My god this is giving me flashbacks. When he said “Real quick lemme carve out the… the two threads… um… the latter, of…” or “this is a collective calibration for cloudflare” it was like I was back at my first job working with bullshit people and getting headaches sometimes when I thought about working with particular coworkers or particular situations that had come up that day.
My guy. Just be real. I wanted to reach through the screen and mute his mic and say, “Brittany, let me step in here for a second: We’re doing some layoffs. We have some metrics that we measure, and it honestly may not really be fair as far as they are applied to you. But the decision is honestly already made. We’re just letting some people go for business reasons, and it’s nothing personal and honestly not even my decision, or your manager’s. And we’re happy to give you a good reference because as you say, you’ve been doing some good things.” And then just leave it at that.
Like just be direct. Don’t be weird, don’t pretend that the weird script you’ve been given makes any sense or just keep ploughing through with a distant look in your eyes when she’s clearly comfortable being direct with you. People will work with you better because of it.
Edit: Fuck, I watched to the end. I actually went through a very similar thing to this, where I as this girl put it “really believed in this company,” and then I realized the company didn’t give a fuck about me and didn’t believe in me or have anything good to offer, and I was being stupid to believe in them. At that point I faced a choice; either stay and keep getting, more or less, abused. Or, stay and become dead inside like everyone else and just become a distant-eyed weirdo. Or, GTFO. I chose to GTFO, more or less immediately, and that’s why this is a story about what happened “at my first job.”
I feel bad for this girl. What she wants isn’t wrong. But Cloudflare actually did her a huge favor by removing her from that situation before she spent any more of her finite life trying to sincerely do good for them.
My god this is giving me flashbacks. When he said “Real quick lemme carve out the… the two threads… um… the latter, of…” or “this is a collective calibration for cloudflare” it was like I was back at my first job working with bullshit people and getting headaches sometimes when I thought about working with particular coworkers or particular situations that had come up that day.
My guy. Just be real. I wanted to reach through the screen and mute his mic and say, “Brittany, let me step in here for a second: We’re doing some layoffs. We have some metrics that we measure, and it honestly may not really be fair as far as they are applied to you. But the decision is honestly already made. We’re just letting some people go for business reasons, and it’s nothing personal and honestly not even my decision, or your manager’s. And we’re happy to give you a good reference because as you say, you’ve been doing some good things.” And then just leave it at that.
Like just be direct. Don’t be weird, don’t pretend that the weird script you’ve been given makes any sense or just keep ploughing through with a distant look in your eyes when she’s clearly comfortable being direct with you. People will work with you better because of it.
Edit: Fuck, I watched to the end. I actually went through a very similar thing to this, where I as this girl put it “really believed in this company,” and then I realized the company didn’t give a fuck about me and didn’t believe in me or have anything good to offer, and I was being stupid to believe in them. At that point I faced a choice; either stay and keep getting, more or less, abused. Or, stay and become dead inside like everyone else and just become a distant-eyed weirdo. Or, GTFO. I chose to GTFO, more or less immediately, and that’s why this is a story about what happened “at my first job.”
I feel bad for this girl. What she wants isn’t wrong. But Cloudflare actually did her a huge favor by removing her from that situation before she spent any more of her finite life trying to sincerely do good for them.