[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)