The age of social media clout....

Not sure if anyone's heard this recent story of a woman who went viral after recording herself being fired by an IT company: https://www.entrepreneur.com/busine...live-recording-her-layoff-talking-back/468422

Apparently she was only there a few months, didn't even have time to perform well enough to be in the right (apparently she had no sales and claimed she was "good in meetings" whatever that means) and became the unfortunate next in line to be fired as many many people before her have. Normally I don't care about these kinds of viral stories. The hype fueled 24 hour news cycle designed to get clicks is part of reality now. But I find it fascinating the mechanics of how these situations work...

To many she is a seen as a hero, standing up to "cold heartless" employers who only care about the bottom line and view their workforce as glorified meat puppets. God knows I agree with her in principle. I've been fired more times than I care to admit. In fact, in the job before last I went on a similar tirade after being sat down by my employers to get the axe... the difference is though that 1. I was there for 5 years, and actually WAS one of the top performing employees and only ran into trouble after the old staff didn't come back post-covid and the new lazy, entitled Gen Z'ers they hired didn't take kindly to my desire to "do a good job", constantly complaining about my attention to detail, etc... and 2. I didn't record the interaction... first off because I don't care about social media clout and I also didn't want to get sued.

I empathize with this woman, but I feel that the wrong message is being ingested by the masses who (understandably) hate corporate overlords and enjoy watching someone who represents the repressed masses stand up to them. To be clear, no one should do this ever. Regardless of whether or not new companies reach out to you if you go viral (which she claims is happening), this could backfire horribly. You could be sued, depending on your states laws regarding recording others without their consent. You may never be hired by anyone in your chosen field again after they google you and realize you represent a potential PR disaster waiting to happen. But most of all because literally nothing will change as a result of this. Employers will not stop firing people because someone somewhere stood up to management. This woman didn't tip the scales in favor of the repressed working stiff. Entering into an at will employment arrangement with a company is what it is.... they can and will fire you for any reason and that's never going to change.

Whether or not she's been offered new employment as a direct result of all this (which I find very hard to believe, I mean she was a low performance employee who violated her employer's privacy by airing dirty laundry to the world, but let's take her at her word for arguments sake), we're increasingly becoming a society that chucks all caution to the wind in order to "go viral". And now other people, seeing this apparent "success story" may pull similar stunts and find themselves not only unable to go viral, but blacklisted from their chosen profession and/or legally punished.

 

It’s simple to me. They claimed “performance” but it was layoffs. People don’t like being lied to or bullshitted. It’s disrespectful.

Add it to the list of reasons Cloudflare can’t be trusted. Technical, moral, social.

 

Probably true. But honestly does it make a difference (unless some sort of severance is involved)? Corporations lie all the time. I don't feel like this is some sort of revelatory thing. Every time I've been fired I knew it was for "bullshit" reasons. I think almost everyone who didn't do anything that was obvious grounds for termination can relate to the idea that corporations are there to protect their bottom line, not be transparent with employees... I mean it's like finding out Santa Claus doesn't exist a couple decades too late.

 

Why did this in particular get your goat?

 

Because most people who read this story miss the overall implications of it, only focused on the surface level message. We live in the age of spin and deception. Where the consequences of one's actions are buried under the glamour of clout. Where the headline is more important than the actual story. Reason and nuance are now the enemy because it's easier to ignore it and go back to sleep under the warm blanket of technological apathy. It's a fascinating dichotomy.

 

My experience of what usually happens is the opposite. During a layoff round, employers commonly take the opportunity to shitcan troublesome or underperforming staff while claiming that they were just one of a number (too many in the group, etc.). To be fired specifically for performance issues usually requires that the employer can demonstrate such issues have actually existed, and that the employee has been given the opportunity to improve. Certainly in big corporations (have to admit I'm not sure what situation is with US IT companies though), there are published step-by-step processes for addressing underperformance.

Having been told 'performance' by HR, rather than going public she'd probably have been better off hiring a lawyer and challenging the company on its lack of action in that respect. Plenty of former colleagues of mine made money that way during layoff rounds in the oil industry; the companies usually found it better to pay out (with confidentiality clauses, naturally) rather than go through the time, expense and bad publicity of protracted court cases.

 

I would not hire someone who live record themselves getting terminated and posted confidential information (their termination with HR) on the socials. Super unprofessional and super easy to get blacklisted. Now her name will be on the internet forever and other companies will be very warry in hiring someone who didn't have a problem posting confidential information on the internet (she will consider to be a risk for a company, period).

 

Social media allows someone to take a small snippet of a moment and make a moment out of it. We see her getting laid off in that moment but lack additional context. We have to completely judge the situation from her perspective. Employers likely hate firing people as that sucks as are affecting a real person and its stressful. Maybe she was doing well at her job but the entire department was faltering.

An employer likely will know after a few months if it was a good hire or not. Cloudflare is a massive company and who knows what happened in their operation. But I do agree with @YMO it does seem rather unprofessional though it does bring back memories and feelings I had being fired in the past or seeing colleagues get the same treatment. I didn't fight back like she did nor did I have the balls to post about it on social media. We all react differently in these situations and the work environment has changed a ton in the past few years.

Will these social media moments be more common or this one of the rare moments we see how life at these tech companies go.

 

This is why I find it amazing she's getting offers (if she's to be believed), as no company in their right mind would hire someone who breaches the confidence of her workplace and clients in such a manner (the legal implications are obvious). As an employee, I certainly wouldn't want to work with someone like that either, since she's proven she has no problem recording people without their consent and posting it online for her own gratification. Regardless of whether not she thinks she was in the right, she opens herself up to some pretty major career consequences going forward.

 

I agree with you @ColtMrFire though I think this has always been in our nature. Look at the reality TV craze where people were happy to be laughed at (not with) just to be on TV. I think we all want to be recognized and that desire gets misplaced with mass communication like TV and Radio and now the Internet because being on TV, or going viral is mistakenly seen as recognition. We're connected to the world now and rather than seeking recognition from our local communities we want it from the world. And TV/internet is the way to do that. This woman may find a lot of superficial happiness in being so recognized worldwide despite any consequences. Though she may regret it later if she can't find a job.

 

Let's assume that everything she said about her performance is correct and they're wrong to terminate her.

Lady, get a f'ing clue. The world is not a safe space and it's not fair. The sooner you figure that out and figure out how to deal with it in a manner that's beneficial to you, the better your life will be. My advice: get your shit together and find a better opportunity. Quit wasting time whining, life's too short.

I can't stand unfairness but you have to be realistic.

 

One of the things I realized after I defended myself during my termination was in how pointless it was. It's not pointless to vent, but to do so in front of your employers as if its a negotiation and that they'll somehow magically give you your job back if you act offended enough is... in retrospect, a waste of energy. She seemed to want a truthful answer as to why she was being fired, which is even more naive and something she's better off figuring out sooner rather than later. But in the age of social media clout, it's "YOU GO GIRL!" with no thought of the repercussions. Most of those comments do nothing to help her in the long run, but only delay her inevitable cold dose of reality, which will be more painful the longer its delayed. You need to realize when you're dealing with HR or management, you are not talking to individuals who will change their mind if they could only be reasonable, you are talking to representatives of the corporate structure, who view you as numbers on a balance sheet. They speak only to protect the organization (and their own jobs).

 

Maybe she was the "Evil Dog Lady" ?

We need an "Evil Dog Lady" emoji

 

Based on the HR and director's responses during the call, its clear to me that the people doing the firing have no clue as to why she is being terminated... they are probably given a list of people to call and they call them. The fact that the direct supervisor wasn't involved is mind-blowing to me.

My impression is that it is a layoff/force reduction and the employer is trying to minimize having her (and all her coworkers) claim unemployment. Otherwise there is absolutely no reason to go thru the headache of terminating for cause (eg., lack of performance) vs a layoff. For a company the size of Cloudflare, I'm surprised the unemployment insurance hit would be significant enough that they want to go thru this trouble... but who knows.

As for her approach...extremely unprofessional, and her statement that "Any company that wouldn’t want to hire me because I shared a video of how a company fired me or because I asked questions as to why I was being let go is not a company I would ever want to work for anyway" is extremely naïve. No company would knowingly take the risk of hiring someone that has demonstrated such a lack of professionalism. But, if she takes the video down and lays low, then the chance of anyone remembering 2 yrs from now is pretty slim.

 

One of the stories I heard and in a way confirmed by my sister and her husband working in tech sector, is the reluctance of these companies to do individual layoffs vs mass layoffs. Back a few years in the peak of things, tech employees were getting swallowed up by all the big tech companies or well funded start ups. Even if someone was a bad fit back then on their team, higher ups or managers would be hesitant to fire the problematic employee and opt to promote or swap them to a different team just to shift the problem elsewhere.

The mass layoffs are cruel, finding out you and hundreds of others are getting sacked through the Zoom were heartless but easier than individual layoffs. They have paid these employees a ton and they have the means to bring lawsuits against you vs the majority of employees in the workforce. This video to me highlights this, she is being a massive pain in the butt for Cloudflare which caused the CEO to even make a big reply on Twitter. They probably in the future might opt to do one of the mass layoff Zoom calls in the future now to prevent this sort of backlash.

I guess I would love to be in her position where I can go viral over the moment I got fired and end up getting job offers from it. Its an anomaly and a luxury that the vast majority of employees in the USA are not afforded.

 

In all practical terms, I agree with you.

But, on principle, I have to say that confidentiality in these matters takes two. Take salary, for instance. I think USA has a different culture, but in UK, this all meant to be very hush-hush. Which is an employer-created myth.

If anyone wanted to know what I earned, they only had to ask me.

Of course, if a settlement includes non-disclosure terms, and the employee signs to that... they signed to it. Been there, and of course I chose the money.

Nail hit on head.