blog post<\/a> that oozes
\nOrwellian \u201cdoublespeak,\u201d CEO Matthew Prince and President\/COO Michelle
\nZatlyn used the headline \u201cBuilding for the future\u201d to share the email they sent
\nto all employees.<\/p>\nThat mail opens: \u201cWe are writing to let you know directly
\nthat we\u2019ve made the decision to reduce Cloudflare\u2019s workforce by more than
\n1,100 employees globally.\u201d<\/p>\n
The post explains, \u201cCloudflare\u2019s usage of AI has increased
\nby more than 600% in the last three months alone. Employees across the company
\nfrom engineering to HR to finance to marketing run thousands of AI agent
\nsessions each day to get their work done.\u201d<\/p>\n
All that AI means \u201cwe have to be intentional in how we
\narchitect our company for the agentic AI era in order to supercharge the value
\nwe deliver to our customers and to honor our mission to help build a better
\nInternet for everyone, everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sackings are therefore needed, and are \u201cabout defining how a
\nworld-class, high-growth company operates and creates value in the agentic AI
\nera.\u201d<\/p>\n
To rub salt into the wounds of sacked staff, the email went
\nout not long before Cloudflare announced quarterly results that included 34 percent
\nyear-over-year revenue growth and guidance for 30 percent future growth.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prince opened the company\u2019s earnings call by stating \u201cWe had
\na very strong start to 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
Analysts on the earnings call asked Prince to explain the
\nlayoffs and whether they will make Cloudflare stronger.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have seen that there are roles at Cloudflare that
\nare not the roles we need for the future,\u201d Prince responded. \u201cJust because you
\nare fit does not mean you cannot get fitter. Over the last six months
\nespecially, the productivity gains from the people directly talking to
\ncustomers and directly creating code have been incredible, and a lot of the
\nsupport roles behind them are not going to be the roles that drive companies
\ngoing forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The CEO said Cloudflare has \u201calways lived a little bit in
\nthe future\u201d and said the company is an early beneficiary of AI.<\/p>\n
And he said the company will keep hiring.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe people embracing these tools are so much more
\nproductive than we have ever seen before,\u201d he said. \u201cI would guess that in 2027
\nwe will have more employees than we did at any point in 2026, but the roles are
\nchanging dramatically, and you have to do something dramatic to make that
\nshift.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is not about downsizing or saving costs,\u201d Prince said.
\n\u201cThis is about having the right people in the right roles to build the future.\u201d<\/p>\n
As is often
\nthe case these days, the email to staff warned them of a brief doomsday
\ncountdown.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin
\nthe next hour, every member of our global team will receive an email from both
\nof us clarifying how this change affects them,\u201d the message states. \u201cFor those
\ndeparting today, we will send this update to both their personal and Cloudflare
\naddresses to ensure they receive the information immediately.\u201d<\/p>\n
The
\nRegister imagines that went down well for workers in time zones where
\nemployees might avoid their work email outside 9-5, but sneak an early-morning-or-late-night-glance
\nat their personal inboxes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prince and Zatlyn
\ntold employees they hope \u201cto do this only once\u201d and then contradict themselves by
\nsaying they \u201cdon\u2019t want to do it again for the foreseeable future.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cBy taking decisive action now, we provide immediate clarity
\nto those departing and protect the stability of the team that remains,\u201d they
\nwrote, before adding their view that one deep cut because \u201cdragging a
\nreorganization out over multiple quarters creates prolonged emotional
\nuncertainty for employees and stalls our ability to build.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0Firing 1,100 people is therefore \u201cthe right thing to do;
\nit\u2019s the honest thing to do; and it reflects the values of the company we are
\ncontinuing to build.\u201d \u00ae<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Off-Prem Around 20 percent of staff get an \u2018In one hour, you might not work here anymore\u2019 email…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438344,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-438343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438343\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438344"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}