7 ms·

She does not have $22B in cash. You pay employees in cash. Impact investing is just as brutal as any other investment fund. Dollars can be deployed more impactf

She does not have $22B in cash. You pay employees in cash. Impact investing is just as brutal as any other investment fund. Dollars can be deployed more impactfully elsewhere. The goal is investments that create long term structural change and subsidizing employees of a declining business doesn’t move them towards that goal.

mikeyouse 6y ago
The point is the business wasn't declining until she changed the mission.. In addition to her Apple wealth, she owns roughly 100 million shares of Disney. 68 staff cuts at $150k/year all-in cost mean she'll save roughly $10M/year. So she could sell 0.08% of her shares in Disney at today's price and these people would be employed for another year to work on the mission that she / the collective chose.
- donohoe 6y ago
  "The point is the business wasn't declining until she changed the mission" WTF? No. Are you just making this up? She, via Emerson Collective, has invested heavily and they would be in greater trouble were it not for her. (I used to work for Quartz which was started by The Atlantic so my comments are based on actually having been there and know how these operations work)
  - burkaman 6y ago
    They were profitable for 8 years before she bought them. https://www.axios.com/the-atlantic-to-expand-adds-100-people-300e3a96-375e-44f0-b10f-2a7e6da5152b.html https://www.axios.com/the-atlantic-to-expand-adds-100-people...
    - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
      That doesn't mean they stopped being profitable after she bought them, or that she "changed the mission," as a previous poster put it. Just like many other businesses, an infusion of cash allowed them to expand. It's easy to criticize them for that now, but there's a real sense in which that critique amounts to, "Instead of expanding, they should have used that infusion of capital to restructure their finances in a way that let them survive a dramatic collapse in revenue that happened virtually all at once."
      - wonnage 6y ago
        expand? you mean like wework? or any of the other softbank unicorns?
      - sanderjd 6y ago
        I don't know how you could read this thread and get to what you wrote for your alternative "instead of expanding". The alternative proposed by the thread starter is something like: "having invested in expansion, she should continue supporting the employees that were hired during that expansion". And that expansion is the change in the mission that the thread starter is referring to.
        chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        The expansion was, according to the linked article, largely into live events. I disagree with characterizing that as a "change in the mission" -- the Atlantic always hosted some live events, and they continued publishing the magazine, so it's not as if they pivoted into becoming something they weren't. But the point I was trying to get at is that if they won't be able to hold live events at all for a year or more to come and may take years past that to get back up to their original level, what does "supporting the employees" hired for that group mean? If we're talking super-generous severance packages, we're in agreement -- but if we're talking about paying them to keep doing a job in support of a business the company can no longer perform, which was the implication I got from the thread, I'd pretty hesitant to sign on. I suppose I'm pushing back a bit at the notion that because there's a billionaire benefactor involved, that immediately changes the ethics of the situation. If Powell Jobs hadn't invested in them, they hadn't expanded, and they still had to do layoffs like so many media companies have in the last few months have, wouldn't their obligations be essentially the same? It seems to me they would -- yet it also seems to me we probably wouldn't be having this argument in that scenario. (To be clear, I'm not saying "pity the billionaires" as much as saying "should billionaires exist" seems to me to be a somewhat orthogonal argument.)
      - burkaman 6y ago
        I am not criticizing them for expanding. I am criticizing Jobs for using her power to hire more people, but not using her power to temporarily maintain their jobs in a uniquely dangerous situation.
    - danvayn 6y ago
      They did spin up staff numbers and who knows how much was spent on business facets like advertising. I'd atleast agree that it might not have been the best investment decision given the large amount of "competitors" in Atlantic's space
      - donohoe 6y ago
        Yes, the added staff and that lead to the pay-wall they have which was helpful and a long-overdue idea.
    - donohoe 6y ago
      Yes, and print ad revenue continues to march towards the cliff, and then Covid 19 killed companies digital ad budgets and that cratered. These are all circumstances affecting nearly every media company right now.
      - burkaman 6y ago
        I understand, and most media companies are going to be forced to lay off people when they simply don't have enough money to pay them anymore. I don't blame them if there's nothing they can do. This is a relatively unique circumstance where the owner could easily keep paying them if she wanted to, but has chosen not to. Ad revenue and live events are not gone for good, just for a little while.
uoaei 6y ago
People who have control over $22 billion have the ability to get a large sum of physical cash very quickly. The problem is who gets to choose what is "more impactful". Maybe some of those staff were getting ready to shatter the world with an insane revelation that instigates "long-term structural change" and makes life better for everyone. Then Jobs would have invested her money improperly. But because she gets to almost unilaterally decide what happens under her purview, those former employees never get a chance.
burkaman 6y ago
I know she doesn't literally have $22 billion in a bank account, but she could obviously scrounge up enough cash to pay these people if she wanted to. The Atlantic is not a "declining business". It was profitable for a long time before she bought it, it expanded because she wanted it to, and the decline in revenue is likely temporary. They aren't losing subscribers and they aren't in danger of failing anytime soon. If she invested in The Atlantic to create long term change, and its subscriber base and reach is growing (which it is), then she shouldn't care about a short term decline in ad revenue. Dollars can certainly be deployed more profitably elsewhere, but you're not gonna accomplish any social change if you base your investments on quarterly profits.
- ABeeSea 6y ago
  > it expanded because she wanted it to And now it’s shrinking because she wanted it to.
  - burkaman 6y ago
    I think we're on the same page. She has an immense amount of power which she is wielding in a legal and fairly conventional manner, but one that I consider ethically wrong.
    - pochamago 6y ago
      I don't think I understand. Would it have been more ethical in your system if she hadn't hired them in the first place?
      - burkaman 6y ago
        It depends what she did instead. If she just left her money in the bank, no, that's worse. But it would have been more ethical to spend her money in a way that wasn't exclusively dedicated to making more money. Maybe start a collectively owned media organization where power isn't concentrated in one person. Or donate to an existing nonprofit media organization, where revenue is more closely correlated to social impact than the economic health of third party advertisers. Basically just stop trying to make more money. You don't need any more. Do something to make the world better.
ciarannolan 6y ago
>She does not have $22B in cash. The idea that someone worth $22B can't snap their fingers and have a few million dollars cash available is ridiculous. Do you think there are no buyers for Apple or Disney stock?

mikeyouse 6y ago

The point is the business wasn't declining until she changed the mission.. In addition to her Apple wealth, she owns roughly 100 million shares of Disney. 68 staff cuts at $150k/year all-in cost mean she'll save roughly $10M/year. So she could sell 0.08% of her shares in Disney at today's price and these people would be employed for another year to work on the mission that she / the collective chose.

donohoe 6y ago
"The point is the business wasn't declining until she changed the mission" WTF? No. Are you just making this up? She, via Emerson Collective, has invested heavily and they would be in greater trouble were it not for her. (I used to work for Quartz which was started by The Atlantic so my comments are based on actually having been there and know how these operations work)
- burkaman 6y ago
  They were profitable for 8 years before she bought them. https://www.axios.com/the-atlantic-to-expand-adds-100-people-300e3a96-375e-44f0-b10f-2a7e6da5152b.html https://www.axios.com/the-atlantic-to-expand-adds-100-people...
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    That doesn't mean they stopped being profitable after she bought them, or that she "changed the mission," as a previous poster put it. Just like many other businesses, an infusion of cash allowed them to expand. It's easy to criticize them for that now, but there's a real sense in which that critique amounts to, "Instead of expanding, they should have used that infusion of capital to restructure their finances in a way that let them survive a dramatic collapse in revenue that happened virtually all at once."
    - wonnage 6y ago
      expand? you mean like wework? or any of the other softbank unicorns?
    - sanderjd 6y ago
      I don't know how you could read this thread and get to what you wrote for your alternative "instead of expanding". The alternative proposed by the thread starter is something like: "having invested in expansion, she should continue supporting the employees that were hired during that expansion". And that expansion is the change in the mission that the thread starter is referring to.
      - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
        The expansion was, according to the linked article, largely into live events. I disagree with characterizing that as a "change in the mission" -- the Atlantic always hosted some live events, and they continued publishing the magazine, so it's not as if they pivoted into becoming something they weren't. But the point I was trying to get at is that if they won't be able to hold live events at all for a year or more to come and may take years past that to get back up to their original level, what does "supporting the employees" hired for that group mean? If we're talking super-generous severance packages, we're in agreement -- but if we're talking about paying them to keep doing a job in support of a business the company can no longer perform, which was the implication I got from the thread, I'd pretty hesitant to sign on. I suppose I'm pushing back a bit at the notion that because there's a billionaire benefactor involved, that immediately changes the ethics of the situation. If Powell Jobs hadn't invested in them, they hadn't expanded, and they still had to do layoffs like so many media companies have in the last few months have, wouldn't their obligations be essentially the same? It seems to me they would -- yet it also seems to me we probably wouldn't be having this argument in that scenario. (To be clear, I'm not saying "pity the billionaires" as much as saying "should billionaires exist" seems to me to be a somewhat orthogonal argument.)
    - burkaman 6y ago
      I am not criticizing them for expanding. I am criticizing Jobs for using her power to hire more people, but not using her power to temporarily maintain their jobs in a uniquely dangerous situation.
  - danvayn 6y ago
    They did spin up staff numbers and who knows how much was spent on business facets like advertising. I'd atleast agree that it might not have been the best investment decision given the large amount of "competitors" in Atlantic's space
    - donohoe 6y ago
      Yes, the added staff and that lead to the pay-wall they have which was helpful and a long-overdue idea.
  - donohoe 6y ago
    Yes, and print ad revenue continues to march towards the cliff, and then Covid 19 killed companies digital ad budgets and that cratered. These are all circumstances affecting nearly every media company right now.
    - burkaman 6y ago
      I understand, and most media companies are going to be forced to lay off people when they simply don't have enough money to pay them anymore. I don't blame them if there's nothing they can do. This is a relatively unique circumstance where the owner could easily keep paying them if she wanted to, but has chosen not to. Ad revenue and live events are not gone for good, just for a little while.

uoaei 6y ago

People who have control over $22 billion have the ability to get a large sum of physical cash very quickly. The problem is who gets to choose what is "more impactful". Maybe some of those staff were getting ready to shatter the world with an insane revelation that instigates "long-term structural change" and makes life better for everyone. Then Jobs would have invested her money improperly. But because she gets to almost unilaterally decide what happens under her purview, those former employees never get a chance.

burkaman 6y ago

I know she doesn't literally have $22 billion in a bank account, but she could obviously scrounge up enough cash to pay these people if she wanted to. The Atlantic is not a "declining business". It was profitable for a long time before she bought it, it expanded because she wanted it to, and the decline in revenue is likely temporary. They aren't losing subscribers and they aren't in danger of failing anytime soon. If she invested in The Atlantic to create long term change, and its subscriber base and reach is growing (which it is), then she shouldn't care about a short term decline in ad revenue. Dollars can certainly be deployed more profitably elsewhere, but you're not gonna accomplish any social change if you base your investments on quarterly profits.

ABeeSea 6y ago
> it expanded because she wanted it to And now it’s shrinking because she wanted it to.
- burkaman 6y ago
  I think we're on the same page. She has an immense amount of power which she is wielding in a legal and fairly conventional manner, but one that I consider ethically wrong.
  - pochamago 6y ago
    I don't think I understand. Would it have been more ethical in your system if she hadn't hired them in the first place?
    - burkaman 6y ago
      It depends what she did instead. If she just left her money in the bank, no, that's worse. But it would have been more ethical to spend her money in a way that wasn't exclusively dedicated to making more money. Maybe start a collectively owned media organization where power isn't concentrated in one person. Or donate to an existing nonprofit media organization, where revenue is more closely correlated to social impact than the economic health of third party advertisers. Basically just stop trying to make more money. You don't need any more. Do something to make the world better.

ciarannolan 6y ago

>She does not have $22B in cash. The idea that someone worth $22B can't snap their fingers and have a few million dollars cash available is ridiculous. Do you think there are no buyers for Apple or Disney stock?