[mabbo]

As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them and each time they completely dropped the ball.

Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.

[pyre]

I went through the interview process with them several years ago (when they were still called Top Hat Monocle). I basically got very positive feedback from the interview process, until I had to interview with the CEO. Apparently the reason given by the CEO for torpedoing me was that I didn't have enough projects on my Github account so I didn't "love the web" enough.

Take from that what you will about their attitude towards hiring (taking into account that this was 3+ years ago). That said, I haven't met anyone from Top Hat that I personally had a bad opinion of.

[surge]

Seriously? Not every project can be in a public repo, are all their projects on open repos? Some of us host our own or use different sites because we've been using git longer than github. Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Someone can be pro open source, and have lots of projects ongoing but host their own gitlab, IRC server, etc, they share with their community or started long before github was a thing.

I also can't imagine someone whose in this field that doesn't "love the web". Github is good, but it's not the only way to do it.

[latch]

I agree it's ridiculous to get to be turned down for that reason at that point. If that was their attitude, they could at least be efficient about it for their own sake and out candidates.

But, in general, I think you should consider the other side of the argument. The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. And if you're looking at candidates and someone has code online that looks promising after a brief examination, I think it's reasonable to take that into account.

It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web".

[sidlls]

If "It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web"." then why is it "reasonable to take that into account?" Those two sentiments seem to contradict each other.

The real problem here is that there is now yet another terrible signal being used as a measure of acceptability in the vetting and interview process.

"Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises".

[gregmac]

> "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises".

Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of acceptability.

I think we are all agreeing that it's not reasonable to reject someone due to lack of published code. Latch is trying to point out the reality of the situation:

> The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with.

If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code.

It's very hard to judge someone's work quality based on personality. I've hired people who seemed good when talking to them but turned out to be not very great developers. I've also hired people who seemed questionable when talking to them, but had decent code samples and/or published code and also turned out to be good or great developers.

I guess to be fair I've never hired anyone who seemed like they'd make a poor developer, had no code samples to prove otherwise, and did badly on coding tests, so maybe I'm missing some great developers who aren't very personable or good under pressure. Frankly I'm okay with that, because I am absolutely positive most of the people in that category are in fact poor developers.

[sidlls]

> Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of noacceptability.

Unless you have a way to verify the source of the code is the candidate with some level of confidence this isn't different from picking the office peacock for promotion.

> If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code.

How is it less risk, assuming one came to the "equal on every level" decision by some means that evaluates their proficiency reasonably well? The only thing having self-published code signals is a willingness and desire to have one's code public. I haven't seen an actual argument justifying your assertion regarding risk.

[softawre]

Is it less risk to hire the open source guy? What if he spent a bunch of time at his last employer working on un-sanctioned projects? Will he do that to you as well?

Just playing devil's advocate.

[evilduck]

I don't think it's reasonable at all unless you equally weigh other sources of evaluating coding ability. IMO it's the same as assuming all managerial applicants also have volunteer charity experience as a manager that they can document and show. Very few careers hinge on what you do in your spare time as long as that spare time isn't spent being a criminal.

edit: hell, it's also already a norm that you have to perform a pro-bono coding assignment as part of the interview process. It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview.

[randomdata]

> It's ridiculous to expect an extensive spare-time open source effort plus 2-10 hours of free work for an interview.

It's a bit of a misnomer to think that businesses expect (or require, as some put it). In reality, they can only weigh their options. Of course, the more options they have, the more particular they can be. It is not unreasonable to think that they had many suitable candidates, and the one who had the most visible evidence of past work became the preferred choice of the group.

Mentioning to the OP what helped cinched the deal for what candidate did get the job may have just been meant as a point of information. Of course, it's difficult to say what really happened without being an observer to the events that took place.

[yannickt]

It's one thing to prioritize a candidate with a public profile over one without when determining the order in which to interview candidates.

But to reject a candidate, after he's interviewed by the CEO (so this would presumably be the last interview stage), because he doesn't have "enough" public projects and therefore doesn't "love the web" enough? I think that's stupid.

Edit: misread the parent, we are actually saying the same thing.

[latch]

which is what I said.

[st3v3r]

That argument makes absolutely no sense. The candidate had made it to the point where they're being interviewed by the CEO. Any consideration of that has long since passed.

[plafl]

Maybe the CEO made the decision subconsciously and later rationalized the decision

[nickpsecurity]

Vast majority of people's decisions are made this way. CEO's are no different. Might be more so if they're moving super-fast managing a startup. So, this possibility should always be considered even if not stated as either the reason or a reason something happened.

[omouse]

The company's been around since 2009 apparently, I'm pretty sure they are no longer a startup, just a regular business that has to survive in the real world and all funding rounds are temporary loans.

[nickpsecurity]

Point still stands but without the rush factor of startups.

[stcredzero]

Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate.

Quite recently, I had a conflict on social media, where some other programmer went halfway to doxxing me. Apparently, the worst thing he could imagine saying to someone was that "Your github sucks!" And in his mind that is sufficient for determining someone isn't a worthwhile person.

I remember when SourceForge held the same sway. Now look where it is now. (That said, I do plan on putting some more stuff up there. Though it would be hard to tell, I do have some code that is used commercially, even now.)

[nemild]

The other thing to be aware is that the rationalization may be different than the reality of why he didn't choose you. The CEO may have found this an easier way to reject you.

In YC, there was this saying (in the context of VCs): believe the rejection, but not the reason. There's little upside in being honest.

[wahnfrieden]

Hi, I'm Alex, on the engineering team @ Top Hat.

I can't speak for back then (I joined after the Top Hat rename), but I'd like to clear up our current practices. We definitely appreciate when candidates have projects or code publicly visible, but understand that not everyone hones their craft through open-source work for one reason or another and would not hold it against someone if their coding contributions weren't public.

[c2h5oh]

You are lucky - you could have been hired. It's a horrible place to work -I've got first hand experience.

[omouse]

Read through their GlassDoor reviews, it suggests they're an awful company on both the dev and sales side. And that means thatm at this point, their product probably isn't very good because devs keep leaving. Which means it'll be a mountain of technical debt to deal with and of course the inevitable, "omg we must have new features X, Y, and Z".

They're no longer a startup, yet they act like it. If they didn't raise more cash I would suspect that they would be out of business in a few short years.

[djsumdog]

Sucks because I'd like to see real disruption in the text book industry. It's like trying to compete against Wal-Mart .. I still shop at Target/Kroger/et. al, but I realize they now employ a lot of the same supply chain practices Wal-Mart started just to stay competitive.

So it makes me wonder if Top Hat, claiming to be disruptive and different, is or will eventually employee questionable practices just like the current industry.

[axiom]

I'm the founder/CEO of Top Hat I'd love to hear about your experience and what we can do better - my email is mike at tophat dot com

Hiring engineers is one of the most important things we need to get right, so I'd hate to think we're doing such a bad job at it. Really sorry that you've had a bad experience with us

[eth0up]

Maybe not the suggestion you're looking for, but I'll take the opportunity to vent.

First and foremost, don't arbitrarily block Linux users for web interfaces. McGraw Hill does, or did in the past and so do others. I spent hours contacting their useless support and playing politics with the college to get this changed, to no avail. At first, I could simply change my useragent and sneak in, with everything working well enough. When they 'smartened up' (or whatever) a bit, they effectively kept me out thereafter. This was a very nasty and persistent problem for me and one I won't forget.

Also, I never once found McGraw Hill software helpful. It seemed a cheap, shameful way to employ 'professors' otherwise too inept and uncreative to manage their own coursework and classes. At the undergraduate level, many colleges are becoming odious rackets (by my observations). McGraw Hill et al are indispensable allies here. Be different, be effective, be honest about education. Real education isn't a gravy train.

[HarryHirsch]

It seemed a cheap, shameful way to employ 'professors' otherwise too inept and uncreative to manage their own coursework and classes.

You just found out the truth about textbook prices. What students are really paying for is the test bank for their assessment, the workload for today's instructors is just to great to be able to do paper coursework. In the past, you would have delegated grading to student assistants or the courseload would be smaller, nowadays you have "Mastering Physics" and whatnot. That, friends, is what "disrupting the market" is all about.

[coldpie]

Funny, physical textbooks have never blocked me from using Linux, nor has physical paper coursework...

[VT_Drew]

Exactly.

>Even as the big publishers work to increase the proportion of sales that come from digital products, they’re still largely dependent on physical books.

The other issue the large sum of money they want to charge per book. The cost of the books is so high that it is propping up "physical book" market. Mostly because publishers have offered no way to resell your digital or ebook. Lots of students buy used text books, and students that buy new often sell their books to recover some of the cost when they complete the class. The publishers see digital books as a way to prevent students from doing this so that everyone has to buy new (at the ridiculously high prices). The students are going to do what is economical for them, until the prices either drop significantly, or you offer an online marketplace where students can sell/trade digital books then physical college text book industry will be here to stay.

[eth0up]

I can assure you, some colleges have worked out methods to prevent students from selling their used books too. I'll cite my previous, rinky-dink college that after a single semester, within the same year of book publication, would simply change the book required for the next course. They did this with all five of my courses. I was unable to resell a single book that I'd purchased new only four months previously.

Also to consider is the marketing of student biometrics or other private data garnered through such software, e.g. SmartThinking https://services.smarthinking.com/login/login.php, etc.

SmartThinking also blocked Linux and, in my opinion, provided no benefits to students at all. It was actually used to manage and grade the majority of our assignments. Seriously, the professor would have most assignments pre-graded by SmartThinking; it told the professor what to think! The whole system seemed an embarrassment.

EDIT: I should add that for the amount of time spent in "smarthinking", many physical classes could just as well be conducted remotely. Many students pay for a traditional course, but end up with the majority of their curriculum occurring remotely/digitally. If this is to be so, then the tuition should reflect accordingly and presently it doesn't. Also, I misspelled "smarthinking" by adding two "t"s.

[coldpie]

Yeah, I was kind of hoping when I read the article title that this was someone actually making an impact in the school text space, but it seems to just be more of the same shitty software that provides no advantage over actual books, just with a different cost structure. Woo.

[JosefStoolen]

I am a current undergraduate student using TopHat software. My professor stated that he was unable to typeface using Latex for the class notes. This should be a feature if it hasn't been updated already.

Additionally, at my school there is a centralized online interface for professors and students to post notes, quizzes, updates about the course, grades, forum discussions etc. Myself and many students were upset when we had to pay for a 'premium' service which offered no features outside what was offered for free in all our other classes.

All I can say is in order for TopHat to impress STEM students they will have to be very creative in the features that they offer. Though they are sometimes liked by professors, interfaces like TopHat and McGraw-Hill/Pearson are almost universally seen as a rip off by students. Access to propriety notes isn't a feature when very few students pay for any textbooks in their STEM subjects.

[SpaceRaccoon]

My university has a platform very similar to TopHat - assignments, lecture notes, text, quizzes, grades, and all- but for free (or, included).

The only reason our Quantum Mechanics prof used TopHat instead was because it gave him the opportunity to gouge an extra $100 out of us for a terrible "textbook" that in any other class would be considered lecture notes, full of errors and typos, proof-read by nobody and held to no standard, with atrocious equation rendering and a terrible interface.

He ended up uploading our assignments to TopHat as PDFs but since it doesn't support PDF-viewing we just download those as zip files anyway. Our in-house service supports PDF-viewing in browser, along with powerpoint and other formats.

Not really sure why TopHat exists besides a way to gouge more money out of us students if we want to be enrolled in a course. I could get by without my professor's poor excuse for a textbook, but I would lose 5% immediately if I couldn't participate in the silly attendance system, and more for the online quizzes (although we could use our in-house system to the same effect) so I have no choice but to fork the money over straight to my professor's pocket. As if my 15k tuition wasn't already enough.

[withdavidli]

I would report that to their department head. I thought teachers assigning their books was a conflict, needing to shell out $100 for crappy notes is a scam.

[throwawayosiu1]

A friend of mine was selected for a Support Role (that too, a temp one).

They had him and a bunch of other come in on the same day, and write a 16 page exam.

From what I understand, my friend didn't like the atmosphere and was already overqualified so he accepted another position.

But this left a bad taste in my mouth about their hiring practices - but then again, if they are continuing with this, it probably means that it works for them.

[omouse]

What was on the 16pg exam? that sounds ridiculous!

[throwawayosiu1]

Everything from:

1. how you'd handle customers for various problems? (which seems fair enough).

2. some coding questions (my friend did this in matlab but they wanted him to do it in python).

3. some IQ questions

4. some questions about the platform (which my friend didn't have an idea about as he'd never used top hat before).

[softawre]

> some questions about the platform

I think it's useful to know whether an interviewee who has driven into your place of business is serious enough to spend 30 mins learning your platform.

[flukus]

It's fair if the website has useful content. I've been pinged before for not researching the company after their website basically said "we specialize in absolutely everything".

[danielhooper]

I called them out on this in one of the Who's Hiring posts they always comment on. This seems like a reallllyyyy obvious problem for them...

[pyre]

This reminds me of people calling out DeviantArt several years ago in Who's Hiring posts, and their hiring practices.

Which culminated in this blog post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3061860

[canistr]

What's interesting to me about the discussion in this article is how many people talked about wanting to adopt Google/Amazon's hiring process and how they liked the 7 interviews/whiteboarding way more than take-home assignments.

Call me weird, but I prefer the assignments than the mindless discussions about balancing trees and Big-Oh notation.

[cholantesh]

I think there is a place for both. Maybe not data structures, but things like application architecture and development practices are ripe for good discussion.

A well designed take home assignment, meanwhile can be a good filter, telling you immediately if the candidate knows the basics and has the added benefit of showing you strengths and weaknesses in their practice.

[lkozma]

Having written a thesis about "balancing trees and Bih-Oh notation" I am saddened that you consider the topic mindless :)

[lhorie]

I applied directly a few years ago (prompted from an ad at stack overflow), and response times were pretty reasonable.

The interviewing process itself was somewhat time-intensive for a Toronto company (it had a do-at-home assignment, which is fairly uncommon in TO), but other than that it was a fairly average experience.

Ultimately I turned down their offer, because their offer was low (and going from the who-is-hiring threads, it still is lower than market averages)

With that said, I got a chance to talk to some of the developers, and the work-life balance seemed reasonable (although not as good as, say, working at CGI)

[gabbo]

May I ask where you chose to go instead? I don't see much which is exciting in Toronto (bad money, uninteresting tech).

[lhorie]

I stayed at the company I was at (Klick Health) for a few more years, but moved to a different department doing more interesting things. Truthfully, I left because even after two very large raises, the salary was still not competitive w/ similar recruiter-advertised positions.

After that, I went to work remotely for a company in Boulder, CO, called Human Design.

Money-wise, the better opportunities I heard about in TO were mostly from a recruiting agency called JobSprings (usually in the 120k range, usually in the queen west area). It's exceedingly rare to find anything above 150k. Tech wise, yes, it's predominantly Angular 1 jobs.

[mabbo]

There's a growing number of startups in Toronto, mostly in the Fintech space. Amazon's office here has around 500 devs now too, doing various interesting things (I spent 5 years there).

Apart from the madness that is housing prices, dev wages vs cost of living aren't too bad here. Hopefully that housing bubble pops, and then Toronto will really be attractive to developers.

[gabbo]

One can hope :). TBH, absent Amazon Toronto paying unexpectedly well and having great work (or a Toronto real estate collapse), it sounds almost like going to work for Google in Waterloo and somehow making that work sounds like the least bad option in the GTA.

[canistr]

+1 to the reputation of Top Hat amongst Toronto devs. Everyone I know is avoiding the place like the plague. Regardless of the salaries touted on places like StackOverflow Jobs.

[andrew_wc_brown]

Toronto startup hire culture is really sad even today.

I interviewed at Top Hat 3+ years ago and I remember their hiring process was sad because it was a FizzBuzz test under conditions that were setup for me to fail.

I wasn't allowed to use my own laptop, editor of choice, or language of choice to complete the test. They wouldn't tell me what conditions they wanted eg. do they want test code?

I had to do the test on their computer, in javascript, no internet.

They said I was slow. Well you should have let me use MacVim and I would shown how slow you are in TextMate.

They said I didn't write test code. They wouldn't tell me, and they wouldn't even look at mass bodies of work of production apps where I had tons of test code I written with CI.

[wahnfrieden]

Hey, I'm Alex @ Top Hat, in engineering

Sorry to hear you had an awful experience like that. We definitely want to provide a better candidate experience than that.

As I mentioned before in this thread I can't speak for interviews that long ago, but these days we have a standard process: we want to see you in your element, so you're encouraged to use your own machine and whatever tools and languages you're best at. We also currently do a pairing-style mini-project where you're free to look things up - Google has become another essential tool for devs, so we want to avoid forcing people into unnatural ways of working that won't reflect their actual abilities in an interview.

[AlexC04]

I never went through the "full process" at TopHat - but I've been impressed with the interactions I've had. As a former teacher, now an engineer I thought they'd be a really great fit.

The one time I reached out to them though, I called it off before we could move forward because I got a promotion, raise and change of role (all of which I was specifically looking for).

I don't know much about the culture - but my understanding is that they've got good compensation & a reasonable work life balance. (EDIT: wow, reading the other comments here, my understanding may have been WAY off)

Actually taking on the textbook publishing industry would be a really big deal IMO. I could imagine a few really interesting disruptions there. Tablet versions of all textbooks via a "netflix" type model?

Maybe like $250/year for access at the university level rather than $600 for that one totally esoteric 30 page title on the mating habits of the African fruit fly.

Students save over the cost of all books, and the edge-titles get brought up.

Maybe that's a bit too Pollyanna an idea. I'm sure there would be an amazing volume-market if you did it at the high-school level.

One digital subscription account, all textbooks. No defacing, no lugging heavy books, access anywhere, always up to date.

If pages and sections were PDF exportable with low-impact DRM it really could be revolutionary.

[Panini_Jones]

They also have a pretty bad reputation among U of T students.

[brutus1213]

Toronto seriously needs better tech employers :'(

[fastftw]

- Current TopHat Full Stack Dev PEY here -

I'm not sure what your basis of a bad reputation is, but, I've been working at TopHat for the past 10+ months as part of their engineering team and it's been my favourite internship thus far (I've had 2 previous internships in development). As far as I know, myself and one other UofT student are the first PEY's to have been hired, and our current opinions of the company are quite high.

To highlight some extraneous comments regarding mentorship, it should be known that the teams are sized to about 5-8 people, with a team lead & product manager facilitating each team. Bi-weekly one-on-one's are in place to catch up with your respective lead and talk about your experience thus far, goals for the future, and really providing a basis of mentorship and growth. Higher ups such as the VP's are always accessible throughout the day to chat; we're pretty open.

If you have further questions, feel free to comment below and I'll get back to you ASAP! ^^

[Panini_Jones]

My negative comments on the reputation of the company come from 3rd hand sources (possibly even more hands). I'm glad you're finding your experience to be fruitful; I will add it as a datapoint to my understanding of the perceived reputation of the company.

Do U of T students like the software TopHat produces?

[rconti]

"Professional Experience Year"

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/PEY

[stephanos2k]

how so?

[Panini_Jones]

They have a reputation for being a bad employer for interns (culture/mentorship) and also producing bad software. Apparently, many of the students (not including myself) have actually used the software and not enjoyed the experience.

[js4win]

Hi, I'm a current dev at Top Hat, went to UofT and started about a month ago. As @fastftw mentioned, the culture and mentorship are much better than you would expect at most growing startups.

The teams are small, yet the software we deliver is well tested internally before being put out into production. The best part here is that employees are encouraged to use the Top Hat products themselves, which really helps better the overall applications.

As for mentorship, team leads and the execs are very accessible and guide you through how the processes at the company work. New employees are encouraged to share their opinions while doing development which is a big plus. I hope this cleared up some concerns you had!

[dbg31415]

Recruiting is an imperfect endeavor.

That whole "85% personality, 15% skill" saying really applies here.

I've seen great developers get frustrated that they have to talk to a junior HR rep for their first screen and say things that were way over her head, or just flat out rude. (Not saying you were, or intentionally were at any rate.)

HR / Recruiters really piss me off too... I was working at a company as a contractor, helping to build their in-house dev team and transition them away from using contractors. I sent them one of the best devs I knew, and a great guy who had worked on very similar tech stack to boot. He didn't even make it to round 2.

His version: Well, the HR screener was 15 minutes late calling me, then wasted another 10 minutes asking questions about the wrong role -- an accounting role instead of a dev role. About the 4th accounting question in, I realized what was wrong and asked her if she was reading off the right question list. We got if fixed up, but she seemed really embarrassed.

Her version: He wouldn't have been a good fit for our company culture.

Total shame, but what can you do? The screener gets all the power in that situation... we trust her because we hired her, but she's clearly in a position where if she makes a mistake and doesn't want to own up to it... she can just sweep it under the rug. She has a bad day... wants to take it out on a candidate, what are you going to do about it? Her knowledge of tech is 100% limited to what sounds like a good answer relative to other answers other candidates have given her.

Culture fit, and the human side is important... probably a safe bet in most situations that if you can't talk with the bubbly 22 year-old recent college grad, you probably will have communication issues with others too. All you can do is be kind, move on to round 2 and hope you eventually get to talk to someone in your specialty smart enough to know how to actually rate your talent. =P

[tempVariable]

Same here, in 2012. I talked with who I remember is one of the founders. I believe there were already in Toronto or in the process of moving from the Waterloo area.

It was very bad as far as whole process was concerned. I didn't mind though since they were in their infancy and I moved onto a different position anyway.

[georgee]

I can't speak to the process in 2012, but I assure you we have a very mature, modern agile process in place now.

[jtchang]

Really good to know. I wonder if there is a site that actually lets you post reviews of interviews from companies. Glassdoor I guess is one but I'd be curious about culture as well.

[3pt14159]

I haven't heard great things about working there over the years.

[libovness]

what are some of the other more interesting companies/startups in Toronto?

[throwawayosiu1]

Shopify seems interesting.

There really are not that many tech companies in Toronto (and that are hiring unless you have 5+ yrs of experience).

Either 1. you have very very early stage startups (that expect you to work for free till they get funded),

2. funded startups that have a short runaway and expect you to work like crazy till they get to the next round of funding (during an interview with a fintech startup - it was mentioned that they expected me to work for ~12+ hrs / day but I'd still get paid for only 8 hrs. But when they scaled up, I'd be "rewarded" for my hustle, grit and commitment".

3. Big companies (Google, Mozilla, etc.) who are looking for quite a lot of devs but seem to be insanely picky about hiring them.

To add to this, there seem to be a lot of devs than jobs (or that companies can go for long without hiring for those open roles).

[sobes]

As someone who's worked as a Software Developer in Toronto for the past 13+ years, I totally disagree with this assessment.

First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.

Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).

Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.

All of the above are from personal first hand experience. Of course I haven't worked for every single tech company in Toronto but I have worked for several (mainly early stage startups).

[throwawayosiu1]

> First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.

Obviously this is not something I have a lot of statistically accurate data for but, me and my friends are recent graduates and collectively have applied to quite a lot of very early stage startups in Toronto and out of those, we all have experienced the bait and switch of unpaid work till funding at least 50% of the time.

> Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).

I didn't say all startups are like what I've mentioned. The one I'm currently working at is awesome! That said, it's more often the case that startups use their short runaway as an excuse to make you work long hours (and just to be clear - the 12hr / day was not an estimation - I was literally asked my thoughts about it during an interview - that company is still recruiting on HN Who's hiring for more employees and a quick google search shows they have increased headcount to 35 people this year and is profitable).

> Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.

I have 0 problems with employers being picky. I worked closely with the CEO of a previous startup and I totally understand that. What I don't understand is the point of claiming you need to hire a developer (with a start date of immediately) and then leaving the position open for months altogether, or having crappy working conditions.

BTW I've interviewed at Nulogy (if that's where you are currently working) - Since this is a throwaway I can't give too much details, While I was still disappointed for the reason I was rejected it was one of the good interviews I've had (interviewer was knowledgeable, I learnt about the company and product, the tech stack, the problems they were facing, what was expected of me, and just some personal chit-chat during the coffee walk).

[omouse]

The market is definitely strange in Toronto.

Did the #2 type companies offer any equity at all?

[throwawayosiu1]

They all do.

the first ones offer anywhere between 30% (if you are a co-founder), 15% - 1% (if you are in the first 10 to get hired).

The 2nd type offer equity (generally less than 1%) and in all honesty it's pointless - chances are they'll fail before your 4 yr vesting period (and if you work for 12 hrs/day everyday you'll probably get burnt out even before you hit your year 4). And even if they don't fail, if you do get equity (and convert it to cash) divide it by 4 + salary / yr, you are basically making less than the avg salary for your position / exp in your area.

[ptmstart]

Totally agree with you. Only in the rare case like Shopify, the stock option will give you a meaningful return.

[hobonumber1]

SoundHound is doing really well in Toronto. I work there. We just raised $75M Series D and got featured on FastCompany as one of the best AI companies in the world. We are hiring a lot of engineers.

[zhwrd]

I work in engineering at https://unata.com based in downtown Toronto. We are a digital shopping saas platform for grocery retailers and we currently work with about 10 mid size grocery chains across US and Canada.

Last year we were named one of Deloitte’s Top 50 Fastest Growing Canadian Companies and CIX’s Top 20 Most Innovative Canadian Companies. Check us out!

[ptmstart]

I would say Wealthsimple.

[JabavuAdams]

Games: * Ubisoft * Rockstar Toronto * UKen * Big Viking Games * Gameloft * Torn Banner Studios * Get Set Games * Drinkbox Studios * Capybara Games * Sago Sago * Metanet Software * Zynga Toronto

[cholantesh]

Anecdotally: Wave, Flipp, and Wealthsimple come highly reviewed from some acquaintances.

[todazar]

I'm at CanadaStays - one of the biggest in vacation rentals in the great white north.

[sobes]

Nulogy.

[ajrkerr]

Can confirm, I work there. Fun and hardworking company with a strong growth culture.