A woman who recorded herself getting fired has sparked a discussion on termination etiquette, with even the CEO of her company weighing in and admitting to certain mistakes in the dismissal process.
San Francisco-based cybersecurity firm Cloudflare dismissed around 60 employees earlier this week for not meeting performance standards. Brittany Pietsch, a recently-hired accounts executive at the company, was among those who lost their jobs.
Pietsch recorded her termination call in a video that Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince called “painful” to watch. The video has gone viral with over 21 million views on X. It shows Pietsch asking the HR representative at the meeting for an explanation as to why she was let go despite having received only good reviews from her manager so far.
It is worth noting that her manager was not part of the call. Pietsch, who joined Cloudflare in August last year, says that she was fired by an HR representative and a director she had never met before this.
“Can you explain for me why Brittany Pietsch is getting let go?” she was heard asking when told she had been fired without an explanation as to why she was fired. It is clear that Rosie, the HR rep, and the other person on call had no idea why Pietsch was being let go. Their explanation was vague at best.
“We've finished our evaluations of 2023 performance, and this is where you have not met Cloudflare's expectation for performance,” the director said.
Pietsch responded by pointing out that she had only joined the company on August 25 and had never received negative feedback before this.
“I’ve been on a three-month ramp,” she said. “I have had the highest activity amongst my team, I’ve had three contracts out, done a really great job managing my deals.”
“Also, every single one-on-one I’ve had with my manager,” the Atlanta woman continued, “he’s given me nothing but ‘I am doing a great job, have had great activity, great meetings, I’m picking up the products very quickly. I make really great relationships with my clients.’”
“So, I disagree that I haven’t met performance expectations.”
"I cannot speak to what your manager has communicated to you directly," Rosie said. The HR rep and director did promise to get back to the employee with more specific details about her performance issues.
With no good explanation forthcoming, a tearful Pietsch told the HR rep: "It must be very easy for you to just have these little 10 to 15 minute meetings, tells someone they’re fired, completely wreck their whole life and then that’s it with no explanation. But that’s extremely traumatizing for people…it’s a huge slap in the face."
Layoffs or termination
The video sparked a debate about whether Cloudflare was firing employees or carrying out layoffs. There’s a crucial difference between the two.
“A layoff is a cut that is necessary due to company performance and needing to decrease costs, while a firing is usually solely based on performance metrics or personal characteristics,” Kristen Fowler, vice president of human resources and practice lead at executive search firm Clarke Caniff Strategic Search, told Fortune.
Cloudflare denies laying off employees and maintains that all 60 employees were fired due to performance issues.
“When we do make the decision to part ways with an employee, we base the decision on a review of an employee’s ability to meet measurable performance targets,” the company said in a statement shared with several news outlets. “We regularly review team members’ performance and let go of those who aren’t right for our team. There is nothing unique about that review process or the number of people we let go after performance review this quarter.”
CEO’s response
However, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince admitted that the termination could have been handled better.
In his response to the video, shared on X, Prince said the video was painful to watch. Managers should always be involved when it comes to terminations, he admitted.
“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,” he said.
Moreover, the chief executive said that employees should receive regular feedback if they are underperforming, rather than being surprised during a firing.
“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,” he said.
Prince added that getting fired does not necessarily make someone a bad employee, Sometimes, people are just not the right fit for a particular organisation – like “Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player,” he said.
“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,” he concluded, promising to do better in the future.
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