There is no answer Cloudflare could give her or anyone else that would make folks go "oh, ok, I get it. Thanks!" So why even bother giving one?
I would check your assumption here. What is this "my file" you imagine exists. What is it? Who is the custodian? Is there just one copy, if not, how are they kept in sync, etc.?
So, if a prospective employer contacts Cloudflare and asks why she was terminated and Cloudflare says “performance” when that’s not actually the case, it’s detrimental to the potential employer’s perception of her.
This works around potential libel issues associated with giving specific reasons.
She says she was hired 4.5 months ago and that her ramp-up quota period was 3 months long. That's not quite "just finished training".
In sales, once your ramp up period is over you're expected to be held to the same performance standards as everyone else. Ramp up periods do provide some cover for not hitting quota, but not closing a single deal during the ramp-up period and in the months following (albeit over holidays, which is tough) is not a good sign.
It could be pure bad luck, but the reality is that having zero closed sales and being past your ramp-up period is going to put you at the top of the layoff list.
She also says that every 1:1 she's had with her manager has been positive.
I would expect in a circumstance where an employee is actually underperforming that they would not have been told otherwise during their regular performance meetings.
In some places i've worked it most certainly would be, others not so much. I don't know if we have that level of information in this case however.
My background has been in hosting/cloud and I've run and worked within sales teams and its generally been:
Selling $5 dollar a month shared hosting accounts and 50 dollar dedies? Yeah, you should probably have something by the end of your first month after ramp.
Selling 50k+ a month cloud infrastructure and engineering services solutions? You get at LEAST one dud quarter to find your feet after ramp, if due to nothing else other than its a significantly longer lifecycle.
I agree that being honest is not going to make everyone happy, but I don't understand why they can't at least give solid reasons.
Probably the liability around someone saying something not accurate, or something that could be construed as approaching, even indirectly, some protected class. They've already laid her off, she's not going to be singing their praises under any circumstances, anything they do at this point just increases their liability.
In a perfect world I'd love for people laid off or fired to get detailed reasons why so they can adjust course if necessary or at least know that it was nothing they did and just budgetary, but there are too many people who will want to argue the point in court that the company not only has no incentive to do it, they're heavily incentivized not to.
this is about business and legalities about business
As they should!
Decency? Honesty?
If you tell an ex you left them because they are (fat?), is it honest or is it cruel ?
It's particularly obnoxious with theoretically prestigious companies that "hire the smartest people" and then blatantly lie to us as if everyone inside and outside the company doesn't see right through them.
> If you tell an ex you left them because they are (fat?), is it honest or is it cruel ?
It's cruel, just like it's cruel to lie to someone they are being fired due to "performance" when the real reason is just a blanket layoff scheme over a whole department.
What would be more cruel: a lie "you are not performing so we are letting you go" vs the truth "the company has decided to layoff some business units we don't believe will be profitable in the foreseeable future".
I believe it's a pretty good case for applying honesty instead of being another lying corporation.
Legal counsel and HR will explicitly avoid stating such things.