Cloudflare. ‘Lisbon is our fastest growing office worldwide’

Cloudflare continues to maintain high expectations for its Lisbon office. By the end of the year, the tech company wants to double the team, to a total of 250 employees, and it still aims to have 1,000 talented people in Portugal by 2025.

Of the company’s 16 offices around the world, Lisbon is the one that has grown the most, says John Graham-Cumming, Chief Technological Officer at Cloudflare, and where the company is betting its chips, which is why the CTO chose Portugal as his place of residence.

Today with 130 employees, the Lisbon office was the third of the North American technology company to open in Europe, after London and Munich. And Cloudflare is already preparing the move to a new space to welcome future employees, in a working model that, for now, is hybrid.

“Pandemic introduced this much more flexible way of working, what it didn’t say is that we should get rid of offices completely. There is value in people coming together to have meetings, not everybody has a great working environment at home,” argues John Graham-Cumming. Moving to a four-day workweek – similar to what Feedzai did every August – is not in the company’s immediate plans. It will have to wait for more data before deciding.

With more than 2,800 employees worldwide, the company that closed 2021 with 656.4 million dollars in revenue (+52%), estimating for this year total revenues between 927 million and 931 million dollars, is strengthening the team. For Lisbon, there are around 70 open positions.

When it set up in Portugal in 2020, Cloudflare announced ambitious plans: in five years it wanted 1,000 people in the Lisbon hub and 200 by the end of 2021. What’s the current situation?

We certainly haven’t changed our goal with this being one of our most significant offices, in fact, I would say it’s become more significant for us, because we’ve been hiring across many different departments. Right now we have 130 people in Lisbon and around 70 job openings available. By the end of this year, we will double [the number of people], we will be around 250 and we hope to continue to grow at that pace. The initial goal of being 1,000 in Portugal will be achieved. It’s becoming an important location for us, which is why I moved here. The pandemic has made remote work more common and we have opened the vacancies to the whole country instead of just in Lisbon. We have people in Porto, and we hope that of those 1,000, some will not necessarily be in Lisbon or in an office because the world has changed.

One of the reasons for choosing Portugal was that you had good universities, people with a good background. So there’s a natural group of talented people locally.

Is the focus still on local recruitment or, given the new reality of remote work, is there an idea of recruiting talent abroad?

We came to Portugal to hire people in Portugal, and the majority of our team is Portuguese. We didn’t come here to bring everybody from abroad. One of the reasons for choosing Portugal was that you had good universities, people with a good background. So there’s a natural group of talented people locally. However, we are still transferring some people here. The largest group of employees is local and the second largest is perhaps from Brazil.

We came here initially thinking mainly of technical staff, like engineers and all those things. We have already recruited many people and we continue to do so, but the finance department has really discovered people with a very important finance background in Portugal – from banking, accounting – and that department is also growing very quickly. Our support area also has a number of people in Portugal with very good language skills and we have been recruiting. This is our fastest growing office worldwide and it will continue to be.

Portugal being attractive to foreign talent was one of the reasons Cloudflare settled here. Is that attractiveness still there or has the pandemic changed that vision?

The pandemic did not dramatically change that scenario, what it did was introduce flexibility. Cloudflare has offices in Paris, Munich, Brussels that are very sales-focused. With the pandemic, part of our employees who, for example, worked in London and were French, German or Belgian asked to return to their country. We allowed that to happen because of the greater flexibility to be in those locations. There is more flexibility but that did not really change the attractiveness of Lisbon, in some ways it made it more attractive. The pandemic made people equate their lives, where they want to be, and that led many to think that Portugal is actually a good country to live in. It depends on the individual, but it did not fundamentally change the reasons why we came to Portugal.

Shortly after your arrival, Cloudflare’s CEO Mathew Prince complained on Twitter about a lack of government support, bureaucracy. Has that situation changed in the meantime? Has the recruitment of foreign talent become simpler?

Any Portuguese person I speak to has a story surrounding bureaucracy. I live here, it’s part of the experience of living in Portugal. The pandemic brought a lot of challenges on the immigration side, the Consulates were closed, there were delays… As we come out of the pandemic, I hope that this whole process will become easier. I don’t think it had a significant impact (on us), it’s something we’ve been learning to work with.

We are currently looking for space in Lisbon for a much larger office than the one we have in Marquês de Pombal. The pandemic has slightly reduced the pressure to move because about 60% of the office is working from home. But we definitely have to find more space.

The current office in Lisbon does not have the capacity to accommodate the 250 employees you are aiming for this year alone. Are there any plans on that front? Or does the current more flexible working model not require a change of location?

We are currently looking for space in Lisbon for a much larger office than the one we have in Marquês de Pombal. The pandemic has slightly reduced the pressure to move because about 60% of the office is working from home. But we definitely have to find more space, because the company is growing very fast all over the world and also here.

Is a second hub outside Lisbon part of the plans?

We have some people in Porto, it wouldn’t be difficult to imagine that if we have more there or in Aveiro, we could have a hub there. At the moment, there is no plan, but we will look at it carefully because we see value in people coming to the office, even if not every day, to meet colleagues.

Tech companies describe a hot environment in terms of talent and salary pressure. What are your strengths in this competition?

Although there is, as a whole, a talent shortage, I don’t think we feel it acutely given the huge number of people who have shown a willingness to work with us. In a growing company, there are always more opportunities than when it is more static. When faced with the option of going to Cloudflare or Facebook, a very large company, many people, especially on the technology side, think that in a growing company they will have more opportunities and will grow more. For an organisation like Facebook, their trump card will be to pay more and more, trying to attract people for the money. Those who come to Cloudflare think more in terms of their career and what we do: make the internet faster, more secure. It’s a mission and it gives people a job with opportunities for growth, in which they can feel proud.

Do you feel you have a purpose and not just that you’re creating more engagement on the networks, using your Facebook example…

If they want to go to Facebook that’s fine, but it’s different… We sell services to companies that make their websites safer, faster, more private. It’s a pleasure to work on something like that.

They’re coming for work, not for arcade games, free lunches or that sort of things. That’s not what we’re about. I know Google, Facebook and others had that concept, like work is almost a kindergarten, but people come because they are interested in the work, the salary and the usual benefits are good.

Talent is no longer attracted to the idea of foosball or pinball machines in the office. What benefits do you feel are driving people to Cloudflare?

They’re coming for work, not for arcade games, free lunches or that sort of things. That’s not what we’re about. I know Google, Facebook and others had that concept, like work is almost a kindergarten, but people come because they are interested in the work, the salary and the usual benefits are good.

There has been a lot of discussion about the impact of remote working on productivity. What has been your experience?

Almost two years into the pandemic, as a society we have found a way to work remotely in our jobs and I think productivity has remained quite high. It’s not something we’ve seen as a problem.

There are countries and companies testing the four-day workweek. Feedzai, for example, has gone ahead with this initiative every August. Would it match your way of working?

In the last couple of years, we have seen a lot of experimentation around different ways of working. Cloudflare had very much an office culture, Pandemic has changed the way we think, with more remote working, with different types of flexibility. We’ve shaped our London and San Francisco offices to support this new environment, where some people go to the office to have quiet work, others to collaborate with others and the office, where before everyone had their own desk, has become a much more flexible workspace. As for the four-day working week, we will see the results (of the pilots) and then we will see if it makes sense.

Will this flexible system, with hot desks, be your future working model or is it just an adjustment to the pandemic?

The pandemic introduced these more flexible working models, what it didn’t say is that we should get rid of offices completely. There is value in people coming together to have meetings, not everyone has a great working environment at home. Whether it will continue, I don’t know. Maybe in five years, we’ll think it was a bad idea, we’ll go back to the office and everyone will have their own desk. Now we are doing this experiment. Personally, I’m starting to go to the office here in Lisbon one day a week, so that I can have a personal interaction with my colleagues, I think that’s very important. It’s interesting that the Portuguese government, as part of its teleworking legislation, has introduced the requirement for employers to bring employees together in person, because we miss that interaction.

We can still contact our employees in an emergency situation. I wasn’t used to calling my staff after hours, so I don’t think [the new teleworking law] has a big impact on us.

The new teleworking law also states that employers cannot contact employees after working hours. Some find it unworkable.

People need a break from work, working 24 hours a day is not healthy. It’s not a law that concerns me. In this hybrid environment, it is important that there is some line. The fact that the Portuguese government introduced this (measure) – I know it was very widely reported around the world that in Portugal you can’t contact your employees out of hours – I think it’s trying to foster a healthy environment. We can still contact our employees in an emergency situation. I wasn’t used to calling my staff after hours, so I don’t think it has a big impact on us.