When it comes to increasing revenue, nobody really knows how the userbase is going to adopt a product. Look at Vine vs Tik Tok. Same exact format, but one died and one took off like a rocket ship.
When companies can invest money, they do so without concern for long term in the hopes that they can just bruteforce project with manpower and make something stick. If you don't participate in this, you risk missing out establishing a product that has long term staying power and thus long term revenue.
So it figures that when these costs start running high, things get cut. And when everyone is downsizing, and you don't and instead choose to invest, you risk losing money on a failed product that you could have spent later on something profitable.