Techrights' Assessment of Red Hat Layoffs in 2025 (Yes, They Happened!)
Don't search the Web for "Red Hat Layoffs"; it would lead anyone to the wrong conclusion/s. Look up "IBM Layoffs" or "IBM RAs" or something similar...
Why?
Well, earlier this year it was further formalised and clearly formulated by Red Hat's CEO that Red Hat staff was more or less transitioned into "IBM staff" status; Microsoft's GitHub had done almost the same thing around the same time. In Microsoft's case, the subsidiary was absorbed inwards, into a new shell with a buzzword in its name, "AI" [1, 2], hoping to trick Microsoft shareholders into thinking GitHub was an "AI company" or "AI product" and therefore the losses were acceptable and likely just temporary ("an investment" being the common euphemism for such phony economic predictions and assurances).
There are financial and accounting reasons for this change at Red Hat (IBM) and at GitHub (Microsoft), set aside marketing and branding.
"Are the Red Hat layoffs affecting the systemd 'development' team?" one reader asked us today.
Well, it's hard to tell what teams were impacted, but many kernel-level devs (programmers) "Resigned" or "Last Day'ed" - wordings that insinuated they were pushed out (especially if they said the latter [1, 2]; most kept quiet about it). We saw comments that said some would be replaced by "Indians" (direct quote), but we also saw evidence of Red Hat layoffs in India. We have no evidence of a correlation between nationality/ethnicity/demography and extent of layoffs at Red Hat.
We saw a number of Red Hat-led projects coming to an end (a "sunsetting" of sort), so we assume teams were culled or downsized. We covered some examples earlier in the day.
In short, Red Hat layoffs did occur this year, but even when they did the media did not mention these (and those would count as "IBM" regardless).
Red Hat has historically been a net gain for GNU/Linux (even if some things Red Hat did were negative, overall the positives outweighed those). The thing to strive for is - more so for GNU/Linux enthusiasts - a Red Hat that fosters inclusion - also in the software sense, not shallow politics. Red Hat's attack on those who reject Wayland, for instance, makes Red Hat look anything but tolerant. The same goes for systemd, Flatpak, and many other things.
Monoculture does not make us stronger but more vulnerable and thus increasingly feeble. █