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Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

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Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#121

Post by st3v3r »

latch wrote: post #38
surge wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously? Not every project can be in a public repo, are all their projects on open repos? Some of us host our own or use different sites because we've been using git longer than github. Also, love the "web". It's called the Internet, are you a tech CEO or not? I love how critical they are because you didn't conform to their specific idea of how coders share their code and communicate. Someone can be pro open source…

I agree it's ridiculous to get to be turned down for that reason at that point. If that was their attitude, they could at least be efficient about it for their own sake and out candidates. But, in general, I think you should consider the other side of the argument. The "problem" is that people without public profiles are competing with people with. And if you're looking at candidates and someone has code online that…

That argument makes absolutely no sense. The candidate had made it to the point where they're being interviewed by the CEO. Any consideration of that has long since passed.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#122

Post by ronparkins »

throwawaydbdksn wrote: post #112
axiom wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our goal is to put an end to that kind of crap, where publishers charge $100-300 for a text and then gouge students another $50 on top of that for a homework system. Most content on Top Hat is free or around the $20-40 price range, with most of the money going back to the author (vs. publisher model of paying a 5-10% royalty)

Do the professors get paid to use tophat? If so I will avoid them at any cost. What a perverse incentive to take money from students and put it directly into the professors wallet

nope...

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#123

Post by gregmac »

sidlls wrote: post #102
gregmac wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

> 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 noacceptability. 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…

> 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.

This is why I specifically said 'less risk' rather than saying something like 'would 100% be a great hire'. You have to vet everything a candidate says and shows you, including their credentials and past experience. Some people lie on their resumes, unfortunately.

In the worst case, they are a good enough liar to get through the hiring process and you find out later they can't write code or don't actually know the things they said they know, so you fire them (and hopefully you figure this out during a probationary period).

> The only thing having self-published code signals is a willingness and desire to have one's code public.

I was conflating 'public' with 'available to be seen by the interviewer' in my argument, but it doesn't change what I'm trying to get across. Having code public has an advantage before the interview, when the employer only has the resumes to judge by. During the interview a candidate may also be able to show non-public code, but just being able to show any code gives an edge over no code.

Many, many, many people have no code show to show at all, generally because they wrote it for their previous employer. That's fine, but it puts them at a disadvantage over someone who can show code they wrote (public or not).

It's less risk because it's easier to judge someone by code than no code. I don't know why that isn't obvious. Let me put it this way: if you ask 10 programmers what "good" code is, you'll get 10 overlapping but distinct answers, and I think most programmers applying for a job are going to claim their code is 'good'. The trick is really figuring out if your definition of 'good' overlaps enough with my definition of 'good' that we can work together. We could discuss this for an hour or two and I could be 75% certain, or I could look at your code for 5-10 minutes and be 90+% certain.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#124

Post by degenerate »

throwawaydbdksn wrote: post #109
wbh1 wrote: post #46

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…

Does it bother you that the majority of student see mandatory subscriptions to all of these services as a giant ripoff? 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 an…

He works for the university; he's not the one getting ripped off. Top Hat might make his life easier because they have simpler contracts and are nicer when it comes to customization, but in the end the students are still getting hit with the bill. His perspective is irrelevant to the problem. Until the point where colleges have to actively recruit new blood and aren't bursting at the seams with applicants, the kickback partnership between publishers and universities will never go away. It makes way too much sense to stick the student with every bill, because the system knows they will pay it.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#125

Post by georgee »

tempVariable wrote: post #70
mabbo wrote: post #2

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.

Same here, in 2012. I talked with who I remember is one of the founders. I believe there were already in Toronto or in the process of moving from the Waterloo area. It was very bad as far as whole process was concerned. I didn't mind though since they were in their infancy and I moved onto a different position anyway.

I can't speak to the process in 2012, but I assure you we have a very mature, modern agile process in place now.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#126

Post by RaiO »

I work at Top Hat in the Engineering Department but only joined in the past year. I have heard second hand that things were bad in the past (2+ years ago now) in terms of culture and work/life balance.

Things have been great since I've joined and the exec team is VERY interested in what they can do to make things even better.

Here are a few of my personal observations, both good and bad: - people most often work 10-6 with flexibility and everyone actually uses their vacation and "personal days" - most devs actually break from work at lunch (supplied) to socialize and play board games - you get great visibility into how the company is doing and what other departments are up to - considering we are a company of 200+ people the execs are very accessible and are happy to spend time with you for any questions/concerns you have - all work is extremely team oriented. They care about where people want to go in their careers and several people have been progressively given more senior responsibilities. - the majority (not everyone) is very engaged and excited to be here. - the handful of people who have left in the past couple years all left on good terms and regularly stay in touch and even come out to Engineering events still. There's definitely a sense of community (although I believe this didn't always exist and will be a challenge to keep around as we grow aggressively). - great location (for me) right on the subway downtown Toronto

Bad things: - space is cramped. You get a decent sized standing desk but there's not a lot of breathing room other than that. They've outgrown the space though there are plans in the works to fix this. - there is time allocated for "Engineering" projects but mostly we are very date driven and have an aggressive product delivery schedule. - diversity. It's a top management priority for the next year but historically they've clearly dropped the ball here. There are several people in Engineering very interested in improving diversity.

I am clearly a biased party, actively working here, but I genuinely feel it's a great place build your career. There are very few places this size that are growing ~70-80% YoY continuously, actually making profit, and have great ambitions for the future.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#127

Post by wahnfrieden »

pyre wrote: post #15
mabbo wrote: post #2

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.

I went through the interview process with them several years ago (when they were still called Top Hat Monocle). I basically got very positive feedback from the interview process, until I had to interview with the CEO. Apparently the reason given by the CEO for torpedoing me was that I didn't have enough projects on my Github account so I didn't "love the web" enough. Take from that what you will about their attitude…

Hi, I'm Alex, on the engineering team @ Top Hat.

I can't speak for back then (I joined after the Top Hat rename), but I'd like to clear up our current practices. We definitely appreciate when candidates have projects or code publicly visible, but understand that not everyone hones their craft through open-source work for one reason or another and would not hold it against someone if their coding contributions weren't public.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#128

Post by georgee »

omouse wrote: post #69
JabavuAdams wrote: post #53

I previously worked with their VP Engineering, at Janna Systems. A very, very sharp guy who's been through a couple of startups and exits. I've heard from a different friend that they're very results oriented w.r.t estimates, etc. It means that they get a lot of stuff done, but there's no time for research or non-approved exploration.

That makes it sound like a ticket-shop; you're treated like a bricklayer rather than a software engineer?

Thanks for the vote of confidence! Like a broadway show, the start of classes is fixed in stone so meeting dates is pretty important to the business.

Good development organizations tailor their methodology to the needs of the business and here at Top Hat the whole company rallies behind the start of classes.

Having a process to meet a date doesn't preclude good engineering. No software engineer wants to be told what to do and how to do it. As a business we are very transparent as to what we want to accomplish and my engineering teams have a lot of leeway on how they want to accomplish it.

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#129

Post by wbh1 »

throwawaydbdksn wrote: post #109
wbh1 wrote: post #46

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…

Does it bother you that the majority of student see mandatory subscriptions to all of these services as a giant ripoff? 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 an…

I'm not involved in the curriculum development side of things, so I don't have much input into that. And prior to the implementation of Top Hat, our students had all been using physical "clickers" to respond to in-class questions.

However, Top Hat implemented a program where the students could trade in their old clicker and get a 5 year Top Hat subscription. Plus a "Lifetime" Top Hat subscription is cheaper than buying a clicker, so students have seen it as a net win.

We do not receive financial compensation from Cengage, Pearson, or McGraw. The strategic part is that they offer more services to us, let us test new stuff they're toying with, and help our profs develop custom content.

I still take classes, so I definitely feel the hit of these textbook prices. It's also why I've advocated for pushing more towards a "direct integration" method of provide course content in our LMS. Students pay ~$60 for access to the content, instead of $100+ for a textbook. It still adds up, but it's a way to start to lower costs.

(and the prices keep going down. I just found out yesterday that one of our vendors is dropping the price of a range of course content because of high adoption rate)

Re: Top Hat Raises $22M to Go After Pearson, McGraw-Hill

#130

Post by BeetleB »

HarryHirsch wrote: post #110
mralvar wrote: post #82

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…

Do you really expect an underpaid adjunct not to outsource the grading to the department's textbook company of choice? Adjuncts don't get to pick textbooks. 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!

>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!

Not all publishers. Just those that make trivial, minor changes that prevent you from using used books for classes.

Also, the whole "Let's create a separate text book for each university" thing.

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