Great colleagues but poor handling of layoffs - Senior Software Engineer Cloudflare Employee Review

1.0
16 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Amazing colleagues, okay office, decent technology, unlimited pto, good pension (up to 7% company matched)

Cons

It's a complete mess working here. Cloudflare poor handling of layoffs says everything about the culture. Some people were laid off by "accident" and have already been offered to go back working for the company. Many (if not most) software teams (that were already very understaffed) have been heavily hit, but Matthew Prince is online saying that "very few have been laid off". This shows that they have no clue of the people who have been fired. They laid off people that were extremely hard working and added so much value to the company. Some people were laid off while on call, like...wtf!? The push for AI and vibecoding makes no sense for a company known for being a security company. Ever since the latest CTO took over we have experienced an increased number of outages which doesn't seem to get better. The obsession with Twitter is very immature for a company that aspires to be like the next Google. Software teams are pushed to come up with the new GitHub, Microsoft Office suite, or Confluence. What is Cloudflare even now? They want to burn software teams down and then reward them with more layoffs. I would personally stay away until either the CEO or CTO (ideally both) gets fired from the board. There will definitely be more layoffs coming.

Explore other reviews about Cloudflare

5.0
1 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very good culture and strong talent

Cons

Expectation to manage up and extremely fast paced environment

4.0
8 May 2026
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

Very interesting and engaging work. Lots of smart people work there so you will learn a lot. It's place to learn industry best practices. Stock usually performs well so compensation is pretty good if you live in cheaper areas like Austin.

Cons

Stressful at times. On-call can be rough. Product demands can be rough. Lots of pressure to ship new things even if mounds of tech debt exist and make shipping riskier, all just to meet customer contract commitment deadlines. Detailed testing and vetting of new features could improve too. I think the comp is less sustainable for more expensive places like New York and SF

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