Her coworkers had been getting 15-minute meetings booked into their calendars all day, she revealed in the video. So when she got on a call with "[two] people [she] didn't know: a woman from HR and a director man [she'd] never heard of," she was pretty sure she knew what was up — but how she handled being let go has got the internet talking.
One person on the call explained that after finishing their evaluations, Pietsch had "not met Cloudflare's expectations for performance." Brittany's TikTok caption read at this point, "I wanted to stand up for myself bc what did I have to lose?"
"I'm gonna stop you right there," Brittany said before explaining that she had joined the company in late August of 2023 and has been on a three-month ramp, which involved two major holidays. She added that she had the highest activity among her team and had gotten great feedback from her manager.
She then asked why two strangers, rather than her manager, were letting her go. "We've never met so this seems a little odd... my manager has no idea that this has been happening," she said. "I would love an explanation that makes sense."
And after one of the people letting her go said that it was a "collective calibration" rather than pointing to anything specific about her performance, she said, "I disagree that I haven't met performance expectations... I really need an answer and an explanation as to why Brittany Pietsch is getting let go, not why Cloudflare decided to hire too many people then are now actually realising that they can't afford this many people and they're letting them go. If that's the real answer, I'd rather just you just tell me that than making up some bullsh*t."
The people letting Brittany go stayed somewhat vague on the call, however. "Can I be honest with you, there's nothing that we're going to say in this call in the time that we have that's going to undo the way that you feel right in this moment," one of the people Pietsch was speaking to said. "I personally, I will do everything that I can to give you as much specific information as I can, after this call, I can't make any promises."
“It must be very easy for you to have these little 10, 15 minute meetings, tell someone that they’re fired, and then that’s it with no explanation," Brittany said.
"That's extremely traumatising for people," she said of the approach to firing staff. "You guys have still not given me a reason why I'm being let go." Later, one person on the call said "there's no situation where we will be able to go into specifics," to which Brittany said, "it just doesn't make sense that you guys still haven't been able to give me a reason why I'm being let go."
People in the comments had thoughts, with one person saying, "HR pro here. Let me just say that it is HR’s JOB to have all of the details to explain why this happened if it is truly performance-related."
Others praised her composure, with one commenter suggesting, "Go to law school — speaking clear and focus when faced with emotions is your gift, you’d be great lawyer."
But others didn't like her blunt approach, with one person saying "cursing at HR staff you don’t even know is WILD. regardless if u we’re being fired or not this was extremely unprofessional."
"Sadly this is what layoffs look like. They really don’t need a reason," another said.
