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Learning the right lessons from that Cloudflare firing video

How not to go viral for all the wrong reasons.
February 20, 2024

A poorly handled firing can have a massive impact on team morale and how candidates see you. Just ask Cloudflare.

The tumult in tech continues. Since the start of 2024, more than 150 tech companies have cut almost 40,000 employees, according to data from Layoffs.fyi. Within this already grim picture, however, few organizations have managed to draw as much negative PR as the global cloud services company, Cloudflare.

In January, Cloudflare account executive Brittany Pietsch, surreptitiously recorded her firing and then posted the nine-minute video to TikTok. In the video, Pietsch is informed via Zoom that she is being let go for poor performance by two HR staff whom she has never met.

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