So seems like Brittany was some sort of Account Exec for a company called CloudFlare hired in Aug 2023. They had a layoff after a few months which included December and they let her go citing "performance". But she fights back saying she got great reviews from her manager, and no one ever said anything about her performance and was not put on a PIP. Cloudflare was laying her off but dressing it up as a performance thing to save themselves from something. Sneaky.

So here's an example of duplicitous companies gaslighting employees about performance to get rid of them when the reason is their own mismanagement or market issues. Similar stuff has happened to me in the past.

It's good to see that she is exposing these scoundrels.

Watch the video here:

https://www.tiktok.com/@brittanypeachhh/video/7323004085043612959

Her post on Linkedin:
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brittany-pietsch-237893173_tiktok-britt-activity-7151621500440104960-cTtw

That's the bullcrap they do to avoid paying any prorated performance bonuses on the way out and to intimidate any employee from a complaint by putting it on record that there was some sort of performance matter at the last minute,

It's very unethical. If you are over staffed or need to cut expenses then be honest about it.

lawsuits here they come!

C@LAg said:

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last i checked... unless you are operating under a union contract, companies have no obligation to tell you why they are letting you go. and they can let you go for whatever reason they want.

it sucks. but that is the way it is.

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wrong depends on the state

MouthBQ98 said:

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That's the bullcrap they do to avoid paying any prorated performance bonuses on the way out and to intimidate any employee from a complaint by putting it on record that there was some sort of performance matter at the last minute,

It's very unethical. If you are over staffed or need to cut expenses then be honest about it.

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Yep, my former employer was notorious for this. Made me sick to see and glad I got away from that cespool.

Depends on how many they layoff at once.

C@LAg said:

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last i checked... unless you are operating under a union contract, companies have no obligation to tell you why they are letting you go. and they can let you go for whatever reason they want.

it sucks. but that is the way it is.

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If they are letting you go because of performance issues, they better have a lot of documentation to support that.

Guess she should closed those deals

Abc

I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

Interesting.

A couple of things stand out.

1) It is bogus that they're firing her after just 4 months if the issue is really 'production.' Especially if the onboarding/ramp up is really three months.

2) At the same time, its really also bogus for her to say things like, "I gave my whole life to this company.." when, come on, its been four months.

3) Having been on both sides of that conversation in my career, I can relate. That truly is how those conversations always go and its super obnoxious.

4) She seems like a really bright young woman - but it wasn't a great idea to video it, put her name and image on it. Any future corporate employer might look at that and run for the hills no matter what. That said, the flipside of that is that maybe that's a blessing - maybe she can turn this into a positive and do something entrepreneurial and give corp America the middle finger it sometimes deserves.

In my entire career in line management roles we actually fired very few people and if someone actually was terminated for cause it was bad like sexual harassment, fraud, workplace intimidation, etc.

Very rare to see someone get walked for performance. Not worth the headache.

Good afternoon. I'll go ahead and get started. The purpose of this meeting is to inform you that effective today your role at the ABC Company has been eliminated due to many challenges we are currently facing in the market.

blah blah blah blah

<concerned look> ....blah blah blah

Again, thank you for your contributions and service to the company. HR will now walk you through the full severance package and agreement documents as well as explain support services that will be made available to you.

I'm gonna take the other opposite side of this argument.

Unfortunately, when dealing with under performing or employees with a poor temperament or attitude, if they are not a white male, it is damn near impossible to build a case against them in four months.

These people also generally prepare from day, one for the moment they are terminated. You'll notice it's generally a pattern.

Do I believe that a hundred years ago employers had the upper hand? Absolutely. However, the pendulum has swung too far the other way.

TheCurl84 said:

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I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

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Now we know how you "lay off" your employees.

Agthatbuilds said:

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Guess she should closed those deals

Abc

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She has the looks for outside sales. No way she should be making phone calls trying to close deals.

over-staffing for the holidays. sounds like retail.

C@LAg said:

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last i checked... unless you are operating under a union contract, companies have no obligation to tell you why they are letting you go. and they can let you go for whatever reason they want.

it sucks. but that is the way it is.

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Fair enough. But that wasn't the point. The point was a fraudulent rationale given for the separation. This is a violation of business ethics.

I've been laid off when the company I was working for was taking a huge financial hit. They just called and told me they were going to have to cut my position due to force reductions an would be in contact regarding out boarding. No big deal. Bummer, but you then have near absolute freedom to pursue the next part of your life. It was actually kind of liberating.

akm91 said:

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C@LAg said:

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last i checked... unless you are operating under a union contract, companies have no obligation to tell you why they are letting you go. and they can let you go for whatever reason they want.

it sucks. but that is the way it is.

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If they are letting you go because of performance issues, they better have a lot of documentation to support that.

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I was a supervisor at a company with about 4,000 employees, and our training constantly emphasized exactly what you state. If you turned in a performance appraisal with "outstanding" checked for every item, it came back to you. They had been in trouble many times (in years past) for performance terminations when the underlying paperwork indicated the opposite.

C@LAg said:

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last i checked... unless you are operating under a union contract, companies have no obligation to tell you why they are letting you go. and they can let you go for whatever reason they want.

it sucks. but that is the way it is.

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it's called an "AT WILL" contract and if you have one it clearly states that the company can release you anytime they want to for any cause.

I have worked for companies under a contract, and also under "At Will" and then after a year they gave me a binding contract.

Guess she hasn't seen "Up in the Air."

And yes, I've been let go, but it was my manager and he did everything he could to help me.

Finally, it was performance from what I saw. It sounded like Sales and she didn't make any...

I don't know what the real reasons are but I do expect the employer to be direct and honest.

In TX it's legal to record conversations as long as 1 party gives consent and is part of the conversation. That prohibits bugging an office.

Releasing it to the public is a other issue.

Dealing with pro-terminators. The only reason to sit with them is to hear "the next steps" which she didn't release. That's more interesting to me.

But by releasing this she did a certain amount of damage to cloudflare in a pr way. It exposes what goes on all the time. That's probably all she'll get unless she starts a gofundme. She's pretty and she cried so I think she could get 8-10K

Been there done that. That's the way things have been in the CyberSecurity software space for the better part of a year now. Private equity money gets nervous and makes unnatural things occur.

TheCurl84 said:

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I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

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Not in Texas. Only one party to the exchange must consent to the recording.

One of the first things she admits on the call is that she hasn't closed any deals. That being said, she's only been there a short time. If they were reducing staff like almost every tech company is right now they should have just been honest and told her that.

However, she's also greatly reducing her future hire ability by releasing this video. Every future employer is going to view her as a potential problem and will just go on to the next applicant.

Okay the more I listen to this conversation the more I'm on her side. These HR useless asshats are just throwing around platitudes and using Buzz words that they probably don't even understand themselves and they are flat out lying to her. They started the conversation by essentially blaming her for her own firing and then admitted oh we're just recalibrating. These are the types of clowns that run companies into the dirt but never seem to get laid off themselves.

The robotic responses they are giving like "I hear you" and the other crap is the deescalation stuff they are trained to say but the problem is those phrases are now so commonly used and given in such a wooden way that they'd be better off not even using them anymore.

She posted about it on Linkedin.

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/brittany-pietsch-237893173_tiktok-britt-activity-7151621500440104960-cTtw

TheCurl84 said:

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I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

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The reason why these corporations have run amuck is there is no one to call them out on their bs. Now someone has the guts to do that. Kudos to her. Was it a risk? Yes. I hope she finds another job but for things to get better, there always has to be some brave people to stand up to tyranny.

She explains it on Linkedin:

Quote:

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I've also read some comments about how I'll never be able to find a job now because I'm a "loose cannon employee". I'll tell you what, 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. If I don't stand up for myself… who will?

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Agthatbuilds said:

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Guess she should closed those deals

Abc

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Don't be insensitive.
That wasn't what the company asked her to do.
According to her Linkedin post:

Quote:

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1. Within my first 3 months of the role, my KPI's were solely based on my activity, meetings, and pipeline gen. (That was in addition to the 5 weeks of onboarding boot camp and going through dozens of training modules). As my manager would attest, I was a leader on our team with those KPIs, despite me still rampin

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infinity ag said:

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TheCurl84 said:

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I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

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The reason why these corporations have run amuck is there is no one to call them out on their bs. Now someone has the guts to do that. Kudos to her. Was it a risk? Yes. I hope she finds another job but for things to get better, there always has to be some brave people to stand up to tyranny.

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Too many people are too scared of corporations they let them treat them like crap. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Support LGBT. Say their pronouns. Hire diverse candidates only. Then they wonder why society sucks around them. It sucks because of cowards, which often includes the guy in the mirror.

texagbeliever said:

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infinity ag said:

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TheCurl84 said:

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I have to say though, she exposes herself by releasing this video to the world.

First, she could be sued for recording this without their knowledge. Second, it's one thing to record for your own legal purposes.....but to release it to the world? I wouldn't ever hire her.

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The reason why these corporations have run amuck is there is no one to call them out on their bs. Now someone has the guts to do that. Kudos to her. Was it a risk? Yes. I hope she finds another job but for things to get better, there always has to be some brave people to stand up to tyranny.

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Too many people are too scared of corporations they let them treat them like crap. Get vaccinated. Wear a mask. Support LGBT. Say their pronouns. Hire diverse candidates only. Then they wonder why society sucks around them. It sucks because of cowards, which often includes the guy in the mirror.

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You are right. I was too, I will admit. Which is why we need to applaud people like Brittany. At one job 7 years ago, I had 4 managers in 10 months and they tried to make it seem like I was not performing when no one had any plan what to do as we went through 2 acquisitions in 30 days and all "leaders" raced for the doors. Now I feel that I should have given those morons a piece of mind and walked out of there with my head held high.

RIP to her future employment opportunities.

If her resume makes it past the first cut, then the company fires up "The Google." And she is immediately rejected.

By trying to terminate her for cause without actual cause, the company is trying to worm its way out off paying unemployment. This seems like a violation of law.