101–110 of 165 posts
As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them and each time they completely dropped the ball. Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.
what are some of the other more interesting companies/startups in Toronto?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If "It's not that the other person is lazy or "doesn't love the web"." then why is it "reasonable to take that into account?" Those two sentiments seem to contradict each other. The real problem here is that there is now yet another terrible signal being used as a measure of acceptability in the vetting and interview process. "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable…
> "Have some GitHub/GitLab/etc profiles" is in the same category as "give the most personable person in the office promotions and raises". Sorry, it's not at all in the same category, because it's actual output of work. Being able to look at actual code written by the person you're considering hiring is a really great measure of acceptability. I think we are all agreeing that it's not reasonable to reject someone due…
Unless you have a way to verify the source of the code is the candidate with some level of confidence this isn't different from picking the office peacock for promotion.
> If you are considering two candidates, who seem more or less equal on every level, but one has an extensive amount of published good quality code and the other does not, it's less risk to hire the one with code.
How is it less risk, assuming one came to the "equal on every level" decision by some means that evaluates their proficiency reasonably well? The only thing having self-published code signals is a willingness and desire to have one's code public. I haven't seen an actual argument justifying your assertion regarding risk.
For the online learning software, I've also dumped the publisher products and switched to the free spaced-repetition software Memrise.
I think most of my colleagues will be moved over to open educational resources within fifteen years, and I'm not sure there's long-term profit to be made in this market.
In the past couple of years we’ve grown our company from under 100 employees to well over 200. All this growth meant rapid, challenging role changes and adaptation and we've had some rough patches. Over the past 18 months, we've had a very low attrition rate in Engineering and I think it reflects the positive experience of the vast majority of our team.
I am sorry some people have had a bad experience interacting with us. I would love to hear any complaints or suggestions, my email is george at tophat dot com
Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's not to get. They're just casting a wide net looking for that special unicorn coder that only appears when the planets align. All other mere mortals are not worthy but they will gladly waste your time until then. I guess they forgot the old adage about interviews are 2 way streets. These guys don't have a very good rep in Ottawa either. It's not really their fault, it's more of a Canadian business attitude thin…
> These guys don't have a very good rep in Ottawa either. It's not really their fault, it's more of a Canadian business attitude thing. What does " Canadian business attitude " mean? Are you referring to attitude of Canadians toward businesses or their attitude as a Canadian corporation?
Probably a by-product of our colonial days that we've yet to cast off. Although immigration will solve it soon enough.
As a developer in the Toronto area, I suspect I would be working for Top Hat if their recruiters were better. I've had two or three interactions with them and each time they completely dropped the ball. Extra funding is great, but if they can't hire, they can't use it.
what are some of the other more interesting companies/startups in Toronto?
Last year we were named one of Deloitte’s Top 50 Fastest Growing Canadian Companies and CIX’s Top 20 Most Innovative Canadian Companies. Check us out!
But with... an entrance fee? The gorilla which eats all schools will have an entrance fee?
Disclosure: I work for a large University (combined residential+online presence of ~100k) and we have contracts with Pearson, McGraw, Cengage, and Top Hat. Top Hat has been surprisingly enjoyable to work with from a contractual side. They've been accommodating to our needs and worked with us to improve their product -- I'm actually working on a SOW with them right now where they'll be adding new features for us at 0…
I mean, you could save every student maybe 600 a year if the university purposely used books that are one edition out of date. That's the same as lowering tuition around 5% at most places. Would this really affect the quality of education in any meaningful way?
"Strategic partnership" sounds like another way of saying the university gets some money out of the deal at the expense of their students pocket books.
How is this justified from the position of someone who maintains relationships with these companies?
I absolutely hated Top Hat during my undergrad. It was just another thing I had to buy that teachers used as an excuse to be lazy because it was ~interactive~. You were so tied to a device for all your classes that if multiple teachers used it it wound up becoming a pain. I noticed it was mostly instructors who taught one-off elective/strictly credit classes that used it in almost a punitive way to make sure you paid…
But what's with the griping about textbook publishers? The overreliance on adjuncts allows the university to charge lower tuition and the publishers make the feat possible!