When 27-year-old sales employee Brittany Pietsch received a message for a 15-minute Zoom call, she was already "suspicious." She knew that other colleagues at Cloudflare, a cloud-based networking and cybersecurity service provider, had received similar messages. As the call began, she hit the record button on her phone. The video later went viral on social media, stirring controversy.

"I don't regret sharing it," the former Cloudflare employee said. "I've received so many messages from people saying, 'I wish I had stood up for myself the way you did.' Also, reputable companies have approached me saying, 'I want someone like you on my sales team,'" she said.

The conversation started with a man (later joined by a woman) telling Pietsch she was being fired for not meeting performance expectations for 2023.

"I'm going to stop you right there," the young woman responded, stating that in the three months she worked there, her manager only had praise for her. When she persistently asked for details about her performance and how it led to her dismissal, the two representatives refused to provide specifics. One stated it was part of a collective efficiency assessment, while the other vaguely promised to share more detailed information later.

Pietsch also repeatedly asked why her manager was not on the call, receiving no substantial answer. The dismissive tone of the two representatives exacerbated the situation. Phrases like, "I understand how you feel," "I'm sorry you feel that way," and "Nothing we say will make you feel better" made things worse.

"It must be very easy for you to do these little 10-15 minute updates, telling someone they're fired, completely destroying their life, without any explanation," Pietsch says in the video. "It's an extremely traumatic situation."

Brittany was fired last Tuesday and posted the video on TikTok the following day without naming the company. Another person took the video, added her name and that of her former employer, and shared it on X and other social networking sites. Since then, it has been viewed millions of times.

Among those who saw it was Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince. "The video is painful for me," Prince wrote on X last week, admitting that Pietsch' dismissal was "far from perfect" and that "the company will learn from its mistakes."

He explained that the company fired about 40 salespeople this quarter, a number he described as normal. "Every healthy organization needs to remove people who underperform. That wasn't the mistake here. The mistake was that we weren't kinder and more humane," he said.

"When we decide to part ways with an employee, we base our decision on a review of the employee's ability to meet measurable performance targets. We believe it's right to remove from the team as soon as possible people who we know are unlikely to succeed, so they can find the right place for themselves elsewhere," he also stated.

The comments came as Pietsch' dismissal - and the recording - divided social media. Some criticized the manner of the firing, while others said Pietsch' attitude was undignified.

In the last year, as companies make cuts, executives and human resources teams ponder how to announce bad news in the best possible way. Mishandling layoffs can harm the employer's reputation and demoralize remaining staff. Hybrid work environments, where Zoom calls replace face-to-face meetings, have compounded the complexities of an already difficult task.

Phyllis Hartman, president of PGHR Consulting, a human resources consulting firm, said in-person layoffs are preferable to video calls.

"But that's not the main issue with Pietsch' video," she said. "Her boss should have been on the call. And the people who did the firing should have been given more information from the company about the reasons for the dismissal."