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)
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
If he thinks it’s painful to watch then he should apologize personally 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.
under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten
What feedback?
Tbf
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we don’t know if she’s got feedback before getting fired or not
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he does address that:
No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right.
Shocked they actually admitted a mistake here. What will really matter is if they actually change anything.
Did he though? I mean he perfectly sticks to individual shortcomings as the reason and even implies that she ignored feedback.
Dude, he didn’t really admit to any mistake.
That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did.
He’s literally saying firing her was not the mistake. He still believes she should’ve been fired and not laid off. He also believes firing her based on nondescript performance metrics was right. The only thing he believes was wrong was how the firing was carried out. The only thing he’s admitting is that the firing wasn’t “PR friendly”, which is an indirect way of saying the mistake was getting caught.
You’re literally just making stuff up here.
As you said, he said firing here wasn’t the mistake. They determined that she wasn’t working out there so they fired her. That’s within their rights. The “nondescript performance metrics” aren’t non-descript, we just don’t know them because we don’t work for cloudflare. Her job seems to be to bring in clients. She admits herself that she hasn’t brought in a single client, and lost one at the final hurdle (could be because of her, might not be).
The mistake was her manager not being in the call. That’s pretty much the only “mistake” they made here. HR did their job, which was to tell her she was fired and to walk her through the next steps.
What feedback?? The feedback that said she was doing well from the people familiar with her work? Or the mysterious metrics she was failing to meet but also had no idea about? God, what an out of touch douche nozzle.
Also, if they’re not a fit but still a good employee, LAY THEM OFF. But who wants to pay for all that messy extra stuff when you can just grind through the workforce?
The way this whole thing went down is absurd.
That said, I had an underperforming colleague who never picked up that feedback was negative. They only latched onto the positive statements. This is either a failing of the receiver to hear the negative when also getting positives or a failing of the feedback giver to be direct.
It’s impossible to say in this situation, though it caught my attention that she mentioned she was close to closing a deal and lost it last second. If we take the CEOs statement at face value, perhaps she didn’t actually meet their metrics.
I can’t say if this is justified or not, but what is abundantly obvious to me is 1) their feedback system likely sucks 2) the hit squad was under prepared with the justification for a termination for lack of performance, 3) she called them on their shit justifiably.
I also agree that it should be expected they give a reasonable severance if this is their hiring model… If you by rule whack people.after three months, they should compensate for another three as people were not looking for new work.
