8 ms·

“farewell outline. we have all been laid off.”

115 points by petercooper 7y ago

Tomte 7y ago
I'm so happy we have Kurzarbeit[1] in Germany. Our CEO told us today that they're planning for it. I don't know yet, whether I will be on it, but I assume that I will. And it's infinitely better than losing my job. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_working https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_working
- CaveTech 7y ago
  This exists elsewhere as a temporary or seasonal layoff/furlough. Many companies are going to be shedding employees through "covid related" layoffs that are not in fact covid related. Perfect time for companies to restructure without bad press.
  - mm89 7y ago
    Kurzarbeit is described on Google as "Short-time working or short time is a situation or system in which civilian employees agree to or are forced to accept a reduction in working time and pay.". That's different than a layoff. I'd happily accept a reduction in pay and work hours over a 100% pay cut and temporary layoff, if that's what it took to keep my company alive during a temporary economic downturn.
    - solarkraft 7y ago
      Kurzarbeit is described as "Short-time working or short time is a situation or system in which civilian employees agree to or are forced to accept a reduction in working time and pay." on Wikipedia. That article also states that you can participate in training, which will actually give you the chance to maintain your income. Pretty cool, I think.
    - ttul 7y ago
      Yes. Kurzarbeit means the company keeps people on its payroll but doesn't give them full hours. The government tops their pay back up to 100% but the company is saved from carrying the full load. The company keeps its employees and all the valuable training they received, allowing it to get back to full speed once the downturn is over. A free market is very inept at solving this problem because no single company is going to make the long term investment required to foresee future recessions and implement a war chest sufficient to offer Kurzarbeit. But the state can think ahead and generate a public good from this kind of program.
      - Tomte 7y ago
        > The government tops their pay back up to 100% Not quite, I think the government makes up for 60% or so of the income difference, but I'll have to look it up later myself.
        ttul 7y ago
        Thank you for the correction.
- __s 7y ago
  This is what Tepperman's (furniture store) did in Canada in 2008
- ttul 7y ago
  Kurzarbeit is a concept whose time has come. I desperately hope that governments around the world consider emulating this excellent policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward. It's a great way to insulate economies from the harmful switching costs (i.e. firing and then rehiring and retraining) caused by a temporary economic downturn.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    Portugal implemented this for COVID, I didn't even know it already existed in Germany. Employees get 2/3 of the regular salary, of which 30% is paid by the company and 70% by social security. Companies which ask for this are forbidden to fire anyone (except for cause).
    - derision 7y ago
      Isn't this what the US just implemented too? You can apply for assistance through the CARES act for 100% of employee salaries and the loan is forgiven at the end if you don't lay off any of your employees
      - icebraining 7y ago
        Maybe so, I wouldn't know.
- kube-system 7y ago
  I guess the forgivable SBA loans in the US might have a similar effect?
Qub3d 7y ago
Its a shame to hear, I really enjoy the Outline's content. Is there any more context as to who "all" is referring to? Is the entire site dead?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
_eht 7y ago
Being close to the publishing world, this does not surprise me. eCPM has halved, if not better depending on demographics. We will likely see this happening to places that started this pandemic out overextended.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Since you are close to this space, do you have any sense of whether the number of ad views is increasing because more people are home?
  - x0x0 7y ago
    ad views aren't important. Look at dollars in. Over time, net dollars in must exceed net dollars paid to publishers. I have a cxx role at a startup. We slashed our ad budget for the next 45-60 days until we figure out how deep our economic collapse is going to be; I suspect we're far from the only company. The other thing about ecpms is most advertisers have a daily frequency cap for cookies. More browsing plus more ad slots does not necessarily equal that much more filled ad slots. We're going to see a lot more ad-supported content companies fail as we destroy the ability to do cross-site targeting. (I'm not saying increasing privacy is bad; merely that this is an entirely-foreseeable outcome). Some sites will transition to paywalls; others will die. Premier sites -- NYT, wapo, gawker family, etc -- will be able to do direct deals with advertisers. That takes both a dedicated salesforce, a draw, and frequent users. Mid-market sites like this will almost certainly not be able to do so. See also Josh at Talking Points Memo's writing about transitioning to a mostly subscriber-supported model.
    - Scoundreller 7y ago
      > ad views aren't importanT You sure? If it’s a supply and demand market, in increase in eyeballs can crash CPMs as the competition to get your ad to display craters. Kinda like how a small decrease in traffic (say 10%) can turn a highway from gridlock to free flowing.
      - 7y ago
ilamont 7y ago
Outline isn't the only online pub laying off all or most employees. I know someone in a specialty tech pub (robotics) who lost his job two weeks ago, as soon as the news turned bad in the U.S. Marketing and events, two mainstays for specialty news, have evaporated, and many online pubs don't have enough subscribers.
azinman2 7y ago
If this is a pure online pub, how/is this somehow related to covid-19? Not many details...
- ardy42 7y ago
  The tweet doesn't mention covid-19, but if it's related maybe: 1. A patron's income is more directly affected, so he suddenly withdrew support. 2. Maybe they were teetering at the edge of financial viability and the onrushing recession will kneecap them in some way (maybe no one wants to advertise anymore, or something).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- eli 7y ago
  Network ad rates have crashed as there is a glut of impression but low demand from advertisers. Many online publishers will turn to paycuts and layoffs or even go out of business in the next few weeks
- dominotw 7y ago
  loss of advertising revenue?
- sciurus 7y ago
  Big drops in ad revenue are affecting companies big and small. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192311/coronavirus-pandemic-media-advertising-twitter-new-york-times https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192311/coronavirus-pa...
- rchaud 7y ago
  I doubt the two are related. This is just the continuation of the bottom falling out of digital media publishing. Mic.com and a few other companies went bust last year. This wasn't a sudden change, it was the result of media companies putting their faith in social networks to distribute their content instead of trying to organically build their own audiences through say, email. Social networks de-emphasized "news" links in their feed algorithms over the past few years, so that impacted the number of impressions those posts would receive. And beyond that, users weren't interested in clicking a link and then having to come back to FB to comment on the article.
Meditato 7y ago
I don't like that people got laid off, but I can't muster a lot of sympathy specifically for an former gawker employee. Down with outrage clickbait!
jsjddbbwj 7y ago
Learn to code.
gumby 7y ago
Wasn’t this what the payroll protection program was designed for? It’s a “loan” on which the principal and interest are paid by the government to cover payroll and rent. Instead these people are just gone.
- adreamingsoul 7y ago
  has anyone actually recieved a payment?
- georgecmu 7y ago
  Payroll Protection Program Loan (PPPL) is supposed to be rolled out today, and it's been false start so far. Two banks that I'm working with don't have anything up and running and claim SBA did not provide enough guidelines (technically not true). See links below for more information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/04/02/small-business-administration-releases-guidelines-for-stimulus-loans-hours-before-planned-launch-banks-arent-ready/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/04/02/small-bu... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/jpmorgan-says-its-not-ready-for-small-business-loan-applications-as-banks-await-treasury-guidance.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/jpmorgan-says-its-not-ready-...
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    The SBA definitely did not provide enough guidelines to banks. I work in-house now and we've been working with a bank to get an SBA loan for our company. We're in the fortunate position of being a good risk so we passed that part of the process, but are currently stuck in limbo, because the SBA failed to provide enough information to banks about how to actually enter a loan into the program once the applicant has passed the standard KYC/risk-assessment process.
- legitster 7y ago
  > Top U.S. banks have threatened to give the federal government’s small-business rescue program a miss on concerns about taking on too much financial and legal risk, five people with direct knowledge of industry discussions told Reuters… > Their main concern is that the Treasury Department has said it expects lenders to verify borrower eligibility, and take steps to prevent fraud, money laundering and protect customer information under the Bank Secrecy Act, sources said. Banks are worried they could face regulatory penalties or legal costs down the line if things go awry in the haste to get money out the door, or get blamed for not moving funds fast enough if they perform due diligence the way they would in ordinary times, the sources said. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-stimulus-banks-exc-idUSKBN21K075 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-stimul... Another example of our crisis response failing us.
echelon 7y ago
I was looking at this SBA loan forgiveness plan that's a part of the relief / recovery / bailout bill. I actually think right now is an incredible time to launch a startup, and I want to hire a few out of work software engineers to work with me. My plan was to incorporate, take out a loan, and pay payroll with the entirety of it. Unfortunately it looks like the bill requires you to have been in business before February 15th with verifiable employees on payroll. I'm really miffed, because putting unemployed employees on payroll at a new company isn't any worse than keeping existing employees on payroll at a business that doesn't have customers. In fact, if a new company is more productive and is working on solving problems that arise because of this virus, it seems more productive to solve the new problems than to keep the unviable businesses running. I'll have to figure something else out...
- edoceo 7y ago
  A new business is far riskier than keeping an existing one. You seem to have forgotten the need for prroven product-market fit.
- vb6sp6 7y ago
  its a program to keep business afloat, not launch new ones.
  - fphhotchips 7y ago
    Yeah, but GP has a point; from a total employment standpoint, there is no difference. In fact encouraging new business at this time could create a burst of new, lean, innovative startups solving real problems from a time of hardship, rather than fake problems from a time of prosperity.
    - gamblor956 7y ago
      There are existing startup incentive programs... The point of CARES is to keep existing revenue-generating businesses open, and their employees paid. And quite frankly, as a former techie it's kind of disgusting that people in the tech community are complaining that their employee-free, revenue-free, 1-day-old startup doesn't qualify for a program intended to keep existing, otherwise viable businesses (absent COVID19) running and their employees paid. This is not the time for the tech community to launch yet another regulatory arbitrage startup that exploits everyone else.
Scoundreller 7y ago
Ohhh, theoutline.com I was wondering just how many employees outline.com even had and if they could just run as is with a couple people.
rchaud 7y ago
The Outline might have been the only "digital media" site to actually have interesting looking ads. I can't find an example right now, but the ads were full-page and swipe-based, so you could read it as a story. My adblocker catches the usual suspects, but I'm guessing these were not served from a third-party domain. I'm perfectly happy with ads that look like some effort went into them, and don't carry the numerous trackers that we now accept as part and parcel of real-time bidding networks. They never had the Taboola/Outbrain chumbox as so many "reputable" publications do. They never had hideous Adsense ads breaking up the page. It's too bad the site didn't have a clear identity; the topics were all over the place, and it didn't have a unique tone of voice. Plus, I'm guessing media buyers were not pleased about having to actually create interesting looking ads that were closer to interactive sponsored content than a two-line Adsense ad they could A/B test to their heart's desire.

115 points by petercooper 7y ago

I'm so happy we have Kurzarbeit[1] in Germany. Our CEO told us today that they're planning for it. I don't know yet, whether I will be on it, but I assume that I will. And it's infinitely better than losing my job. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_working https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-time_working

CaveTech 7y ago
This exists elsewhere as a temporary or seasonal layoff/furlough. Many companies are going to be shedding employees through "covid related" layoffs that are not in fact covid related. Perfect time for companies to restructure without bad press.
- mm89 7y ago
  Kurzarbeit is described on Google as "Short-time working or short time is a situation or system in which civilian employees agree to or are forced to accept a reduction in working time and pay.". That's different than a layoff. I'd happily accept a reduction in pay and work hours over a 100% pay cut and temporary layoff, if that's what it took to keep my company alive during a temporary economic downturn.
  - solarkraft 7y ago
    Kurzarbeit is described as "Short-time working or short time is a situation or system in which civilian employees agree to or are forced to accept a reduction in working time and pay." on Wikipedia. That article also states that you can participate in training, which will actually give you the chance to maintain your income. Pretty cool, I think.
  - ttul 7y ago
    Yes. Kurzarbeit means the company keeps people on its payroll but doesn't give them full hours. The government tops their pay back up to 100% but the company is saved from carrying the full load. The company keeps its employees and all the valuable training they received, allowing it to get back to full speed once the downturn is over. A free market is very inept at solving this problem because no single company is going to make the long term investment required to foresee future recessions and implement a war chest sufficient to offer Kurzarbeit. But the state can think ahead and generate a public good from this kind of program.
    - Tomte 7y ago
      > The government tops their pay back up to 100% Not quite, I think the government makes up for 60% or so of the income difference, but I'll have to look it up later myself.
      - ttul 7y ago
        Thank you for the correction.
__s 7y ago
This is what Tepperman's (furniture store) did in Canada in 2008
ttul 7y ago
Kurzarbeit is a concept whose time has come. I desperately hope that governments around the world consider emulating this excellent policy during the COVID-19 pandemic and afterward. It's a great way to insulate economies from the harmful switching costs (i.e. firing and then rehiring and retraining) caused by a temporary economic downturn.
- icebraining 7y ago
  Portugal implemented this for COVID, I didn't even know it already existed in Germany. Employees get 2/3 of the regular salary, of which 30% is paid by the company and 70% by social security. Companies which ask for this are forbidden to fire anyone (except for cause).
  - derision 7y ago
    Isn't this what the US just implemented too? You can apply for assistance through the CARES act for 100% of employee salaries and the loan is forgiven at the end if you don't lay off any of your employees
    - icebraining 7y ago
      Maybe so, I wouldn't know.
kube-system 7y ago
I guess the forgivable SBA loans in the US might have a similar effect?

Qub3d 7y ago

Its a shame to hear, I really enjoy the Outline's content. Is there any more context as to who "all" is referring to? Is the entire site dead?

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

_eht 7y ago

Being close to the publishing world, this does not surprise me. eCPM has halved, if not better depending on demographics. We will likely see this happening to places that started this pandemic out overextended.

reaperducer 7y ago
Since you are close to this space, do you have any sense of whether the number of ad views is increasing because more people are home?
- x0x0 7y ago
  ad views aren't important. Look at dollars in. Over time, net dollars in must exceed net dollars paid to publishers. I have a cxx role at a startup. We slashed our ad budget for the next 45-60 days until we figure out how deep our economic collapse is going to be; I suspect we're far from the only company. The other thing about ecpms is most advertisers have a daily frequency cap for cookies. More browsing plus more ad slots does not necessarily equal that much more filled ad slots. We're going to see a lot more ad-supported content companies fail as we destroy the ability to do cross-site targeting. (I'm not saying increasing privacy is bad; merely that this is an entirely-foreseeable outcome). Some sites will transition to paywalls; others will die. Premier sites -- NYT, wapo, gawker family, etc -- will be able to do direct deals with advertisers. That takes both a dedicated salesforce, a draw, and frequent users. Mid-market sites like this will almost certainly not be able to do so. See also Josh at Talking Points Memo's writing about transitioning to a mostly subscriber-supported model.
  - Scoundreller 7y ago
    > ad views aren't importanT You sure? If it’s a supply and demand market, in increase in eyeballs can crash CPMs as the competition to get your ad to display craters. Kinda like how a small decrease in traffic (say 10%) can turn a highway from gridlock to free flowing.
    - 7y ago

ilamont 7y ago

Outline isn't the only online pub laying off all or most employees. I know someone in a specialty tech pub (robotics) who lost his job two weeks ago, as soon as the news turned bad in the U.S. Marketing and events, two mainstays for specialty news, have evaporated, and many online pubs don't have enough subscribers.

azinman2 7y ago

If this is a pure online pub, how/is this somehow related to covid-19? Not many details...

ardy42 7y ago
The tweet doesn't mention covid-19, but if it's related maybe: 1. A patron's income is more directly affected, so he suddenly withdrew support. 2. Maybe they were teetering at the edge of financial viability and the onrushing recession will kneecap them in some way (maybe no one wants to advertise anymore, or something).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
eli 7y ago
Network ad rates have crashed as there is a glut of impression but low demand from advertisers. Many online publishers will turn to paycuts and layoffs or even go out of business in the next few weeks
dominotw 7y ago
loss of advertising revenue?
sciurus 7y ago
Big drops in ad revenue are affecting companies big and small. https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192311/coronavirus-pandemic-media-advertising-twitter-new-york-times https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/3/24/21192311/coronavirus-pa...
rchaud 7y ago
I doubt the two are related. This is just the continuation of the bottom falling out of digital media publishing. Mic.com and a few other companies went bust last year. This wasn't a sudden change, it was the result of media companies putting their faith in social networks to distribute their content instead of trying to organically build their own audiences through say, email. Social networks de-emphasized "news" links in their feed algorithms over the past few years, so that impacted the number of impressions those posts would receive. And beyond that, users weren't interested in clicking a link and then having to come back to FB to comment on the article.

Meditato 7y ago

I don't like that people got laid off, but I can't muster a lot of sympathy specifically for an former gawker employee. Down with outrage clickbait!

jsjddbbwj 7y ago

Learn to code.

gumby 7y ago

Wasn’t this what the payroll protection program was designed for? It’s a “loan” on which the principal and interest are paid by the government to cover payroll and rent. Instead these people are just gone.

adreamingsoul 7y ago
has anyone actually recieved a payment?
georgecmu 7y ago
Payroll Protection Program Loan (PPPL) is supposed to be rolled out today, and it's been false start so far. Two banks that I'm working with don't have anything up and running and claim SBA did not provide enough guidelines (technically not true). See links below for more information: https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/04/02/small-business-administration-releases-guidelines-for-stimulus-loans-hours-before-planned-launch-banks-arent-ready/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahhansen/2020/04/02/small-bu... https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/jpmorgan-says-its-not-ready-for-small-business-loan-applications-as-banks-await-treasury-guidance.html https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/02/jpmorgan-says-its-not-ready-...
- gamblor956 7y ago
  The SBA definitely did not provide enough guidelines to banks. I work in-house now and we've been working with a bank to get an SBA loan for our company. We're in the fortunate position of being a good risk so we passed that part of the process, but are currently stuck in limbo, because the SBA failed to provide enough information to banks about how to actually enter a loan into the program once the applicant has passed the standard KYC/risk-assessment process.
legitster 7y ago
> Top U.S. banks have threatened to give the federal government’s small-business rescue program a miss on concerns about taking on too much financial and legal risk, five people with direct knowledge of industry discussions told Reuters… > Their main concern is that the Treasury Department has said it expects lenders to verify borrower eligibility, and take steps to prevent fraud, money laundering and protect customer information under the Bank Secrecy Act, sources said. Banks are worried they could face regulatory penalties or legal costs down the line if things go awry in the haste to get money out the door, or get blamed for not moving funds fast enough if they perform due diligence the way they would in ordinary times, the sources said. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-stimulus-banks-exc-idUSKBN21K075 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-stimul... Another example of our crisis response failing us.

echelon 7y ago

I was looking at this SBA loan forgiveness plan that's a part of the relief / recovery / bailout bill. I actually think right now is an incredible time to launch a startup, and I want to hire a few out of work software engineers to work with me. My plan was to incorporate, take out a loan, and pay payroll with the entirety of it. Unfortunately it looks like the bill requires you to have been in business before February 15th with verifiable employees on payroll. I'm really miffed, because putting unemployed employees on payroll at a new company isn't any worse than keeping existing employees on payroll at a business that doesn't have customers. In fact, if a new company is more productive and is working on solving problems that arise because of this virus, it seems more productive to solve the new problems than to keep the unviable businesses running. I'll have to figure something else out...

edoceo 7y ago
A new business is far riskier than keeping an existing one. You seem to have forgotten the need for prroven product-market fit.
vb6sp6 7y ago
its a program to keep business afloat, not launch new ones.
- fphhotchips 7y ago
  Yeah, but GP has a point; from a total employment standpoint, there is no difference. In fact encouraging new business at this time could create a burst of new, lean, innovative startups solving real problems from a time of hardship, rather than fake problems from a time of prosperity.
  - gamblor956 7y ago
    There are existing startup incentive programs... The point of CARES is to keep existing revenue-generating businesses open, and their employees paid. And quite frankly, as a former techie it's kind of disgusting that people in the tech community are complaining that their employee-free, revenue-free, 1-day-old startup doesn't qualify for a program intended to keep existing, otherwise viable businesses (absent COVID19) running and their employees paid. This is not the time for the tech community to launch yet another regulatory arbitrage startup that exploits everyone else.

Scoundreller 7y ago

Ohhh, theoutline.com I was wondering just how many employees outline.com even had and if they could just run as is with a couple people.

rchaud 7y ago

The Outline might have been the only "digital media" site to actually have interesting looking ads. I can't find an example right now, but the ads were full-page and swipe-based, so you could read it as a story. My adblocker catches the usual suspects, but I'm guessing these were not served from a third-party domain. I'm perfectly happy with ads that look like some effort went into them, and don't carry the numerous trackers that we now accept as part and parcel of real-time bidding networks. They never had the Taboola/Outbrain chumbox as so many "reputable" publications do. They never had hideous Adsense ads breaking up the page. It's too bad the site didn't have a clear identity; the topics were all over the place, and it didn't have a unique tone of voice. Plus, I'm guessing media buyers were not pleased about having to actually create interesting looking ads that were closer to interactive sponsored content than a two-line Adsense ad they could A/B test to their heart's desire.