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Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

betakit.com

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Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#21

Post by cm3 »

johngalt wrote: post #3

This is a good example of why you should treat interviews as a two way street. Don't just worry about convincing them that you are the right candidate. You should also try to determine if they are the right employer.

I view unsuccessful interviews as a way to see some city I wouldn't have otherwise visited and more importantly get experience with current job interview styles. It takes time, but it's not a total waste. Though, some companies make it hard or take very long to get travel reimbursement.

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#22

Post by giarc »

reustle wrote: post #5

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto As some companies are (finally) starting to realize, there are incredibly talented people all over the world, who are not within 1.5 hours of your office. Allowing them to work remotely opens your company up to a much higher caliber of talent for the same, if not lower, cost. The tools are out there now and they work we…

There's a guy in the comments that said he just relocated from USA to Canada to work with the company. So obviously they can find staff willing to relocate.

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#23

Post by johan_larson »

reustle wrote: post #5

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto As some companies are (finally) starting to realize, there are incredibly talented people all over the world, who are not within 1.5 hours of your office. Allowing them to work remotely opens your company up to a much higher caliber of talent for the same, if not lower, cost. The tools are out there now and they work we…

Strange decision.

Expanding into the US is a great move, and creating a US office to support that makes perfect sense. Moving the actual HQ to the US seems more questionable. And getting rid of two thirds of their employees when they are still ramping up sounds just plain crazy.

I think the smarter move would have been to create a US office and locate it close to either customers (What is the main US center for the construction business, anyway?) or capital (meaning the Bay Area). But retain the office in Toronto and the current staff. They could then choose to hire additional staff in either the US or Canada, whichever made more sense. For ordinary talent hiring in Canada, even in Toronto, would be significantly cheaper.

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#24

Post by extra88 »

yardie wrote: post #13
MrLeftHand wrote: post #2

This is some nasty stuff. I feel sorry for the guy literally working there less then a day and getting the boot. Shows some really serious problems in management. Who the hell hires people when they know very well they won't stay and make the whole staff redundant. Well, except for friends and family of course. Either it was a lack of communication between management and HR, or they just really didn't give a flying f…

It's not just restricted to startups. I know a few stories of F500s who hired people then fired them days or weeks later. In one case one guy never made it to his desk. I don't think HR was given any heads up. I imagine management wanted to keep everything business as usual until the last moment.

Yeah but that's more understandable because they're big bureaucracies and there would be too many people to include in the secret.

In what bizarro world is the head of HR not a part of management?

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#25

Post by raverbashing »

reustle wrote: post #5

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto As some companies are (finally) starting to realize, there are incredibly talented people all over the world, who are not within 1.5 hours of your office. Allowing them to work remotely opens your company up to a much higher caliber of talent for the same, if not lower, cost. The tools are out there now and they work we…

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto

No, it isn't

But they're probably looking for "the perfect candidate" and the one that thinks and does things exactly as they expect

They won't find it in SF as well

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#27

Post by giarc »

yardie wrote: post #13
MrLeftHand wrote: post #2

This is some nasty stuff. I feel sorry for the guy literally working there less then a day and getting the boot. Shows some really serious problems in management. Who the hell hires people when they know very well they won't stay and make the whole staff redundant. Well, except for friends and family of course. Either it was a lack of communication between management and HR, or they just really didn't give a flying f…

It's not just restricted to startups. I know a few stories of F500s who hired people then fired them days or weeks later. In one case one guy never made it to his desk. I don't think HR was given any heads up. I imagine management wanted to keep everything business as usual until the last moment.

Atleast with F500s you could imagine that it's simply an issue of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. With startups of this size, you imagine that people doing the hiring are also aware of the pending move and mass layoffs.

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#28

Post by disordinary »

Surely it's harder to get talent in the bay area? Lots of competition for staff and you can't attract people there because those who want be there would have already gone for one of the other companies.

What's always interesting is that every startup is building a world class team with some of the best developers in the world. Surely every startup can't hire the best because the best is finite, otherwise they'd be hiring the average.

If a company which does something in the diy space wants the best of the best then who is actually developing the languages and tooling? If the best developers are helping my tiler to invoice me then who is working machine learning, software to cure cancer, language design, software to control space travel, etc?

We can't all be the best, and sometimes you've gotta think. I help people in the construction industry, I'm not Google, and in fact it's irresponsible of me to try and hire the best people because they're going to do so much more for society working somewhere else.

Re: Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF

#30

Post by udba »

As an engineering student at UWaterloo it's pretty depressing to watch most of the best upper year engineers finish their studies and then abandon Canada for SV. There's logic in it for them: American companies are offering huge sums of money by Canadian standards, the weather is nicer, and the opportunities seem better. If I didn't have serious reservations about living in the US, I would probably do the same.

However, I find it particularly reprehensible when companies make the move. For them, it's counter-intuitive: they have access to a huge pool of talent, both experienced devs and the vast armies of grads from UofT, UW and others. Furthermore, they're getting this talent at dirt cheap rates, since the Canadian peso is awful at the moment and salaries are significantly lower here than those in SV and the wider US.

Their expenses go up because they have to pay in USD (instant 25% hit in purchasing power), and they get thrown into the rat race of competing for talent in SV. I really wonder what goes through the mind of some of these moronic execs when they make moves like this.

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