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.
Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
21–30 of 183 posts
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 fi…
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.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fi…
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.
Totally fair - my company has high revenues (unlike 99% of crypto) and we are essentially a digital Pokémon card company, and we resell our Pokémon card factory to others white label. It is a very straight forwards and logical business model.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
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.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#25I'm more interested in hiring freezes, i.e. locking people out of the industry vs forcing them to switch jobs
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.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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 fi…
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).
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#27Calling 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.
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.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Totally fair - my company has high revenues (unlike 99% of crypto) and we are essentially a digital Pokémon card company, and we resell our Pokémon card factory to others white label. It is a very straight forwards and logical business model.
Always good to be selling shovels in a gold rush than chasing the gold.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 fi…
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,…
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.
Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups
#30This 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 per…
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.