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)
“Most people outside of IT don’t even know what Cloudflare is or that it even exists.” They do now ;)
And by next week, they’ll forget because they don’t ever plan to apply there for work. The small percentage of people that will avoid applying there because of this is a small drop in the bucket of people that will still apply. This is no where near as important as some people make it out to be.
Yet the CEO felt the need to try to do some damage limitation. Clearly he doesn’t share your confidence about the lack of impact this could have on the company’s reputation.
Again, a little PR to brush it aside is all that was. Come back to me next week and show me the impact.
If it was nothing why brush it?
To get ahead of it and control the narrative. They were publicly accused of a wrongful dismissal. That has huge legal connotations, whether she realized that or not. But the corporation has all their legal ducks in a row. She hasn’t exposed anything but her own inexperience. Really, if she did have a wrongful dismissal case, she likely overplayed her hand by publishing the video so soon. She’ll get employment insurance, but that’s all she’ll get at this point.
I’m finding this confusing. On the one hand you are adamant this will have no impact for them but then also say this could have huge legal connotations for them. Which is it? It can’t be both.
No, it has huge legal connotations for her. If she had a wrongful dismissal case, then she should have brought the video and the documentation to a lawyer instead of blasting it out to the world. Now the legal department that has a team of lawyers working to advise the CEO and making sure she doesn’t have a case, whether she actually had one or not. That’s why it will be reported as fired without cause. If she was told she was fired with cause but it’s reported as without cause and she can still claim employment insurance, then she has no case. If she had kept her mouth shut and let them process the termination, she might have had something combined with the video. Now she has nothing, and this will be forgotten by next week.
Patience is a virtue, especially when you’re being fired.
“Now she has nothing” - You shouldn’t underestimate the impact of going viral. If she’d kept quiet no one would have ever known about the way Cloudflare behaved. Now she’s gone viral globally and her 1 day old LinkedIn post about this situation has (so far) collected 4,260 reactions, 547 comments and 128 reposts. You can bet your bottom dollar that Matthew Prince is not sleeping soundly tonight. It’s going to be rather interesting to see what happens next…