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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

#141

Post by [deleted] »

rhizome wrote: post #136
HarryHirsch wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost will continue to be passed on to you until there is a robust discussion about the financing model and the working conditions in academia. If any change is going to happen it's going to come through student effort; despite their protestations the position of the unions and the professors is to preserve the status quo . Back then we'd call this "revolutionary consciousness". The goals of the students will also…

I'm sorry you're so jaded, but how is textbook/online pricing not relevant to the financing model? There's no need to dismiss that avenue of conversation.

[deleted]

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

#142

Post by throwawayosiu1 »

sobes wrote: post #135
throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shopify seems interesting. There really are not that many tech companies in Toronto (and that are hiring unless you have 5+ yrs of experience). Either 1. you have very very early stage startups (that expect you to work for free till they get funded), 2. funded startups that have a short runaway and expect you to work like crazy till they get to the next round of funding (during an interview with a fintech startup - i…

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 yo…

> 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.

Obviously this is not something I have a lot of statistically accurate data for but, me and my friends are recent graduates and collectively have applied to quite a lot of very early stage startups in Toronto and out of those, we all have experienced the bait and switch of unpaid work till funding at least 50% of the time.

> 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).

I didn't say all startups are like what I've mentioned. The one I'm currently working at is awesome! That said, it's more often the case that startups use their short runaway as an excuse to make you work long hours (and just to be clear - the 12hr / day was not an estimation - I was literally asked my thoughts about it during an interview - that company is still recruiting on HN Who's hiring for more employees and a quick google search shows they have increased headcount to 35 people this year and is profitable).

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

I have 0 problems with employers being picky. I worked closely with the CEO of a previous startup and I totally understand that. What I don't understand is the point of claiming you need to hire a developer (with a start date of immediately) and then leaving the position open for months altogether, or having crappy working conditions.

BTW I've interviewed at Nulogy (if that's where you are currently working) - Since this is a throwaway I can't give too much details, While I was still disappointed for the reason I was rejected it was one of the good interviews I've had (interviewer was knowledgeable, I learnt about the company and product, the tech stack, the problems they were facing, what was expected of me, and just some personal chit-chat during the coffee walk).

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

#143

Post by funkymike »

throwaway729 wrote: post #94
jabl wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think the textbook industry is ready for disruption, but it won't happen by someone VC funded that essentially just wants the money going to the incumbents to themselves. The disruption I'm expecting to happen is quality CC licensed content. Well, depending on the topic that already exists, but what needs to happen I guess is mainstream mindshare. A lot of the $$$ in the textbook industry is just air ("Hey, basi…

> The disruption I'm expecting to happen is quality CC licensed content Bingo! But there is still money to be made here. Bundle a high quality open source textbook with tons of extra examples, auto-graded quizzes/assignments when possible, cheater detection, etc. Provide regular updates so that Google doesn't know the answers to all the homework assignments/quizzes. Scrape the answers that are provided by google and…

One important service that the existing textbook companies provide is editing. That's the gap that seems to be unaddressed by having professors self publish.

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

#144

Post by softawre »

gregmac wrote: post #88
sidlls wrote: post #45

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…

Is it less risk to hire the open source guy? What if he spent a bunch of time at his last employer working on un-sanctioned projects? Will he do that to you as well?

Just playing devil's advocate.

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

#145

Post by softawre »

throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #41
omouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was on the 16pg exam? that sounds ridiculous!

Everything from: 1. how you'd handle customers for various problems? (which seems fair enough). 2. some coding questions (my friend did this in matlab but they wanted him to do it in python). 3. some IQ questions 4. some questions about the platform (which my friend didn't have an idea about as he'd never used top hat before).

> some questions about the platform

I think it's useful to know whether an interviewee who has driven into your place of business is serious enough to spend 30 mins learning your platform.

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

#146

Post by c2h5oh »

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…

You are lucky - you could have been hired. It's a horrible place to work -I've got first hand experience.

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

#147

Post by cholantesh »

libovness wrote: post #13
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.

what are some of the other more interesting companies/startups in Toronto?

Anecdotally: Wave, Flipp, and Wealthsimple come highly reviewed from some acquaintances.

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

#148

Post by throwaway729 »

funkymike wrote: post #143
throwaway729 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The disruption I'm expecting to happen is quality CC licensed content Bingo! But there is still money to be made here. Bundle a high quality open source textbook with tons of extra examples, auto-graded quizzes/assignments when possible, cheater detection, etc. Provide regular updates so that Google doesn't know the answers to all the homework assignments/quizzes. Scrape the answers that are provided by google and…

One important service that the existing textbook companies provide is editing. That's the gap that seems to be unaddressed by having professors self publish.

I don't agree.

Editing for content or style?

Style editing is usually detrimental IME. Especially when the style editor doesn't understand the content and is just applying typographical rules.

And content editing is usually done by fellow professors or students. Which if the book is open source will happen anyways as new professors use the book in their courses and notice errors.

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

#149

Post by mabbo »

gabbo wrote: post #97
lhorie wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I applied directly a few years ago (prompted from an ad at stack overflow), and response times were pretty reasonable. The interviewing process itself was somewhat time-intensive for a Toronto company (it had a do-at-home assignment, which is fairly uncommon in TO), but other than that it was a fairly average experience. Ultimately I turned down their offer, because their offer was low (and going from the who-is-hiri…

May I ask where you chose to go instead? I don't see much which is exciting in Toronto (bad money, uninteresting tech).

There's a growing number of startups in Toronto, mostly in the Fintech space. Amazon's office here has around 500 devs now too, doing various interesting things (I spent 5 years there).

Apart from the madness that is housing prices, dev wages vs cost of living aren't too bad here. Hopefully that housing bubble pops, and then Toronto will really be attractive to developers.

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

#150

Post by cycomachead »

throwaway729 wrote: post #148
funkymike wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One important service that the existing textbook companies provide is editing. That's the gap that seems to be unaddressed by having professors self publish.

I don't agree. Editing for content or style? Style editing is usually detrimental IME. Especially when the style editor doesn't understand the content and is just applying typographical rules. And content editing is usually done by fellow professors or students. Which if the book is open source will happen anyways as new professors use the book in their courses and notice errors.

Publishers provide style, content/grammatical editing, domain experience and pedagogical review.

Most professors don't have strong backgrounds in pedagogy and even those that do benefit from having others edit their work.

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