[HN Gopher] Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
___________________________________________________________________
Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
Author : ericzawo
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-09-25 03:33 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theglobeandmail.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theglobeandmail.com)
| seibelj wrote:
| My (US) company hires Canadians for all departments remote and
| pays top dollar, with equity. We have recently hired several
| excellent devs and any Canadian reading this should stop getting
| shafted by local firms and get on the USA-remote train. I'm sure
| other companies are doing the same here.
|
| https://recurforever.com/
| pluc wrote:
| I'll take getting shafted over working in crypto any day of the
| week
| fruit2020 wrote:
| Because of the morals, the risks, or the pressure?
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I can't speak for parent but I've been headhunted by crypto
| companies a lot and my feeling is the same.
|
| For me it's as simple as: I will never work for a company
| where I cannot immediately and concretely understand the
| value proposition.
|
| Crypto people can frame this as me not being competent if
| that's what they need. But I think I'm reasonably smart and
| usually it just sounds like a fraud.
| seibelj wrote:
| HN is the absolute worst place to recruit given the bias
| against crypto here. But I'll flip it around and say many
| startups in all manner of verticals are shaky - Fast.com,
| innumerable food delivery and fintech, "AI for XYZ" etc.
| etc.
|
| One thing you can use to differentiate firms is the team,
| the founders, the funders. My company is backed by
| Point72 / Steve Cohen which does a lot more due diligence
| than most other firms. YMMV however - I myself would
| never work for adtech given my distaste. But a lot of
| HNers love certain FAANGs that data mine you and your
| children to sell you crap you don't need. But many choose
| to disregard their morals and dismount their high horse
| when $$$ is involved.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| Mhm. My bias is not exclusive to Crypto. I need the value
| prop to be obvious. I've worked for a company where it
| wasn't and nothing makes a job more miserable than
| pivoting every four months because everyone's just
| playing startup and nobody has any clue where to aim.
| seibelj wrote:
| Totally fair - my company has high revenues (unlike 99%
| of crypto) and we are essentially a digital Pokemon card
| company, and we resell our Pokemon card factory to others
| white label. It is a very straight forwards and logical
| business model.
| dmix wrote:
| Always good to be selling shovels in a gold rush than
| chasing the gold.
| intelVISA wrote:
| As far as crypto nonsense goes that's unusually smart
| adventured wrote:
| You surely realize that in the US or Canadian tech
| cultures, Steven Cohen is only slightly better than being
| backed by a billionaire Russian oligarch. Cohen is
| certainly extraordinarily rich and well connected, his
| reputation isn't going to be positive for techies
| generally however. That is to say, tech workers are far
| more likely to be turned off by your pointing that
| investor out than the other way around (but hey, maybe it
| does some screening re potential applicants).
| seibelj wrote:
| To work in crypto at a sophisticated firm like Coinbase,
| Gemini, Circle (my former company) or my own co, it would
| be a given you believe in markets and the experimental
| nature of digital assets given... that is the whole
| reason to work here!
|
| I am a libertarian, free thinker, capitalist, etc. which
| is the standard profile in this industry. I have
| recruited engineers out of Amazon and Google who said
| they needed a change of pace from the "moralizing" (use
| your own judgement). It is a very open discussion, open
| inquiry industry.
|
| So if working for a Cohen company is against your morals,
| easy to ignore. If that doesn't bother you, then you
| passed the first question! Steve is a genius - but not
| everyone likes Wall Street.
| retcore wrote:
| Sounds like, "Move fast and break ,[habitually other
| people's] piggy banks." SAC is totemic in a industry
| founded by other people's money and the carry without any
| equivalent downside. Speaking as a former prop trader, of
| cutting edge products including those I've designed as
| principal, when you're touching the wider economy a
| entirely different set of rules either applies or
| someone's gotta be responsible. I don't believe that
| anyone's understood what "the buck stops here" means for
| two generations.
| dehrmann wrote:
| > the value proposition
|
| You're selling a get rich quick fantasy.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/z1QKG
| sbarre wrote:
| This part at the end of the article is probably the real true
| nugget in here:
|
| > But implicit in that risk, Mr. Nayyar points out, is a lot of
| downside. Many executives thought, "but didn't say out loud, that
| if demand disappeared or changed course - sometimes even slightly
| changed course - those people we brought on, it might not make
| sense to have them around any more. ... You're just a number on
| the page; whatever happens, happens."
|
| I have no doubt that a lot of tech companies, including Canadian
| startups like Shopify, hired like mad during the pandemic boom
| knowing full-well that they would end up laying off a bunch of
| those new hires once things got "normal" again.
|
| A lesson to be learned for anyone taking a job in a fast-growing
| company is to really think about the value that your specific job
| brings to the company.
|
| What is your direct contribution to the bottom line? Work this
| math into whatever official comms you get from your employer when
| trying to think about what your actual job security looks like.
|
| That and be prepared for layoffs. Have a couple of months of
| runway put aside somewhere and don't touch it. Because I think
| these cycles of boom-then-bust for growth are only going to get
| more frequent.
| valzam wrote:
| What I don't understand about this: What's the point of
| bringing on so many engineers with the expectation of firing
| many of them? It takes time to get productive and especially
| when you hire lots of engineers they will probably work on new
| projects. Spending a lot of money on an engineer and then
| firing them before they start to really produce value is very
| odd...
| boringg wrote:
| I dont think they intended to have to lay off people. If
| everyone recalls during the core of the pandemic people
| really thought that this was the new normal. Im sure they
| thought that this was a full time step change in demand. I
| doubt they anticipated a recession (much like most
| companies). The executives at most companies aren't that
| smart on long term macros, much more reactionary to immediate
| needs
| maxFlow wrote:
| Back in early 2021:
|
| > As the newest senior leader on Shopify's engineering team,
| Polinsky will lead Shopify's efforts to build its e-commerce
| infrastructure and will lead the company's efforts to double
| its engineering team in 2021 by hiring 2,021 new technical
| staff. [0]
|
| > "Engineering hiring is probably the biggest limiter to
| Shopify's growth," Harley Finkelstein [President of Shopify]
| said in an interview after the results. The company had hoped
| to hire 2,021 new engineers this year and current conditions
| mean "obviously, it's hard to do that," he said, without
| disclosing the number that have been hired. A tight market for
| talent is a worry for many industries but none more so than
| technology. Universities are not producing enough new engineers
| and the entire sector is competing for graduates, Finkelstein
| said. [1]
|
| As of today they only have 10 open positions in the
| "Engineering & Development" department, the majority of which
| are for Staff/Tech Leads. [2]
|
| Perhaps it would behoove Shopify to put a bit more thought into
| their hiring strategy; rather than just wanting to inflate
| engineer numbers as a vanity metric via jingly campaigns (2021
| on 2021). "Just a number on the page".
|
| [0] https://techcouver.com/2021/01/06/shopify-to-double-
| engineer... [1] https://archive.ph/RMzlm [2]
| https://www.shopify.com/careers/search?search%5Bkeywords%5D=...
| ffggvv wrote:
| > A lesson to be learned for anyone taking a job in a fast-
| growing company is to really think about the value that your
| specific job brings to the company.
|
| Imo the issue usually is that interesting and value bringing
| work are usually not in alignment at these companies.
|
| most companies i've worked at, no one wanted to work on ads and
| found them boring even though they brought in all the revenue.
|
| everyone wanted to work on the experimental or shiny new thing
| which may not have demonstrated value yet.
|
| but not sure if it's worth working on the boring thing just for
| job safety
| mjr00 wrote:
| This isn't a uniquely Canadian problem at all, it's just Canada
| experiencing the pain of the wider tech sector.
|
| Ultimately, it's the same issue as what's happened (and
| happening) in the US: the VC fun money dried up, and it's no
| longer cool to be an unprofitable business with a lot of "growth
| potential". Now tech leadership is being forced to balance a
| budget and figure out a path to profitability instead of just
| perpetually increasing revenues at negative margins.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Shopify is publicly traded and is an e-commerce platform. It
| isn't dependent on VC money to run, and neither are its
| customers. What happened was people shifted discretionary
| spending to e-commerce during covid, and between things
| reopening, having a fully-stocked home gym, and inflation, they
| cut back on buying stuff.
|
| Wealthsimple might have funding issues (I'm not sure), but it
| lost a lot of use because again, its growth was driven by
| people bored at home.
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Like many other things affecting western countries though, it's
| worse in Canada since we have lower investment rates, spend
| less on R&D, have an ultra-risk averse culture, extremely high
| costs, etc...
| thomasjudge wrote:
| Winter is coming
| cardy31 wrote:
| Calling Shopify a Canadian Tech Startup is really getting old. At
| 10k+ employees the term "startup" should really stop being
| applied to it. It is really big, and many of its execs are from
| huge American banks. So even "Canadian" may soon cease to be a
| valid label for it.
| barkingcat wrote:
| Shopify was also launched in 2006, making it a 16 year old
| company. While not all startups are young in time-age, calling
| shopify a "startup" is a misnomer.
| 3qz wrote:
| A "startup" in Canada is just a dozen guys who stay afloat by
| chasing $50k government grants full time. It's very good when
| these go out of business
| raverbashing wrote:
| They also chase VC money but yeah.
|
| They usually go for the least plausible business models for
| some reason
| peyton wrote:
| Haha the PMs at their pension funds on the other hand... I have
| heard it gets boring when everyone in a local startup ecosystem
| is chasing govt grants.
| mikrl wrote:
| Once I looked into SRED and connected the dots, whenever I
| heard hypercapitalist talk at work I'd have to bite my tongue.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| I know this doesn't apply to all Canadian startups, but this is
| definitely a thing too.
| mkl95 wrote:
| I'm more interested in hiring freezes, i.e. locking people out of
| the industry vs forcing them to switch jobs
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Hiring freezes are definitely more sinister. I'll take being
| laid off over facing endless dead-end prospects. Too bad they
| usually come hand in hand.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Layoffs may not even be a bad thing if job mobility is high.
| Startups lay off a lot of people who have bullshitted their
| way into their position, members of low ROI teams who can't
| be easily be transferred somewhere else, quiet quitters, etc.
| On the other hand struggling to find a job as an experienced
| engineer is usually a symptom of a sick economy.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Heck, I've even been almost jealous of the ones who got
| laid off once, at a company that was starting to circle the
| drain. They were effectively being paid to job hunt with
| the severance package.
| supernovae wrote:
| I've never seen entire industry hiring freezes so i'm not aware
| of the concern. Would rather stay on job during hiring freeze
| than he let go. I can sense if i need to bail without being
| subject to one or another.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| A hiring freeze at all or most of the big FAANG companies
| lowers negotiable salary cap for all of us.
| mkl95 wrote:
| Hiring freezes don't have to be industry wide to be
| problematic. If you are competing with dozens of people for a
| job, there is a high chance some of them are both a good fit
| and willing to accept crappier compensation.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, even if there are only some actual layoffs and only
| some degree of hiring freezes/slowdowns/tight budgets, that
| translates to fewer openings with more people competing for
| them with lower TC being offered. The general sense among
| the people I talk to is that it's increasingly
| significantly less of an employee's market than it was 6 to
| 12 months ago.
|
| Nowhere near dot-bomb territory of course (and the dynamics
| are different) but the market has changed.
| [deleted]
| lmeyerov wrote:
| I wonder if there's an intuitive ratio here, like 10 freezes
| for every layoff, and 10 slowdowns for every freeze
|
| Freezes and slowdowns don't really need to get announced. We've
| definitely seen an uptick in candidate quality (we're
| especially keen on an open position in data to work w/ DOJ
| leadership on-site in DC!), and while the growing graph AI
| market can explain some of the interest, the broader industry
| slowdowns elsewhere have to be part of it.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-25 23:00 UTC)