Why I Quit Microsoft To Join A 5-Person Start Up In Toronto (2012)
jaclynkonzelmann.tumblr.com
jaclynkonzelmann.tumblr.com
Most seniors won't be looking at the website to learn more about the product, but we also wanted to make sure there was a way for them to read about it if they wanted to learn more, so we also have a brochure available that is addressed to them.
As for other products that are able to work outside - there really aren't that many options available, and all of them are missing certain features that we have built into ours. The most popular systems being used today definitely are not capable of working outside (Philips Lifeline, Life Alert, etc.), and that is the primary market that we are targeting. The combination of being cell enabled, single device, online portal, with activity tracking capabilities is something that sets us apart from those systems. We also have a WiFi module integrated into the device to allow us to accurately detect location even indoors (other systems simply use GPS and cell towers).
Toronto/Waterloo area is definitely growing and expanding - I went to school at UW and it's crazy to go back and visit and see how much has changed. I'm also partial to the SF area, the energy here is still quite different than back in Toronto I've found.
looks like a solid offering, best of luck.
Either way, seems like you ended up making the right decision for yourself. Congrats!
That's why companies that stack rank and make performance reviews part of the transfer packet always-- there are no exceptions to this in the long run-- end up with the warring departments phenomenon for which Microsoft is notorious.
I would not suggest that Jaclyn is wrong in her choices. Not at all. But sometimes it is a choice between working within an imperfect organization, and moving on to another .. whose flaws you will discover over the next 3 years.
Would not go that far.
What's that saying about doing something that you love and you'll never work a day in your life...
- stack ranking leads to competition leads to everyone doing their best,
- at the end of the day you have to offer differentiated rewards to your team, and it's better to offer more rewards to those who earned them (vs. just blanketing everyone with the same rewards)--stack ranking just makes this explicit, and
- it puts pressure on bottom performers to leave the company or find a team that's a better match.
That said, I recently left Microsoft (after 8 years in the Office org, probably near OP), and stack ranking was one of the reasons. For me the toughest part of it was that I felt there was no part of my compensation that was tied to the overall product my team produced--we could have produced a gorgeously engineered, ground-breaking product or a buggy piece of bloatware no customer wanted; it really didn't matter from a review perspective.
Stack ranking is also generally despised by the rank-and-file, often because they are sure it's the reason they haven't had a meteoric rise despite their obvious superiority over everyone else. Folks who have "made it" to the upper echelon often mysteriously acquire the stack ranking religion.
Stack-ranking makes it impossible for everyone but the top 25% to transfer, though, because no one wants someone with a bad or mediocre review history.
If you need to fire people, fire them. Flushing out good people in the name of stack ranking is a pointless, morale-killing waste.
or, as I am wont to say, back up the dump truck filled with money and then we'll start talking. It has to be worth it (however you measure what "worth" and "it" are) to go back to something that goes against your principles. :)
We have the same common evils of legacy software where weeks are spent triaging bugs and shipping stable code.
But I guess what I dislike the most is the stack ranking system.
Do all large software shops have stack ranking? I ask HN this as I'll honestly skip any company now that uses stack ranking as a measure of performance.
Not sure about the rest of you but I find it to be incredibly detrimental to team work, people start hoarding techniques and skills in order to get ahead. The bus factor of the team shoots up. The work place environment just feels adversarial. Its just quite sickening, but maybe I'm just very naive.
If we are talking about Microsoft and Seattle, UW means University of Washington; if we are talking about Toronto-area, UW means...University of Waterloo, right?
Developers in Toronto are very cheap compared to large cities in the US like NYC and SF. A lot of really good Canadian developers move to the US because they get paid 2-3x as much.
There is very little "startup tech culture" in Toronto itself which is good or bad depending on what you want. That being said Kitchener/Waterloo, although very small, is actually closest feeling I've seen to SV with regards to engineering focus and community. It's about 2 hours outside of Toronto.
Most early stage startup investing in Canada is done by BDC (or Business Development Canada). Even with incubators like Extreme Ventures, the company she is working at in the article did Extreme, the majority of the money they invest is from the government of Canada. Canadian founders I know who have taken Canadian money always say that you are better off taking money from investors in the US.
Canadians, in general, are more risk averse. Even Americans who wouldn't start a company understand what entrepreneurship is about as it is kind of baked into the American raison-d'etre -- but this is not the case in Canada.
CONS: -Canada thinks smaller than SV (not as open to big ideas) -BDC is a big player when it comes to Canadian money, we've had some interactions with them and for the most part they run more like a bank/government organization than they do a VC. They are getting better, but are just not quite there yet. In the end we actually turned down money from them. -The accelerators there are trying...but they are a far way off from being of the same quality as some of the ones down here -When it comes to raising money you normally get a lower valuation and the terms aren't usually as founder friendly
PROS -There are a few bigger players popping up in the Toronto/Kitchener scene that are really helping the culture and community there grow -It's cheaper and talent is easier to find (Waterloo produces some amazing talent) -There are a lot of government grants and tax incentives
There are definitely people in the area worth meeting who are doing some exciting things, but the buzz and excitement and opportunities down here are still greater imo. I'm also partial to the West coast as a general lifestyle choice.
OP got stuck on low-end work and wasn't learning anything. She got shitty reviews. That doesn't mean she did a bad job or is incompetent (I doubt either is true) but it means they didn't value her, and she made the right call by getting out. If she'd stayed just to vest a few hundred shares of MSFT-- I doubt this benefit rang out to more than $10k per year-- she'd be nuts.
For example, if market is $125k, and you're making $100k + 0.2% of a company worth $100M, that's:
Equity is worth 200k over 4 years, or 50k/year. (40% of market salary.)
-20 (paycut) + 40 = 20
Below 0: Fucking awful. They don't respect you. Leave.
0 to 25: Mediocre, not interesting. OK for an otherwise attractive job.
25 to 60: Substantial but probably not life-changing equity. Typical for good contributors.
60 to 200: Real equity. They want you. They care if you work there.
200+: Founder-level.Silicon Valley is the best place for VC-funded technology, by far, but the culture that's sprung up in this current wave is just repulsive. People are starting to figure that out.
Lots of smart people who, five years ago, would have only gone to New York or San Francisco, are now going all kinds of cool places as a generation figures out where the next maker culture is going to start (if it's going to be limited to one or a few places at all, which I doubt). It's like a diaspora. Austin, Toronto, Boulder, all seem quite strong.
Later this month I'm moving to Baltimore, which is somewhat of a dark horse but I actually think it will win big in the longer term (5+ years). It's already come a long way from what it used to be.
Seattle and Boston are quite nice places to live, too; but they're still kinda pricey and that means the legacy of the last wave hasn't gone back into the sea yet.
Toronto's a good pick. I spent a couple months there in the late '90s and it struck me, even then, as a great place to live.
That's my biggest problem. Say iOS developemtn is asset heavy and requires a decent way of sorting your assets with your stories. JIRA is complete shit for that. Trying to explain that to the agile coach or scrum master... yeah.