We are living through extraordinary times. Around the world, the Coronavirus has caused disruptions to nearly everyone's work and personal lives. It's been especially hard to watch as friends and colleagues outside Cloudflare are losing jobs and businesses struggle through this crisis.
We have been extremely fortunate at Cloudflare. The super heroes of this crisis are clearly the medical professionals at the front lines saving people's lives and the scientists searching for a cure. But the faithful sidekick that's helping us get through this crisis — still connected to our friends, loved ones, and, for those of us fortunate enough to be able to continue work from home, our jobs — is the Internet. As we all need it more than ever, we're proud of our role in helping ensure that the Internet continues to work securely and reliably for all our customers.
We plan to invest through this crisis. We are continuing to hire across all teams at Cloudflare and do not foresee any need for layoffs. I appreciate the flexibility of our team and new hires to adapt what was our well-oiled, in-person orientation process to something virtual we're continuing to refine weekly as new people join us.
Summer Internships
One group that has been significantly impacted by this crisis are students who were expecting internships over the summer. Many are, unfortunately, getting notice that the experiences they were counting on have been cancelled. These internships are not only a significant part of these students' education, but in many cases provide an income that helps them get through the school year.
Cloudflare is not cancelling any of our summer internships. We anticipate that many of our internships will need to be remote to comply with public health recommendations around travel and social distancing. We also understand that some students may prefer a remote internship even if we do begin to return to the office so they can take care of their families and avoid travel during this time. We stand by every internship offer we have extended and are committed to making each internship a terrific experience whether remote, in person, or some mix of both.
Doubling the Size of the 2020 Internship Class
But, seeing how many great students were losing their internships at other companies, we wanted to do more. Today we are announcing that we will double the size of Cloudflare’s summer 2020 internship class. Most of the internships we offer are in our product, security, research and engineering organizations, but we also have some positions in our marketing and legal teams. We are reopening the internship application process and are committed to making decisions quickly so students can plan their summers. You can find newly open internships posted here.
Internships are jobs, and we believe people should be paid for the jobs they do, so every internship at Cloudflare is paid. That doesn't change with these new internship positions we're creating: they will all be paid.
Highlighting Other Companies with Opportunities
Even when we double the size of our internship class we expect that we will receive far more qualified applicants than we will be able to accommodate. We hope that other companies that are in a fortunate position to be able to weather this crisis will consider expanding their internship classes as well. We plan to work with peer organizations and will highlight those that also have summer internship openings. If your company still has available internship positions, please let us know by emailing so we can point students your way: special-intern-program-2020@cloudflare.com.
Opportunity During Crisis
Cloudflare was born out of a time of crisis. Michelle and I were in school when the global financial crisis hit in 2008. Michelle had spent that summer at an internship at Google. That was the one year Google decided to extend no full-time offers to summer interns. So, in the spring of 2009, we were both still trying to figure out what we were going to do after school.
It didn't feel great at the time, but had we not been in the midst of that crisis I'm not sure we ever would have started Cloudflare. Michelle and I remember the stress of that time very clearly. The recognition of the importance of planning for rainy days has been part of what has made Cloudflare so resilient. And it's why, when we realized we could play a small part in ensuring some students who had lost the internships they thought they had could still have a rewarding experience, we knew it was the right decision.
Together, we can get through this. And, when we do, we will all be stronger.
Or visit https://www.cloudflare.com/careers/jobs/ and type Internship into the search box to see a complete list of all internship options.