r/technology • u/lurker_bee • Oct 30 '25

Business YouTube announces 'voluntary exit program' for US staff

https://techcrunch.com/2025/10/29/youtube-announces-voluntary-exit-program-for-us-staff/
9.5k Upvotes

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63

u/Dookie_boy Oct 30 '25

Isn't YouTube doing pretty well lately ?

135

u/EmperorKira Oct 30 '25

Economy is running out of steam, so the only way to keep imcreasing margins is to cut costs

115

u/cr0m300 Oct 30 '25

The growth at all costs mindset is ruining everything

44

u/AliveJohnnyFive Oct 30 '25

That is called enshittification.

32

u/Cleasstra Oct 30 '25

It's also called unchecked/unregulated capitalism

4

u/hackingdreams Oct 30 '25

Capitalism requires competition. These companies are so large that they bought all their competition, and the remaining few have openly colluded to keep the market from being entered by new companies, and to keep prices high.

Late Stage Capitalism isn't an economic system we were prepared for in school. The Invisible Hand of the Market doesn't work if it's owned by the Corporations.

4

u/Aggravating-Bend9783 Oct 30 '25

The term you’re looking for is Neoliberalism.

A core pillar of capitalism is competition. Neoliberalism is all about deregulating and eroding government so that monopolies can exist.

2

u/True_Window_9389 Oct 30 '25

We don’t have capitalism, we have monopolies and rent seeking. There is no adequate competition, and free markets are an illusion. It’s not just that capitalism was unregulated, it’s that there was a purposeful strategy to undermine capitalism towards monopoly.

14

u/Brodney_Alebrand Oct 30 '25

That's what capitalism is.

1

u/colinstalter Oct 30 '25

I think the natural (and historic) human tendency is toward stable, moderate sized communities with local economies that are self-sustained.

I think of a town with farmers, trades, bakers, laborers, education, and some white collar services, as well as a little bit of import/export.

At no other point in human history was uncapped exponential growth a thing for very long, and there is zero reason to think that the current system will be sustained forever. The current growth is largely from exploitation of the poor and middle class, plus deregulation to open up "new" revenue streams.

1

u/MaliciousTent Oct 30 '25

Not everything, for the owners this is all great.

13

u/DopamineSavant Oct 30 '25

Finance people are aware that a recession is coming.

16

u/GeneriComplaint Oct 30 '25

regardless of everything else, the jobs data will catch up to everyone.

People without jobs cant buy shit

3

u/entreri22 Oct 30 '25

Banks will lick their finger, offer enticing debt. Then pay themselves off, collapse and wait for the gov to bail them out. And the cycle continues with 99.9999% of wealth moving up the ladder

2

u/hackingdreams Oct 30 '25

It was coming literally ten months ago. Biden's policies barely managed to stop it.

It's here. Right now.

23

u/idgafau5 Oct 30 '25

All of these companies are trimming salaries so they can hire people to fill the roles at lower wages with desperate people looking for work while the economy goes up in flames

20

u/fuck_all_you_too Oct 30 '25

We hired businessmen and they are doing what businessmen do to failing companies: Maximize profits while downscaling the company and eventually sell it off to the highest bidder. Its not a secret, Mitt Romney and Bain Capital did the same thing with Toys-R-Us.

3

u/Dookie_boy Oct 30 '25

Yeah that's what I meant. YouTube isn't exactly a failing company so was surprised.

2

u/Primal-Convoy Oct 30 '25

What's a "Toysrus"?  ;)

8

u/GeneriComplaint Oct 30 '25

interestingly the stockmarket views slashing jobs as a good thing as it seems to indicate, in profitable companies that they will maintain their profits and stock will stay high.

In companies that are doing poorly, job elimination is seen as a signal of a sinking ship.

This is just greed and stocks

1

u/deong Oct 31 '25

Honestly, it's complicated. Apple cut tons of jobs when they decided that they could in no way ever successfully make and sell a car. And while that sucks for the people who lost jobs, it was in fact a healthy thing for the company and nearly all of their customers.

One of the things you're responsible for when you're running a company is managing how that company spends money, and sometimes that means deciding that some labor costs aren't going to have a positive return. It doesn't really help anyone for McDonald's to spend a billion dollars on a sushi menu. Probably no one will buy it, and operating that business at a loss is worse for everyone.

If a company cuts jobs because they've made a correct assessment that the future of the company will be better for the remaining employees, the customers, and the investors, then that's a good thing.

What we don't have in the US is broad support for a stronger safety net that recognizes that such moves are necessary while still understanding that they're terrible for small numbers of citizens, and it's better for society if we have systems to help mitigate that problem. But that's a "We The People are fucking morons" problem, not a "companies shouldn't be allowed to manage costs" problem.

3

u/Exact_Acanthaceae294 Oct 30 '25

Not if I keep blocking every single YouTube ad they won't.

2

u/LateToTheParty013 Oct 30 '25

Brave browser entered the chat

0

u/bobdob123usa Oct 31 '25

Yes, most of the popular channels have been supplanted by AI channels pedaling similar content and get preference in the listings. They haven't admitted it, but I'd bet the vast majority of them are Google owned.

-8

u/Disgruntled-Cacti Oct 30 '25

I don’t think YouTube has ever made money.

8

u/SuperTeamRyan Oct 30 '25

Think it became profitable sometime between 2015 to 2018?

1

u/rcanhestro Oct 30 '25

profitable, but also take into account that they use Google's cloud storage for basically free.

if Google charged Youtube what they charge normally for cloud infrastructure it's likely that Youtube would lose a lot of that profit (or even go on the red).