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Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

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Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#41

Post by intelVISA »

seibelj wrote: post #23
Waterluvian wrote: post #22

Earlier 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.

As far as crypto nonsense goes that's unusually smart

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#42

Post by cmrdporcupine »

sbarre wrote: post #7

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 ha…

I recently began the process of interviewing for a position with a Vancouver HQ'd Canadian tech company (that a friend works at) while also interviewing for a remote US HQ'd startup. I terminated the process with the Canadian company when I accepted the offer for the startup. A couple weeks later the Canadian company announced a large number of layoffs, including for the kind of position I was considering.

I just looked and they're now advertising for that position again, with a fresh new posting. Just two months after their layoffs.

Dubious.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#43

Post by mardifoufs »

3qz wrote: post #8

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

Only $50k grants? You must have missed the AI startup wave here in Montreal. They didn't end up producing much, if anything, of value. But they sure knew how to scale those grants/"government investments" to a completely new level.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#44

Post by Kye »

raverbashing wrote: post #19
3qz wrote: post #8

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

They also chase VC money but yeah. They usually go for the least plausible business models for some reason

It makes sense. Plausible business models can get normal business loans. Funding what no one else or not enough people are funding is typically the point of a grant.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#46

Post by throwawaylinux »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #14
mjr00 wrote: post #4

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 per…

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...

> lower investment rates, spend less on R&D, have an ultra-risk averse culture

Why do those make it worse? Lower investment rates means less money to lose, R&D is often trimmed first, and investment should go to lower risk in this kind of environment. And costs shouldn't be much higher than USA.

I think the problem is actually the opposite. People say the US is willing to take risks which is why their tech and startup scene is so good. Among the complaints about all other countries trying to work out how to become the "next silicon valley", near the top is almost universally "risk adverse". I think that's backwards though, investments in Canada and other such places in tech startup are very high risk and speculative, because people are just closing their eyes and praying that these fanciful predictions about being the next silicon valley are true and they hit it big, rather than being based on any real evidence or logic.

True it's often governments engaging in this reckless risky spending, which seems to make it appear to be "low risk" to other investors. That doesn't make it so though.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#47

Post by mabbo »

sbarre wrote: post #7

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 ha…

> 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.

You should read Tobi's post about what happened. That's not how it was.

https://news.shopify.com/changes-to-shopifys-team#

> Before the pandemic, ecommerce growth had been steady and predictable. Was this surge to be a temporary effect or a new normal? And so, given what we saw, we placed another bet: We bet that the channel mix - the share of dollars that travel through ecommerce rather than physical retail - would permanently leap ahead by 5 or even 10 years.

> It’s now clear that bet didn’t pay off.

> Ultimately, placing this bet was my call to make and I got this wrong.

Shopify grew like mad, but it wasn't from vanity. If the bet had paid off, it would have meant a permanent step up in company value.

Bias: I'm one of the last developers hired before the stock crashed.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#48

Post by Gene_Parmesan »

cardy31 wrote: post #21

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.

As a non-SVer, this has always been something that confused me. What is the actual definition for "startup"? It doesn't seem to be tied to age, funding level, employee counts, user counts, revenues, or really anything else at all.

Honestly, it seems like a mostly self-selected tag used to indicate culture -- e.g., expectations of working conditions (hours, for instance) that in "normal" business we have long ago realized are actually counter-productive.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#49

Post by junofan »

valzam wrote: post #34
sbarre wrote: post #7

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 ha…

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...

Can pitch as growth stock on road show.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#50

Post by negamax »

Unpopular opinion with some truth in it. Many of the SWEs and other product people in these companies left at the peak of pandemic due to burnout, but mostly due to cheap money. Many senior leaders cashed out their stock and went into the sunset.

Companies responded with mass hiring as money was everywhere. They grossly underestimated the complexity of running an engineering org and now the bill is due. I think until the old guards come back, we will see the pain exacerbate.

PS: It's an opinion

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