They would be among the first to go under union rules, too.
Unions are often worse at prioritizing things like tenure over performance, if anything. But even under those rules she was one of the most junior people.
There is basically no situation where a union would have prioritized this any differently.
They had no signed contracts, but with onboarding, the ramp up, and holidays, it sounds like this was explicitly not an issue for their manager.
You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better.
People don't like things that don't make sense. In my experience, between individual advice and collective bargaining, unions do make things make more sense in this way.
The employee admits having closed zero sales. It doesn't get much more objective than that.
They're also relatively new to the company. Unions tend to prioritize tenure over performance anyway, so their relative newness might have put them at an even higher disadvantage under a union.
> You're right that tenure is a common way of deciding who is going, but if HR had come in and said "we're really sorry but we're letting go the most recent joiners, no reflection on you other than your start date, you'll get a good reference based on your ramp up performance", that would have gone over much better.
I don't believe this at all. If this had been a TikTok where HR said "We're letting you go because you started recently" everyone would be outraged about them firing people for arbitrary, non-performance reasons.
You clearly have no experience in sales--especially enterprise sales.
1) No responsible sales organization is going to let a brand new hire alone with a client under 6 months.
2) You aren't selling shit to enterprise from Mid-November until after the first week of January.
3) She barely had a single quarter to get some company to add her to a budget and close a sale. No chance.
/me -> former Red Hat Solution Architect that was given 6 months to go from hired to field ready in assisting two account managers. My RH and technical knowledge was fine, but sales is a completely different beast. I was lucky with my timeline as it gave me a lot of time to breathe, shadow my mentor, and get the two required certs. If it was three instead I would have been in over my head by the end of those 90 days. Every day was effectively being sprayed by a fire hose of information.
And she honestly may have had absolutely horrible luck. I've worked with great accounts, terrible accounts, and then some *poof* accounts. I had more deals than I would have liked get suspended right as ink was about to meet paper due to internal events at the customer.
1. Her performance was subpar but Cloudflare told her to keep doing what she was doing.
2. Her performance was fine but the Cloudflare are full of shit.
Either way it's not a good look for Cloudflare.
Layoffs happen. Welcome to tech. Just say it's a layoff, and everybody will get on with life.
However, trying to fire someone for performance short of 12 months smells like somebody was told to try to claw back or limit signing bonuses, relocation allowances, stock grants, and promissory estoppel claims.
It's a VERY, VERY bad look for Cloudflare who, up to this point, I had decent vibes about from dealing with various employees.
She also says that her manager was giving her positive reviews in every one-on-one.
• Third quarter revenue totaled $335.6 million, representing an increase of 32% year-over-year
Do we need to feel sorry for cloudflare or something?
She says on the call, or her feedback has been positive, so why should she expect a negative outcome like this?
As a junior, she should be given the appropriate and valid feedback so she can learn and improve for her future. Not this dystopian, cold bullshit. Do you have any idea what this kind of thing does to a junior employees confidence? Wow.
We should never stand for it.
A union won’t make the managers setting policies better human beings but it puts them in a context where there’s a party who has more power to push back, and can afford things like lawyers. It also means that they have things like union contracts saying that, for example, you can’t fire someone for performance without proof and warning such as a negative review and time to improve. Simply knowing they’ll have to follow the process is often enough to rein in the worst abuses.
2022: Lost 193 million 2021: Lost 260 million 2020: Lost 119 million
2023 also had big losses upwards of 150 million
It's very clear they need to cut expenses
A union would have had significantly more notice because they're in tune with the company and prioritize the workers. Extra notice means greater better planning.
You didn't listen to what they said:
* One month at speed * Three months of ramp
Generally, ramp time in roles like this persons would involve tailing and listening to active areas, training for the specifics of the product that you're selling, etc.
We then hit December, wherein
* Nobody makes big spend choices in December. It's a dead month for sales unless you're in Retail selling toys and gadgets. Sales closing in December are fucking golden geese. * They had one possible account land pull out at the last moment. Why? Unsure. * Assuming this person is telling the truth, their management indicated they were a high performer overall.
Just like very few companies hire in December, very few companies make big spending choices at the end of the calendar year.
Unions can do things like
* Argue that the state of the dismissal is contrived ("you didn't sell anything in the week nobody buys things") * Create mandatory minimum times of employment (e.g. "you can't lay off someone who has only recently joined" or "you can't lay off someone who moved > 100mi for the job until they have had at least one primary performance review")
Unions fight the nebulous "performance metrics" that HR is citing here.
That depends, there are often left over budgets and people scrambling to spend them
Ok.
> it's important that the right people are chosen [for layoffs], for the right reasons
Um . . . unions?
> requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria [for which people are being fired!]
Unions?
> are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted
Unions only do that?
I would hope that unions are more than just ways to protect management when they make firing choices.
Unions are not supposed to be a management condom for when management f's the employees. Do people pay dues just so they "do it with a rubber?"
As a well paid software engineer who wants to work with high performing colleagues, nothing my union has said has suggested they aren't supportive of this. They are about holding companies to account, not entrenching poor performers or normalising salaries around some middle ground.
Bear in mind also that there has been a near century long war of propaganda against the idea of unions. There's a lot of negative connotation built up in media, discourse, expectations, etc.
Fundamentally, a union for software engineers is just not going to work the same as a union for, say, manufacturing. There's a lot that mostly doesn't apply to us like physical safety, but a lot more that does like whistleblowing.
Firing "lazy non-performers" is easy, you just follow the steps.
1) warning about performance, in written form with someone present 2) second warning 3) fired.
The American way where a boss can just come in and say "you're fired, gather your things and security will escort you out" will never fly here.
The process is there to make sure the reason for firing is explicitly stated and understood by both sides. It also gives some safeguards that just a personality conflict between people can't be used to fire someone, there has to be a proper reason beyond "I don't like your face"
Companies can also fire people when they hit a downturn, but there's a catch. If they claim it's for "economic reasons" (there's a specific turn of phrase they need to use here that doesn't translate) they then need to primarily re-hire the people who they fired if they start hiring for the same positions again.
Unions are not the answer.
Factory unions protect the collective uniformly because each person is interchangeable. This is a “raise the minimum” type environment. They make it hard to fire because they need to hold the line.
Some unions are structured to support highly skilled and differentiated labor. Like in Hollywood. They protect workers like camera-men but still allow skilled actors to be well paid and properly audition for roles.
A union doesn't stop layoffs it just costs everyone more. Your best representative in a layoff is a lawyer and a place with better employment notice pay.
GP said they can negotiate who gets laid off and what happens to those who do.
Unions can be an entirely appropriate and reasonable party.
Layoffs are unfortunately, sometimes, necessary. But when they happen, it's important that the right people are chosen, for the right reasons (whether that's performance based, voluntary, protecting certain groups, ensuring fairness, etc). That requires collective bargaining by representatives who are able to assess and change the criteria, and who are able to negotiate for better outcomes for those impacted.