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cloudflare employee fired viral tiktok video / pov you're about to get laid off.

Cloudflare Employee Getting Fired Video

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Updated Jan 12, 2024 at 05:56PM EST by Zach.

Added Jan 12, 2024 at 01:01PM EST by Adam.

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Overview

Cloudflare Employee Getting Fired Video refers to a viral video in which former Cloudflare employee Brittany Pietsch records herself getting laid off by the company with the caption "POV: you're about to get laid off." The video spread in January 2024 as people criticized Cloudflare's handling of the situation, particularly that they had HR people Pietsch never met handle the firing, while also praising Pietsch's composure. The viral nature of the video then led to a comment from Cloudflare's CEO, causing the controversy to become more prominent online.

Background

On January 10th, 2024, Brittany Pietsch posted a TikTok video to her account @brittanypeachhh seemingly showing herself getting fired from Cloudflare over Zoom. The TikTok gained over 79,000 views in two days (shown below).

@brittanypeachhh When you know youre about to get laid off so you film it :) this was traumatizing honestly lmao #layoffs #tech #techlayoffs #corporate ♬ original sound – Britt

In the video, Pietsch explained that she anticipated being fired on a work call as many of her coworkers were fired that day. As it progressed, HR people who she'd never met handled the firing, saying it was a "performance-based" decision, but they struggled to explain what issues the company had with her performance.[1]

Pietsch proceeded to push back on this point, explaining she had only worked at the company for three months, including the typically poor sales month of December, while pushing her own accomplishments in her short time at Cloudflare.

Online Reactions

After the video was posted to Pietsch's TikTok on January 10th, 2024, it was then reposted by the account @alexyardigans, which caused it to go viral (video has since been deleted). It inspired several high-engagement stitches on the platform shortly after.

For example, on January 11th, TikTok user @hr_molly posted a stitch opining that the HR team at Cloudflare badly fumbled Pietsch's firing, gaining over 268,000 views in one day (shown below, left). The same day, user @catie_campbell posted about the video, saying the situation could have been avoided if Pietsch had done her due diligence before joining the company (shown below, right).

@hr_molly Layoffs are bad enough. Why worsen them with a poor delivery of that message? In my opinion, they fumbled it right from the beginning. Managers or HR or whoever does these meetings need to respect the impacted staff and provide an appropriate experience. Don't place the blame on the employee. #humanresources #hrtiktok #workplaceproblems #jobtips #corporatetiktok #careertiktok #layoff #managersbelike #managersoftiktok #leadershipdevelopment #greenscreenvideo #greenscreen ♬ original sound – HR Molly

@thecatiecampbell #stitch with @🙀 KittyCafe 😻 Do your due diligence before joining a company! #layoffs #cloudflare @Inc. #eq #leadership ♬ original sound – Catie Campbell

The video went viral on Twitter / X after it was reposted by user @SMB_Attorney on January 11th. There, the video gained over 10 million views, 3,800 retweets and 25,000 likes in one day (shown below).


The popularity of the tweet subsequently inspired a response from Cloudflare's CEO, Matthew Prince[2] on January 12th, 2024. In his response, he acknowledged that Cloudflare had not "fired" Pietsch "perfectly."

"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. We don’t always get it right."

His response gained over 500 retweets and 1,100 likes in roughly 12 hours (shown below).


Matthew Prince @eastdakota 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, we don't hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. 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. We don't always get it right. And sometimes under performing employees don't actually listen to the feedback they've gotten before we let them go. Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn't mean they're a bad employee. It doesn't mean won't be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he's undoubtedly a great basketball player. And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them. We definitely weren't anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who aren't performing off. That wasn't the mistake here. 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. 1:42 AM Jan 12, 2024

Also on January 12th, Pietsch responded to the situation and her viral fame on LinkedIn.[3] She said she believed she was meeting her performance targets and her manager was as blindsided as she was. She then added that she had received a lot of support and similar stories and that she was not worried about hurting her employment chances in the future because she stood up for herself in her video.

Search Interest

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External References

[1] Business Insider – A corporate employee sparked a workplace etiquette debate after posting a 10-minute TikTok seemingly showing herself getting fired

[2] Twitter – Matthew Prince

[3] LinkedIn – Brittany Pietsch

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