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

The accessibility to executives is something I've noticed even just working on contracts with Top Hat. I am surprised at the level of engagement that your VPs and C-suite execs have with customers. It certainly makes customers feel cared for.

Recruiting is an imperfect endeavor.

That whole "85% personality, 15% skill" saying really applies here.

I've seen great developers get frustrated that they have to talk to a junior HR rep for their first screen and say things that were way over her head, or just flat out rude. (Not saying you were, or intentionally were at any rate.)

HR / Recruiters really piss me off too... I was working at a company as a contractor, helping to build their in-house dev team and transition them away from using contractors. I sent them one of the best devs I knew, and a great guy who had worked on very similar tech stack to boot. He didn't even make it to round 2.

His version: Well, the HR screener was 15 minutes late calling me, then wasted another 10 minutes asking questions about the wrong role -- an accounting role instead of a dev role. About the 4th accounting question in, I realized what was wrong and asked her if she was reading off the right question list. We got if fixed up, but she seemed really embarrassed.

Her version: He wouldn't have been a good fit for our company culture.

Total shame, but what can you do? The screener gets all the power in that situation... we trust her because we hired her, but she's clearly in a position where if she makes a mistake and doesn't want to own up to it... she can just sweep it under the rug. She has a bad day... wants to take it out on a candidate, what are you going to do about it? Her knowledge of tech is 100% limited to what sounds like a good answer relative to other answers other candidates have given her.

Culture fit, and the human side is important... probably a safe bet in most situations that if you can't talk with the bubbly 22 year-old recent college grad, you probably will have communication issues with others too. All you can do is be kind, move on to round 2 and hope you eventually get to talk to someone in your specialty smart enough to know how to actually rate your talent. =P

As someone who's worked as a Software Developer in Toronto for the past 13+ years, I totally disagree with this assessment.

First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.

Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).

Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.

All of the above are from personal first hand experience. Of course I haven't worked for every single tech company in Toronto but I have worked for several (mainly early stage startups).

The problem with these lifetime subscriptions is that you never know if you're going to actually use them. Textbook prices are definitely a problem, but it's usually much easier to rent or resell textbooks than the equivalent of software.

You also don't buy textbooks until you actually need them. I know many students who have felt pressured into "saving money" on "all 4 years!" plans only to find they don't need a product most terms or they stay and extra semester/term/year and need to spend even more than they were planning.

> That's pretty bad though I wonder if it's actually illegal. In the USA most employment is "at will" so companies can fire you for anything or nothing. I'm not sure where taking vacation/sick days counts from a labor law perspective but I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the rights of the company to fire employees who use them.

It might be illegal in Canada (not 100% sure) but a group of ex-employees that have been fired are suing the company.

> You see this a lot in the finance world as well. Nobody takes vacation during the year and piles it on at the end of the year when things are "change freezese". It's pretty silly.

This would still be understandable (as you'd expect people to take vacations at year end) - However he was indirectly told to forfeit his vacation completely (which in my opinion is scummy if not illegal).

> So how rampant is this though? If it's prevalent throughout Canada then it sounds like a symptom of a jobs gap. If most employers can be picky about picking employees who will skip vacations (again ignoring how stupid this sounds), then I'd argue there aren't many choices for employees to begin with.

I've personally seen it happen in Ontario (don't know if it happens in other provinces) but I don't think it's any different in other provinces either. In my opinion, it's a combination of:

1. fewer jobs

2. employers willing to sit tight till they get their "right" and submissive employee (because you can see thousands of job openings every single day and take it from me - I've applied to 100s of them but I have a feeling they are just fake - as in, companies post them to show growth/scale etc. but don't really hire - for example, Index Exchange and IBM both have a few positions open for which a friend got interviewed and passed on as he was not a culture fit - 10 months later....still unfilled)

3. most employees don't mind it in the slightest - or those who do, have already done what's necessary and move into better positions (or I'm hanging out with some some weird folks).

I've seen very few people who are really passionate about their job / stuff they build / improving etc. - for most, it's all about making enough $, and having enough to sustain your daily life PERIOD (and the cycle continues). You are considered crazy if you try to break this or don't like this routine.