YouTube announces 'voluntary exit program' for US staff | Hacker News Reader

YouTube announces 'voluntary exit program' for US staff

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67 pointswhoknowsidont27 comments

Yup, when one major tech company announces layoffs, all others appear to use the occasion as cover to do their own. Voluntary exit is usually followed by layoffs if they don’t hit the numbers they are targeting.

s/if/when/

Well it's part of the hiring strategy with tech companies. You hire based on your competitors hiring. The company that can raise to hire more talent is able to get to market on the next big thing before the competition and see stock value rise. But when a down cycle hits, they all drop hiring to match because you're overspending and will see stock prices drop to the competition.

The company says no roles are being eliminated as part of these changes.

What in god’s name is the “voluntary exit program” going to do then ? It will obviously eliminate some roles ?

Corporate doublespeak at its finest.

It will eliminate some particular employees, the roles may be retained and filled with other, probably—for it to have a business purpose—lower-cost (either because of location or experience or a combination) personnel.

Or, even more cynically, the roles can be nominally retained but due to inability to find the right talent or something like that kept open through the current (outside of AI, for now) economic downturn, and then filled again later.

Employees are also a liability. The entire HR department exists to manage this.

and who manages the HR department employees? not being facetious, Ive wondered this for a while now. seems like they have almost unchecked power to run a corp into the ground.

If a company is the Soviet Union and the CEO is Stalin, HR would be the NKVD. How did Stalin keep the NKVD in line? They were also being murdered themselves while filling their murder quotas.

It’s not doublespeak. Multiple people can share the same role. Downsizing reduces redundancy. The number of roles can remain the same even with a smaller headcount.

Would be interested to know the terms of the severance. Non-disparagement seems likely, but noncompetes are not enforced in California. So if you were trying to leave anyway, seems like a win/win.

My understanding is that there are no particularly special rules.

The VEPs are good for people who either are already planning to leave or who are considering it. I'm much happier that Google has done VEPs followed by layoffs to hit targets rather than just plain layoffs this year. I still think that the layoffs are horseshit given how outrageously profitable the company is, but the VEPs have been great.

The pay is less than most people think as reported since it is just salary and doesn't include stock vests, but if you've been at Google for a while its still a good chunk of change.

It’s interesting this is coming at the time when it’s also announced the licensing agreement between YouTube TV and Disney has ended. Perhaps they are bracing for an impact to revenue from there? Though I’m unsure how much YouTube TV contributes to the company, revenue-wise.

The company had all time high quarterly revenue and profits, the stock is at all time high. It’s disgusting this is even being floated as an option.

That was last quarter. Now they need to achieve even higher profits for the next one.

I am affraid there could be could be a political reason behind it all. Like Musk/Twitter.

I know, its unlikely to not have heard about internal rumors but who can tell how far the dystopian tech cult around thiel and co reaches. These guys clearly conspire for something. Ok, tinfoil head off now.

There's no political reason here. VEPs have been rolling out across different chunks of Google all year. They just got to youtube now. I'm not sure why they've been staggered, but I don't think that there is any connection to politics.

I really hate this MBA, always go up curve, when it is physically impossible to have everyone go up.

What is so wrong with having a sustainable business with happy employees.

Nothing, they just don't make the headlines.

Also, if you were someone picking a stock, which is likely to go up higher? One where the stock demonstrably keeps going up and to the right, or one that doesn’t?

The issue is everyone’s own greed. Including the old ladies and pension fund managers.

Which provides many benefits - but also, when push comes to shove - exposes the ‘teeth’ more directly.

The stock market just allows more abstract and scalable access to that greed, that otherwise would be more randomly distributed.

> One where the stock demonstrably keeps going up and to the right, or one that doesn’t?

The one that doesn’t go to the right, because if they figured out how to stop or go back in time, they probably have some smart people working there.

They have a term for ‘doesn’t go to the right’ in business - liquidation. It has nothing to do with time travel, and investors really don’t like it most of the time.

Nothing, it's just hard. The problem you trip over is retention of strong employees.

Many strong employees are ambitious and need the prospect of progression to be happy with their job. When growth slows below the employee ambition rate, not everyone can be sustainably paid more. Then you're faced with a choice of removing people to make space or employees being unhappy.

You can let this equillibrate naturally. The employees who are both ambitious and skilled enough to land other jobs will disproportionately be first out the door, leaving room for others. But this reduces the average talent level, and hurts company prospects, so many companies choose other paths. Some proactively fire the bottom 15% every year. Some heavily differentiate pay to make up for lack of promotions. Some constantly reorg and fail to find spots for employees in internal interviews. Offering a paid out for those who were thinking about it anyway seems a uniquely humane solution.

Another thing that is kind of physically impossible, unless one lives in a region with pleotheora of choices.

In many regions, one needs to be happy to have a job at all, while others cannot accomodate everyone that wants to be there.

Agree. Early in my career I was in an org that had been fast growing but then sales went flat. I was effectively told that I could not be promoted because there were already too many people at level N+2 and N+1. I told my M2 that this to me meant we'd all just grow old together and the org would be static. He didn't disagree and I transferred to a new org which although it was also not growing, did have a leadership gap and a growth path for me.

Never understood the backwards ass logic of expanding profits by firing people when the business is doing good. If majority of people are unemployed, no one’s going to pay for your YouTube Premium.

Some times I think that the US optimises for being a place for business, not for the freedom of its people.

>"The US isn't a nation of countrymen, it's an economic zone..."

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