Flock's 270 Got Two Years to Exercise. Pitch the Work, Not the Bonus

Most of the roughly 270 people who took Flock Safety's buyout left around October 29 with severance, several months of health coverage and two years to exercise their options. Three days before that date, 404 Media published audio of CEO Garrett Langley calling the backlash that pushed some of them out "not real." If you plan to recruit them, the usual playbook (move fast, lead with a sign-on bonus) solves problems these people don't have.

Who actually left Flock Safety in the buyout?

About 270 people left, roughly 18% of Flock's ~1,500 staff, according to Reuters, which first reported the packages. Flock has not confirmed that figure. Spokesperson Paris Lewbel confirmed to TechCrunch that a voluntary separation program took place and described it as a voluntary program, not a layoff.

A voluntary separation program is a buyout where the company offers a package and employees decide whether to take it. That one difference shapes everything after it. People who appear in searches for "Flock Safety layoffs" were not cut. They looked at the offer, looked at the company and chose to go.

The backdrop matters too. An anti-surveillance group reported that 90 cities ended contracts with Flock in August. One employee told WIRED: "When you see enough of the vandalism [aimed at Flock cameras], you know the writing is on the wall."

Why most of the 270 are probably not engineers

Going by the visible profiles, most of the people you can find work in go-to-market jobs, not engineering. If you came here to hire ex-Flock Safety engineers, expect targeted sourcing work, not a flood of resumes.

In Refolk's index of professional profiles, 559 US profiles mention "Flock Safety" in their headline. I pulled a 25-profile sample. Twenty-two of them were still at Flock, and the top ten titles were all sales, enablement, marketing or strategy roles, including:

• Director of Enterprise Sales
• VP Go-to-Market
• VP Commercial Sales
• Revenue Enablement Manager
• Director of Marketing Strategy
• Director of DFR & Nova Sales
• Director of Training

None of the top titles were in engineering. Twenty-five profiles is a small sample, so read this as a skew, not a census.

Headline search also has a blind spot. Anyone who doesn't name their employer in their headline won't show up in the 559, so treat that figure as a count of visible headlines, not a map of Flock's workforce.

559

Why a cash-heavy pitch won't move a Flock buyout leaver

These candidates aren't short of money or time, so a sign-on bonus doesn't fix anything for them. The package covered both.

Here is what the Flock Safety buyout reportedly included:

• Payouts in the tens of thousands of dollars, which Flock described as roughly double its usual severance
• Several months of extra healthcare coverage
• A two-year window to exercise vested stock options

An exercise window is the period after leaving in which a former employee can buy their vested options at the strike price. The usual window is 90 days, and IBTimes noted that two years is longer than Flock typically gives employees who resign.

Here's why that matters. A 90-day window puts real pressure on a departing employee. They need cash to exercise, or they need a new job lined up fast, or both. Recruiters rely on that pressure all the time, even if they rarely say so. A two-year window removes it. Add severance and health coverage, and there's nothing forcing these leavers to decide quickly.

Inc. calls Flock "the $8 billion surveillance technology startup," and the company has raised about $1.2 billion in venture capital. The leavers' options aren't worthless. With two years, they can wait to see what the shares turn into before spending anything. A bonus doesn't add much to that. What does help is a role they find meaningful and a timeline that respects how little pressure they're under.

2 years

Three reasons people left, three different pitches

Flock's leavers went for at least three different reasons, so one mission pitch sent to all 270 will miss most of them. When recruiting voluntary buyout candidates, ask why they left before you pitch anything.

1. Ethics. These people left over how the product was used and how the public saw it. The vandalism the WIRED source described, misuse cases and city cancellations all fall here. Lead with work they can explain to friends and family without wincing.
2. Equity risk. American Bazaar reported speculation that Flock might sell off parts or all of the business. These people may still believe in public-safety technology. They just didn't want their career riding on a company that might be sold. Lead with funding, runway and leadership stability. A civil-liberties pitch can put them off.
3. Morale and burnout. Langley himself said on All-In, "I think the biggest damage is internal morale." These people were worn down by defending their employer. Lead with team quality, a calm roadmap and a manager they would actually want to work for.

The most common mistake is assuming everyone in group two thinks like group one. A sales director who sold Flock's public-safety work may be proud of it. If your opener implies they should be ashamed of it, you've lost them.

Ask why they left before you pitch. A civil-liberties opener can lose the people who still believe in the work.

How to use the leaked Langley audio without trashing Flock

The audio gives you an honest opener with ethics-motivated leavers, but only if you treat it as their concern, not your talking point. If you criticize Flock in a first message, the candidate assumes you'll talk about them the same way someday.

The facts: Langley spoke at the IACP conference in Orlando, and Joseph Cox of 404 Media posted the audio on October 26. In it, Langley said of the criticism, "It's anonymous bots, and so it is not real," and claimed "social media chatter on Flock is down about 95 percent from July." Critics such as Becca Eastwood of the ACLU of Iowa have been quoted in Reason on how widespread the backlash really is.

For someone who left partly because the backlash felt real, those remarks put a clear gap between what they saw and what leadership said publicly. You don't need to point that out. They already know. What works:

• Mention the timing neutrally ("Saw you wrapped up at Flock this week, and I know it's been a loud month").
• Let them bring up the reasons. Many will.
• Describe how your company handles hard questions about its own product, with a specific example if you have one.

What doesn't work: quoting the audio back at them, calling Flock names or assuming they agreed with the critics.

Timing: reach the October 29 cohort now, the holdbacks from December to late January

Run two waves. The main cohort left around October 29 and is reachable today. A smaller group that Flock asked to stay one to three more months will leave between December and late January 2027.

A holdback is an employee who accepted the buyout but was asked to stay past the main exit date. Inc. reported that some buyout takers "may be asked to remain for an additional one to three months."

This is the least obvious part of the pool, and probably the most valuable. Flock chose who to hold back, which tells you whose skills it found hardest to replace. The strongest candidates are probably still inside Flock until sometime between December and January.

How to work it:

• Wave one (now): Contact the October 29 cohort. With severance and health coverage in hand, few will need a two-week start. Plan for a later one.
• Wave two (December to late January): Look for profiles that change from "Flock Safety" to "ex-Flock" or "open to work" in that period. Those are the holdbacks.
• Between waves: Keep a short, respectful note in front of the holdbacks so you're already known when they're free. Don't push them to leave early. They agreed to stay.

Keeping track of who changed status and when is tedious by hand across 559 headlines. It's the kind of watch-list Refolk handles well: you describe the person once in plain English and re-run the same ask each week to see who has moved.

How to find ex-Flock engineers when the visible titles say sales

Search by what the work involves, not by the employer name. Flock's engineers turn up under their skills, their cities and the names of their next employers.

Search the skills, not the logo

If you're hiring computer vision engineers, pair skills such as computer vision and embedded systems with "Flock" anywhere on the profile, not just the headline. Be careful about stacking filters. Combining several skills with a seniority level can return almost nobody, which says more about the filter than about the market. Start broad and narrow down.

Start in Atlanta, then Charlotte

Atlanta, Flock's HQ, was the top region in the index sample at 4 of 25, with Charlotte next at 2. Start there, then widen to remote.

Follow the ones who already left

Ex-Flock profiles in Refolk's index already appear at Gaia Robotics, Replit and Mastercard. Anyone who has already moved on knows which of their old colleagues are any good. A warm intro from a former teammate works better than any cold message, especially with people who are in no hurry.

Check GitHub for the people with quiet headlines

Engineers whose headline just says "Software Engineer" often still have public repos, conference talks or open-source contributions. Searching GitHub alongside LinkedIn is the difference between seeing salespeople and finding the engineers. Refolk searches GitHub, LinkedIn and the open web in one plain-English query, which matters here because the engineers you want are the ones a headline search misses.

Even with all that, a senior computer vision engineer is hard to hire on any timeline, and the best ex-Flock candidates may not be free until late January. If your roadmap can't wait for the holdbacks and your own pipeline keeps coming back empty, look beyond one company's alumni.

FAQ

Is the Flock Safety buyout a layoff?

Flock says no. Spokesperson Paris Lewbel told TechCrunch it was a voluntary separation program, not a layoff, and did not confirm the reported 270 figure. For recruiters, the difference matters: these people chose to leave with a package, so they're under less pressure than laid-off candidates and will take longer to decide.

When can I contact Flock buyout leavers?

Most left around October 29, 2026, and you can contact them now. Some were asked to stay one to three more months, which puts the last exits in late January 2027. Keep in light touch with the holdbacks, but don't push them to leave early, since they agreed to stay.

Should I offer ex-Flock candidates a sign-on bonus?

It won't hurt, but it won't decide anything. The package reportedly included severance worth tens of thousands of dollars, several months of health coverage and two years to exercise options, so cash and urgency aren't their problems. Meaningful work, a stable company and a realistic start date carry more weight.

How many ex-Flock Safety engineers are there?

Nobody has published a reliable number. In Refolk's index, 559 US profiles name Flock Safety in their headline, but a 25-profile sample was dominated by go-to-market titles, with no engineering roles in the top ten. Engineers are there, but you'll find them by searching skills, GitHub activity and cities like Atlanta, not by the employer name alone.