Clarifying the Cloudflare layoffs
- Many were top performers. However, I understand that’s conjecture on here, so take it as you will. - To those saying “3-4 months is plenty to sell”, this is a different industry space. Infrastructure involves critical products so average sales cycle takes longer due to major risks & consequences. For SMB/Mid Market it’s 6+ months. For Enterprise segment it’s 1.5+ years. Ask anyone in Sales from the space or competitors. - Cloudflare has been quietly laying off people ~175+ legitimately or arbitrarily via reorgs (setting them up for poor performance). Not to mention all those who left/driven out. Makes it obvious they want attrition. - In Sales, they lay them off just to keep posting job openings to backfill, to shortly then lay them off again. IMO, despicable playing with peoples lives like that and market under the guise of a random award - “Builtin best place to work” #layoff #sales #cloudflare
I work in software M&A and can support the OPs sales cycle analysis. The more expensive and complex the product, the longer the cycle and it's even longer for government sales. Good representatives spend years building up their book of business consistently feeding their pipeline.
Yes , but from the news , the people laid off were SDR’s , so their role is not closing deals , it is outbound emails and calls and they are measured by activity , not winning a deal.
If you listened to Brittany's call she referenced not closing a contract yet and her position was account executive.
Problem I have is CEO constantly claims about they are better than everyone else because they don't do layoffs while doing shit like this that is far worse.. Is optics of not doing layoffs worth the cost of doing this shit and also benefit of avoiding having to pay severance.
Does Cloudflare have something like this? This has a ton of opportunities for Googlers laid off. bit.ly/gnews-layoffs-help
Everyone should dox this company. The CEO is a POS too
You can see how such layoff are handling. No reason, no explanation, not KPI, no feedbacks. https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/7323004085043612959?is_from_webapp=1&web_id=7322584795496793642
“- In Sales, they lay them off just to keep posting job openings to backfill, to shortly then lay them off again” Why would they do this , makes no sense . Training an SDR takes time and money , why hire them , train them fire them and then backfill ?
It probably comes to, amid the frequent leadership changes, restructuring, and resulting bad decisions, they still want those activity numbers. Edit: Found out as a company that’s not profitable, layoffs don’t look good, because valuation has been based on growth potential and they imply growth isn’t expected to be as strong, effecting confidence in the stock.
My hunch is to steal leads or contacts. Get sales to start advocating for a new product and once a big customer is signed you no longer need them. I am not in sales but I see no sense in laying sales off quickly. It takes time to ramp up with a product, many large customers have 2-3 month purchase period, where they test new product, gather info, go back and forth, compare with others etc. Sales are not that quick. This quick churn of people shows immaturity and lack of insight. It will come to bite them.