judge how the termination was delivered though, and that one is a shitty look for Cloudflare.
Why is Brittney’s video not a reliable impartial account? Also note that nothing she says about her performance and feedback is in any way disputed during the call. They had nothing to say to the contrary.
We don't actually know what her manager said to her during all her one to ones. We don't know what feedback she was receiving. Just because the person on the other end of the call did not dispute any of the things she raised, it does not mean she was correct and not biased.
We also see from Matthew Prince's reply to the video that he is also an unreliable participant as he is suggesting that a manager would always be involved in redundancies, and we can see from the video that was not the case.
HR is not going to argue on a call like that, so the viewer will always see a one sided account. The decision has been made, and not by them. They likely do not even know or have access to that information and are given a list and told "fire these people today." She could have come to work drunk, and you would still not hear about it on a call like that. I don't like it either, but it is the way things go at big corps.
She hasn't closed one deal in the one month she's been with the company after training, does that sound like a reasonable evaluation period to you? Why did she not receive any feedback on that from her manager? If your layoff is a surprise to the employee, you fucked up.
> Brittney P. should be worried about her future job prospects. This video is now viral. I would think twice about hiring her.
If you would avoid hiring a person because they might expose your shitty practices, that says more about your practices than about the person.
What she posted wasn't "disparagement," for she hasn't herself said anything to disparage them. She simply posted a legally recorded conversation. If it made Cloudflare look bad, that's on them; they have only themselves to blame.
“Disparaging” Defined:
The term “disparaging” is considerably more broad that the term “defamatory.”
(......) Perhaps the most consequential difference is many courts have held that statements can be disparaging even if truthful or non-defamatory [1]
So yes, it depends on who's judging, but it certainly can be, disparagement.
Ah, but here's the thing: She didn't say anything in the video to disparage Cloudflare. She simply posted a conversation. Integral to "disparagement," as a concept, is the notion that the disparager must have made at least one overtly disparaging statement.
I don't think that merely posting a video, where Clourflare's employees and policies acted stupidly and callously of their own accord, qualifies as a "statement" for the purposes of law.
If I posted a video of the CEO of united, in a drag, at a public event, and I was subject to a non disparage contract with United, im not so sure I would be fine even though all I did is post an act, with no commentary, that was public.
IANAL so I suppose it would be up for a judge to determine my intent. If the stock price drops and the CEO gets fired, do I walk away scot free?
The reality might be that companies are immoral, but saying "I wouldn't hire this person because they might expose my immoral practices" does make you look bad, rather than the person.
This is an archaic take on sales. They're not selling fungible widgets, their service is not something to offload on clients who don't want it as then they'll obviously just stop the subscription, with all that's happened being to undermine Cloudflare's reputation and chance at future business.
She comes across well, thinks on her feet and is assertive without being even remotely unreasonable.
My company engages in sales cycles exceeding a year at times. Unless there's a renewal or something coming up in those 3 months, it takes at least that time to learn the sales tools and meet all your customers. I've never seen a sales person let go inside of a year.
She was on a ramp aka training then started in q4 during holiday season. New sales don't sell first quarter. She isn't selling lemonade, she is selling deals worth 10s of thousands.
Is December normally a good month for sales? I'd imagine it'd be the worst- budgets exhausted at EOY, yourself and your potential customers taking vacation time, etc. plus I imagine there can be latency with boring logistics like getting paperwork signed.
Nope! Often there's money left over for whatever reason, and in many places if you don't use it this year, you'll lose it next year. Nothing like walking out of a decrepit meeting room in November and then back into the same meeting room in late January but now it's kitted out with 3x50" TV's and a studio quality camera.
> yourself and your potential customers taking vacation time
Only if all the important initiatives have been finalised before the end of the year! The buyers have targets they're supposed to be hitting also, and often one of those is "purchased a new CRM/ERP/WTF for implementation in FYx+1".
I would hire her in a second. She saw something unethical and made it public at risk of personal cost. Hiring her is like sending the message "we aren't afraid of this happening because we don't do that." I would view hiring her as a positive sign for a potential employer.
Not only that, she comes off as authentic and sold her side of the story very well with that video. She speaks clearly and cogently, even while emotions are clearly bubbling. I think that video shows her skills as a salesperson in action.
Good leaders hire people who keep them in check. Poor leaders hire people they can walk over.
She is making them pay a much greater cost than her severance in PR and that benefits me because I am more likely to be in her position than I am to be in the CEO's position.
I straight up won't work for CloudFlare now after seeing this and the CEOs feeble response. CloudFlare is now in the category of "corporate" in my head.
I would rather live in a country made of people like her than a country made of people who don't fight back when they feel wronged.
Corporate America is able to be a steaming pile of garbage because most people think like you and not her, so there are no consequences for HR assholes being HR assholes, and since there are no consequences, the dehumanizing behavior keeps on going. She provided consequences. Now those HR workers are going to have to sit in meetings and develop more empathetic policies or come up with a sales pitch on why that video is wrong themselves. The CEO is probably going to have to talk to shareholders about it.
Next time they might look at the potential set of consequences (or another company might) and say it's not worth it.
> Brittney P. should be worried about her future job prospects. This video is now viral. I would think twice about hiring her.
This video reminds me of the cop who was suspended for continually posting TikTok videos of herself dancing while in uniform even after being warned multiple times to stop[0]. Her reaction was to keep doing it.
Regardless of who is right in this situation (neither side in my mind) this "blew up" and as you say there isn't a manager or org that isn't paying close attention to this. She's going to have serious challenges in getting her next role. Whether fair or not she's radioactive at this point. If nothing else if Britney P is in a two/all party recording consent state this is technically illegal. Not saying that's right but it is the law...
I'd go as far as to say I'd never hire her. Work is challenging enough without knowing a person you're working with could be manipulating/trapping you for their social media account(s) and actually has in the past. Right/wrong is often grey and a matter of perspective. One person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist.
To the people who are saying you would hire her and view this as admirable - fair enough but situations can be very subtle and you wouldn't feel the same way if she caught you on a bad/off day and setup a situation where you could very easily be portrayed as the "bad guy" and "put you on blast".
It's just not worth the risk.
Explanations for this in my mind:
1) Social media addiction is a real thing. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine the definition of addiction is "People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences."
2) Looking for any situation to serve as a springboard for a new "career" as a social media "personality".
3) Doing ANYTHING for fame or attention.
4) The only good explanation - wanting to bring attention to an unjust situation. My cynical and dim view of social media, "influencers", etc makes me think this is the most remote explanation. Even if this is the case situations where only one party knows they're on a stage gives them a massive advantage in these kinds of interactions and if you watch the video it's obvious from the start this was a trap. The Cloudflare employee on the other end of the line is completely incompetent and ironically should be fired for their performance for how they did overall but also for not recognizing this is clearly the case. As the linked article says right up front:
"This is a prime example of why you should always assume your employees are recording your conversations."
Great, what a wonderful environment we've created for ourselves.
It's one thing to record, it's another thing entirely to record and post to social media. If Britney P was solely collecting evidence/documentation she could have recorded the video and kept it to herself but no, straight to TikTok.
Slight tangent - also see the situation where a "prank" social media person was shot during one of their pranks[2]. The whole social media prank thing is completely disgusting to me and the fact a jury acquitted the shooter leads me to believe that taking advantage of ordinary people with these parasitic, dangerous, and obnoxious "pranks" (harassment) is disgusting to most people who aren't desperate social media addicts.
The social media person's response to this situation was unbelievable, with them saying "We’re gonna continue the videos. It is what it is". I believe they're also on record saying how great the entire thing was because it only lead to more attention and views... See 1-3 - you very well could have died and you might next time yet you lean in harder. Yeah, I'd say that meets the definition of addiction. It's no different than OD'...
It's actually the opposite imo. With polarizing events like some people will indeed dislike her greatly and judge her for it but others who agree with her position will rally behind her and go out of their way to hire her. As long as there are people in her camp, she has likely received an outcry of support and multiple interview requests with likely some leadership opportunities.
>With polarizing events like some people will indeed dislike her greatly and judge her for it but others who agree with her position will rally behind her and go out of their way to hire her. As long as there are people in her camp, she has likely received an outcry of support and multiple interview requests with likely some leadership opportunities.
It's not going to help her much if everyone rallying behind her are /r/antiwork type people.
Yeah, at that point you'll just have several videos of everyone looking bad, instead of just one.
I truly do believe that if/when people like this finally get their way and have nothing left to rail against, they'll simply look inward to their own group for something to take issue with, and around they go.
Honestly ask yourself, would some of the more vocal activists truly be happy if their mission was suddenly accomplished? Or would they discover that their existence now feels empty, and that their entire modus operandi actually revolved around eliciting strong emotions from others?
My point above was that this is more of a social media story than anything.
I can't imagine any reasonable organization looking at this and thinking it's positive. I see an irresponsible, attention seeking social media addict with serious boundary issues - violating everything from more-or-less professional standards (again gray, perspective), to her employment agreement, to the law for clicks/likes and/or "dunking on"/"owning"/"calling out" her employer.
As I keep saying this is all very gray and a matter of perspective. Anyone in a hiring position has to look at this and think "when are we going to do something she arbitrarily takes issue with and puts US on blast with an illegally recorded conversation, stolen documents, etc"?
It's like cheating on your wife, marrying your mistress, and then her being surprised when you cheat on her. If she did it to a previous employer she'd do it to you.
In the UK (and most other places with fairly strong employee protections I imagine) it becomes pretty difficult to get rid of employees once they've been around for a while. Often involving a lengthy "managing out" process.
Given this, it's common for a 3-6 month "probation period" when starting a new role in which you can be dismissed fairly arbitrarily. This makes sense given the commitment taking on an employee represents IMO.
As a result, it's very common for people to lose their jobs within a few months of starting. Just as I imagine a lot of relationships end after a rather short period of time or then tend to persist a bit longer. Sometimes it's clear things just aren't going to work out.
She's right in that it's a bit of a rug pull to get continuously good feedback and then suddenly get terminated. There should ideally never be any surprises. I.e. you'd always usually tell the employee what will happen if x does/doesn't happen, get them to agree and then when it pans out that way, no-one is shocked. But like I said.. she's been there what, 4 months? Just move on.
In the US, that does not happen. The expectation is someone only gets terminated in the first year if they are terrible. Unless it’s a tiny startup, such a stint would raise concerns.
Seems like a good system given the context in the US. Classic American hands off approach that it's more of an unspoken rule than legislation etc :)
But anyway, in many ways I can see a system that like working very well for some of the types of people that need it most (e.g. entry level, neurodiverse etc). Makes the 6 month probation system look harsher by comparison.
> The expectation is someone only gets terminated in the first year if they are terrible
That's an over generalization. I've walked a few people out the door within the first 3-6 months who weren't performing that well. They weren't terrible, just ultimately not a fit for one reason or another.
There's actually a debate in the biz/MBA world on "hire slow, fire fast"[0].
I believe Reed Hastings at Netflix has advocated in the past for a hybrid approach "hire fast, fire fast" - interviews can be nearly useless and unfair. See people who are excellent employees but poor "test takers" vs people who are actually terrible and incompetent but can crush an interview.
In my experience you just don't know what's going to happen until "the rubber meets the road".
You know, I was expected to hate that part from Reed Hastings when I first started reading it, but he is right. Interviews are nearly useless and unfair. Giving people a chance to learn technical and professional skills when you are starting out, even if you terminated later, is important.
That's interesting - I have always treated the first 3-6 months as a period to make sure the person is a fit and is ramping at the right speed, and letting them go if there is an issue within that period makes way more sense to me than keeping them on to struggle for a year. It's not a greater red flag for me to see someone got fired two months in than a year and a half in - in fact, the year and a half would cause me to ask a lot more questions.
> In the UK (and most other places with fairly strong employee protections I imagine)
People keep saying this, but I'm not at all convinced anyone commenting really understands UK employment law. It's really only after 2 years of working for the same company that you get any decent employment protection.
It takes a bit more legal work, but if within the first 2 years they don't want you, they can get rid of you. If you're within your first 3 months of probation, they can just extend it to 6 months and get rid of you.
The UK is not a great country these days to go "employment laws keep you safe". There are better ones.
If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.
So I made a very vague comment about it being more tricky to get rid of employees in the UK. If you think it's not actually that hard as "it takes a bit more legal work", great.. but we still seem to generally agree. It's a bit patronising to imply I know nothing about UK employment law because we have a small difference of opinion around how robust we would say the protections are.
It was a minor anecdotal comment based on my own experience of hiring/managing employees. Maybe I'm a crap manager but I've always found it labourious to get rid of people (especially passed the 2-year mark as you say). I may as well add that my wife has worked in HR for coming up to 15 years as well and I've been privy to all sorts of juicy legal drama via her.
I generally try and give every response to me some consideration but I'm not sure what else to say. Seems like maybe you just wanted to use my comment as a segway into your point about the erosion of employee protections, which you're entitled to do of course.
> Seems like maybe you just wanted to use my comment as a segway into your point about the erosion of employee protections, which you're entitled to do of course.
That’s like a quarter of the comments on HN at this point (minus the employee protections bit, usually it’s something much more insipid). It’s pretty much impossible not to trigger someone. Everyone’s got their pet issues and culture wars these days.
Well, that's...fine, I guess, right? I mean that's how conversations work in real life, right? Just as long as the parent commenter doesn't interpret it as a direct attack or a direct argument. It just takes the conversation down a different path.
I'll agree with the word choice of 'insipid' however...
Meh, you contributed to a certain meme and they contributed a counter-meme because they feel strongly about it. I don't see the problem though their tone might put you on the defense.
But these vague claims are how we end up with memes like "oh that would never happen in $place/Europe/Japan" and such.
>If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.
I think in the US employers would be more amenable to a four day work week than making it harder to fire people arbitrarily
Please show me the candidates that aren’t coin operated by big business. Either party is entirely beholden to the giant corporations and lobbyists. So voting literally does nothing.
>If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.
What would "better employment laws" look like for you? After all, the parent's theory was that she was fired because she was on the verge of getting additional employment protection, and her performance was mediocre, so rather than risk being saddled with an underperforming employee they fired her just to be safe. Stronger laws against termination would make this problem worse, either by causing companies to be even more aggressive to fire people before their probationary period ends, or try to mitigate risk earlier in the hiring pipeline.
Basically, once you've worked somewhere in the UK for 2+ years you generally have some statutory/default protections. One of which is a set of laws around unfair or "constructive" dismissal[1].
e.g. if we had a falling out and I fired you on the spot, you could take me to an employment tribunal. Likewise, if I made your life hell and essentially forced you to quit, it would amount to the same thing.
These laws ensure that formal, standardised disciplinary processes are followed. This makes sure that employees are subject to the same process as their peers and aren't treated unfairly and that there is a formal, documented justification if an employee is ever terminated.
From an employer POV, this is sometimes a bit annoying when an employee is a bit shit because -- barring cases of gross misconduct -- you still have to put them through the disciplinary song and dance before getting rid of them. "Managing out" is the process of essentially setting them up to fail, you put them on a PIP or something (Performance Improvement Plan) where you'd basically say "you need to be hitting these targets by this date or you're gone". A lot of the time both parties know the individual in question won't hit set targets so the whole thing often feels like a bit of theatre. Keeps things fair though and stops employers taking the piss.
I'm not an expert on US (or UK) employment law but my understanding is that terminating an employee in the US requires far less oversight/justification.
Unless you've worked at a UK company for at least 2 years you are effectively at-will and can be terminated for any or no reason, except a specifically illegal reason.
> As a result, it's very common for people to lose their jobs within a few months of starting.
The rest of your post seems to contradict this, or at least it's a bit inconsistent. You can lose your job during or at the end of the probation period, because the probation period didn't work out, but it's very uncommon to be laid off shortly after you've passed your probation period.
I guess you mean that this is the US, so this was a kind of "probation period" for her, but in that case it should have been made very clear that she was failing.
If you lay an employee off and it's a surprise to them, you've fucked up.
Yeah, very badly worded sorry. It's almost always at your "probationary review" when you either lose your job or get your position confirmed (or your probation extended in some cases).
Completely agree with your comment about any surprises being a big fail. I made a similar point even. Not well done
Her ability to "just move on" may be compromised by having a very short stay on her resume, and no reference.
I hope she finds something else quickly but many companies look for any red flags as sufficient reason not to take the risk. This kind of experience has real implications for a person's future prospects, at least for several years.
It certainly doesn't help the resume, but I doubt it hurts very much, if at all. This is sales, people understand the environment/current market dynamic, etc. Potential future employer will understand very well that Cloudflare had layoffs, that she was impacted and that's it.
As a manager, I've been told at some companies they don't need me there after providing all documentation (emails, 1:1 notes, missed expectations, etc). I think is an attempt to avoid getting into live arguments between the employee and the manager. They think is "easier" for the company (if clearly less human and personal) to have someone else deliver the message and try to move on, not get into answering too many questions, etc.
> "I-it could be that she didn't actually listen to the feedback, guys. What if she had bad feedback?!" (Implying, without evidence, that the employee is at fault. The most tone-deaf part of his response.)
> "Maybe she'd be a star on another team!" (Pointless sports analogy. Another tone-deaf moment.)
But I am not sure what else he could have said to claim this may not be as bad as it looks to save face; or to remind people that the video is but one slice of all facts and any black-and-white judgement one may make solely from it may be imperfect or unfair to parties involved. He did accept blame that they did not get this one right and that it was painful to watch. What else does public with near zero stake in the situation need to hear to be satisfied.
If I were a potential hire / investor / client -- yeah I may pay more attention and make some mental notes about how much I respect them as a company. But I dont think this was embarassingly bad to become a dealbreaker for any stakeholder. For me it mostly adds one more bit to a gestalt of how corporate functions and tech companies work these days.
This video also give us an example of a trend of recent years that is really awful:
In very short cycles, going on a hire spree and then redundancies plans without real consequences for the management or companies. Basically it costs them almost nothing to mess with people's lives.
For example, when doing unreasonable mass hiring, the market goes up, because it is a sign of growth. Then, when firing people in mass, the market value also goes up because it is supposed a sign for short term increased revenue.
In big tech, people are commodities, not human beings with lives. Its not just shown in the hire/fire cycle you mention, but also in how many companies let the most vile content thrive on their platforms, with no consideration about the harm it creates. All of this to make a buck or keep the stock prices up.
Here's a related question: will this video ultimately help or hinder her career? I've always feared that other companies will look at this sort of thing, regardless of who is "in the right", and want to distance themselves from a potential rabble rouser who might bring some future emergent attention to them as well.
Even if 1000 companies says she's wrong, it just takes 1 to agree for her to continue her career. Pretty good odds given the millions of views I'd speculate she has a job next week.
Hey, I'm more likely to hire her. She can stand up for herself and ask good questions in a difficult spot. That's the kind of employee I want.
(And several people on Twitter were saying, "I want to marry her." Indeed, that's what Jeff Bezos was looking for long ago. He said he wanted a woman who could bribe someone to get him out of a third-world prison. Well, he had that. Then he threw it away, in my completely uninformed opinion.)
> She can stand up for herself and ask good questions in a difficult spot.
And when she asks those questions and the person across the table says "I'm happy to get those answers for you and give them all to you, but I don't have them and can't get them right now in this meeting"...
... and she just keeps repeating the same question without moving forward?
They attacked her, but she, despite being outnumbered and vulnerable, defended and found a chink in their armor. For sure the smartest thing is to try to wiggle the knife, try to make the hole bigger, or at the very least more visible (lies reiterated, repeated). At the same time making the whole process painful for the attackers, turning the knife, knowing that they can't leave and need to stay and take it. Of course they would want to continue forward, leave the situation and repeat the same thing in another 10min firing session. But why would she cooperate with dishonest NPC?
Saw a variation of this during the recent bout of tech layoffs. Shortly before end of year eval time, a senior executive sent out emails questioning whether it was even possible for new hires to have made sufficient impact and suggesting they should consequently be given a poor rating as the default.
It's amazing that leaders at these companies which, for years, acted as though they had all the answers and were more successful than other industries because they worked smarter. And then, at the first sign of headwinds, they want no accountability for their decisions and can't figure out a principles as simple as being honest and treating people fairly.
I'm honestly curious how CloudFlare will handle reference checks for these people, given they are calling these performance based dismissals. Will they say they are "not eligible for rehire" (the HR way of saying they were terminated for cause)? If so, I hope they get sued, as that can tank a person's entire career trajectory.
>Again, you are responsible for paying FUTA and SUTA tax for your employees. And when former employees file for unemployment benefits, you are (indirectly) the one footing the bill.
>Benefit payments are charged to your employer tax account, which results in increased state tax rates. The more unemployment claims the state approves, the more you contribute for unemployment taxes.
At least in California, businesses pay rates that are partially determined by the number of UI claims the company has paid out. You get a letter-based score that has many different tiers.
Startups without a long history end up in the worst category be default, iirc.
>I'm honestly curious how CloudFlare will handle reference checks for these people, given they are calling these performance based dismissals. Will they say they are "not eligible for rehire" (the HR way of saying they were terminated for cause)? If so, I hope they get sued, as that can tank a person's entire career trajectory.
1. If you were fired for "performance" reasons, why would you want to use that as a reference?
2. IANAL, but regardless of whether "not eligible for rehire" will "tank a person's entire career trajectory", truth is a valid defense against defamation. If Cloudflare indeed is not going to rehire them, they're fairly safe from lawsuits.
I just got a new job, and they called every single company I had worked for to ask them if I worked there, what my position was, and whether I was eligible for rehire. I didn’t get a choice about whether to include each previous employer or not: my choice was between “do the background check” or “thanks for your application, we have decided to move forward with a different candidate.”
The only other thing I could have done was not included the ones with less-than-stellar experience, but then I wouldn’t have made it past the resume screen because of the gaps!
I just embrace the gaps personally. The idea of a terrible former employer costing me a new job sounds awful. My effort might be in vain anyway since background checks, from my understanding, show the entirety of your W2 history anyway
That depends I think on the demographic hiring her as the TikTok generation as you can see are all on her side (older generation might view her as young/inexperienced/whiny to entitled brat). It might be a good PR stunt to hire her and thus look good in the eyes of possibly the millions who commented in her favor.
As well after Covid things are different like people don't and don't want to work as hard as they use to. We value our own time more then our employers time. A very small dataset where I experienced this is going to fast or casual food restaurants 15 to 30 minutes before they close. Some will cuss you out in a nice way for you making them do their job close to closing hours.
> Some will cuss you out in a nice way for you making them do their job close to closing hours.
Try asking a Swiss man in his late 50s/early 60s at a Swiss bank to do a medium-sized but achievable task at 15:00 on a Friday and see what kind of response you get. I had several under me, so I know firsthand that you'll likely get grumbling and pushback. You'll probably get the work product, but it will come with critical commentary.
Sure and my experiences were at a McDonald's like fast food place we have in the US called Wendys and at a sub shop like Subway called Jersey Mikes.
I can semi understand 15 minutes at the sub shop and even asked the worker is it too late to make me a sub? She said no then proceeded to slam the meat, bread, etc on the counter, huff/puff and roll her eyes at me while her co-worker says we are closing soon. This same worker does this to many in the town as a handful of others complained about her in a FB group thread. She is still working there giving the same attitude. They are paid $20 an hour plus tips. After Coivd the employee is always right cause i guess they are hard to find now and retain.
> A very small dataset where I experienced this is going to fast or casual food restaurants 15 to 30 minutes before they close. Some will cuss you out in a nice way for you making them do their job close to closing hours.
I do not at all believe this is unique to the Tik-Tok generation.
> As well after Covid things are different like people don't and don't want to work as hard as they use to.
Do you have any evidence beyond anecdata for this assertion? My understanding is the "great resignation" was people upping their salary requirements, basically the willingness to break your body and soul for pennies is significantly lessened. In other words, minimum wage labor became more scarce and/or just more expensive. Are you willing to work for half of your current pay? If you were, would you work less hard?
For the knowledge that we do have, per the person being fired, they were a diligent worker. Seemingly to have done pretty well after a short ramp-up period even. This is why the firing is an even bigger kick in the nuts, she worked hard, was praised for that hard work by her manager, and then HR comes in and says she was not doing well at all. I would turn this around a bit, perhaps the older generation feels entitled that they can treat people like this.
> Some will cuss you out in a nice way for you making them do their job close to closing hours.
If you do this you're a jerk. They've already started the process of cleaning the kitchen because they want to leave at close like you want to leave at 5. Do you start something new at 4:45 or do you pack up? If you do this and really believe it's "making people do their jobs" you've graduated to asshole and they're treating you in kind. I understand that HN is full of people who either don't grok cultural norms or who balk at them saying "well if they don't want to serve you half an hour before close they should close a half hour early then." I'm not gonna tell you can't live your life that way but you can't be surprised when you eventually find yourself disrespecting someone by ignoring those norms and people getting angry at you for it.
Read my comment below I went to this sub shop many times ..where they know me as a customer and when I walked in I asked explicitly if they could still make me a sub.
Just noting my experiences this never happened before Covid..u work the shift you are scheduled and serve food til then. Now if the owner of the business is isn't paying them beyond their shift yet their employees are getting blamed that's not right.
The counterpoint to this is: if the restaurant wants to stop serving food at 4:45 so the staff can leave at 5, they should close at 4:45 instead of 5.
"Closing time" is external-facing, and customers shouldn't be expected to know that it actually means "4:45 so the staff can go home at 5".
It's not a cultural thing, it's about clearly setting expectations. If you publicly state that closing time is 5, and you're not okay with someone coming in to order at 4:45, that's on you, not them. Trying to justify "you can't order a half hour before closing" as a "cultural norm" is just making excuses for poor communication, imo.
Besides, isn't expecting everyone to understand your specific cultural norms fairly... Exclusionary?
Well per their comment there is now such a cultural norm and it's ok to cuss out with your body language and attitude to treat customers as such. That worker does it to others per Facebook comments about that jersey mikes. 7 months later she is still there so just maybe this is the new norm ..not one that makes sense but Covid changed the game some to a lot.
No, the cultural norm is that it's respectful to the workers to not go to a sit down restaurant less than an hour before it closes or a fast casual place less than a half hour before it closes. That time is for the people currently eating in the restaurant to finish up while the staff clean the kitchen but before they're asked to leave.
So someone who comes in during that time and insists on ordering food means they have to clean then kitchen again and stay even longer after close. So while it's praiseworthy to keep your composure when you're not being shown respect I won't fault them for begrudgingly doing what they ask and conveying that.
They were asked and could've said as I knew them for two years as a customer to say I cleaned things up ..could come tomorrow. As well my other example ..,Wendy's 30 minutes before closing saying do u really went to order we are closing soon.
What time is the right time to go in and get a sub or a burger when their hours clearly say 10 to 10?
I think it's a valuable skill to develop a sensitivity towards how workers are treated by their employers and how your own actions, however small to you, can have a big impact on them.
We all know by now that low paying jobs don't just pay poorly, but take everything they can from their employees. Closing at 5PM means clocking out, then locking the door at 5PM. If a customer came in at 4:45PM and you had to stop cleanup, start cooking, then cleanup again after 5PM that's a shame. Maybe you need to be better at your job. And you're a part time employee, so you don't qualify for overtime. Do better next time.
Service workers are treated like garbage, by their employers and by customers.
No one is making excuses for poor communication either. Don't you think that the kid mopping the floor would like to explicitly articulate in every way he knows how that it's only a real asshole who comes in asking for a french dip 5 minutes before closing? Or should he maybe a make a sign to put on the door underneath the business hours describing how, though he can't make you, it'd make his life a lot better if you didn't order food during the last half our of the day? How long would he have a job?
The thing about "cultural norms" (why not "norms?") is that expecting everyone to understand them is precisely what makes them "norms" in the first place.
It's simple lock their doors at 845pm that says it all and I'm fine with it because it's confusing otherwise! I also had similar issue at Wendy's 30 minutes before closing time.
Overall and again I'm confused as to When is the appropriate time to go and get food from a place when their hours say 10am to 10pm?
I would personally say to expect the kitchen to start finishing around 9:15pm. Unless it’s a super high traffic place or a place where they do online orders as well, I would avoid going as much as possible after 9:15pm, and I would not even bother after about 9:40pm
Then why even say your open 10 to 10 when you are only serving til 930pm (allow 30 minutes for worker clean up)? Just close at 930 and they are paid til 10pm.
Anything else makes zero logical sense when a business explicitly states business hours are 10am to 10pm. Throughout my posts here I've noted 15 minutes before closing I'm empathetic to and even explicitly asked the worker at the sub shop is it too late which should could've said I've cleaned up could you come tomorrow. Yet 30 minutes ..isn't cause then what's next 45 minutes.. 60 minutes..whenever they feel like it and business hours that are posted have no meaning!
This was never a thing before Covid ..15 minutes possibly but 30 minutes never and that's the gist of my argument! People are lazier and value their time more then their employers and or their employers no longer pay them beyond closing hours (something changed)! As well could be a mix of both.
To be fair a lot of places do publish a “kitchen closes at”, or at least mark it on the menu, so folks coming in after 9:30 know that they can have a drink but that’s it.
I think that’s the best solution to be honest, but it’s not done everywhere.
The thing about "cultural norms" (why not "norms?") is that expecting everyone to understand them is precisely what makes them "norms" in the first place.
It's "cultural norms" because it only extends to the scope of some population of people. These tend to break down when outsiders become involved, because one population's norms aren't always the same as another's.
This is why I have preference towards being explicit. If you don't want to make food after 4:30pm, put up a sign that says the kitchen closes at 4:30pm. Then it's explicit, and you don't have to rely on the implicit understanding of "cultural norms" in order to effectively communicate that you don't want to be making food later than 4:30pm.
It removes potential sources of ambiguity in favor of explicitly stating your preferences. This generally works better for all parties involved.
But we don't have the ideal. We have employers calling the shots about what "we close at 5pm" means, and employees who would love to explicitly, in very clear language, explain why coming in within minutes of closing ruins their day. But if they did that, they'd lose their jobs.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fix what's broken. I'm saying because it's broken and that while it's broken, don't be an asshole to people stuck in the broken system.
My own personal experiences and I anonymously created a post on Facebook discussing two anonymous local fast food & casual chains on a local FB group noting my experiences. The majority said I was in the wrong and the majority were 44 years and below (so not just the TikTok generation ..gen z). Older then that it skewed something like if are scheduled your shift to serve food you do so until closing time. There could be factors in play like the employees are not paid beyond their shift hours and they are taking the blame for crappy franchise owners.
Also to me it makes sense that this change has occurred and or I and others are experiencing the same thing. If there's a worker shortage band it's hard to retain workers the rule change as an owner so you can keep your business going especially where there's huge demand (jersey mikes for example)for what your selling.
Most of my opinions are downvoted and disliked ... been on here since 2007. Yet like how i hated and pointed out Cruise was another Uber (they needed to get off the streets cause bro culture was driving it .. fake it before you make it with a startup that's product 1 ton or more robot car that's learning as it goes isn't any place for fake it before you make it) and many other instances my opinions are a lot of times forward thinking.
As well when i pitched the idea of sharing battery power between two phones to Intel and Mark Burnett (producer of the Voice, Survivor, etc) on his inventor reality show in 2015 ... in 2019 Samsung added this feature into their phones (Wireless Powershare). As well created an idea in Feb 2013 (long ago lol) that turned multiple phones into one synced speaker via a web app..in March 2013 Samsung announced they were putting this same tech into their phones and in April 2013 Google invited me to discuss putting our tech into the Moto X. My take here per my experiences /intuition is that ppl do not work as hard and care as much in low level to even some high level jobs due to worker shortages and or their companies aren't paying them beyond their shift.
I think two things can be true at the same time in this situation:
1) The employee made a poor choice posting meeting recording publicly.
2) The company did an appallingly poor job terminating her.
Certainly this video makes me believe that cloudflare is likely a poorly managed company that treats its employees badly. As for Ms. Pietsch, she may be a low performing employee who made a bad choice to post this video.
I think it’s interesting how subjective this can apparently be. What I saw in the video was someone standing up for themselves and fighting against perceived wrongdoing in an articulate way. That’s exactly the type of person I want on my team. I’d hire them in a heartbeat.
Recording and posting company videos is bad in the general sense, but not in this case. There’s nothing sensitive or confidential in the video that was posted. The fact that she posted this specific video doesn’t make me assume that she would go and post other videos that do have confidential information, and if a company is embarrassed by their actions in this situation, that says more about the company than it does this employee.
I doubt this is career suicide. It might even do the opposite by getting this person’s name and situation out there.
> What I saw in the video was someone standing up for themselves and fighting against perceived wrongdoing in an articulate way. That’s exactly the type of person I want on my team. I’d hire them in a heartbeat.
Initially. But then they respond by saying that they are willing to follow up with her separately with the answers to her questions, but they don't have them there and then. Not having them there and then is a failing on their part, absolutely. But she won't let go. "How was my performance bad?" repeatedly. At some point in the video it goes from someone having a legitimate grievance to someone just trying to make a point and not listening to feedback or responses.
I'm not naive. I've been on the receiving end of it. But once she's got that answer, it's clearly evident that's the answer you're getting. Refusing to move on from that isn't productive in a business setting, is more my thought.
(I literally had a PIP where my manager 100% ghosted me through the entire PIP, and I created all the work products requested in the PIP, and had documentary evidence that he did not once look at a single one of them. And then when he sat there in the last meeting with HR, and openly, repeatedly lied that he'd reviewed it all and that it was of an unsatisfactory level and that I could have been retained if it had been to a higher level, and I shared my screen filled with "Shared with X. Last Viewed: Never" on GDocs... he turned off his camera and just said the decision was made.
Which it was. I didn't expect it to be changed, nor did I particularly want it to be changed. But I did want his "openly lied to both employees and to HR over personnel issues" on the record. And it was. There was no point to keep repeating it twenty times over. It vented her frustration on a personal level but I'm not sure it shows good business judgment on her part (realize that's not mutually exclusive to CF not showing good business judgment either).
You might want to hire this person but the question is if your boss would want them. There is a high chace they wouldn’t want to hire specifically this disobedient person.
Disobedient? She's being fired. Honestly, I think the whole thing is mostly a nothing burger. Gen not-my-gen finding out about capitalism and at-will employment at the worst time, I guess. Watching tech over the last year makes it clear how out of touch lots of people are. Employers, employees, exploiters, exploitees. Especially the highly-comped ones. All of the sudden surprised the gravy train has run out.
> There is a high chace they wouldn’t want to hire specifically this disobedient person.
I had a niggling suspicion the opposing views on her employability are because the commenters are on opposite ends of the authoritarian axis.
My thesis is people who strongly believe in (power) hierarchies as the natural order of things will see her actions as unacceptable, and an affront to social order itself since she has proven she can't be trusted to submit to the rightful authority regardless of circumstances.
She specifically set herself up to be recorded and then shared it across the internet. That is the problem part, not her questioning of the HR people (which was a show for the camera!) That kind of “I’m the main character” type energy would be a lot to deal with, especially for a 4 month employee.
Yes, she didn't follow the rules. Whether one views that as inherently problematic broadly follows the value-system I outlined earlier. I think her breaking (the letter of) the rules is amply justified in this case - others clearly disagree. AFAICT, she didn't violate the spirit if the rules - no confidential. information was revealed.
People's names, roles in the company, and voices were revealed. If you Google "rosie cloudflare hr", the top result is a LinkedIn profile for Rosemary J. Fantozzi, who works in GTM HR. That profile is now hidden or deleted, and it's not hard to figure out why.
I have no regard at all for corporate rules, but I do for privacy and privacy laws. Brittany may have broken the law by making the recording (Georgia is a one-party state, but she couldn't know where the other people in the meeting were -- New York is also one-party, but California for example is all-party), but either way it was poor judgment to release it without at least redacting names and roles.
You're wrong. The California Supreme Court, for example, has said so explicitly, for the general case. That leaves the question of this specific case, which nobody here is qualified to judge.
Either way, tech is in California, and she's definitely going to lose out on opportunities because of this. The good news for Brittany is that a bunch of companies will try to hire her right now purely for clout, so she'll be fine.
> People's names, roles in the company, and voices were revealed. If you Google "rosie cloudflare hr", the top result is a LinkedIn profile for Rosemary J. Fantozzi, who works in GTM HR
As you noted, Rosie's name and title was already public on LinkedIn! So it's just the voice that was possibly non-public, and I don't think that's widely considered to be "confidential information".
As for breaking the law, I consider thr actions to be whistleblowing on a layoff disguised as performance-related firing (as evidenced bu the recording!) Realizing this information is in the public's interest, she showed excellent judgement and robustly defended herself against a sham dismissal that makes a mockery of norms: most companies have the decency to place "poor performers" on PIPs (even when the poor performance is due to stack-ranking rather than failure to do assigned duties). Firing someone for poor performance out of the blue, without giving them feedback about it first is immoral (and hopefully illegal considering employment is at-will. That could have fired her fir any reason, but I suppose they don't want to trigger layoff-provisions)
Salespeople need to face overwhelming failure and keep going. They need to ignore social cues that would cause most people to back off. They need to be aggressive and challenging.
Getting rid of this salesperson seems like a big loss for Cloudflare.
She wasn't a good fit for CF, so maybe she would be a good fit at your company instead?
"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."
> 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.
1) This is complete hogwash and absolutely cements that I want nothing to do with Cloudflare.
I've worked in enterprise sales. I've also worked with sales as engineering support. I've also been the senior technical rep that sales had to sell to, too.
3 months on a newbie barely gets you up to the point that you can probably go into a client and shadow a senior and talk about a couple Powerpoint slides without completely embarassing yourself. That's it. It certainly doesn't get you the ability to handle an account or do a close.
Some of our later best salespeople looked completely useless at 3 months.
2) This is the kind of shitty "we're sorry you're offended" apology that dribbles out of every shitty CEO's mouth.
The fact that Cloudflare is STILL trying to stick with "fired for cause" after being put on blast is a gigantic red klaxon.
How many people did they treat like this before they finally got their chain yanked over it? What's the punishment for the people who did this? And how do they plan to make this right?
I don't see any of that, thanks. Hopefully some of the Cloudflare competitors are ready to make hay over this.
I don't know about your specific quoted nit. I had a period in my life where I went on 100+ first dates, in a very short amount of time. I got to the point where I could tell within a few minutes if this person and I would click or not. I always finished the date though, so I also got a chance to make a bunch of friends too, which was awesome. Had I just got up and walked away, that wouldn't have been the kind and humane thing. That is where CloudFlare messed up and he admits it.
I imagine with 1500 employees + ~160 a year, over the course of several years, you get a good feeling for which ones are going to make it. CloudFlare is a relatively technical product, I'm sure they are looking for the type of sales people who are going to more than come up to speed in those 3 months. Probably someone who already has had highly technical sales jobs. Maybe she slipped through their own hiring process. That is on CF, but I wouldn't hold them to the fire for that.
I worked in the IT department for a large porn company. It was literally part of the interview process that you would be exposed to porn in the workplace. We would filter people based on their reaction to that... most of the time, it was people who were actually too excited by the prospect. The point being that is that we made the working environment clear from the start, even though it was obvious.
After a long enough period of time of being in business, CF probably has a great collection of sales people. I've dealt with some of them myself and been extremely impressed. If I were them, wouldn't want to dilute the pool. But, for someone to go into an environment like that not knowing that was the case, and then being surprised at the end... something is wrong with that, which again, he admits to above. Either that, or we have to question her motivations. Given the obvious high bar that CloudFlare exhibits in their sales teams, I'd say both are on the table for consideration.
At the end of the day, we won't ever know all of the details in this story, which makes me less motivated to take either side. It is really just a story to make you emotional and get clicks, than it is about right or wrong.
A churn and burn sales team cycle does not speak to a high bar. The companies I've worked with that have taken this approach have been the least thoughtful, and the least productive, usually relying on high pressure sales tactics that yes, most people are not cut out for.
Sales is a profession that anyone can do, because it's a ubiquitous life skill. If it's so easy for them to tell at three months the employee isn't working out, why can't they figure that out in three interviews? What critical info comes out in 90 days of work that can't be extracted during a 2 month long interview process? It's far more likely that they have no idea who will and won't turn out to be a good fit, and that these kinds of 'for cause' firings are meant to 'positively' motivate the remaining workforce, or are due to internal budgeting that is in no way related to the salesperson.
3 months of which was ramp, another 2 weeks of which was holiday. She was given bad manager feedback, no chance to correct, and fired without proper explanation. To her, this was churn and burn, and I wouldn't be surprised if the other 40 people fired where similarly treated.
If my job is sales and I hadn't closed a single deal in 4 months, I'd have quit myself. I'd either take the blame upon myself or I would have figured that this company already saturated the market, or has a bad product that nobody wants. The easy route is blaming someone else.
Do you not understand how ramp works? She would not be allowed to a sell during the first three months, or only with direct supervision. I'd be very surprised if you've ever worked in a sales first position, given this basic misunderstanding.
You're correct, I'm not a sales person, which is maybe why I'm finding it hard to be sympathetic to her firing.
"She closed zero sales 4.5 months into a 3 month ramp."
She had 1 month, after 3 months of ramp, to close something. Based on that, alone... I'd still stick by my comments above. If she has even a single peer closing even a single tiny deal in that 1 month, then she's already at the bottom of the list.
1 month, 2 weeks of which was holidays. As someone with extensive sales background, I'd advise you to step back and realize your judgements are heavily under informed.
If I were still in the business, and someone posted a video of me fucking up this badly as a manager, I'd be embarrassed, but I wouldn't hold it against them; rather, I'd try to fuck up less badly in the future.
She seems like a good hire:
-smells bullshit
-calls it out
-articulate throughout
-keeps cool, even while being fired, and while clearly (successfully) fighting back her emotions
-defends her position, and doesn't back down when weak and unsatisfactory answers are provided
I can't comment on the quality of her work, but she seems tenacious and put together. She'd have done very well in the bank I worked at last. I hope she's swamped with offers from better companies.
We need to stop blaming victims and instead stand up for them. If the person who published the video suffers in any way shape of form as a result then cloudflare needs to be held accountable. That company is already on my shitlist. Potentially as low as microsoft, or openai. And that’s quite an achievement.
> Plus the act of career suicide by publishing company meeting recordings on social media.
I'm very much older than the TikTok generation and I APPLAUD this kind of thing.
Companies have been getting away with too much garbage for way too long by hiding it. Forcing every dumbass minion to realize that they may be on blast at any moment means that both the company and individuals have to start thinking about not being complete shits.
Either this is a layoff and they're doing something legally shady or this is a stack-ranking termination and we all know how to regard companies doing that.
No matter what the reason is: Cloudflare comes out of this looking completely terrible.
Background checks only confirm information given as part of an application. Employment and job title.
References however can be more about the quality of the work including "would you work with this person again?"
HR only does the background check part. The job of an HR department is to make the company look good. They do not want to start a conversation about how they hire bad employees or initiate a conversation where the former employer will tell their side of the story.
I'm not going to be that extreme. But I needed an instance today and I definitely didn't set up anything on Cloudflare for this project. Maybe in time I'll migrate everything. I used to think they were pretty cool but when they pull stunts like this I think they aren't a great place.
She might be an underperforming employee who made a bad decision in posting the recording to the web, but that does not take away from the fact that how the employer handled the call was truly disastrous and unprofessional.
>Wait...the theater major who hasn't closed anything six months into her job (LinkedIn) and was oddly made up with stage makeup for her termination conversation was just "totally surprised" by this?
Ya the guy who posted that is an obvious sales shill. I wouldn't be surprised if he has or wants a relationship with CloudFlare or some higher up in it. He goes out of his way to point out she put on makeup for the call? I mean he's in sales, women have to look good in that profession. What exactly is stage makeup vs regular makeup? What exactly is the point of denegrating her degree? I'm sure he doesn't degrade his own female employees for wearing makeup on any professional interaction. He didn't even get the employment timespans right.
I mean terminations happen, no reason to be scummy about it, Peter. It makes you look really unprofessional too.
Anyway, good luck lady. I hope you find a better company for you.
I'm glad people are finally outing companies that do this. People need to take these actions into consideration when deciding to join companies like Cloudflare.
The language really gets me. Maybe (happily) I've been out of corporate America for too long to get it...
"...part ways with you..." --> "We've decided to fire you."
"...Rosie might be better to explain the process of who's giving this information..." --> "Rosie can talk about why it's us vs. your manager."
"...this is a collective calibration for Cloudflare..." --> what the fuck?
"...if you can respect that. We can totally respect that..." --> at a loss
"...meet the expectations that you're communicating to us..." --> "...tell you what you want to know..."
"...give you the data that was calibrated..." --> ...how do you calibrate data? FFS.
"...extremely traumatizing for people..." --> ha ha ha...goddamn snowflake. You're getting fired, it's not fun, but it's not like watching your buddies get blown up in front of you and waking up in bed screaming for the next forty years.
"...I cannot speak to what your manager has communicated to you directly..." --> "I don't know what your manager said"
"...I hear you and what you're saying..." --> "I understand"
"...from a process perspective, your questions are valid but this isn't going to be the forum and situation where..." --> "We aren't going to have that conversation with you now"
"...I don't think there's anything we can say in this moment and today..." --> "Sorry"
In particular, what's up with the duplication? "this moment & today", etc.? I hear it from people with a low bureaucratic position a lot. Think firefighter making an announcement, HR drone, etc.
truly rolled over laughing at "collective calibration". kudos to you for going over their BS speak line by line and laying it bare. At the risk of generalization, HR at most companies in the US are truly tone deaf these days.
Very strange. If it's a layoff, just say it's a layoff and follow the standard procedure. It's bad but nothing fundamentally wrong if it has to happen. If it's about performance, like the article says, the employee should be warned with metrics and other evidence. That's why companies like Amazon have procedures like pip to "ensure" a performance related firing has its basis (even though pip is often abused there, whatever, at least in theory that's something). I don't think this will go well
1) the saleswoman did not make any sales during her trial period, so she is justifiable fired.
2) what she did, recording the meeting without the other part knowladgement is borderline (if not totally) illegal.
3) Her actitude was condescending and snobby. Thing that probably justify her situation.
4) Uploading this to TikTok is completely unappropriated, and probable professional suicide.
5) The way the company assigned a random person to fire her over zoom is definitely not nice, her manager should have done that. Also it looks like the way this company works and she know that during the period she also remotely worked for them.
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BUT, having worked in tech for well over a decade now, you should absolutely 100% not believe any feedback that's given to you. She's in sales. She should understand that there's exactly 1 metric that matters, closing deals. I'm not saying it's her fault she got fired, but this should really be a lesson for everyone watching this video. Do not believe what they tell you.
So let's say a manager tells their sales rep to focus on understanding well what the customer needs, before closing the deal. Sales rep doesn't give credit to the manager and rushes for a close. Customer turns out to be a bad fit for company's products and services. Now, the company has a liability.
Management exists for a reason. There cannot be “exactly 1 metric” in any job, unless it's paper clip maximization.
It sure seems like Cloudflare are just culling staff to me, or her manager has no managerial abilities and doesn't know how to give genuinely useful feedback.
If it was her performance that was in question, there would be a trail, maybe even a car crash worth of evidence to back up that claim.
I don't think she will have issues finding work, unless having high standards, conducting yourself in a professional manner, and fighting for yourself and for your peers are considered a bad things.
I think Richard Branson (Virgin) once said, "Treat your staff how you would like them to treat your best customer." - unfortunatrly that doesn't appear to be the mantra at Cloudflare.
People complain about corporations sending out emails to notify people they have been fired or laid off. This person posting a hit video is a prime example why companies make things as brief as possible with no interaction available.
I mean yes.. but depending on company policy on training/Co thats expected...
It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1 - those are usually dead times of year.
Unless your sales org is a puppy mill/boiler room… which many are.
Also, in this case they cut a huge amount of the sales org, this seems more like a “shit we over hired and need to lay people off without it being a layoff, let’s use performance…” shenanigans.
I've worked at a few enterprise software companies in the US, and Q4 is always the busiest time for sales. Having a deal roll into Q1 is very undesirable, so sales people do what they can do close before the end of the year. Q1 is incredibly quiet.
On the Engineering side, yes - Q4 and Q1 are super quiet as sales is driving the economic machine in Q4, and everyone's doing planning in Q1.
Yes, but not if you're still ramping. The sales cycle for Cloudflare is probably 6-24 months. Unless you've stepped in on a deal that's basically about to close, you're not going to be closing just because it's Q4.
That she goes on to try and rub their noses in her shortcomings tells me all I need to know who was at fault here.
Q4 is a dead time of year? I swear some of you have never had jobs.
It's funny that you say this then go on to accuse others of never having had jobs.
I've worked around enterprise sales for years and it's entirely possible for reps to go 3 quarters without closing business if they're in a strategic patch or they're trying to build a new vertical/geo. Sales cycles run anywhere from 6-24 months of you're selling enterprise software of any substance or scale, and unless you're getting hot deals from the last person, you're going to be starting most of those at 0. That's why we have ramps.
That said, there are definitely metrics you can look at to see if someone is on the right path at the 3/6 month mark. It's just not necessarily closed business.
The deal sizes are usually much higher; consequently, you need more people with authority to be in agreement that the purchase is worth it.
To do that, you need to make relationships, navigate corporate hierarchies, get on calendars, etc. All of that takes time.
It is possible that this person wasn't doing any of that, hence the termination. This is very unlikely if this was a bulk termination. Doubly so given that she was hired so close to the holidays.
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.
We also see from Matthew Prince's reply to the video that he is also an unreliable participant as he is suggesting that a manager would always be involved in redundancies, and we can see from the video that was not the case.
> Brittney P. should be worried about her future job prospects. This video is now viral. I would think twice about hiring her.
If you would avoid hiring a person because they might expose your shitty practices, that says more about your practices than about the person.
Most employee NDAs will include a non disparage clause in the agreement. Its standard.
This is Why we have glassdoor forums. So you can disparage anonymously.
Or maybe she didnt sign the NDA and if so disparage away just dont expect other emoloyers to come running to you.
So yes, it depends on who's judging, but it certainly can be, disparagement.
[1] https://ogletree.com/insights-resources/blog-posts/negotiati...
I don't think that merely posting a video, where Clourflare's employees and policies acted stupidly and callously of their own accord, qualifies as a "statement" for the purposes of law.
If I posted a video of the CEO of united, in a drag, at a public event, and I was subject to a non disparage contract with United, im not so sure I would be fine even though all I did is post an act, with no commentary, that was public.
IANAL so I suppose it would be up for a judge to determine my intent. If the stock price drops and the CEO gets fired, do I walk away scot free?
Based on that video alone and the skill she used in communicating with HR, she's a brillant sales person. No doubt about it.
She comes across well, thinks on her feet and is assertive without being even remotely unreasonable.
"Thinking that as a salesman you have to sell things is an archaic take on sales."
Nope! Often there's money left over for whatever reason, and in many places if you don't use it this year, you'll lose it next year. Nothing like walking out of a decrepit meeting room in November and then back into the same meeting room in late January but now it's kitted out with 3x50" TV's and a studio quality camera.
> yourself and your potential customers taking vacation time
Only if all the important initiatives have been finalised before the end of the year! The buyers have targets they're supposed to be hitting also, and often one of those is "purchased a new CRM/ERP/WTF for implementation in FYx+1".
She seems passionate and strong. I like her fight and pushback.
Not only that, she comes off as authentic and sold her side of the story very well with that video. She speaks clearly and cogently, even while emotions are clearly bubbling. I think that video shows her skills as a salesperson in action.
Good leaders hire people who keep them in check. Poor leaders hire people they can walk over.
She is making them pay a much greater cost than her severance in PR and that benefits me because I am more likely to be in her position than I am to be in the CEO's position.
I straight up won't work for CloudFlare now after seeing this and the CEOs feeble response. CloudFlare is now in the category of "corporate" in my head.
I would rather live in a country made of people like her than a country made of people who don't fight back when they feel wronged.
Corporate America is able to be a steaming pile of garbage because most people think like you and not her, so there are no consequences for HR assholes being HR assholes, and since there are no consequences, the dehumanizing behavior keeps on going. She provided consequences. Now those HR workers are going to have to sit in meetings and develop more empathetic policies or come up with a sales pitch on why that video is wrong themselves. The CEO is probably going to have to talk to shareholders about it.
Next time they might look at the potential set of consequences (or another company might) and say it's not worth it.
The least we owe her is solidarity.
I'm definitely not defending Cloudflare on this but that's much easier to do when you're the only party knowing the interaction is going to TikTok.
This video reminds me of the cop who was suspended for continually posting TikTok videos of herself dancing while in uniform even after being warned multiple times to stop[0]. Her reaction was to keep doing it.
Regardless of who is right in this situation (neither side in my mind) this "blew up" and as you say there isn't a manager or org that isn't paying close attention to this. She's going to have serious challenges in getting her next role. Whether fair or not she's radioactive at this point. If nothing else if Britney P is in a two/all party recording consent state this is technically illegal. Not saying that's right but it is the law...
I'd go as far as to say I'd never hire her. Work is challenging enough without knowing a person you're working with could be manipulating/trapping you for their social media account(s) and actually has in the past. Right/wrong is often grey and a matter of perspective. One person's freedom fighter is another person's terrorist.
To the people who are saying you would hire her and view this as admirable - fair enough but situations can be very subtle and you wouldn't feel the same way if she caught you on a bad/off day and setup a situation where you could very easily be portrayed as the "bad guy" and "put you on blast".
It's just not worth the risk.
Explanations for this in my mind:
1) Social media addiction is a real thing. According to the American Society of Addiction Medicine the definition of addiction is "People with addiction use substances or engage in behaviors that become compulsive and often continue despite harmful consequences."
2) Looking for any situation to serve as a springboard for a new "career" as a social media "personality".
3) Doing ANYTHING for fame or attention.
4) The only good explanation - wanting to bring attention to an unjust situation. My cynical and dim view of social media, "influencers", etc makes me think this is the most remote explanation. Even if this is the case situations where only one party knows they're on a stage gives them a massive advantage in these kinds of interactions and if you watch the video it's obvious from the start this was a trap. The Cloudflare employee on the other end of the line is completely incompetent and ironically should be fired for their performance for how they did overall but also for not recognizing this is clearly the case. As the linked article says right up front:
"This is a prime example of why you should always assume your employees are recording your conversations."
Great, what a wonderful environment we've created for ourselves.
It's one thing to record, it's another thing entirely to record and post to social media. If Britney P was solely collecting evidence/documentation she could have recorded the video and kept it to herself but no, straight to TikTok.
Slight tangent - also see the situation where a "prank" social media person was shot during one of their pranks[2]. The whole social media prank thing is completely disgusting to me and the fact a jury acquitted the shooter leads me to believe that taking advantage of ordinary people with these parasitic, dangerous, and obnoxious "pranks" (harassment) is disgusting to most people who aren't desperate social media addicts.
The social media person's response to this situation was unbelievable, with them saying "We’re gonna continue the videos. It is what it is". I believe they're also on record saying how great the entire thing was because it only lead to more attention and views... See 1-3 - you very well could have died and you might next time yet you lean in harder. Yeah, I'd say that meets the definition of addiction. It's no different than OD'...
It's not going to help her much if everyone rallying behind her are /r/antiwork type people.
I truly do believe that if/when people like this finally get their way and have nothing left to rail against, they'll simply look inward to their own group for something to take issue with, and around they go.
Honestly ask yourself, would some of the more vocal activists truly be happy if their mission was suddenly accomplished? Or would they discover that their existence now feels empty, and that their entire modus operandi actually revolved around eliciting strong emotions from others?
I can't imagine any reasonable organization looking at this and thinking it's positive. I see an irresponsible, attention seeking social media addict with serious boundary issues - violating everything from more-or-less professional standards (again gray, perspective), to her employment agreement, to the law for clicks/likes and/or "dunking on"/"owning"/"calling out" her employer.
As I keep saying this is all very gray and a matter of perspective. Anyone in a hiring position has to look at this and think "when are we going to do something she arbitrarily takes issue with and puts US on blast with an illegally recorded conversation, stolen documents, etc"?
It's like cheating on your wife, marrying your mistress, and then her being surprised when you cheat on her. If she did it to a previous employer she'd do it to you.
Given this, it's common for a 3-6 month "probation period" when starting a new role in which you can be dismissed fairly arbitrarily. This makes sense given the commitment taking on an employee represents IMO.
As a result, it's very common for people to lose their jobs within a few months of starting. Just as I imagine a lot of relationships end after a rather short period of time or then tend to persist a bit longer. Sometimes it's clear things just aren't going to work out.
She's right in that it's a bit of a rug pull to get continuously good feedback and then suddenly get terminated. There should ideally never be any surprises. I.e. you'd always usually tell the employee what will happen if x does/doesn't happen, get them to agree and then when it pans out that way, no-one is shocked. But like I said.. she's been there what, 4 months? Just move on.
Seems like a good system given the context in the US. Classic American hands off approach that it's more of an unspoken rule than legislation etc :)
But anyway, in many ways I can see a system that like working very well for some of the types of people that need it most (e.g. entry level, neurodiverse etc). Makes the 6 month probation system look harsher by comparison.
That's an over generalization. I've walked a few people out the door within the first 3-6 months who weren't performing that well. They weren't terrible, just ultimately not a fit for one reason or another.
I believe Reed Hastings at Netflix has advocated in the past for a hybrid approach "hire fast, fire fast" - interviews can be nearly useless and unfair. See people who are excellent employees but poor "test takers" vs people who are actually terrible and incompetent but can crush an interview.
In my experience you just don't know what's going to happen until "the rubber meets the road".
[0] - https://hbr.org/2014/03/hire-slow-fire-fast
People keep saying this, but I'm not at all convinced anyone commenting really understands UK employment law. It's really only after 2 years of working for the same company that you get any decent employment protection.
It takes a bit more legal work, but if within the first 2 years they don't want you, they can get rid of you. If you're within your first 3 months of probation, they can just extend it to 6 months and get rid of you.
The UK is not a great country these days to go "employment laws keep you safe". There are better ones.
If you don't want these rug pulls and employment laws to keep getting watered down, instead of asking about 4 day work weeks, start voting for candidates and parties that have better employment laws at the top of their policies.
It was a minor anecdotal comment based on my own experience of hiring/managing employees. Maybe I'm a crap manager but I've always found it labourious to get rid of people (especially passed the 2-year mark as you say). I may as well add that my wife has worked in HR for coming up to 15 years as well and I've been privy to all sorts of juicy legal drama via her.
I generally try and give every response to me some consideration but I'm not sure what else to say. Seems like maybe you just wanted to use my comment as a segway into your point about the erosion of employee protections, which you're entitled to do of course.
That’s like a quarter of the comments on HN at this point (minus the employee protections bit, usually it’s something much more insipid). It’s pretty much impossible not to trigger someone. Everyone’s got their pet issues and culture wars these days.
I'll agree with the word choice of 'insipid' however...
ITYM "segue".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Heselden
But these vague claims are how we end up with memes like "oh that would never happen in $place/Europe/Japan" and such.
I think in the US employers would be more amenable to a four day work week than making it harder to fire people arbitrarily
Unfortunately they may have other less savoury policies. Which is [one of several reasons] why I don't vote.
What would "better employment laws" look like for you? After all, the parent's theory was that she was fired because she was on the verge of getting additional employment protection, and her performance was mediocre, so rather than risk being saddled with an underperforming employee they fired her just to be safe. Stronger laws against termination would make this problem worse, either by causing companies to be even more aggressive to fire people before their probationary period ends, or try to mitigate risk earlier in the hiring pipeline.
as someone who is unaware of related laws in UK/US, can you elaborate more? or if possible cite some examples? Thank you.
e.g. if we had a falling out and I fired you on the spot, you could take me to an employment tribunal. Likewise, if I made your life hell and essentially forced you to quit, it would amount to the same thing.
These laws ensure that formal, standardised disciplinary processes are followed. This makes sure that employees are subject to the same process as their peers and aren't treated unfairly and that there is a formal, documented justification if an employee is ever terminated.
From an employer POV, this is sometimes a bit annoying when an employee is a bit shit because -- barring cases of gross misconduct -- you still have to put them through the disciplinary song and dance before getting rid of them. "Managing out" is the process of essentially setting them up to fail, you put them on a PIP or something (Performance Improvement Plan) where you'd basically say "you need to be hitting these targets by this date or you're gone". A lot of the time both parties know the individual in question won't hit set targets so the whole thing often feels like a bit of theatre. Keeps things fair though and stops employers taking the piss.
I'm not an expert on US (or UK) employment law but my understanding is that terminating an employee in the US requires far less oversight/justification.
[1] https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/unfair-and-constructive-dismiss...
The rest of your post seems to contradict this, or at least it's a bit inconsistent. You can lose your job during or at the end of the probation period, because the probation period didn't work out, but it's very uncommon to be laid off shortly after you've passed your probation period.
I guess you mean that this is the US, so this was a kind of "probation period" for her, but in that case it should have been made very clear that she was failing.
If you lay an employee off and it's a surprise to them, you've fucked up.
Completely agree with your comment about any surprises being a big fail. I made a similar point even. Not well done
I hope she finds something else quickly but many companies look for any red flags as sufficient reason not to take the risk. This kind of experience has real implications for a person's future prospects, at least for several years.
This is a duplicate of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38977794
And before that, there was also this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38961859
Makes me wonder if he hadn’t been let go too?
Edit: Also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38969065
> "I-it could be that she didn't actually listen to the feedback, guys. What if she had bad feedback?!" (Implying, without evidence, that the employee is at fault. The most tone-deaf part of his response.)
> "Maybe she'd be a star on another team!" (Pointless sports analogy. Another tone-deaf moment.)
> "W-we'll do better next time."
An embarrassing display.
If I were a potential hire / investor / client -- yeah I may pay more attention and make some mental notes about how much I respect them as a company. But I dont think this was embarassingly bad to become a dealbreaker for any stakeholder. For me it mostly adds one more bit to a gestalt of how corporate functions and tech companies work these days.
Heck, how about telling that he personally reviewed her case and that her direct manager called her with details.
What if he did all that and more but we the public doesn't need to know?
Or they have some idea what needs to be fixed but it can neither be done within one week nor summarized in one paragraph.
This is just 15 minutes of diversion in our lives -- we don't care either way.
He chose to communicate amd.he chose what to write and what not to write.
But instead of analyzing the facts, you decide to base your analysis on what-if fantasies that you invented.
Sad.
…only to repeat the cycle in under a year and lay off another group in the exact same way.
In very short cycles, going on a hire spree and then redundancies plans without real consequences for the management or companies. Basically it costs them almost nothing to mess with people's lives.
For example, when doing unreasonable mass hiring, the market goes up, because it is a sign of growth. Then, when firing people in mass, the market value also goes up because it is supposed a sign for short term increased revenue.
(And several people on Twitter were saying, "I want to marry her." Indeed, that's what Jeff Bezos was looking for long ago. He said he wanted a woman who could bribe someone to get him out of a third-world prison. Well, he had that. Then he threw it away, in my completely uninformed opinion.)
And when she asks those questions and the person across the table says "I'm happy to get those answers for you and give them all to you, but I don't have them and can't get them right now in this meeting"...
... and she just keeps repeating the same question without moving forward?
That's not how you handle "a difficult spot".
They attacked her, but she, despite being outnumbered and vulnerable, defended and found a chink in their armor. For sure the smartest thing is to try to wiggle the knife, try to make the hole bigger, or at the very least more visible (lies reiterated, repeated). At the same time making the whole process painful for the attackers, turning the knife, knowing that they can't leave and need to stay and take it. Of course they would want to continue forward, leave the situation and repeat the same thing in another 10min firing session. But why would she cooperate with dishonest NPC?
It's amazing that leaders at these companies which, for years, acted as though they had all the answers and were more successful than other industries because they worked smarter. And then, at the first sign of headwinds, they want no accountability for their decisions and can't figure out a principles as simple as being honest and treating people fairly.
I'm honestly curious how CloudFlare will handle reference checks for these people, given they are calling these performance based dismissals. Will they say they are "not eligible for rehire" (the HR way of saying they were terminated for cause)? If so, I hope they get sued, as that can tank a person's entire career trajectory.
I think you meant unemployment insurance?
>Again, you are responsible for paying FUTA and SUTA tax for your employees. And when former employees file for unemployment benefits, you are (indirectly) the one footing the bill.
>Benefit payments are charged to your employer tax account, which results in increased state tax rates. The more unemployment claims the state approves, the more you contribute for unemployment taxes.
Startups without a long history end up in the worst category be default, iirc.
1. If you were fired for "performance" reasons, why would you want to use that as a reference?
2. IANAL, but regardless of whether "not eligible for rehire" will "tank a person's entire career trajectory", truth is a valid defense against defamation. If Cloudflare indeed is not going to rehire them, they're fairly safe from lawsuits.
The only other thing I could have done was not included the ones with less-than-stellar experience, but then I wouldn’t have made it past the resume screen because of the gaps!
He used us as a reference and I’ve never received a call from another job asking about his employment.
I’ve watched his LinkedIn, he has had 3 to my knowledge.
The truth is I think lying on resumes is more effective than it should be.
Plus the act of career suicide by publishing company meeting recordings on social media.
As well after Covid things are different like people don't and don't want to work as hard as they use to. We value our own time more then our employers time. A very small dataset where I experienced this is going to fast or casual food restaurants 15 to 30 minutes before they close. Some will cuss you out in a nice way for you making them do their job close to closing hours.
Try asking a Swiss man in his late 50s/early 60s at a Swiss bank to do a medium-sized but achievable task at 15:00 on a Friday and see what kind of response you get. I had several under me, so I know firsthand that you'll likely get grumbling and pushback. You'll probably get the work product, but it will come with critical commentary.
I can semi understand 15 minutes at the sub shop and even asked the worker is it too late to make me a sub? She said no then proceeded to slam the meat, bread, etc on the counter, huff/puff and roll her eyes at me while her co-worker says we are closing soon. This same worker does this to many in the town as a handful of others complained about her in a FB group thread. She is still working there giving the same attitude. They are paid $20 an hour plus tips. After Coivd the employee is always right cause i guess they are hard to find now and retain.
I do not at all believe this is unique to the Tik-Tok generation.
> As well after Covid things are different like people don't and don't want to work as hard as they use to.
Do you have any evidence beyond anecdata for this assertion? My understanding is the "great resignation" was people upping their salary requirements, basically the willingness to break your body and soul for pennies is significantly lessened. In other words, minimum wage labor became more scarce and/or just more expensive. Are you willing to work for half of your current pay? If you were, would you work less hard?
For the knowledge that we do have, per the person being fired, they were a diligent worker. Seemingly to have done pretty well after a short ramp-up period even. This is why the firing is an even bigger kick in the nuts, she worked hard, was praised for that hard work by her manager, and then HR comes in and says she was not doing well at all. I would turn this around a bit, perhaps the older generation feels entitled that they can treat people like this.
If you do this you're a jerk. They've already started the process of cleaning the kitchen because they want to leave at close like you want to leave at 5. Do you start something new at 4:45 or do you pack up? If you do this and really believe it's "making people do their jobs" you've graduated to asshole and they're treating you in kind. I understand that HN is full of people who either don't grok cultural norms or who balk at them saying "well if they don't want to serve you half an hour before close they should close a half hour early then." I'm not gonna tell you can't live your life that way but you can't be surprised when you eventually find yourself disrespecting someone by ignoring those norms and people getting angry at you for it.
Just noting my experiences this never happened before Covid..u work the shift you are scheduled and serve food til then. Now if the owner of the business is isn't paying them beyond their shift yet their employees are getting blamed that's not right.
"Closing time" is external-facing, and customers shouldn't be expected to know that it actually means "4:45 so the staff can go home at 5".
It's not a cultural thing, it's about clearly setting expectations. If you publicly state that closing time is 5, and you're not okay with someone coming in to order at 4:45, that's on you, not them. Trying to justify "you can't order a half hour before closing" as a "cultural norm" is just making excuses for poor communication, imo.
Besides, isn't expecting everyone to understand your specific cultural norms fairly... Exclusionary?
So someone who comes in during that time and insists on ordering food means they have to clean then kitchen again and stay even longer after close. So while it's praiseworthy to keep your composure when you're not being shown respect I won't fault them for begrudgingly doing what they ask and conveying that.
What time is the right time to go in and get a sub or a burger when their hours clearly say 10 to 10?
We all know by now that low paying jobs don't just pay poorly, but take everything they can from their employees. Closing at 5PM means clocking out, then locking the door at 5PM. If a customer came in at 4:45PM and you had to stop cleanup, start cooking, then cleanup again after 5PM that's a shame. Maybe you need to be better at your job. And you're a part time employee, so you don't qualify for overtime. Do better next time.
Service workers are treated like garbage, by their employers and by customers.
No one is making excuses for poor communication either. Don't you think that the kid mopping the floor would like to explicitly articulate in every way he knows how that it's only a real asshole who comes in asking for a french dip 5 minutes before closing? Or should he maybe a make a sign to put on the door underneath the business hours describing how, though he can't make you, it'd make his life a lot better if you didn't order food during the last half our of the day? How long would he have a job?
The thing about "cultural norms" (why not "norms?") is that expecting everyone to understand them is precisely what makes them "norms" in the first place.
Overall and again I'm confused as to When is the appropriate time to go and get food from a place when their hours say 10am to 10pm?
Anything else makes zero logical sense when a business explicitly states business hours are 10am to 10pm. Throughout my posts here I've noted 15 minutes before closing I'm empathetic to and even explicitly asked the worker at the sub shop is it too late which should could've said I've cleaned up could you come tomorrow. Yet 30 minutes ..isn't cause then what's next 45 minutes.. 60 minutes..whenever they feel like it and business hours that are posted have no meaning!
This was never a thing before Covid ..15 minutes possibly but 30 minutes never and that's the gist of my argument! People are lazier and value their time more then their employers and or their employers no longer pay them beyond closing hours (something changed)! As well could be a mix of both.
I think that’s the best solution to be honest, but it’s not done everywhere.
Think we've been talking about two different types of places to eat :-)
It's "cultural norms" because it only extends to the scope of some population of people. These tend to break down when outsiders become involved, because one population's norms aren't always the same as another's.
This is why I have preference towards being explicit. If you don't want to make food after 4:30pm, put up a sign that says the kitchen closes at 4:30pm. Then it's explicit, and you don't have to rely on the implicit understanding of "cultural norms" in order to effectively communicate that you don't want to be making food later than 4:30pm.
It removes potential sources of ambiguity in favor of explicitly stating your preferences. This generally works better for all parties involved.
But we don't have the ideal. We have employers calling the shots about what "we close at 5pm" means, and employees who would love to explicitly, in very clear language, explain why coming in within minutes of closing ruins their day. But if they did that, they'd lose their jobs.
I'm not saying we shouldn't fix what's broken. I'm saying because it's broken and that while it's broken, don't be an asshole to people stuck in the broken system.
Also to me it makes sense that this change has occurred and or I and others are experiencing the same thing. If there's a worker shortage band it's hard to retain workers the rule change as an owner so you can keep your business going especially where there's huge demand (jersey mikes for example)for what your selling.
As well when i pitched the idea of sharing battery power between two phones to Intel and Mark Burnett (producer of the Voice, Survivor, etc) on his inventor reality show in 2015 ... in 2019 Samsung added this feature into their phones (Wireless Powershare). As well created an idea in Feb 2013 (long ago lol) that turned multiple phones into one synced speaker via a web app..in March 2013 Samsung announced they were putting this same tech into their phones and in April 2013 Google invited me to discuss putting our tech into the Moto X. My take here per my experiences /intuition is that ppl do not work as hard and care as much in low level to even some high level jobs due to worker shortages and or their companies aren't paying them beyond their shift.
I know this will be donwvoted too :)
1) The employee made a poor choice posting meeting recording publicly. 2) The company did an appallingly poor job terminating her.
Certainly this video makes me believe that cloudflare is likely a poorly managed company that treats its employees badly. As for Ms. Pietsch, she may be a low performing employee who made a bad choice to post this video.
Recording and posting company videos is bad in the general sense, but not in this case. There’s nothing sensitive or confidential in the video that was posted. The fact that she posted this specific video doesn’t make me assume that she would go and post other videos that do have confidential information, and if a company is embarrassed by their actions in this situation, that says more about the company than it does this employee.
I doubt this is career suicide. It might even do the opposite by getting this person’s name and situation out there.
Initially. But then they respond by saying that they are willing to follow up with her separately with the answers to her questions, but they don't have them there and then. Not having them there and then is a failing on their part, absolutely. But she won't let go. "How was my performance bad?" repeatedly. At some point in the video it goes from someone having a legitimate grievance to someone just trying to make a point and not listening to feedback or responses.
(I literally had a PIP where my manager 100% ghosted me through the entire PIP, and I created all the work products requested in the PIP, and had documentary evidence that he did not once look at a single one of them. And then when he sat there in the last meeting with HR, and openly, repeatedly lied that he'd reviewed it all and that it was of an unsatisfactory level and that I could have been retained if it had been to a higher level, and I shared my screen filled with "Shared with X. Last Viewed: Never" on GDocs... he turned off his camera and just said the decision was made.
Which it was. I didn't expect it to be changed, nor did I particularly want it to be changed. But I did want his "openly lied to both employees and to HR over personnel issues" on the record. And it was. There was no point to keep repeating it twenty times over. It vented her frustration on a personal level but I'm not sure it shows good business judgment on her part (realize that's not mutually exclusive to CF not showing good business judgment either).
Maybe that would change if more people refused to move on?
But "disobedient", is quite a word choice.
I had a niggling suspicion the opposing views on her employability are because the commenters are on opposite ends of the authoritarian axis.
My thesis is people who strongly believe in (power) hierarchies as the natural order of things will see her actions as unacceptable, and an affront to social order itself since she has proven she can't be trusted to submit to the rightful authority regardless of circumstances.
I have no regard at all for corporate rules, but I do for privacy and privacy laws. Brittany may have broken the law by making the recording (Georgia is a one-party state, but she couldn't know where the other people in the meeting were -- New York is also one-party, but California for example is all-party), but either way it was poor judgment to release it without at least redacting names and roles.
You'd only be bound by other laws if the recording was done at the location governed by those laws.
Either way, tech is in California, and she's definitely going to lose out on opportunities because of this. The good news for Brittany is that a bunch of companies will try to hire her right now purely for clout, so she'll be fine.
As you noted, Rosie's name and title was already public on LinkedIn! So it's just the voice that was possibly non-public, and I don't think that's widely considered to be "confidential information".
As for breaking the law, I consider thr actions to be whistleblowing on a layoff disguised as performance-related firing (as evidenced bu the recording!) Realizing this information is in the public's interest, she showed excellent judgement and robustly defended herself against a sham dismissal that makes a mockery of norms: most companies have the decency to place "poor performers" on PIPs (even when the poor performance is due to stack-ranking rather than failure to do assigned duties). Firing someone for poor performance out of the blue, without giving them feedback about it first is immoral (and hopefully illegal considering employment is at-will. That could have fired her fir any reason, but I suppose they don't want to trigger layoff-provisions)
Salespeople need to face overwhelming failure and keep going. They need to ignore social cues that would cause most people to back off. They need to be aggressive and challenging.
Getting rid of this salesperson seems like a big loss for Cloudflare.
"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."
https://twitter.com/eastdakota/status/1745697840180191501
1) This is complete hogwash and absolutely cements that I want nothing to do with Cloudflare.
I've worked in enterprise sales. I've also worked with sales as engineering support. I've also been the senior technical rep that sales had to sell to, too.
3 months on a newbie barely gets you up to the point that you can probably go into a client and shadow a senior and talk about a couple Powerpoint slides without completely embarassing yourself. That's it. It certainly doesn't get you the ability to handle an account or do a close.
Some of our later best salespeople looked completely useless at 3 months.
2) This is the kind of shitty "we're sorry you're offended" apology that dribbles out of every shitty CEO's mouth.
The fact that Cloudflare is STILL trying to stick with "fired for cause" after being put on blast is a gigantic red klaxon.
How many people did they treat like this before they finally got their chain yanked over it? What's the punishment for the people who did this? And how do they plan to make this right?
I don't see any of that, thanks. Hopefully some of the Cloudflare competitors are ready to make hay over this.
I imagine with 1500 employees + ~160 a year, over the course of several years, you get a good feeling for which ones are going to make it. CloudFlare is a relatively technical product, I'm sure they are looking for the type of sales people who are going to more than come up to speed in those 3 months. Probably someone who already has had highly technical sales jobs. Maybe she slipped through their own hiring process. That is on CF, but I wouldn't hold them to the fire for that.
I worked in the IT department for a large porn company. It was literally part of the interview process that you would be exposed to porn in the workplace. We would filter people based on their reaction to that... most of the time, it was people who were actually too excited by the prospect. The point being that is that we made the working environment clear from the start, even though it was obvious.
After a long enough period of time of being in business, CF probably has a great collection of sales people. I've dealt with some of them myself and been extremely impressed. If I were them, wouldn't want to dilute the pool. But, for someone to go into an environment like that not knowing that was the case, and then being surprised at the end... something is wrong with that, which again, he admits to above. Either that, or we have to question her motivations. Given the obvious high bar that CloudFlare exhibits in their sales teams, I'd say both are on the table for consideration.
At the end of the day, we won't ever know all of the details in this story, which makes me less motivated to take either side. It is really just a story to make you emotional and get clicks, than it is about right or wrong.
Sales is a profession that anyone can do, because it's a ubiquitous life skill. If it's so easy for them to tell at three months the employee isn't working out, why can't they figure that out in three interviews? What critical info comes out in 90 days of work that can't be extracted during a 2 month long interview process? It's far more likely that they have no idea who will and won't turn out to be a good fit, and that these kinds of 'for cause' firings are meant to 'positively' motivate the remaining workforce, or are due to internal budgeting that is in no way related to the salesperson.
Zero sales in 4.5 months.
2% total was laid off.
This isn't really a sign of "churn and burn".
"She closed zero sales 4.5 months into a 3 month ramp."
She had 1 month, after 3 months of ramp, to close something. Based on that, alone... I'd still stick by my comments above. If she has even a single peer closing even a single tiny deal in that 1 month, then she's already at the bottom of the list.
1) in the video is clear she was not a closer, so bad saleswoman.
2) posting the video with your face and name exposed?!?! Unless all this is fake, she is done.
She seems like a good hire: -smells bullshit -calls it out -articulate throughout -keeps cool, even while being fired, and while clearly (successfully) fighting back her emotions -defends her position, and doesn't back down when weak and unsatisfactory answers are provided
I can't comment on the quality of her work, but she seems tenacious and put together. She'd have done very well in the bank I worked at last. I hope she's swamped with offers from better companies.
I'm very much older than the TikTok generation and I APPLAUD this kind of thing.
Companies have been getting away with too much garbage for way too long by hiding it. Forcing every dumbass minion to realize that they may be on blast at any moment means that both the company and individuals have to start thinking about not being complete shits.
Either this is a layoff and they're doing something legally shady or this is a stack-ranking termination and we all know how to regard companies doing that.
No matter what the reason is: Cloudflare comes out of this looking completely terrible.
Just like every other company: confirm the start date, the end date, and the job title. Nobody in their sane mind will give anything else.
References however can be more about the quality of the work including "would you work with this person again?"
HR only does the background check part. The job of an HR department is to make the company look good. They do not want to start a conversation about how they hire bad employees or initiate a conversation where the former employer will tell their side of the story.
Ya the guy who posted that is an obvious sales shill. I wouldn't be surprised if he has or wants a relationship with CloudFlare or some higher up in it. He goes out of his way to point out she put on makeup for the call? I mean he's in sales, women have to look good in that profession. What exactly is stage makeup vs regular makeup? What exactly is the point of denegrating her degree? I'm sure he doesn't degrade his own female employees for wearing makeup on any professional interaction. He didn't even get the employment timespans right.
I mean terminations happen, no reason to be scummy about it, Peter. It makes you look really unprofessional too.
Anyway, good luck lady. I hope you find a better company for you.
"...part ways with you..." --> "We've decided to fire you."
"...Rosie might be better to explain the process of who's giving this information..." --> "Rosie can talk about why it's us vs. your manager."
"...this is a collective calibration for Cloudflare..." --> what the fuck?
"...if you can respect that. We can totally respect that..." --> at a loss
"...meet the expectations that you're communicating to us..." --> "...tell you what you want to know..."
"...give you the data that was calibrated..." --> ...how do you calibrate data? FFS.
"...extremely traumatizing for people..." --> ha ha ha...goddamn snowflake. You're getting fired, it's not fun, but it's not like watching your buddies get blown up in front of you and waking up in bed screaming for the next forty years.
"...I cannot speak to what your manager has communicated to you directly..." --> "I don't know what your manager said"
"...I hear you and what you're saying..." --> "I understand"
"...from a process perspective, your questions are valid but this isn't going to be the forum and situation where..." --> "We aren't going to have that conversation with you now"
"...I don't think there's anything we can say in this moment and today..." --> "Sorry"
In particular, what's up with the duplication? "this moment & today", etc.? I hear it from people with a low bureaucratic position a lot. Think firefighter making an announcement, HR drone, etc.
Alternatively:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240113220120if_/https://www.in...
2) what she did, recording the meeting without the other part knowladgement is borderline (if not totally) illegal.
3) Her actitude was condescending and snobby. Thing that probably justify her situation.
4) Uploading this to TikTok is completely unappropriated, and probable professional suicide.
5) The way the company assigned a random person to fire her over zoom is definitely not nice, her manager should have done that. Also it looks like the way this company works and she know that during the period she also remotely worked for them.