Cloudflare Employee records her final meeting where HR tries to fire her

Submitted ⁨⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech⁩ to ⁨videos@lemmy.world⁩

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

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

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

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

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Humana@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
A story from back when I worked in HR. Finance handed HR a list of teams to reduce. HR saw who had lowest performance metrics or was most recently hired. Then HR emailed the managers and said, ‘we want you to follow around Angela and Brian today, the first mistake they make, write it up and terminate them’. The company had laid off too many people and several states it operated in warned the company they would seek payment if too many more ex-employees filed for unemployment insurance.

Most employees skewed right politically and wouldn’t dream of fighting the company for their rightfully die unemployment benefits since they legitimately thought it was their fault, and many thought UI was socialism anyway.

After witnessing this I immediately began switching careers.

Remember HR is not there to protect the employees, it’s there to protect the company from employee related lawsuits.

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- MiltownClowns@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  HR is IT for people. Do you think the IT guy cares about all the laptops in the company? No, it’s a resource he manages. Do you think HR cares about all the people in the company. No it’s a resource they manage. Companies try so hard to make HR look like high school guidance counselors instead of the ruthless hatchet men they are.
  
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  - toasteecup@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It guy here, I care more about the computers and tech than HR cares about people. Fuck HR
    
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  - CaptPretentious@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    IT guy here… Uh, no. I resent that you would group us with HR.
    
    At my work I keep advocating to give our underperforming hardware (aka old hardware) a second life by opening up sales for them instead of destroying them (except hard drives of course).
    
    When my laptop was acting up and was kind of crappy… I replace the thermal paste and replaced the old failing hard drive with a new SSD. At laptop is now 14 years old (Intel i5-540).
    
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  - CriticalMiss@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I care about the laptops. I care about them a lot. People return them in a shit state, I clean them up take care of them and then advocate to donate them to schools in the area.
    
    HR are just that, hatchet men.
    
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- WarmSoda@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I went through a lay off being a manager once. It’s not fun at all. We had the list and the metrics. But we were already pretty small and we really didn’t want to lose anyone on the list except for a couple people.
  So we basically gamed financial. Offered anyone that wanted it part time. Fired the few people people that were clearly not interested in working anyways. We did something else that I can’t remember, and we ended up being able to fucking keep everyone. It was amazing.
  
  Not even two months later we had to ramp up for the holidays, so everyone that willingly cut their hours went right back to full time.
  
  Year later the company pulled out of the state. But until that time we kept everyone.
  
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  - siliril@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thank you for sticking up for your employees. Had a similar thing happen where I was part time for a few months until things picked up. While it was difficult I appreciated that I had an income for then. And he gave me a stellar reference for if my finances got too tight and I needed to start searching.
    
    This is why managers need to be included in firing decisions. The fact that Brittany here wasn’t able to have that dignity enrages me.
    
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  - Redwax@lemmynsfw.com ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Is this response AI generated or something? How did you keep everyone if you fired people?
    
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yep HR actually stands for Human Risks.
  
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alienanimals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
HR are all class traitors. Their sole purpose in life is to pay you as little as possible and protect the people at the top who are stealing everyone elses’ profits. Fuck anyone working in HR.

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- pearsaltchocolatebar@discuss.online ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  That really isn’t true, and you would know that if you were actually familiar with HR.
  
  HR, for stuff like this, is just the messenger. Some exec told them to fire people, and gave them a directive on who to fire. The HR reps couldn’t answer her questions because they likely don’t know the answer.
  
  Yes, the job of HR is to protect the company, but mostly that’s protecting the company from the company breaking labor laws.
  
  But, I’m sure I’ll get downvoted to hell because the hive mind loves to shit on HR, which is exactly what the execs are wanting. They’re scapegoats.
  
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  - alienanimals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    HR do the execs’ dirty work.
    
    Shame you’re not intelligent enough to realize that. I guess that’s why you work in HR. Don’t be their scapegoat. It’s literally that simple.
    
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  - BottleOfAlkahest@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I worked in HR for a while and 80% of the job was telling managers/execs “you can’t do that to an employee”. It was defending the employee, arguing for better programs, planning events for employees/associates/team members. I paid for a Christmas event out of my own pocket one year because I was told there was no funding. I never got badmouthed or trashed by a manager. But after fighting everyday for associates it was really disheartening to see them say stuff like the person youre replying too. It’s one reason people who aren’t corporate shills get out of HR. You spend your day advocating for people and they turn around and spit in your face. After awhile you just ask yourself why am I turning myself inside out for these people who hate me?
    
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  - jimbo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Nothing you said contradicts the claim that HR people are class traitors. HR only cares about labor law so far as they can achieve management’s goals without landing the company in legal hot water. It’s absolutely not about any concern for the people themselves.
    
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  - ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’ve interacted with lots of HR employees over the years. And for quite a while my wife worked in that field, so I’ve had some ‘inside’ insight into the field. And I largely agree with you.
    
    Like with any field, there are good people and bad people in there. My wife (and most of her colleagues) was one of the good ones. She intervened many times at her old job to stop out of control managers from firing store employees for bullshit reasons. Yes, part of that was to avoid the company getting into legal trouble for it. But an equal part was because she wanted to help these employees, because they were clearly being mistreated by their managers. And while not to that level, I’ve been helped by other decent HR people who went above and beyond company policies to help me during things like bereavement and healthcare needs.
    
    I’ve also dealt with some absolute shit-heel HR people. People who would spend almost all day spying on employees using CCTV to try to catch them doing something - anything - that they could write them up for. People who would go out of their way to hide and ignore evidence of managers vindictively punishing employees who they (the managers) didn’t like. People would use their power as HR professionals to exploit vulnerable employees for sexual motives.
    
    It’s a mixed bag. To say all HR people are good is facile (side note: I know you weren’t doing that). And equally, to slate all HR employees is also wrong.
    
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  - ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    Yes, the job of HR is to protect the company, but mostly that’s protecting the company from the company breaking labor laws.
    
    No, it’s protecting the company from the consequences of breaking labor laws like the WARN Act, which may well apply in this employee’s case.
    
    Companies love to break the law. Wage theft is bigger than any other form of theft in the US. What companies don’t like is to be exposed breaking labor laws, or suffer wage audits, or having to answer to pesky individual suits from disgruntled workers they assume couldn’t fight back but miraculously did.
    
    Every single HR rep I have ever known – and that includes the ones I knew as friends outside work – made a knowing and openly acknowledged choice to check their conscience at the door to accept and keep those HR jobs.
    
    You can justify it however you like, but it’s a choice, each and every time you lie, and it is for HR reps too. It’s just a more direct path to the paycheck and yearly bonuses for them: they literally get paid to lie, to hide, to fraudulently conceal illegal acts, and especially patterns of illegal acts, taking place within the company they represent, and to destroy and deny the existence of evidence whenever the rare employee who can fight back raises their head above the parapet.
    
    And as a person who spent years in IT, I can’t even begin to tell you the actual illegal (and completely heartless and amoral) shit I have personally laid eyes on, like when I temporarily had to work at someone else’s desk on a network issue: a low-level but long-term housekeeping employee who was injured on the job had asked to return to light duty for a few weeks in a letter with medical documentation attached, and I had to sit there with it all spread out on the desk in front of me with a sticky note attached to it saying “Let’s draw a line under this, find a reason to fire her” staring me in the face.
    
    If someone literally wants to lie for a living and be the dog that eats the other dog today, that’s on them. But stop trying to act like that’s NOT exactly how it is.
    
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  - MotoAsh@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “Don’t hate HR! We’re not the master, just his trained attack dogs!”
    
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  - winterayars@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Being a shield against the decisions of upper management is the kind of class traitor work the person above is talking about. HR’s job is taking that kind of decision and turning it into something that can be executed with the least likelihood of an office shooting or lawsuit. Whether either of those things are warranted or not.
    
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- thesporkeffect@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The people doing the firing were lawyers, not HR, but you are absolutely right. If you are told to fire a bunch of people illegally, the only moral response is to refuse and if pressed, document publicly what happened (and quit or be fired yourself).
  
  Following orders is no excuse.
  
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- angrymouse@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is the nature of the HR as a sector, not the ppl that work there. The lumberjack is not responsible for the deforestation. If you dont have any collective to help ppl stand their ground they will only follow orders to buy the milk.
  
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  - alienanimals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You’re the kind of fool who thinks some of the nazis weren’t bad, they were just following orders.
    
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  - afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The lumberjack is harvesting wood which the population as a whole benefits from. They aren’t taking a side of one class vs the another class. Sure I would like them to harvest responsibly but even if they don’t they are still adding value to civilization.
    
    HR is not the same thing. When is the last time they actually helped you? I remember once the employee health insurance was giving me problems covering a medication for my wife and the HR bitch is taking the insurance company side. Telling me how they nice they were at contract time. Yeah mouthbreather of course they are nice, they scammed us out of money and you let it happen.
    
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- recapitated@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Ok, cut out the middleman and get fired face to face by someone even more profit motivated and psychopathic and disinterested in your person.
  
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  - AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Pretty sure they don’t do that in the US cause the 2nd Amendment apparently says that we aren’t allowed to disarm a fucking toddler in this country, so the guns outnumber the citizens.
    
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is actually such a shitty job and while good people may find themselves in it, only bad people stay in it for long. If you’re a great person and just spend your time bringing sunshine to employees then you were rolled in luck before you went into the fryer.
  
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phoneymouse@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The ridiculous thing is they try to frame this as a performance issue when the reality is the company is just doing layoffs. Why even frame it that way? How fucking awful.

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- Chef@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  At least in my state, if your employment is terminated for poor performance, the employer can deny unemployment insurance claims. If you’re just laid off, they must pay out unemployment insurance claims.
  
  By blaming the victim, the company saves money. It’s such scumbaggery.
  
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  - HiddenLayer5@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    At least in my state, if your employment is terminated for poor performance, the employer can deny unemployment insurance claims.
    
    Which in itself is a total bullshit rule. What, so people who are bad at a certain job don’t deserve help while they find a job they’re better at?
    
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  - FanciestPants@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Seems like it would also have the effect of making the employee less appealing to any potential future employers. When asked in an interview why they left their previous job, these people have to decide whether to say honestly that they were let go because of mismanagement and risk their possible new job on whether the background check includes a call to the HR department of your last employer, or give the line that would match the HR record and say they were fired for poor performance. Either way is going to make it pretty hard to get hired, and so if Cloudflare ever needs to hire again in the future, there’s a decent chance these people will still be seeking employment.
    
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- CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They don’t have to pay unemployment if you are fired for performance.
  
  That said, my understanding is that you should always file for unemployment and file an appeal when it’s denied. Chances are higher that it will get overturned on appeal.
  
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  - Powerpoint@lemmy.ca ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    That’s a gross and very American thing to do
    
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- frostysauce@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is a performance issue. The company performed poorly in hiring too many people
  
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- WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is a USA problem that is both illegal, and extremely hard to game, in most of the developed world… Elsewhere employers can generally fire you during probation, or within the first 6-12 months, without severance, but they have no reason whatsoever to lie to you about your performance — they tell you straight up that your position is no longer required, pay out the mandatory 2-4 weeks notice period, and that’s the end of it. Beyond that they cut their losses and pay severance, because the legal and financial implications for lying about performance are not worth the crime.
  
  I find it ridiculous that people blame Cloudflare for this situation. EVERY for-profit company will choose this path IF given the opportunity to avoid fault or severance, and any that don’t will be less profitable and eventually fail on the uneven playing field — 99% of the blame for this situation falls on the US political kleptocracy and their corruption; a political system “BY the capital, FOR the capital”.
  
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  - jj4211@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    While you can complain about the US having weak labor protection, I can tell you that, based on her description, is already illegal, and I have worked at two other companies in the US that take this very seriously. They almost never “fired” anyone but sadly did layoffs fairly often. They gave the appropriate notice and paid the promised severance. Even people that folks would have said deserved a during often got to hang out until the next layoff, because generally the risk of a labor law violation was not worth the notice and severance cost.
    
    Over the last couple of decades working at companies, I have only seen four firings, but many many layoffs.
    
    The four firing were: A guy that would show up for the morning meeting every day then leave work right after, hoping no one would notice. Fired after doing this for a week, getting a talking to to let him know we knew, then he kept doing it for another week before getting fired.
    
    A guy who, in his first week, was on camera stealing 30 thousand dollars of equipment. He returned the equipment and the employer didn’t even press charges.
    
    A guy that would be at work, but do nothing but play with the equipment without ever doing a single thing he was asked. He lasted about 4 months before they finally gave up.
    
    A guy who was walking around the parking lot yelling about how he was going to kill everyone while waving a pistol around.
    
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  - fushuan@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As a comment, in some “elsewhere” places (Spain) they don’t need to pay the notice weeks if they fire you in the first 3-6-12 or whatever was the testing period.
    
    You don’t need to give them notice either. At least in normal Spanish contracts. However, in Spain you are always elegible for unemployment salary (4 months for every worked year, when you file for it iirc), what you would not get is the severance, in case the dismissal was “fair” (despido procedente). Any Spanish worker that is unemployed and didn’t leave their work willingly can file for unemployment salary, which is then given to them as 4 months of salary for every worked year, up to 2 years.
    
    The only case when you might get unemployment salary denied is if you left your job, you were then hired by a company and they fired you after a day. This smells like you had a pact with the second company just so you got the salary, which is obviously fraud.
    
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  - Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    We can blame both. Yes I do blame our shit labor laws, but they’re shit because half of our country thinks (or claims to think) that corporations can self-regulate and will naturally operate in the best interests of the population. We do what we can on that front, but we shouldn’t let companies get away with shitty behavior just because they aren’t being forced to do the right thing. The more evidence of misconduct, the better.
    
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- Ozymati@lemmy.nz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not having to pay a redundancy package? Or just sociopaths in the management team.
  
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ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Somebody needs to tell Brittany Pietsch and her laid off coworkers about the WARN Act and its state counterparts:

en.wikipedia.org/…/Worker_Adjustment_and_Retraini…

Just because Cloudflare really really needs for Brittany and her laid off coworkers to believe that it’s all individual firings based on performance and related measurements, in order to avoid the legally mandated costs of laying off a group of employees, that need does not make this anything less than a layoff.

While there are certainly exceptions to the WARN Act and similar laws, chances are excellent that if Ms. Pietsch and her coworkers take a look at it in light of their own specific experiences, they can come to a MUCH more equitable resolution than the shit on a plate with a side of material misrepresentation handed to them by the HR and legal reps at Cloudflare.

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- chitak166@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Generally, the WARN Act covers employers with 100 or more employees, not counting those who have worked fewer than six months in the last twelve-month work period.
  
  She mentioned in the call that she started working in like August.
  
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  - RealBot@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It specifies which employers are cover with the WARN act, not employees. It either covers whole company (all employees in company) or no one at company at all.
    
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  - heyoni@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Cloudflare has 100 employees not counting her.
    
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- scarabic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is why severance gets offered. It’s a contract that you agree to and henceforth you can’t really fight. And employees would frankly rather take the pay than immediately lose income and then start investing time in a lawsuit against a much better resourced organization, which could take years and may not result in anything. Most companies know how to navigate the laws. Few ordinary people know how to sue over them and win.
  
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feebl@feddit.nl ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Holy fucking shit American corpospeak is pure fucking cancer. Just fucking talk normally.

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- Luvs2Spuj@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I understand how you are feeling, and nothing I can tell you today is going to be able to change that.
  
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- Randelung@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I only know American culture from the internet, and knowing all of the memes and blog posts and everything, it’s still mindblowing to see it in action to this degree and in a situation that is probably representative for so many.
  
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  - lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    As an American it’s a relief to hear there’s a place left on Earth where this behavior would still be unexpected.
    
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- intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This is, no joke, not trying to exaggerate, exactly the kind of language-as-weapon stuff Orwell was always talking about.
  
  Honest, authentic communication and doublespeak look the same on the surface, but the way they’re generated is completely different. One enhances perception and information processing using a shared semantic context built in the air between people trying their best to accurately describe what they see. The other degrades the quality of the language model in everyone’s heads, due to continually violating the relationship between words and reality, making everyone in the room less capable of understanding literally anything.
  
  Unless the person in the room doesn’t put up with it. Brittany stayed on task and didn’t accept bullshit answers, and so even if there were some consequences to speaking up (in this case it sounds like she had nothing to lose) they’d be less severe than the literal brain atrophy that results from swallowing bullshit with a smile.
  
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  - Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The thing that really sticks out is “I understand how you feel”. They never accept that they may be unfair, that her criticism is valid, just “sorry you feel that way.”
    
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- Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s not just in America.
  
  This kind of thing is one of the main products of the new style MBAs from the late 80s forward - it’s all about appearances and emotionally managing other people (notice how she says something and the guy goes “I understand”, “100%” or something like that and then just proceeds to not actually answer her question.
  
  The same perspective into managing companies that brought us calling employees as “human resources” and firing employees as “letting go” (or in this case, “recallibration”) normalized a whole discourse technique of half-truths, evading the question and in general use of Conversational Jiu-Jitsu (anything that comes your way, you just deflect it to the side) to manage a conversation.
  
  You see the same kind of think in modern Politics.
  
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  - modus@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    doesn’t get it that whatever she says makes no difference at all
    
    She’s well aware she’s being fired. She’s trying to get them to admit that it’s not about performance and that she’s actually being laid off. She knows exactly what she’s doing and the HR goons are shitting their pants.
    
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  - gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Honestly, it’s not just corpo talk.
    
    My mother talks the same way. “I understand that you don’t feel well. But you still have to do this completely brain-dead thing that everybody else is doing.” “Why? Because I tell you so. Do children not respect their parents anymore? I’m your mother. You must do what I say. Once you grow up, you can do what you want. But as long as you live in my house, it’s my rules. No, you can’t keep your door locked. Privacy? I’m your mother.”
    
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- MonkeMischief@lemmy.today ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  “I hear what you’re saying, feebl, and those feelings are valid today. But unfortunately American corpos will not be able to change the outcome of how fking stupidly soulless they are today mmk?”
  
  You’re absolutely right. It is a cancer, and stupid trends like this spread until there’s no hope of escape and even a freaking gas station manager tries to talk to you like this.
  
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- Mango@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They’re snakes. Dox them.
  
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mkhopper@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If anyone ever thinks differently, this video should convince you.
If you work for a corporation, you are not a person with a name, you are a number. And that number is the amount of money given to you as pay and benefits.

And when the corporation no longer likes your number, you can be unceremoniously shown the door, regardless of your past performance.

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- crazyminner@lemmy.ml ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Unless you’re apart of a strong union. Then they think twice before firing you.
  
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  - Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Really need to create an “analyst union” that title seems like a white collar coverall term to just pay people less.
    
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- DavidDoesLemmy@aussie.zone ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Unless you live in one of the many countries that have good employment laws.
  
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- MaxVoltage@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  girl you didn’t close the deals it 🦆 happens cars sales is better
  
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  - woobie@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Did you watch the video? With her training ramp she effectively had December to sell. I’m not sure about the Cloudflare sales cycle, but I’d guess most deals aren’t going to happen in a month.
    
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kusuriya@infosec.pub ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
love how its hey we will fire you today as a surprise after you’ve been told something completely different but we promise to tell you why later. I really this was just taken legally as an illegal termination. Because if it’s for performance that means you have data, if you have data you should be able to give me graphs and charts, stick figure animations, poorly acted corporate videos.

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- Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fr. If my performance was bad the entire time, why wasn’t I told until now? If I am doing a crappy job but told I’m doing great, why would I ever do better? Either it’s bullshit that my performance is poor, or they’ve set me up for failure from the beginning. Either of which makes them a piece of shit.
  
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- militaryintelligence@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I expect and demand a puppet show demonstrating my poor performance
  
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  - Kolanaki@yiffit.net ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “Snape… Snape… Severance Snape…”
    
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  - overzeetop@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Interpretive dance or GTFO
    
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Daqu@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
HR is working their script, or they will be fired too. It’s like a fucking callcenter to destroy people.

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- TheDubz87@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Literally looped in circles over and over to avoid answering questions. It was so frustrating to listen to.
  
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- AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  This. I don’t think people here realize that HR doesn’t really have a say in this, they aren’t the ones doing the firing and they aren’t the ones who can undo it since they aren’t the ones providing the team’s budget.
  
  HR’s job in these situations is to do the dirty part: handle the announcement to each employee.
  
  The girl in the video is saying that her manager was “pleased” and she didn’t understand why strangers in the HR department are doing the announcement to her: that’s the whole point, it’s very likely that it’s that “nice” manager who threw you under the bus when he had to make a choice on which people he needs to keep after top management told him to downsize his team but he didn’t have the guts to tell you that personally.
  
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J12@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I know they’re not trying to be but that HR speak is so fucking condescending. “I’m sorry for how you’re feeling.”

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- scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The “non-apology”
  
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- Pyroglyph@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not to mention “I hear what you’re saying”. While objectively true, it doesn’t mean that they understand or give a shit in the slightest. I have a very argumentative family member that says that line ALL the time, and all they really want is to get you to shut up so they can say what they want to say.
  
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brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go to market org. That’s a normal quarter. When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right. And sometimes under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten before we let them go. Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player. And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them. We definitely weren’t anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who aren’t performing off. That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did. And that’s something @zatlyn and I are focused on improving going forward.

-Matthew Prince
Co-Founder & CEO, Cloudflare

Nitter / Mirror | Twitter

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- tias@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  If he thinks it’s painful to watch then he should apologize to HER and her coworkers for traumatizing them, and give them a good severance pay. The way he phrases this as if he’s just shrugging and saying “we’ll do better at some unspecified point in the future, I’m sure” makes him come off as an inhumane piece of garbage with no empathy.
  
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ZeroDrek@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I respect her speaking up for herself, but once a company has decided to let you go there is no amount of talking you can do to convince them to change their mind.

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gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Honestly the problem I see here is not the layoff, which was disguised as a “lack of performance”. Yes, it wasn’t done perfectly, but still, it’s no tragedy.

What is definitely the problem here is the absolute lack of a social security system in the US. That should be implemented.

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Aceticon@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I only saw the start and the emotional vibes are pretty bad, and not just for Britney (though, of course, even in the beginning she’s clearly already hurting).

At least somebody actually directly got in contact with her, personally, rather than firing-by-email.

If there is a lesson I learned way back at the beginning of my career in Tech back in the mid 90s is that you shouldn’t really go for the whole loyalty to your employee when they’re anything but a little company were everybody works together, because they will screw you over if its in their best interest, sometimes casually so, and those making the decision will never be in calls such as this one and instead send some poor sods like the HR lady and that director guy to do the dirty work for them and fell the hurt from the person on the other side if they have any empathy (which most people do have, which is probably why both the HR Lady and the guy were uncomfortable from the start).

Also beware of the company trying to manipulate you as an employee to have your workplace be your entire social circle of friends and even like a second family: the whole point of that is to “retain” employees without having to actually pay what the market says they’re worth. This is actually a pretty old trick in Tech HR, dating back to the original Internet Boom.

The whole loyalty of the companies to employees thing died in the late 80s early 90s and you should be skeptical when it comes to what the company “does for you” and ponder on what’s in it for them: for example, “free pizza dinners” are not at all about being nice for you, they’re about you working long hours for free (which would cost them way more than that free pizza if they had to pay for them) to enhance that company’s profits.

It’s sad and it’s the World we live in: one were the real power of the land is Money and it’s mainly in the hands of Sociopaths.

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SuperCub@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They need a union.

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BassaForte@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I was laid off almost a year ago. I don’t even know the reason why. Our team was fairly small, and targetted a specific product within our company that was still very profitable and we had a lot of work lined up for it. They let go of me, two other devs, the senior qa person and a few others. Our team did not over hire during COVID, in fact our team shrunk during that time. I had a good rep within the company and with the team and I know for a fact the others did too.

My only guess is that the company was trying to save money by shrinking each team, despite already being small (there were 6 left after the layoffs and about 12 before).

My layoff meeting was with my boss and an HR person that I had already been aquatinted with. They did ensure me that my performance was not the reason I was being let go, but they couldn’t get into specifics either. Strangely my boss seemed emotionally unphased.

That experience taught me the lesson that no matter who you are in a company, you’re disposable.

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EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
why can’t corporations just do things in a reasonable and rational way?

Why do they constantly make so many extreme changes all the time? When they need to hire more people, they hire way more than they need, when they need to downsize…or rather when they’re tired of paying so many people, they fire way too many.

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intensely_human@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
You can see first the fear, then the thrill of battle in her eyes. Don’t take any guff from these swine, Brittany.

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Randelung@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So glad she eventually got to the “how the fuck are you so clueless about this, you’re the ones firing ME” part.

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net00@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The worst thing is that there are many bootlickers out there. Worker rights are a joke and companies have infinite ways of fucking you over.

In this instance the HR snakes were caught with their pants down and looked like imbeciles.

But for example many people get placed on PiP with unrealistic goals, or harassed by management over petty mistakes. The only goal being saving the corporation some money by claiming low performance.

A lot of people out there need to get their head out of their asses if they think this is ok.

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snooggums@kbin.social ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Loved it when she asked if performance indicators were real or just something they use as an excuse. Plus pointing out that they aren't going to explain after she is fired, since she won't be an employee anymore.

I hope she finds another job that doesn't treat her like shit.

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kinther@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yikes. This kind of thing is happening all over the industry as it pulls back from COVID over-hiring. layoffs.fyi

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FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The only time I got laid off was from a university where I worked. I read in the paper that morning that there were going to be layoffs and I came in and my boss was really apologetic and told me I was laid off. It actually went really well all things considered. I didn’t blame him and he was as nice as he could be about it, saying things like, “if you ever need a letter of recommendation, send me an email.”

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Yoz@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Being a 9-5 sucks. Never be loyal to an employer especially millenials and coming generation. You have lost everything so do what you get paid for and leave. Don’t let them tell you how boomers and the generation before that did the job.

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Masimatutu@mander.xyz ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Image

nice

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Ulvain@sh.itjust.works ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
She did really good! Almost drove it home, she was so close… As a former manager in HR, here are my two cents. Note that I’m from canada, might not apply as I have it in mind in the US. If they’re trying to frame a layoff as a firing for cause and poor performance, her first way of handling it is excellent. Ask pointed specific questions on what about your performance was lacking and more importantly can you demonstrate to me that I’ve been communicated clear quantifiable and Timely objectives that I’ve been communicated means and ways to be coached and trained to meet those objectives and that I’ve been communicated milestones of me not meeting objectives, with proper corrective measures and coaching to then change course before a firing for poor performance.

If you can’t communicate any of these to me, the objectives, my performance against his objectives, the milestones, and the coaching I received to meet objectives when I did not, then this is not a poor performance related firing. If you’re missing any of these information then I am not yet terminated and I am at your employment until a subsequent meeting where you can come back with that information. On the other hand if what you meant to say is that this is a layoff because you have hired too many people, and that this letting Go has nothing to do with my performance, okay no problem, let’s talk, but in this case it will be with X months of severance and a glowing recommendation letter.

Lastly I want to make you aware that I’ve recorded this conversation, in which it’s now clearly documented that you have no clear tangible indication of any notion of documented poor performance about me, and thus I am still at the employed of my employer until you either provide those, or provide me with coaching that I then fail to put into practice to meet objectives, or until you come back with the severance package for a layoff that has nothing to do with my performance.

Something along those lines…

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Fallenwout@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The way she handled this, she is gonna get hired by another company in an instant.

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DontRedditMyLemmy@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Damn girl, I want you on my team! You got moxy!

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cultsuperstar@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They kept bringing up performance metrics. So are the metrics predetermined to always be against employees? Employees will never have a good performance regardless of all the positive feedback, just so the company can fire people when they want or need and say “well here’s your performance based on the metrics, you’re not working out so we gotta let you go”. That’s what it sounds like to me.

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thefloweracidic@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Wow I applied to Cloudflare a few months ago, glad I got rejected because I was just laid off late last year.

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slaacaa@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Great video, she was right to challenge them.

A lot of people in the comments seems to be trashing HR, but they are just the messengers / bad cops, they carry out the will of the executives, who just give their goons the orders to shoot you, and walk away. If you want to look for someone to blame, look near the top.

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