Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 165 posts

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

#41

Post by throwawayosiu1 »

omouse wrote: post #35
throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine was selected for a Support Role (that too, a temp one). They had him and a bunch of other come in on the same day, and write a 16 page exam. From what I understand, my friend didn't like the atmosphere and was already overqualified so he accepted another position. But this left a bad taste in my mouth about their hiring practices - but then again, if they are continuing with this, it probably means t…

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).

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

#42

Post by spandrew »

I've worked at Top Hat for the last couple years (on the engineering floor) and it's been nothing but positive. Out of all the Toronto-area startups I've worked at in the last 6 or so years Top Hat seemed the most serious about succeeding. And I love the product-space – one I can potentially actually make a difference in. The hiring process was tough, but I didn't think it was unfair.

I worked previously at accounting and marketing experience startups in the area, too. Their products always seemed awkwardly positioned — not silly enough to be fun like Snapchat or solving a serious enough need to be Shopify.

Anyway take that for what you will. Just my 2 cents and thoughts (admittedly biased) on working here the last couple years. They've been some of the most productive ones of my career so far.

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

#43

Post by omouse »

throwawayosiu1 wrote: post #40
libovness wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

The market is definitely strange in Toronto.

Did the #2 type companies offer any equity at all?

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

#44

Post by u_wot_m8 »

senior_james wrote: post #20

I think it's great that they are trying to disrupt the textbook industry. However, the industry is so large and the majority of US universities are so entrenched, it's going to be an uphill battle. There have been many startups that attempted this and all have failed (or the VCs just wanted a payout and were bought for millions when the big publishing companies felt threatened). It's like trying to disrupt Ticketmast…

saw an article that in the last 40 years the number of administrators has increased 400% while tenure track professors has only increased 23%. Number of students has increase 300%. They could easily cut costs but the money is there so there's no incentive

These college admins should honestly be charged criminally

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

#45

Post by sidlls »

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…

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 person in the office promotions and raises".

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

#46

Post by wbh1 »

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 cost.

Even though we have strategic partnerships with these large publishers, I wouldn't mind seeing them go by the wayside in favor of integrating more of Top Hat's digital content.

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

#47

Post by coldpie »

eth0up wrote: post #39
axiom wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the founder/CEO of Top Hat I'd love to hear about your experience and what we can do better - my email is mike at tophat dot com Hiring engineers is one of the most important things we need to get right, so I'd hate to think we're doing such a bad job at it. Really sorry that you've had a bad experience with us

Maybe not the suggestion you're looking for, but I'll take the opportunity to vent. First and foremost, don't arbitrarily block Linux users for web interfaces. McGraw Hill does, or did in the past and so do others. I spent hours contacting their useless support and playing politics with the college to get this changed, to no avail. At first, I could simply change my useragent and sneak in, with everything working wel…

Funny, physical textbooks have never blocked me from using Linux, nor has physical paper coursework...

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

#48

Post by plafl »

surge wrote: post #19
pyre wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Maybe the CEO made the decision subconsciously and later rationalized the decision

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

#49

Post by throwawayosiu1 »

omouse wrote: post #43
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…

The market is definitely strange in Toronto. Did the #2 type companies offer any equity at all?

They all do.

the first ones offer anywhere between 30% (if you are a co-founder), 15% - 1% (if you are in the first 10 to get hired).

The 2nd type offer equity (generally less than 1%) and in all honesty it's pointless - chances are they'll fail before your 4 yr vesting period (and if you work for 12 hrs/day everyday you'll probably get burnt out even before you hit your year 4). And even if they don't fail, if you do get equity (and convert it to cash) divide it by 4 + salary / yr, you are basically making less than the avg salary for your position / exp in your area.

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

#50

Post by fastftw »

Panini_Jones wrote: post #3
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.

They also have a pretty bad reputation among U of T students.

- Current TopHat Full Stack Dev PEY here -

I'm not sure what your basis of a bad reputation is, but, I've been working at TopHat for the past 10+ months as part of their engineering team and it's been my favourite internship thus far (I've had 2 previous internships in development). As far as I know, myself and one other UofT student are the first PEY's to have been hired, and our current opinions of the company are quite high.

To highlight some extraneous comments regarding mentorship, it should be known that the teams are sized to about 5-8 people, with a team lead & product manager facilitating each team. Bi-weekly one-on-one's are in place to catch up with your respective lead and talk about your experience thus far, goals for the future, and really providing a basis of mentorship and growth. Higher ups such as the VP's are always accessible throughout the day to chat; we're pretty open.

If you have further questions, feel free to comment below and I'll get back to you ASAP! ^^

Post reply on HN