Cloudflare posted record revenue last quarter — $639.8 million, up 34%, best quarter in the company’s 16-year history — then fired 1,100 people. Twenty percent of the company, out. CEO Matthew Prince needed a word for these people, so he invented one: “measurers.” Accountants, auditors, middle managers, legal. The people who make sure the company doesn’t eat itself from the inside. Gone.
Prince and his co-founder insisted this wasn’t a cost-cutting exercise. It was the “agentic AI era.” They released a statement so thick with future-speak it barely registers as English. The stock dropped 24% after the announcement — Wall Street’s version of calling bullshit.
A company swimming in money found a fifth of its workforce in the wrong column and deleted them. They dressed it up as transformation. The people who got fired know what it actually was — they got canned because their salaries showed up on the expense side of a spreadsheet owned by someone who will never miss a paycheck.