Not long after Mary Ellen Coe joined YouTube as chief business officer in late 2022, leaders at the streaming video behemoth began intensifying their questions about a team of YouTube staffers who provided support to content creators. They wanted to know if the team was worth the money YouTube was investing in it, said a person involved in these meetings.
The video service’s business team sifted through data to see whether the creators who had dedicated YouTube managers uploaded more often to the service or people watched their videos more frequently, among other metrics, the person said. Ultimately, YouTube decided it could live with fewer of the in-house creator managers. In January it cut about 100 employees working on the partnerships team, which includes creator managers, staff supporting media companies that supply content and staffers handling operations roles.
The episode is a sign of how the culture inside YouTube has changed over the past couple of years, from a place that valued experimentation regardless of the cost to one driven more by metrics and financial rigor. The shift was driven in large part by Coe, a former McKinsey & Co. executive who spent a decade as a Google advertising executive before replacing Robert Kyncl as chief business officer, said people who have worked at the company.
