New details emerge after video of woman being fired went viral
Surprising new details have emerged after a video went viral of a woman being fired – with the company CEO even claiming the clip was “painful” to watch.
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Surprising new details have emerged after a video went viral of a young woman being unexpectedly fired from her tech job, after she filmed and then shared the “traumatising” experience online.
The nine-minute video showed the moment Brittany Pietsch was fired from her account executive position at Cloudflare, an American IT service management company, and her response to the news.
The clip, which has more than 23 million views on X alone, has divided opinions, with some praising Ms Pietsch for demanding answers and lashing the company for its handling of the situation, while others branded the video “cringe” and criticised her decision to secretly film the meeting.
In light of the attention the video received, Ms Pietsch took to LinkedIn to address some of the commentary around the clip and reveal even more details about her controversial firing.
Before being let go in early January of this year, she had been working for the company since August 2023.
In the new post, Ms Pietsch explained for the first three months of her role, her KPIs were solely based on her activity, meetings and pipeline generation.
She was reportedly a leader in her team for those KPIs, which she claims her manager could attest to.
The employee then revealed her manager had “no idea” she was being let go and was “just as blindsided” as she was by the revelation.
“On the call, you can hear the HR rep admit that they could not attest to what my manager has said about my performance. That essentially confirmed for me they had no idea who I was or why they were letting me go,” she said.
“My manager called me afterwards and told me he was sick to his stomach and couldn’t believe this was happening.”
Ms Pietsch also explained that during the call, she was not trying to save her job or change HR’s mind about firing her, instead she was just trying to understand exactly why she was being let go.
‘I would rather you just tell me’
In the now-viral video, Ms Pietsch explains she knew she was about to be fired as her co-workers had been receiving “random” 15-minute call invites all day from people in the company they had never spoken to, so when she received her own she knew what was coming.
The video began with the two company representatives informing Ms Pietsch that she had not met Cloudflare’s “expectations for performance” and, as a result, she was being let go.
The worker wasted no time in asking questions, pointing out that she had nothing but great feedback from her manager and was given no indication that her performance was lacking.
She admitted she hadn’t closed any deals “officially” in her time with the company, but adamantly disagreed that she hadn’t met performance expectations.
“I would love an explanation that makes sense,” she told the representatives.
She was then informed that she was not being “singled out” and her peers were also being “collectively assessed on performance”.
But the young woman wouldn’t be deterred, asking outright for them to explain why she specifically was being let go.
“I won’t be able to go into specifics or numbers,” the representative claimed.
“Wait, why though? I just started, I’ve been working extremely hard. Just because I haven’t closed anything, that has nothing to do with my performance on a three month ramp, with just one month with two major holidays in the middle. I don’t think that has anything to do with why I should be let go,” Ms Pietsch said.
She then questioned whether the real reason they couldn’t tell her why she was being fired was because the company realised they hired too many people and can’t afford to keep them all on.
“If that’s the real answer. I would rather you just tell me that instead of making up some bullsh*t and telling me that right before I lose my job from someone that I’ve never met before, if you can respect that,” she said.
The female HR representative said she could “totally respect” what Ms Pietsch was saying but she wouldn’t be able to give her any clarity or answers that were going to meet her expectations.
The worker then questioned whether she was being let go for “no reason”, before the HR rep said she could speak to someone after the call to see if the data relating to her performance could be provided to her at a later date.
The other representative then claimed there was “no situation” where they would be able to specifically detail the performance indicators and metrics used to inform the decision to let her go.
Ms Pietsch claimed it didn’t make sense that throughout almost nine minutes of conversation, she had still not been provided a valid reason as to why she was being fired.
CEO responds after video goes viral
The video has gained so much attention in the days since being posted online that the CEO of Cloudflare took to X, formerly Twitter, to respond to the situation.
CEO Matthew Prince claimed the company had fired around 40 sales people out of more than 1500, which he branded a “normal quarter”.
He said they can often tell within the first three months if a sales hire is going to be successful or not, even when those three months fall during a holiday period.
“Sadly, we don’t hire perfectly. We try to fire perfectly. In this case, clearly we were far from perfect. The video is painful for me to watch,” he wrote.
“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.”
Mr Prince admitted they “don’t always get it right” before suggesting that under performing employees don’t always listen to the feedback they have gotten on their performance before being let go.
However, he noted that just because someone was fired doesn’t mean they are a bad employee and he believes the “right thing to do” is to get the people who are unlikely to succeed off the team as “quickly as possible” so they can find the right fit somewhere else.
“We definitely weren’t anywhere close to perfect in this case. But any healthy org needs to get the people who aren’t performing off. That wasn’t the mistake here. The mistake was not being more kind and humane as we did,” he said.
Many social media users were quick to jump to Ms Pietsch’s defence, praising her for her response and claiming it is HR’s job to be able to explain exactly why a person was being let go.
“This is all kinds of wrong. No explanations, their silence is deafeningly loud,” one person wrote.
“So proud of how you handled this! Amazing and VALID questions! I hope this goes viral and this company makes MAJOR changes!” another said.
While there were clearly many people who were on Ms Pietsch’s side, there were those who said they could see both sides of the situation.
One X user branded the video a “total disaster on both sides”.
“Getting fired is tough, but it’s important to handle it with dignity. Firing someone is also hard, requiring compassion and respect,” they said.
Another CEO, Scott Stevenson, weighed in on the situation, labelling the fact that Ms Pietsch had closed zero sales during her time at the company as “objectively bad performance”.
He also noted the HR script was “cringe and terrible to watch” but claimed it was likely largely dictated by lawyers.
“There is zero incentive for anyone to post about this defending the company. Anyone ‘playing politics’ must defend the employee to earn charisma points. But that is deeply selfish and perpetuates illusions that ultimately hurt employees,” Mr Stevenson said.
Originally published as New details emerge after video of woman being fired went viral
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