Comment by dp-hackernews | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dp-hackernews | Hacker News Reader

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In her own words, and seems like its the way the company works, she had a 3 month ramp - which I presume is along the lines of training, mentoring, pairing, learning the ropes by example etc - and then let lose to get stuck in, which as she says has been only one month that overlaped a holiday period.

It sure seems like Cloudflare are just culling staff to me, or her manager has no managerial abilities and doesn't know how to give genuinely useful feedback.

If it was her performance that was in question, there would be a trail, maybe even a car crash worth of evidence to back up that claim.

I don't think she will have issues finding work, unless having high standards, conducting yourself in a professional manner, and fighting for yourself and for your peers are considered a bad things.

I think Richard Branson (Virgin) once said, "Treat your staff how you would like them to treat your best customer." - unfortunatrly that doesn't appear to be the mantra at Cloudflare.

She was in sales and sold nothing. 3 months is a long time to be unproductive.

People complain about corporations sending out emails to notify people they have been fired or laid off. This person posting a hit video is a prime example why companies make things as brief as possible with no interaction available.

> 3 months is a long time to be unproductive.

I mean yes.. but depending on company policy on training/Co thats expected...

Sales people generally (in sensible firms) aren’t expected to sell anything in their first quarter while they learn the ropes, the product, etc.

It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1 - those are usually dead times of year.

Unless your sales org is a puppy mill/boiler room… which many are.

Also, in this case they cut a huge amount of the sales org, this seems more like a “shit we over hired and need to lay people off without it being a layoff, let’s use performance…” shenanigans.

> It’s also not expected to make any real enterprise sales during Q4 or the beginning of Q1

I've worked at a few enterprise software companies in the US, and Q4 is always the busiest time for sales. Having a deal roll into Q1 is very undesirable, so sales people do what they can do close before the end of the year. Q1 is incredibly quiet.

On the Engineering side, yes - Q4 and Q1 are super quiet as sales is driving the economic machine in Q4, and everyone's doing planning in Q1.

> Q4 is always the busiest time for sales.

Yes, but not if you're still ramping. The sales cycle for Cloudflare is probably 6-24 months. Unless you've stepped in on a deal that's basically about to close, you're not going to be closing just because it's Q4.

I worked in quite a few sensible firms. A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of because they would have been fired long before that. A 3 month ramp doesn't mean produce zero results. In case anyone is wondering, results for a salesperson means selling things.

That she goes on to try and rub their noses in her shortcomings tells me all I need to know who was at fault here.

Q4 is a dead time of year? I swear some of you have never had jobs.

> A salesperson not selling anything for 3 months was never heard of

It's funny that you say this then go on to accuse others of never having had jobs.

I've worked around enterprise sales for years and it's entirely possible for reps to go 3 quarters without closing business if they're in a strategic patch or they're trying to build a new vertical/geo. Sales cycles run anywhere from 6-24 months of you're selling enterprise software of any substance or scale, and unless you're getting hot deals from the last person, you're going to be starting most of those at 0. That's why we have ramps.

That said, there are definitely metrics you can look at to see if someone is on the right path at the 3/6 month mark. It's just not necessarily closed business.

She had 3 months of training, only 1 month of actual sales with the december holidays in the middle, what is it exactly that you don't understand ?

Corp sales isn't like low-margin, high-volume sales where you're expected to always be closing right from jump.

The deal sizes are usually much higher; consequently, you need more people with authority to be in agreement that the purchase is worth it.

To do that, you need to make relationships, navigate corporate hierarchies, get on calendars, etc. All of that takes time.

It is possible that this person wasn't doing any of that, hence the termination. This is very unlikely if this was a bulk termination. Doubly so given that she was hired so close to the holidays.

She was on a ramp. New sales don't sell first quarter. She isn't selling lemonade, she is selling deals worth 10s of thousands.

The problem with judging any of this is the same as knowing your history lessons and sources.

All we've really got to go on is Brittney Peaches account and Matthew Princes account and neither are going to be reliable sources. We'll never know if what Brittney Peach said is reliable and we'll never know if what Matthew Prince says is true.

We might never know if it was "justified", but we have everything we need to judge how the termination was delivered though, and that one is a shitty look for Cloudflare.

Why is Brittney’s video not a reliable impartial account? Also note that nothing she says about her performance and feedback is in any way disputed during the call. They had nothing to say to the contrary.

We don't actually know what her manager said to her during all her one to ones. We don't know what feedback she was receiving. Just because the person on the other end of the call did not dispute any of the things she raised, it does not mean she was correct and not biased.

We also see from Matthew Prince's reply to the video that he is also an unreliable participant as he is suggesting that a manager would always be involved in redundancies, and we can see from the video that was not the case.

HR is not going to argue on a call like that, so the viewer will always see a one sided account. The decision has been made, and not by them. They likely do not even know or have access to that information and are given a list and told "fire these people today." She could have come to work drunk, and you would still not hear about it on a call like that. I don't like it either, but it is the way things go at big corps.

We also have the words of the HR loons who couldn't say anything consistent. So we kind of have both sides.

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