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Comment by aaomidi | Hacker News Reader

This is amazing video for making a legal case against Cloudflare.

Cloudflare took a stupid, unnecessary risk here by trying to put this on performance when they haven't documented it.

What case? At will employment is a thing. You can terminate people with absolutely no reason if you want, most of the time.

Yeah, you can terminate them with absolutely no reason, and then get sued. Read up on how employment laws actually work. There are all sorts of factors you aren't considering, which play into the legal realm at hand here. Factors like employee count. Yes, even in at-will states. You think that major corporations do PIPs and pay severances out of kindness?

In California, you sometimes have to announce layoffs. This strengthens a class action lawsuit that this is a layoff and not a termination for performance. There will be penalties associated with that.

You can simply say "We are terminating your employment." However, that generally means that you cannot demand back relocation, bonuses, stocks, etc. and you're going to have to cough up equivalent severance to everybody else--otherwise you're staring at a discrimination lawsuit.

> At will employment is a thing. You can terminate people with absolutely no reason if you want, most of the time.

In which case fire them with no reason. If however you waive that choice and offer a specific reason then you probably should make the chosen reason true unless you want to be sued for wrongful dismissal.

You see?

Damn if you do, damn if you don't.

It's then better to just fire and give no motivation whatsoever.

Except this reason was most likely a fabrication due to the fact that they never communicated performance issues in the past.

Cloudflare lied. It’s plain and simple.

Or maybe they did and she didn't tell in the TikToks?

Don't believe everything you see on the internet. Be smarter than that, form opinions based on as many facts as possible, not only partial, biased, information.

I have more reason to believe this person than I do cloudflare.

Practice being skeptical.

You should probably do the same thing.

Given the information, and given what I know about Cloudflare’s internals and how they have behaved, and given how Matthew Prince has been in the past. It is unreasonable to think Cloudflare is in the right here.

Right? I mean who is more likely to be shady and do crooked things? Some person or a business? Can anyone even name a single time when a company has fired someone without real cause and lied?

Companies are made of individuals, and individuals can be shady and crooked. In a vacuum, it’s probably somewhat as likely that the person getting fired and the company doing the firing are scumbags. I’d personally argue that companies have more of a reputation to uphold for profitability reasons, and will therefore be incentivised to act less scummy than individuals.

In this case, the company has nothing to gain no matter how they sever the contract. They’re simply getting rid of an employee who was either costing them money, or getting rid of many employees at a time to navigate a difficult economic situation.

The person making the TikTok on the other hand has a lot to gain from making a controversial and attention-grabbing spectacle out of this.

There are a host of laws regarding termination, even in at will states, especially for companies of Cloudflare's size.

Giving an invalid reason that is unsupported by facts is generally a strong place for a lawyer to assert "wrongful termination" and invoke those laws.

That's a false accusation.

They gave a reason: performance and the girl mentioned to have 0 sales + 3 opportunities.

I wouldn't bet a penny on that lawsuit to win.

They gave a reason. That doesn't mean the facts supported that reason. The employee didn't believe they did.

Not closing a deal in your first month of sales is not exactly unheard of or even uncommon.

Either way, WT lawsuits don't generally "win or lose". They settle.

The facts support the reason ( 0 sales), although there are nuances ( timeframe - 4,5 months)

There's also a lot of missing context.

- what happened in those 3 opportunities that she tried to close a deal

- perhaps she's missing a technical background to actually close a deal, since Cloudflare is a very technical product

No one from us knows the details, so it's speculation.

4,5 months is still a bit fast though. Getting a new employee up to speed takes 6 months in a lot of cases.

But mostly you know it sooner when it wouldn't work out.

You went from "the facts supported the reason" to "we don't have all the facts necessary to know if the facts supported the reason." to "from the facts we know, the reason seems sus."

You don't need to know everything, to acknowledge that 0 sales supports a bad performance review.

Here's additionally info that you didn't knew: https://softwarestackinvesting.com/cloudflare-net-q2-2023-ea... - profitability

100 people were fired and replaced, in the hope to get less underperforming sales people.

=> Facts support this situation and it's consistent to what happened in may last year too.

This is a follow up with the people that were layed off for underperforming. To see if they weren't...

Then she should’ve had that communicated to her earlier.

We don't know specifics.

If she's doing all the things she should do ( as she mentions), but lacks technical knowledge for a technical product.

Than if she asks feedback, she'll get points for the effort.

But concerning technical knowledge, there's not much to do in a short period to get an employee profitable in a lot of cases. Definitely with a product like Cloudflare.

And saying you lack basic knowledge, is very hard to do/fix. Because the knowledge is not solely Cloudflare related. It's development, website, networking, ... There's a difficult gray area on what training someone needs for technical things.

Even if the employee is motivated. They won't be profitable within a year.

Where to start? Where does it end?

If you give a reason, it must be true. Otherwise it opens you up to "well, what was the real reason then?"

Rules for layoffs vary greatly from state to state.

America is a pretend country with pretend rights.

To me it sounds like excelent video for making a legal case againts Britanny, I'd be very upset if someone would be secretly recording a meeting with me as a HR person. Guess that depends on a state, but good luck finding another corporate job.

You'd HATE me then =D.

I live in a one-party consent state. And, Apple Watches have a GREAT and discreet microphone; I record whenever I have the slightest feeling something "important" is going to be said.

(And from a technical POV, using OpenAIs Whisper I can very easily convert those recordings to searchable transcripts)

You want to be a little HR god of your fiefdom. Still, unsurprisingly, intelligent people don't like people above them going on power trips, especially in America, where employers have a one-sided power-relationship with workers.

She's in Georgia, and Georgia, like most states, is a "one-party consent" state for purposes of making audio recordings of conversations. They'd have no case at all.

Making them? Sure. Sharing them on chinese owned social network? I'd be very very surprised.

If it's a legally-made recording -- and thus the property of that person who pressed the "record" button, free and clear of any obligations -- what could be illegal about posting it publicly?

As others have already mentioned, she could have signed an NDA, but those are typically narrow and only apply to technical data, marketing data, sales data, etc. There could be something in there about "internal processes," but it's a stretch.

She could have signed a non-disparagement agreement, but there's nothing in the video which constitutes disparagement.

So I'd assume that she's probably okay. And she did a good thing by posting it.

Besides, legal action would need to come from Cloudflare, which would be an extremely bad look for them.

So you are free to record work meetings and post them on TikTok?

Legally, yes.

But she could experience some consequences if future employers don't feel great about this.

What about NDAs?

What hashtag should I follow to watch more US corp internal meetings?

How did she break an NDA with this video?

You are right you cant just record and out out there just ANY corporate material. But you getting fired? This aint it.

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