Cloudflare CEO Says Viral Firing Video Is 'Painful': 'We Were Far From Perfect… We Don't Always Get It Right'

Cloudflare Inc. NET CEO Matthew Prince has admitted that a viral video of an employee being fired is "painful for me to watch," but maintained that the decision to fire the said employee was not the mistake in this case.

What Happened: Responding to a post by Bloom Institute's co-founder Austen Allred, Prince went into a little more detail about what went wrong with the employee who recorded herself being laid off.

Viewers of the 9-minute video posted by former Cloudflare employee Brittany Pietsch have called it "horrendous" and that there is a "culture or senior leadership problem" at Cloudflare.

"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," Prince said.

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,…

— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) January 12, 2024

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In the video posted by Pietsch, she's shown logging onto a virtual call with a director at Cloudflare along with an HR executive.

During the call, the two representatives tell her that she did not meet performance expectations. However, when she sought an explanation and numbers to justify the layoff, the director says they "won't be able to go into specifics."

"Every single one-on-one [meeting] I've had with my manager, every conversation I've had with him – he's been giving me nothing but ‘I am doing a great job.' I'm just definitely very confused and would love an explanation that makes sense," Pietsch said.

Why It Matters: Layoffs are being announced by several big technology companies, including Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google, which has reportedly laid off over 1,000 employees in January so far.

Prince maintains that Cloudflare was right in firing Pietsch, but said the way she was fired was the mistake in this instance.

"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."

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Picture: Courtesy World Economic Forum via Flickr