re: CEO responds to 'painful' video of employee who went viral after being fired

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This is 100% the standard in most industries. HR is supposed to be trained to ensure they don’t say anything that can hurt the company, and this one did a poor job. It’s usually cleaner if you have the HR person handle all of the talking in a meeting like this.

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It depends. In my experiences I have had to fire employees for performance issues but with an HR person ( mgr) present. Employees fired for policy violations like drug test, no shows, etc have been handled pretty much by HR alone.

Other than the situation in 2008 with lots of layoffs, I find most people if they are honest with you or themselves can see this coming. If Brittany was blowing and going at 100 mph and was making some mistakes, chances are that she is not "separated". I had a guy fresh out of school who ended up being a great employee, but in the beginning he tripped over his own dick on a regular basis.....but each time he tripped it took him longer to fall on his face....until he finally got it right. But he showed up every day, stayed later than most, asked lots of questions and was open to direction.

What I'm saying is that lots of people half-assed it and expected to get a pass. Brittany half-assed it and got what she deserved.

I have a big corp blindside story that floored me. Mid-manager was to drive to the airport to meet his upper and connect for the flight into the big meeting. He was traveling around and went to the nearest airport so when he got there the upper bought him a ticket and put him on a plane home then made the connector to the big meeting alone. When upper landed they met him at the airport and termed him too. The mid’s company truck was left in airport parking for a month before the suits figured it out and had a local retrieve it.

My wife just went through this with her corporate employer in July. She had 13 years, numerous promotions, and was just given a reward of nearly 6 figures in company stock for saving a major client in May that requires her to stay at the company 12 months from the date of issue to collect. Complete shock with no indications that her department or job was in trouble. It was handled by HR much like this video except her direct manager was on the call but not allowed to speak. They did not try to claim any sort of performance base and tied it to layoffs but it made no sense as to why she was chosen and HR would not provide any answers. Once the call ended, her boss called her personal cell ranting about it being BS and saying she had absolutely no say. Fortunately, her previous boss in another department at the same company called the next morning and offered her old job back for the same money she was making. She took it because it was the only way to not lose the stock grant but as soon as she cashes those in this June she's giving a big FU to them and leaving without notice.

I have been at the same place 25 years and it was privately held the first 20 of those. We were acquired by a corporation and the actual culture is nothing like the public image they project. Hate it but I like my staff and don't feel right leaving them to deal with the crap I shield them from. Once they start retiring, I will leave and never consider working for another corporation.

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Getting fired via Zoom is not really the issue. Her manager not being present is.

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I worked at that company and left before this shite happened. From what I heard from friends still there her manager may have been already let go too. They were really cleaning house.

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The deal is the managers and suits are frickin coward fricks who cannot provide specifics and send out their drones to fire people.

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I work in this space. The shitty reality is it's purely decided by being on a list of people under X% of quota attainment. It's not usual for salespeople to get let go in this manner, but this org specifically was constructed terribly and they needed to cut a lot of people to structure it properly.

At any rate, we get paid well and lead a relatively cushy remote life but the tradeoff is we always know this is a distinct possibility. It's supposed to be a lot less likely in sales, but the reality is you're never more than six months from getting fired in a sales job.

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IT_Dawg

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I work in the space as well. I actually worked at this company and left a few months ago because I saw where this shite was heading. Been reading through the comments and it's refreshing to see someone else who actually understands the goings on. Things like:

1 At any SaaS company if you go more than a quarter without closing a deal you should feel wildly under the gun.

2 The executives don't give a shite about the salespeople and the salespeople don't give a shite about the executives or the company. Both sides take maximum advantage of each other for as long as it's mutually beneficial for both sides, and as soon as it's not the relationship ends.

3 At a company the size of Cloudflare and above you truly are just a number on a spreadsheet.

4 We were a remote workforce. She would have never once gone into the office and probably never met her manager in person. The way they were firing the manager might have already been fired as well which is why someone else was subbing in and why let go via Zoom.

5 Cloudflare needed to drastically reduce its sales team to reorganize. They did this by ranking everyone by attainment, knowing how many people they needed to cut, and then let everyone go under a certain % to meet that number. That's why "performance" was cited as even though she would have been given some leeway under regular circumstances (and more warning and coaching) since they were doing a mass cut she became a casualty.

Is it requisite to “fire with cause” as for as unemployment goes to show that you informed the person of the issue, and have documentation that failed to meet it?

Because it really sounds like she was doing her job, they just got targeted for going viral about being overwhelmed at work some months ago. (She didn’t say the workplace was at fault or that they were at wrong. Just word vomit about how hard it is to manage work life balance now a days). If it were because of her actual performance they would have had the numbers there.

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And she was caught by surprise? She hasn't closed a single sale and is in sales. What did she expect?

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I worked at this place. It's pretty common knowledge among salespeople and management that you're lucky to get a deal done in your first three months and they don't really expect much from you in your first six months. She just happened to get caught up in a wave of mass sales staff reduction. Normally she would have had a bit more leeway. Average deal cycle for cybersecurity purchases is just over three months.

5 months with zero sales and 3 contracts inexplicably lost is a big red flag for anyone with sales experience in any capacity

That she had high activity counts for the role but no conversion is another huge red flag, and not the positive that she thought

I’m not sure I take on its surface that she was blindsided and never given any meaningful feedback. I suspect much more likely is that her manager tried to give her constructive and positive energy around serious feedback to avoid her melting