I can’t give more approval for this woman, she handled everything so well.
The backstory is that Cloudflare overhired and wanted to reduce headcount, rightsize, whatever terrible HR wording you choose. Instead of admitting that this was a layoff, which would grant her things like severance and unemployment - they tried to tell her that her performance was lacking.
And for most of us (myself included) we would angrily accept it and trash the company online. Not her, she goes directly against them. It of course doesn’t go anywhere because HR is a bunch of robots with no emotions that just parrot what papa company tells them to, but she still says what all of us wish we did.
(Warning, if you’ve ever been laid off this is a bit enraging and can bring up some feelings)
Basically, companies are required to pay for unemployment insurance that funds the government’s unemployment benefits system. If you lay someone off, the employee files for unemploent, and gets paid a portion of their weekly salary while they look for another job (the amount you get paid and whether there’s any additional requirements varies from state to state, with Democrat-controlled states usually being more generous, but generally you have to show you’re actively seeking a new job), and the employer pays a bigger unemployment insurance rate to compensate for the additional burden the former employee is now placing on the government benefits system.
However, if you’re fired for cause–say, you get caught stealing from the cash register–then the employer can contest your unemployment. If the employer can show you were fired for a good reason, the employee can be denied unemployment benefits, and the employer doesn’t have to pay extra unemployment insurance. This meeting is the company trying to cook up a justification for firing with cause, and the employee trying to get them to admit they’re just being laid off, because if the company admits during the exit interview that she’s just being laid off without cause, it’s nearly impossible to contest her unemployment benefits claim later.
Yeah, I can now see why the whole thing is basically the groundwork for a legal fight.
That said she’s an amateur “lawyer” facing pros so the situation is stacked against her, plus she’s very nervous because she’s young and taking it personally, none of which are good for her side of the outcome.
It is extremelly unlikelly that a nervous amateur with a massive stake on the outcome will manage to get anything useful in a legal sense from a professional lawyer for whom the whole thing is just a job.
This might be one of those situations were the right strategy is to refuse to discuss it with the company’s legal team without your own legal advice present, or at least getting some legal advice upfront about what to get from them (say, documentation they’re obligated to provide).
As with everything, not being the “easy pickings” increases your chance that they’ll just give in and pay up simply because it’s not worth the risk - it’s a lot better to pay somebody and have her sign a non-disclosure agreement on the whole thing than risking it going to court, their claims of “for cause” being trashed in a way that affects the entire strategy for laying all those people off and other ex-employees use that to get summary judgements against them or similar.
Amateur trying to get them to admit she’s not really being laid off with cause probably counts as “easy pickings” for the lawyer on the other side.
If there’s something life has taught me (in a very painful way) is to lawyer-up as soon as there are legal implications (fortunatelly, over here firing “for cause” - i.e. laying off - has quite a higher standard of proof for the company and can’t just be on them making claims of underperformance). Mind you, she was there for a short while, so it’s maybe not worth the legal costs.