We have always strived to make Cloudflare somewhere where our entire team feels safe and empowered to bring their whole selves to work. It’s the best way to enable the many incredible people we have working here to be able to do their best work. With that as context, we are proud to share that Cloudflare has been certified and recognized as one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2023 by Newsweek and the Best Practice Institute (BPI) for the second consecutive year.  

Cloudflare’s ranking follows surveys of more than 2 million employees at companies with team sizes ranging from 50 to 10,000+, and includes US-based firms and international companies with a strong US presence. As part of the qualification for the certification, Cloudflare participated in a company-wide global employee survey — so this award isn’t a hypothetical, it’s driven by our employees’ sentiment and responses.

With this recognition, we wanted to reflect on what’s new, what’s remained the same, and what’s ahead for the team at Cloudflare. There are a few things that especially stand out:

Helping to build a better Internet.

If you speak to any member of the Cloudflare team about why they’re here, they’ll almost certainly talk about our mission. Whether it’s in our careers, or our lives more generally, so many of us have been positively impacted by the Internet. It is an incredible resource for humanity, and being able to contribute back to it is definitely a draw for many Cloudflarians. In an internal survey from September 2023, 92% of our team stated that they are inspired by Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet — and 88% said that their work is important to the company.

Working on these kinds of problems, at the scale Cloudflare is at, requires constant innovation and figuring out solutions at the frontier of technology. At the same time, Cloudflare for years has been giving back to the community and society — through programs like Project Galileo, Athenian Project, and Project Cybersafe Schools — that make us especially proud of the work we do.

Cloudflarians get a real sense of our company culture, team, mission, and how we work, right when they start interviewing with us. Candidate feedback paints a picture of what this looks and feels like:

“The entire process is really different from anything I’ve experienced before — and I’m enjoying it very much. Also, the informal tone makes it much more human and everyone is so approachable.”  

“I’ve never met a group of people at a company that are all consistently excited about the work they are doing.”

Before anyone gets an offer, every candidate in the final stage connects with one of our executive leaders including our co-founders. This has been part of our interview process for many years, and is designed to ensure candidates truly understand what they’re signing up for in their role as part of joining the Cloudflare team, and to make our executive team accessible to everyone starting on day one. Transparency is one of our core values, and we want all employees to have a direct line to our leadership.

Transparency also serves as our guiding light when we engage with the public. We are quick to share detailed reports amid and after incidents, in the hopes that they will benefit the Internet-at-large. And we share regular impact reports detailing our progress around key environmental, social, and governance initiatives.

We have continued to receive unmatched interest with close to half a million applicants in the first half of 2023, which is nearly a 300% increase from 2022. Our offer acceptance rate remained equally as impressive at a rate of 90%. We are continuing to hire worldwide with hundreds of open positions across the organization ranging from Sales to Engineering.

We are committed to developing a globally distributed team with a flexible working approach. Individual teams opt into: hybrid, remote, or in-office, depending on what works best for the folks on the team, and the team more broadly. As an example, we've seen less tenured folks on certain teams wanting to go into the office more frequently to work together in-person. For reasons across the board, we give teams the ability to choose what works best for them. We’ve found that this approach gives teams the opportunity to establish their optimal working arrangements that fit with their objectives and enable collaboration.

Our paid time off policy is on a take-what-you-need basis. We encourage employees to find a comfortable work-life balance by taking as many days off as they need while still being able to perform their jobs satisfactorily.

We want to empower and inspire our team members to do their best work every day — and this includes making sure they feel happy, healthy, and fulfilled both inside and outside of our workplace. Aside from comprehensive healthcare benefits, this also includes support for family planning like parental leave and Carrot Fertility, access to mental health and mindfulness programs through Ginger and Headspace apps, and three days of paid time off each year to volunteer in our respective communities.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is a priority at Cloudflare to help ensure a sense of belonging and community for all of our employees and to best propel our business forward. Our 15+ Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) are employee-led and have designated executive sponsors of each group. These communities come together to support each other, celebrate their cultures, and help with initiatives to educate, support professional development, and more. We have a robust number of ERGs and this continues to grow as the diversity at Cloudflare expands.

Our employees believe that Cloudflare is a special place, with an especially meaningful mission. They believe there is no other place where a team so small is having such a large impact on the Internet. To keep up, it's critical that we have great people across the company to help us continue our mission. To learn more about the Cloudflare career opportunities, please check out Cloudflare Careers!

At Cloudflare, we have strived to build a workplace where our entire team feels safe and excited to bring their whole selves to work, so they can do their best work. That’s why we are proud to share that Cloudflare has been named one of the Top 100 Most Loved Workplaces in 2022 by Newsweek and Best Practice Institute (BPI). Most Loved Workplaces recognizes companies where their workers love, and feel in sync with, the company they work for.

With this, and as we’re approaching the end-of 2022, we thought this was a good time to reflect on some of the things that go into being one of these Most Loved Workplaces and just some of what makes up our workplace and culture.

Something that really grounds our entire team is Cloudflare’s mission: to help build a better Internet. When you are solving some of the toughest challenges facing the Internet — helping make the Internet secure, fast, private, and reliable globally — you need a range of talented individuals to do this. The people at Cloudflare are exactly that, and are essential to our impact on the Internet.

The Internet wasn’t built for what it’s being used for today. In order for the Internet to work the way it does today, from powering critical infrastructure, to making it so that a busy working parent can order a healthy dinner right to their home, requires constant innovation on our part to make sure these online services can withstand the demand online, load quick, and not face cyber attacks and breaches. Cloudflare has a significantly large responsibility online, with about 20% of the web running through our network today — and every single team member here is contributing to this.

In addition to the results from Newsweek and BPI, Cloudflare additionally conducted an internal survey of its global team. This presented results of 94% of surveyed employees stating that they are inspired by Cloudflare’s mission to help build a better Internet. At Cloudflare, 92% of employees say their manager treats them with respect and 92% state that their work is important to the company.

“I've worked for so many Fortune 500, top companies in tech, and never have I felt more valued and grown so much than at Cloudflare. I love going to work, love working with my manager and team, we learn so much from each other and are motivated to smash sales goals and grow our presence in the world. ”

“...I love this company, management, and most of all my team. I am proud to be building a better Internet, and will continue to do so for years to come.”

“Honestly it is the best I've ever worked; it is a lot of work, and sometimes it can be stressful, but I'm sure I can count on my manager for support, and they take their time to explain again and again without making me feel bad for asking.”

“Having had the privilege to work at Cloudflare for the past five years, I can genuinely attest that our people are clearly our biggest asset. I personally feel empowered, respected, and yet intellectually challenged daily. It is impressive for any single company to assemble such a diverse and thoughtful group of co-workers. And it all starts with our leadership.”

Cloudflare offers a comprehensive total rewards and benefits package, and invests in supporting team members through a variety of initiatives and programs.

Examples of benefits range — from our commuter benefits program, for employees working in an office or a hybrid role, we help support the transportation costs associated with commuting — to health and family benefits programs including fertility, caregiving, childcare, and family forming/planning, as well as emotional and mental health benefits — and, we encourage everyone to find a comfortable work-life balance by offering a take-what-you-need vacation policy.

One example of programs is Cloudflare’s Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), employee-led and company-supported groups of underrepresented and/or marginalized employees. These groups are focused on key Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives with leaders, executives, and members for each group, who join together in the workplace based on shared characteristics, life experiences, or interests. ERGs are generally based on creating a community of support and belonging, enhancing career development of their members, and contributing to the development of a more inclusive culture at Cloudflare. Today we have 16 ERGs at Cloudflare ranging from Proudflare, Womenflare, and Afroflare to Cloudflarents and Mindflare (you get the theme!).

What’s been at the center of how we’ve approached supporting our team these past couple years is flexibility and experimentation. Cloudflare’s workplace shifted from completely in-office since the company’s launch and leading up to March 2020, to then an entirely new remote environment that we hadn’t had before. This has been a big experiment for us, and it’s an honor to be recognized among the top workplaces uplifting its people. We recognize that every team’s needs are different and that most of us want some level of flexibility in how and where we work. At Cloudflare, we support a variety of work environments that give teams the opportunity to establish their own optimal working arrangements. Whether that be hybrid, remote, or in-office that fit with their objectives and enable collaboration — each employee has flexibility.

Cloudflare has grown its global team by 93% over the past two years and has overall prioritized the recruitment, retention, as well as success of employees. To give a sense of this, in 2021 we received more than 200,000 competitive applications, extending 1,455 offers — while seeing a 92% acceptance rate across the board, and alongside continuously low attrition rates.

Now approaching the end-of 2022, we have over 3,100 team members globally. As our co-founder, President & COO Michelle Zatlyn says, “Companies are collections of people. One of the best parts of my job is the people I get to work with.” And we are continuing to hire worldwide with hundreds of open positions across the organization ranging from Sales to Engineering. To learn more about the Cloudflare career opportunities, please check out Cloudflare Careers! And an enormous high-five to the entire Cloudflare team for your continuous effort and hand in helping build a better Internet.