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Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

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Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#141

Post by vgel »

honkdaddy wrote: post #137
vgel wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't not-PR just because you wrote it. It's PR because it's disseminating information to the public for the purpose of image management. The information is that the company thought it could grow more during the pandemic by hiring new people, and "bet" growth would stick around and those people could stay on in the long term. Is that wrong? Well, that's business. (I have absolutely no doubt, of course, that the "b…

> disseminating information to the public for the purpose of image management. This is pretty much the definition of anyone ever making any kind of public statement. Choosing ones words carefully with the knowledge that what they're saying will affect others perception of themselves and the situation at hand. I don't think anywhere in Tobi's post was it implying this _wasn't_ a business decision, I figured that went…

I agree that Shopify is a business. My point is exactly that a business decision made for the profitability and stock price of the company is presented as an emotional story.

> that messages from a CEO are not meant to be treated as blogposts or emotional diary entries.

I don't understand what you mean by this. Do you not believe the original post is written to elicit an emotional reaction? How do you interpret it?

> Those lines of code started a company and sent it on a fascinating journey full of wonder, toil, success, failure, ambition, and above all else comradery. Being on a journey, surrounded by great teammates, doing difficult things is what it's all about.

> Our customers are merchants, entrepreneurs, and small businesses owners - the bedrock of our economy and precisely those that are typically hit hardest during recessions. Most are already feeling it. We again have a clear objective in these challenging macro economic times, and we will use everything we’ve got to help them succeed and come out stronger. That’s our core mission.

etc. It reads far more emotional and blogposty than the typical dispassionate corporate layoff announcement ("Corp corp is reducing 10% of our workforce today. This change will allow us to be more agile and do more synergy.") The whole point of this comment chain is that despite the tone and better writing, it's essentially the same message.

If, OTOH, your point is "well obviously it's the same message but you should know that", well of course I know that. That's why I wrote my comment. I just find it sort of frustrating, and the author's response tone-deaf to the issue with it. It's a layoff announcement. Drop the beginning and end about the incredible journey and Shopify's crucial mission. The middle is mostly good.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#142

Post by vgel »

jupp0r wrote: post #108
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 you wrote doesn't make rational sense to me: 1. Why would Shopify willingly hire and train lots of people during the pandemic if they knew they'd let them go afterwards anyways? This makes no economic sense at all, they'd be better off to silently burn that money and not take the reputation hit. 2. You assume that layoff decisions take your individual job and situation into account. This is not the case in pract…

The argument isn't that they did evil stuff for no reason. The argument is they "bet" that growth would continue at pandemic levels, and hired to support that growth, with the plan that if the growth didn't continue and the new people weren't needed, they'd just lay them off.

The opinion is that, if that was the plan (which Tobi's layoff post seems to confirm), that it's a crass way to operate. People uprooted their lives to work there. They quit old jobs, maybe moved cities or countries. Of course layoffs happen and companies make mistakes, but deliberately setting up a strategy with a high possibility of failure ("a bet") and then hiring people knowing that they'll be laid off if things outside their control don't go right in the near future--that's sort of crass.

Obviously no exec was twirling their mustache and saying "find me Jim, we'll fire him first because I hate him". It was just a plan set up, seemingly, without regard for the outsized risk it placed on new employees relative to the possibility of the business itself failing. New employees that would disproportionately be affected by a layoff, by nature of being new employees.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#143

Post by pyb »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #48
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 real…

Startup = Growth : http://paulgraham.com/growth.html

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#144

Post by pramodbiligiri »

Gene_Parmesan wrote: post #48
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 real…

Paul Graham has written that for him Startup = Growth (http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html).

Another thought leader, Steve Blank, writes that "a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model" (https://steveblank.com/2010/01/25/whats-a-startup-first-prin...).

A lot of the "startup type" characteristics of a company can possibly be correlated with one of the above categories. If you don't fall in either category, it would be weird to display those characteristics.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#145

Post by vic-traill »

somerandomqaguy wrote: post #105
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are McDonalds in the US that offer 40k (USD) to entry-level, no-experience workers. With such an insulting salary proposal as you experienced, it's amazing that Canada has any startups at all.

There were two very talented devs I know that took $11/hr CAD jobs personally. I know of more with rough salaries $40,000 and below. Even me; when I was in QA, my salary was $52,000 for 9 years of experience. And that was after a raise. Like it or not, there's people willing to take those positions. No where near as many as Canadian companies would like, but they are there.

> two very talented devs I know that took $11/hr CAD jobs personally

When was this?

Note that $11/hr CAD is below the current minimum wage of every Canadian province and territory as of June 1 2022 [0]

As an aside - what leads to a talented individual doing dev for $11/hr CAD? I'm not able to conjure up a scenario where that is the case other than they were working for their own startup ... ?

[0] https://www.retailcouncil.org/resources/quick-facts/minimum-...

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#146

Post by myth_drannon »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #61
mabbo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

So they made a bet and if it doesn’t pay off the devs get fired but the execs making the bet get to stay? Its not like shopify is even that good of a job for developers, they pay well below FAANG. Checking levels, Senior SWEs are only getting like 15k/year in grants which means you are taking on the start up risk without the potential 10x or 100x payoff.

Below Faangs but much better than your typical Canadian corp. Very smart and effective people I knew moved to Shopify.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#147

Post by sbarre »

xal wrote: post #93
sbarre wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should read Tobi's post about what happened. That's not how it was. I did read that back when it was posted. I hope you recognize PR when you see it? Sorry if it came across like I was saying that companies are being evil or bad or vain about how they're hiring. Quite the opposite, and more dangerously, I think companies see nothing wrong with the boom-then-bust approach to hiring, and that it's going to happen…

I write my own posts, not PR. Don’t be so jaded.

Hi Tobi,

Whether you wrote it or not (and fair that my post may have implied you didn't - my fault), any note/post/message that you publish on the Shopify website is still public relations comms, coming from the CEO of a prominent public company.

I'm not jaded, but I'm also not naive. ;-)

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#149

Post by myth_drannon »

throwawaysleep wrote: post #73
mabbo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 s…

Do you believe him? I certainly don’t believe any of my leaders. One of my orgs had layoffs. Similar story. Now we are hiring like mad again. Truth is that they just jumped like spooked horses and laid off piles of people to keep investors happy for the quarter. That’s all you are to these people.

The problem with many layoffs is that corps layoff one org but start hiring in another org. Instead of transfering employees they go the easier route and just layoff.

Re: Layoffs at Canadian tech startups

#150

Post by myth_drannon »

mardifoufs wrote: post #43
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.

Yeah, that was such a sleazy move by these ML influences or whatever you call them. Have connections with government and the right degrees? Boom, now you taking photoshots with PM and syphoning hundreds of millions of dollars of public money. I think it's especially bad in QC where there is a lot of government support. There were a couple of startups in MTL that had absolutely nothing to show but a lot of PR and it was so so obvious.
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