Woman who secretly recorded herself being fired at work leaves people divided

Opinion has been divided after an American saleswoman went viral for sharing secretly recorded footage of a meeting that saw her lose her job.

Brittany Pietsch had worked for web company Cloudflare when she was sacked by the US firm this month.

She said she was 'unexpectedly laid off' from her role as an account executive 'with no true reason or explanation'.

Knowing something was up in the lead up to the virtual meeting in which she was told she was being let go, she got her camera ready out of view.

Posting the video to her TikTok account @brittanypeachhh, she wrote: "When you know you're about to get laid off so you film it. This was traumatising honestly lmao."

The nine minute clip posted to social media hears 'a woman from HR and a director man I’ve never heard of' telling Brittany she was going to be laid off, with them saying she had 'not met Cloudflare expectations for performance'.

But the Atlanta resident fought her corner, explaining calmly and eloquently why such a decision would not be fair. This included saying she has 'the highest activity among her team'.

But the decision was final, with millions watching the meeting between Brittany and her then-colleagues.

Brittany's decision to film the meeting and post it online has faced a mixed bag from audiences.

On social media platform X, one user said: "Getting fired is tough, but it’s important to handle it with dignity. Firing someone is also hard, requiring compassion and respect. Total disaster on both sides here."

A second said: "Young and stupid. Now any company that Googles Brittany Pietsch will come across this video of her secretly recording the company she was employed at to expose them for doing their job. Unbelievably short-sighted."

But others were quick to defend her, replying: "Imagine ‘both-siding’ this clear-cut nonsense. Good on Brittany Pietsch for standing up for herself.

"She was the authority in this exchange, much brighter than the two people sacking her for reasons even they couldn’t explain."

Over on LinkedIn, one person said: "You're a hero. The workers need more solidarity like this. I live and breathe for this kind of defense of the human condition.

"Don't let the naysayers come and rain on your parade. You did a good thing, and there's plenty of places out there for you to get a soft landing. You're essentially famous, at least for the moment, on LinkedIn. And I've seen plenty of people in hiring positions receive this very positively.

"You'll get hired faster than any of us. Won't be long."

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince soon responded to the viral video, saying: "The video is painful for me to watch."

His full statement, published to X, says: "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, 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. 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. And sometimes under performing employees don’t actually listen to the feedback they’ve gotten before we let them go.

"Importantly, just because we fire someone doesn’t mean they’re a bad employee. It doesn’t mean won’t be really, really great somewhere else. Chris Paul was a bad fit for the Suns, but he’s undoubtedly a great basketball player.

"And, in fact, we think the right thing to do is get people we know are unlikely to succeed off the team as quickly as possible so they can find the right place for them.

"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.

"And that’s something [Cloudflare co-founder] Michelle Zatlyn and I are focused on improving going forward."