Woman getting fired grills HR and her "traumatizing" video is resonating with so many
A woman has gone viral after sharing a nine-minute video of her getting fired on TikTok.
Brittany Pietsch was a mid-market account executive with Cloudflare, a US-based IT services company, until they fired her “with no true reason or explanation” last week.
The employee documented the call with human resources where she didn’t take the termination lying down, and many have resonated with the experience.
“POV: You’re about to get laid off,” the TikTok is titled. Other popular accounts picked up the video, which has now garnered over five million views on the social media platform.
In the video, Pietsch explains that her coworkers were getting impromptu, 15-minute calendar invites all day.
The employee says her work friend was invited to a meeting 30 minutes before she did and “got laid off.”
“I knew what was coming,” the caption on Pietsch’s TikTok reads, adding that she had about 10 minutes to compose herself before her meeting. “I wanted to stand up for myself [because] what did I have to lose?”
@brittanypeachhh When you know youre about to get laid off so you film it 🙂 this was traumatizing honestly lmao #layoffs #tech #techlayoffs #corporate ♬ original sound – Brittany Pietsch
After exchanging pleasantries with two people who she says are a woman from HR and a director at Cloudflare, they dole out the bad news.
“We finished our evaluations of the 2023 performance. This is where you have not met Cloudflare expectations for performance. We have decided to part ways with you,” says one of the voices in the meeting.
Pietsch interrupts and goes on to grill HR for the next eight minutes, urging them to be upfront and tell her the real reason why they’re letting people go.
She explains that despite having been at Cloudflare for only three months, she’s had the “highest activity” among her team, has created great relationships with clients, and has been picking up products quickly.
Pietsch adds that her manager has given her positive feedback in every one-on-one they’ve had.
She also stressed that just because she hasn’t been able to close anything, that has nothing to do with her performance, and more to do with the short amount of time she’s been with the company.
“I don’t think that has anything to do with why I should be let go… so, 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 and are now actually realizing that they can’t afford this many people and they’re letting [them] go,” she says.
“If that’s the real answer, I would rather just you tell me that instead of making up some bulls**t and telling me that right before I lose my job, from someone that I’ve never met before.”
HR sidesteps the question and says they’re happy to follow up with her regarding the data on her performance, but that they don’t have the information ready for the meeting.
“I just knew that this meeting was coming after knowing what’s been happening with my peers and how extremely frustrated and upset everyone is,” says Pietsch.
“I know you guys must not be able to understand that given the positions that you are in, and it must be very easy for you to just have these little 10-minute, 15-minute meetings, tell someone that they’re fired completely, wreck their whole life and then that’s it, with no explanation. That’s extremely traumatizing for people.”
“I have really given my whole energy and life over the last four months to this job. And to be let go for no reason is like a huge slap in the face from a company that I really wanted to believe in,” she adds.
Still, HR couldn’t answer her question, adding that they couldn’t say anything that would undo the way Pietsch felt at the moment.
Thousands of people shared their support in Pietsch’s comments.
“They kept saying, ‘Whatever we say isn’t going to change how you feel,’ but you weren’t asking them to change how you felt… you were asking for data,” reads one reply.
“Let me just say that it is HR’s JOB to have all of the details to explain why this happened if it’s truly performance related,” reads another comment from someone who says they work in HR.
“The silence on the other end is LOUDD. Good for you girl!!” added another.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, responded to the video after it went viral on X.
We fired ~40 sales people out of over 1,500 in our go to market org. That’s a normal quarter. When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within 3 months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Sadly,…
— Matthew Prince 🌥 (@eastdakota) January 12, 2024
He explained that the company fired around 40 sales employees out of over 1,500, which is “a normal quarter.”
“When we’re doing performance management right, we can often tell within three months or less of a sales hire, even during the holidays, whether they’re going to be successful or not. Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly, we were far from perfect,” he wrote in a post on X.
“The video is painful for me to watch. Managers should always be involved. HR should be involved, but it shouldn’t be outsourced to them, No employee should ever actually be surprised they weren’t performing. We don’t always get it right,” he added.
Prince says the management’s goal moving forward is to be “more kind and humane” when it comes to firing people.
What do you think about how Pietsch got fired? Let us know in the comments.