According to a viral TikTok video, Cloudflare — an internet security company based in San Francisco — recently terminated an employee named Brittany Peach. This is a prime example of why you should always assume your employees are recording your conversations. This termination did not go well, and I’ll tell you why.
The conversation is between Peach, an HR rep named Rosie, and a director whose name I can’t make out.
First, Peach’s video indicates she was not the only person terminated, so it sounds like a layoff situation. However, a Cloudflare spokesperson told me,
To keep reading, click here: The Viral Cloudflare Termination Video Is a Masterclass in How Not to Terminate Someone
I believe her name is spelled Pietsch from what I saw on the video. Yeah, that’s pretty slimy the way it was handled. But I doubt it would have gone much better if the manager had been there. I wish I could give her a hug and tell her it’ll be OK. I’ve been through that and it sucks, but i ended up in a better place, and I hope she will do.
It sounds to me like they’re trying to avoid paying unemployment, and to skirt the WARN act by calling layoffs “termination for cause”. Slimy and potentially fraudulent
I smelled that right off the bat. If a company can fire someone for cause and avoid the bureaucracy of a layoff, they will.
Also, word to the wise, if there have already been mass layoffs at your company, not only should you be looking for a new job but also don’t do anything to give them a reason to fire you. My friend’s company had a mass layoff in November. Two weeks ago, an administrative assistant lied about her hours on her timecard, something she had done in the past and an action that had been tacitly tolerated by management. This time, she was fired and, in my state, firings for timecard fraud often are not eligible for UE.
This is just another example of how companies are getting around the issue of labor rights, which are dependent on the specific geographic location. Especially here in the USA, where we have social media platforms telling us of workers rights in the workplace BUT there are NO set labor standards rights including rate of pay expectations. Many states in the USA only use the federal minimum wage $7,25 as the standard despite the illusion that the minimum wage is higher totally forgetting that the individual state determines the minimum wage.
Same applies to how people are given lay off notices—some states require a minimum of 90 days notice and some states have no notice requirements.
Yeah this situation was not handled as well as it could have but not knowing the exact location geographically it could have been perfectly legal.
Excellent blog. As a Human Resources student, I found this blog helpful. Cloudflare is using a strategy to terminate its employees with no exact documentation. My main takeaway from this post is the human relationship that is needed. It would be obvious to me that the person evaluating Brittany Peach’s performance should be the same explaining the reasons for her termination. However, her manager was not on the video call. As Peach explains in the video, some of her coworkers are being terminated as well. It would have been clearer to say “Every year, we terminate the bottom 5 percent of employees, and you fall into that.” Brittany notes. Cloudflare’s top executives must have a reason for the “yearly terminations” however this reflects the company culture, and it will possibly push away some good candidates in the future. It is challenging to be working with fear of being terminated no matter your performance.
A company I worked for conducted a major layoff of people whose performance was in the “1” band. It was handled by consultants, so strangers broke the news. A friend was terminated in that wave. He had just been promoted, but by company policy, he was placed in the “1” band for the first six months until his performance could be evaluated. Apparently the contract company handling terminations wasn’t aware of that policy. His manager was frantic but it was out of her hands. Because it was in a bad economy, he lost his house and his marriage before he could get work again, with a contract company that assigned him back to his old employer as a temp. Ranked firings and strangers managing terminations are cruel and damaging to a company and its reputation.