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)
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.
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.
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?
There’s a lot of good evidence that helping people is pretty un-American.
That’s one of the reasons why companies will put on a PIP(performance improvement plan) if they want to fire you. They try to get you to sign something saying you understand and acknowledge that your performance needs to improve.They need to have some sort of paper trail in order for them to be able to deny the unemployment claim. A company can’t just say “oh yeah that guy sucked” unless there was a substantial, documented issue like you getting into a physical confrontation with someone
Actually making good on insurance claims would defeat the point of insurance, which is to make money off of people in need, i.e. those who can’t afford the financial burdens that insurance purports to protect you from.
Don’t you need to be working somewhere for 6 months to get unemployment? She’s been there for 4
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.
There is no professional, moral, or practical reason to attempt to be “honest” about why you were let go unless you are in a hyper local industry where everyone knows each other personally. Obviously even Cloudflare doesn’t have a solid idea why they let her go.
Employment verification usually goes to a third party either way.
I’ll take this into consideration the next time I look for a new position. I’ve never been on the side of performing or requesting a background check on a potential employee, but have almost always been asked why I left my previous employer when I’ve interviewed for a new position. Thanks internet friend.
Yeah, just to second them, most companies won’t share much more than the vaguest of summaries of your time there. Such as “yes they worked here between these dates doing job”. Keep in mind the person answering the phone most likely doesn’t even know who you are unless you give a direct line to your direct report.
But there’s a bigger reason; they could potentially be sued for damages. If what HR has in the file isn’t true, or the manager misremembers, or any other long list of things. They would be defaming you. Hard to win, harder to prove, but still something most companies want to steer clear of.
There are also state laws which dictate what can and cannot be said about a past employee, but that varies from state to state.
I worked at Teledyne and got laid off. The official policy was that they wouldn’t give anyone a reference good or bad just confirm that the person worked there. Shit people making shit products. They threatened to not give me any severance unless I agreed to never badmouth the Teledyne corporation on the internet. I took the money.
The professional workaround is ‘are they eligible for rehire’. If you’re laid off it’s a yes, if not it’s a no.
“I took the money.”
Uh oh, now you’re going to have to give it back for spilling the tea!
I will get right on that. Maybe I will show up to my ex-manager’s manager house and discuss the matter with him. You know on a rainy night near midnight. Is that the proper way to do this?
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.
That’s a gross and very American thing to do
It is a performance issue. The company performed poorly in hiring too many people
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”.
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.
No.1 and no.3 are interesting people. I wish I could do those things.
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.
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.
Not having to pay a redundancy package? Or just sociopaths in the management team.