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Joist lays off 60 employees in Toronto as company relocates to SF
- protomyth 10y agocomment in that thread by James Half the team were employees in every legal definition of what makes an employee (they deducted and punished "independent contractors" which you can only do with employees" - as the case was with Uber and they settled) but were categorized as "Independent Contractors" until April, they were forced to sign new contracts saying they employees but were under "probation" for another 3 months, so until the end of June. They planned this from the beginning, so they didn't have to have a lawsuit when they did this and say "hey you signed a contract" .... forced signed, they changed the pay structure in May without a change in contract either. These employees only got 2 weeks, despite being a week and a half away from passing probation. Does anyone know if this is true, because this is really poor behavior.
- MrLeftHand 10y agoThis 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*ck. Another grim story about startup life. Not everything that has four legs is a unicorn apparently.
- n00b101 10y agoI know someone who left a finance job in NYC to move to London. Was fired in his first week; the trading desk he had joined was abruptly closed down. I guess senior management kept the plans secret from the line managers who kept on hiring without knowing what was coming. So I don't think this sort of thing only happens in start-ups (if anything, I would guess this type of thing is more likely to happen in a large company where your hiring manager is several levels down from the CEO and might not have any idea that his business unit is about to be closed/divested/relocated/etc).
- jackweirdy 10y agoThat's awful; not least because (depending on their role) gardening leave might apply, preventing them from getting a job in the finance industry for months
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- retube 10y agowould get gardening leave for sure, prob 3 months. That doesn't stop you looking for new work tho, and the leave itself is not a problem, all banks expect to have to wait 3 months before a new recruit can join.
- jsprogrammer 10y agoThe company should be responsible for lost wages due to the solicited employee's detrimental reliance on the company's representations.
- jrockway 10y agoBig companies definitely do things like this. When I was hired by Google, I lived in Chicago. They wanted me to relocate to NYC because there weren't any open positions in Chicago at the time. Within a week of joining I got an email sent to all engineers in NYC asking if anyone wanted to move to Chicago. SIGH. Oh well, it's good to see the world.
- yardie 10y agoIt'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.
- extra88 10y agoYeah 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?
- jsprogrammer 10y agoWhy is a company conspiring to keep secrets from employees?
- giarc 10y agoAtleast 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.
- johngalt 10y agoThis 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.
- psychometry 10y agoEasy enough to say if you're a developer and can afford to be choosy. For most fields, though, the labor market is heavily biased in favor of the employer.
- cm3 10y agoI 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.
- st3v3r 10y agoIt's also entirely possible that those doing the interviewing had no idea this was coming.
- jonny_eh 10y agoPeople should have asked if they plan on relocating to another country within the week?
- bryanlarsen 10y agoNow that they've gone to the expense of moving their remaining 30 employees to San Francisco and have demonstrated such incredible loyalty to their employees, let's see how many of those remaining 30 take advantage of the many opportunities in the Valley to jump ship.
- MrLeftHand 10y agoNot just that, but how many people will join their ranks as well? The story won't go unnoticed and most people in the Tech Industry will hear about it in some shape or form. They will have a hard time to find new people. Especially seniors. They wont leave their good, stable jobs for an employer like that.
- aquilaFiera 10y agoI was apart of the reddit exodus when they closed the Salt Lake City and New York City offices (I was in SLC.) It only took me 90 days which was the minimum requirement to not have to pay your moving expenses back. Since then, which happened in January 2015, I would roughly estimate that 50-60% has turned over at reddit. All of this to say it typically doesn't end well for the company unless this is what they're planning on.
- hsod 10y agoTo be clear, you took the relo package, waited the minimum number of days, then jumped ship?
- aquilaFiera 10y agoThe answer to your question is yes, that's the way it worked, but I didn't do it intentionally. My next company just happened to call right around then.
- jonny_eh 10y agoThe company is probably hoping that the L1/TN visas will keep them loyal.
- reustle 10y ago> 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 well. I have a distributed team of developers for my small consulting company, and I feel no pressure to open an office any time soon. EDIT: Why was this post flagged? Comments now disabled?
- cm3 10y agoI've encountered companies that are already globally distributed but try to force you to move to one of their offices permanently. I can imagine arguments for it, but the arguments I was presented with were unconvincing and more of the hand-wavy kind.
- giarc 10y agoThere'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.
- johan_larson 10y agoStrange 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.
- wcarss 10y agoJoist had a San Jose office, which was also closed.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mabbo 10y agoIf anyone whose been let go by Joist is reading this: I'm a developer with Amazon in Toronto. There's a lot going on here- 300 developers in 4 or 5 major divisions doing all kinds of interesting stuff. The pay's good (for Toronto), we're well located (beside Union station), and of course we're hiring. My username, but at my company's name, dot-com. Happy to chat by email, but I'll link you to our jobs site: https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?location%5B%5D=toronto-canada&category%5B%5D=software-development https://www.amazon.jobs/en/search?location%5B%5D=toronto-can...
- cm3 10y agoIs it different than Amazon Seattle? I mean, is there a reasonable balance between work and life?
- wbkang 10y agoAt least on my floor most people leave at around 6.
- setheron 10y agoI worked at Amazon for four years and absolutely loved it. I never understood the work/life balance problem people had. Usually those that struggled were just weak engineers to begin with and felt like they had to put in 10-12 hours a day just to avoid being put on a performance improvement plan / laid off (i.e. wrong fit to begin with)
- 8_hours_ago 10y agoLuckily lots of companies in Toronto are hiring and are taking advantage of this opportunity to recruit the people affected by this move. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23joist60 https://twitter.com/search?q=%23joist60
- cm3 10y agoI've always wondered what happened to the hardware and software talent from RIM, now that they've pretty much stopped producing anything useful.
- vinceguidry 10y agoThis guy worked at RIM back in the day. Amazingly talented. https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel
- Naritai 10y agoWe must always take some time to enjoy his seminal work, the BlackBerry cannon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1239rkV8bQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1239rkV8bQ
- jacques_chester 10y ago> to achieve our vision for Joist, we need the best talent in the world This is a standard mantra of startup lore, but if I put on my nitpicking hat, is it strictly true? I mean we're not talking about the Manhattan Project here. Plus it's not as though there isn't intensely fierce competition for talent in the valley. Just because a lot of talented people are there, doesn't mean you'll get to hire them. The "best talent in the world" is already bid up to high levels by those few companies in the Bay Area who are straddling rivers of gold. Where I work, we have offices all over the world, including one here in NYC and another in Toronto. Because of the timezone alignment and relatively short travel times, we're now experimenting with more and more remote pairing to share projects between the two offices. In Joist's position I might have considered opening an NYC office instead. It's not as though this city lacks for talent either and if they feel like paying a lot for it, the finance folks have kindly bid up top performers for them. They can get all the difficulties of hiring in the valley, but much closer to home.
- johan_larson 10y agoThe question to ask anyone who claims they only hire the best is, "How do you make sure of that?" They should have an answer, and it needs to be a good one.
- p4wnc6 10y agoWell, we make them do a really hard HackerRank test, and then write syntactically correct code to print a binary tree in raster order on a whiteboard. And then we don't hire them because their salary demands are too high so we get someone cheaper with less experience.
- jacques_chester 10y agoWe used to have a question for interviewers where I work: "Will this person raise the average?" I used to detest it. I left no shortage of smartarse remarks about infinite limits in a finite world. In fact nobody really liked that question and it was eventually removed in favour of variations on the core question: do you want to work with this person?
- cm3 10y ago> we need the best talent in the world So why didn't they allow people to remote from Toronto?
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y agoI think what they were saying is that the best talent in the world isn't in Toronto, so remoting from Toronto isn't the problem (according to them).
- talmand 10y agoBecause that statement has absolutely no basis in reality.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- edude03 10y agoI interviewed with Joist 2ish years ago but after the first interview I didn't think the culture was conducive to my career goals. News like this makes me feel like I dodged a bullet.
- p4wnc6 10y agoGetting any tech job at this point in time is simply a matter of which bullet you will finally, defeatedly choose not to dodge. Every company wants your fealty, overt signals that you'll cower yourself to them, much, much more than any kind of technology competence or aptitude. It's either this, or a person hasn't had enough experience yet to know this, and so they still have bright-eyed optimism that this one company is the one that's going to elevate their career, treat them in a minimally acceptable manner, etc., and you can bet the recruiting staff is banking on finding these people. It's very depressing.
- disordinary 10y agoSurely 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.
- bpicolo 10y agoI have to imagine they're going to have trouble finding talent in San Francisco for the same reason they have trouble finding talent in Toronto. It's not exactly a non-competitive area.
- udba 10y agoAs 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.
- wyager 10y agoCanada is a country, not a dear friend. Workers and companies owe nothing to it. If it makes more sense for someone to leave, then more power to them. Canada can either try to make itself more appealing or deal with people leaving.
- jgw 10y agoRe: "owe nothing to it", I respectfully disagree. Canadians at Waterloo enjoy a heavily subsidized world-class education, at the tax-payer's expense, then leave to contribute nothing to the economy that produced them. Interestingly, some also come back later in life to enjoy subsidized health care to which they've also never contributed. I wonder if there's a way to structure post-secondary education subsidies as a sort of debt that you can pay off by either remaining employed in Canada, or in cash if you decide to leave. Disclosure: UW Comp Eng '98 grad, still in Canada.
- aardvarkk 10y agoUW Sys Des '07 grad, still in Canada. 100% agree with you.
- ninjaroar 10y agoOdd decision. If they were willing to pay silicon-valley level salaries in Toronto, they would have no trouble getting senior talent. But they will be forced to pay silicon-valley level salaries in San Francisco anyways.
- st3v3r 10y agoAnd they're likely not gonna be able to offer enough to separate themselves from the sea of companies there.
- Naritai 10y agoI came to the valley in a forced relocation some time ago. In that case, we also lost >50% of the team, including engineering. (I stayed until my green card came through then jumped ship.) It was clear, though, that the VPs and up didn't care, because they had their heart set on being Silicon Valley Executives, and damned if they were going to let the rank-and-file get in their way. They were so caught up in the glory of VC and speeding down 280 that they were not interested in the business argument. And as for the departing staff? "It's Silicon Valley, we can easily replace staff" Here I get a sense of the same story. There is no way it's difficult to hire talent in Toronto, which consistently ranks as one of the most desirable cities in the world. A simple Google search also will produce hundreds, if not thousands, of articles about how the Canadian immigration system is a breeze compared to the US's. Thus I believe this executive team is the same as my own - determined to be 'San Francisco startup CEO', and damned the cost. By the way, my company's technology fell behind its competitors' (perhaps because of the loss of talent?) and was sold off to a conglomerate ~5 years later, at the same valuation as it had pre-relocation. The CEO had departed the company by then.
- potatolicious 10y agoYeah, it doesn't feel like things really ever work out, retention-wise, for companies that move from elsewhere to SV. Invariably they make "cost of living adjustments" to comp, but never enough to actually be competitive with the infamous SF/SV market, and so their talent drains as soon as they set foot in the Bay Area. This particular news about Joist is just confusing - it looks like they've laid off a huge portion of their staff, with no replacements on the immediate horizon. Doesn't this mean that the business has effectively ground to a halt while they re-hire in SV? It sounds less like a move and more like a reboot.
- Naritai 10y agoIt does sound like they kept most of their engineers, and shed mostly CS staff - which shows a remarkable disdain for those positions. I would be very nervous about working for this company in one of those positions in the future.
- 10y ago
- zhte415 10y agoWhy not run operations separately (those with limited ability to relocate, mentioned in article) from technology (those with easier access). A 2-site center with good right people and good workflows (and established, in this case) brings compounded gains. A 90 people company is well above the border-line in establishing dual-site offices.
- jrockway 10y agoJust going to leave this here: http://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/waterloo/ http://www.google.com/about/careers/locations/waterloo/ https://www.google.com/about/careers/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=en-US&jl=43.653226%3A-79.38318429999998%3AToronto%2C+ON%2C+Canada%3ACA%3ACA%3A19.271436077549094%3ALOCALITY&jl=43.4642578%3A-80.5204096%3AWaterloo%2C+ON%2C+Canada%3ACA%3A%3A5.732117171117123%3ALOCALITY&jld=10& https://www.google.com/about/careers/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=f... (Search above includes both Tornoto and Waterloo, but Waterloo is the main engineering office in the area.)
- notacynic 10y agoThis has nothing to do with hiring and everything to do with finding a buyer. A lot of companies are told by potential buyers "if you were in SV we would buy you". Relocating lets them cut head count, improve financial outlook (new cost structure) and get closer to a potential acquisition. Definitely in the interest of the investors.
- notacynic 10y agoThis has nothing to do with hiring and everything to do with finding a buyer. A lot of companies are told by potential buyers "if you were in SV we would buy you". Relocating lets them cut head count, improve financial outlook (new cost structure) and get closer to a potential acquisition. Definitely in the interest of the investors.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 10y agoI relocated to Toronto SPECIFICALLY to work for Joist, exactly one week ago. I was laid off along with everyone else within 6 days of working for them! Prior to that I was working in the USA for a few years; I'm now in a position where I have to figure out next steps with regards to my career :/ I'm still unsure why they hired me and brought me down here? I'm also hoping that they pay me for my time there (I worked my hardest to impress them, albeit only a week!) By the way by my count it was closer to 90 people laid off, so they are depressing these numbers.
- setheron 10y agothat sounds not right. I hope they give you a good severance if you relocated. That sounds like it should be illegal under something.
- mabbo 10y agoDon't be thrown off of Toronto by one douchebag company. There's lots of jobs here for developers, and it's just a great city (imho). I posted below, but the company I work for is hiring in Toronto and the pay is pretty good for this city.
- justanother 10y ago+1 for the above. This sure was a dick move, but from the past week OP has probably already discovered Toronto is an amazing, clean, and courteous city (from my limited experience) compared to many others. Don't know what their work/visa situation is, but it's worth shopping around for another job and giving the place another shot.
- gist 10y ago> Don't be thrown off of Toronto by one douchebag company What do you think the company should do? It's a company not a person who left their spouse when they got cancer. They are doing what they feel they should do in order to thrive and survive. Now you can argue that you think they are wrong, that is that they don't need to move. But then again you won't suffer the downside of the wrong decision. They will. Companies do what companies have to do in order to grow the business based on how they interpret the facts. That is what joist has done.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- cleaver 10y agoThe comment thread on /r/toronto was not particularly friendly towards Joist. https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/4pa6fp/joist_lays_off_60_employees_as_company_relocates/ https://www.reddit.com/r/toronto/comments/4pa6fp/joist_lays_...
- grandalf 10y agoI've worked with Joist's CTO before and he's got a very high ethical standard and strong commitment to teams he's a part of. I'm sure this decision was not an easy one. Bottom line, we need freer trade to make international boundaries irrelevant to business.
- justin66 10y agoHis company just hired a couple of people and let them go a week later in a layoff. Clearly, the problem is the international trade system, nothing to do with management's ethics or lack of commitment to its team members. OK...
- grandalf 10y agoI can't speak for the ethics of the other members of the management team, but I think it's unreasonable to assume that the decision was made for any other reason than necessity. It may be that the decision to hire new people a week earlier was out of optimism that moving to the bay area was not going to be necessary.
- st3v3r 10y ago"I've worked with Joist's CTO before and he's got a very high ethical standard and strong commitment to teams he's a part of." Clearly he doesn't, otherwise he wouldn't be doing shady stuff like having the company continue to hire people who have to relocate, only to lay them off a week later. "Bottom line, we need freer trade to make international boundaries irrelevant to business." That isn't the problem here.
- kevindeasis 10y agoIsn't this bad precedent? If they move to SF area would talented programmers still want to work for them? It seems like they are a company you can't trust (from what I read in the comment section in that link)
- zongitsrinzler 10y agoThey might have access to more "top talent", but there will be 10x more companies after each of those 30 remaining employees as well who I'm sure will leave this caring company as soon as they get green cards.
- lordnacho 10y agoWhy don't they just open a US office and get their "senior talent" there, if it's that easy to hire them in SV? And if it is easier, why would they cost more in SV? Maybe because there's competition? Also, it's a bit of a cliche that you need the best people to be successful. Organisation is far more important. That other cliche that the team is more than the sum of its parts is far more true. I moved abroad with a very small team a few years ago. It totally broke the culture. People went on intellectual holiday, and haven't recovered. We also became insanely insular, not getting any real inputs from other financial industry insiders.
- st3v3r 10y agoInvestors want access to the founders, and so they have to be in SF.