throwawayosiu1

> That's pretty bad though I wonder if it's actually illegal. In the USA most employment is "at will" so companies can fire you for anything or nothing. I'm not sure where taking vacation/sick days counts from a labor law perspective but I wouldn't be surprised if it was within the rights of the company to fire employees who use them.

It might be illegal in Canada (not 100% sure) but a group of ex-employees that have been fired are suing the company.

> You see this a lot in the finance world as well. Nobody takes vacation during the year and piles it on at the end of the year when things are "change freezese". It's pretty silly.

This would still be understandable (as you'd expect people to take vacations at year end) - However he was indirectly told to forfeit his vacation completely (which in my opinion is scummy if not illegal).

> So how rampant is this though? If it's prevalent throughout Canada then it sounds like a symptom of a jobs gap. If most employers can be picky about picking employees who will skip vacations (again ignoring how stupid this sounds), then I'd argue there aren't many choices for employees to begin with.

I've personally seen it happen in Ontario (don't know if it happens in other provinces) but I don't think it's any different in other provinces either. In my opinion, it's a combination of:

1. fewer jobs

2. employers willing to sit tight till they get their "right" and submissive employee (because you can see thousands of job openings every single day and take it from me - I've applied to 100s of them but I have a feeling they are just fake - as in, companies post them to show growth/scale etc. but don't really hire - for example, Index Exchange and IBM both have a few positions open for which a friend got interviewed and passed on as he was not a culture fit - 10 months later....still unfilled)

3. most employees don't mind it in the slightest - or those who do, have already done what's necessary and move into better positions (or I'm hanging out with some some weird folks).

I've seen very few people who are really passionate about their job / stuff they build / improving etc. - for most, it's all about making enough $, and having enough to sustain your daily life PERIOD (and the cycle continues). You are considered crazy if you try to break this or don't like this routine.

A lot of Canadians have this attitude too.

A very close friend of mine works for OPG (via a contractor).

OPG and his contractor both have agreed to give him 2 weeks paid time off, and ~ 1 week of sick time off.

However, taking time off ensures that you WILL get laid off (reasons would be made up ofc) during the next quarter.

This basically forces everyone to not take time off (and work during vacations - my friend worked full time during statutory holidays like Christmas and New Year).

When I tried to tell him this was very illegal, he basically said that he was lucky to have his job or he'd be unemployed so he does not mind this.

Now this might be an exception but I've heard and seen numerious stories such as these all over Ontario from various companies (from crappy ones like TCS to startups to small established business like Axiom and even some big multi-national companies - especially in the fintech world and banks).

That said, there are also a lot of companies (like the one I currently work for and the previous company I worked at) that try their best to make sure employees have a great time working there and do their best to achieve that.

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.

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).

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 - it was mentioned that they expected me to work for ~12+ hrs / day but I'd still get paid for only 8 hrs. But when they scaled up, I'd be "rewarded" for my hustle, grit and commitment".

3. Big companies (Google, Mozilla, etc.) who are looking for quite a lot of devs but seem to be insanely picky about hiring them.

To add to this, there seem to be a lot of devs than jobs (or that companies can go for long without hiring for those open roles).

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 that it works for them.

Something that annoys me the most about top hat is not the product but the company:

1. almost every month they enter their info for the HN Who's Hiring thread.

2. BUT they don't seem to ever respond apart from something automated about receiving your resume (this is not just from personal experience, I've seen people generally comment about the no real response)

3. They advertise the same position over and over again (mobile developer, backend/frontend/fullstack dev)

and finally to top it all of, I don't think they really care about being called out on this at all.

I did go through the entire process (3 tests in total, the first 2 were as he mentioned and the final test was a couple of coding questions - pretty basic stuff tbh)

However, I was disqualified for being out of the frame for less than a second (I grabbed a bottle of water and it was a bit further from my laptop)

I don't mind getting disqualified but I'd have appreciated either of the following:

  1. mentioning that you should be in the frame at all times (this was not mentioned what so ever)

  2. displaying the frame so you knew you were going out

Either one complements the other but there is no way to know what's being seen from the camera apart from the fact that it's recording (based on the camera light)

oh also, I think the author will have issues getting hired by Amazon again (when I took the test, they made me accept an agreement that basically stated that I could not share the questions with anyone - online or otherwise)

1. How exactly are the sysadmins graded? (because in the end, let's be real...this tool will most probably be used by HR folks to filter out candidates and they'd not care too much if you send over a screencast/replay of what the candidate did)

1.1) Sys admins generally have their own set of tools (which would be customized per company I guess)...would these be installed by default? (I'm assuming you are provisioning docker containers / candidate / test and then destroying them after use).

1.2) I've used the ones that are sent for developers and it's been a pretty terrible experience at best (it's buggy, won't accept valid code etc.). If this is the case for sysadmins, it's even more worse (but then again, I guess you can put a spin on it and claim it's for the best as they'd have to deal with unpredictiability).

2. How will different technologies be integrated to test candidates on? (for example, testing knowledge on multi node kubernetes cluster and so on).

Throwaway from my main account.

I am a recent grad and I was looking for a job since May to Sept. I applied to a lot of places from the HN Who's hiring threads.

I thought I'd post my stats below:

Remote: I applied to around 25 of these posts - I got only ~3 replies.

* Coinbase: Had a hacker rank challenge that didn't work seem to work (and was disqualified)

* Hola Networks: Extremely slow & async (took almost a month)

  - Google Docs code test (2 questions - was not allowed to use an external editor or compile my code) and the contact refused to talk to me before I had complete this challenge.

Now for in-person local interviews (in and around Toronto):

I must have applied to over 50 companies posted in that timeframe. A few rejected at first reply (needed more experience although the posting itself didn't mention how much experience was needed), a few didn't bother replying and finally of those who did reply (~10):

* 1st interview stage: went to about 5 companies (rejected for culture fit, not enough experience, didn't do well at the white board [0]). Others made me use hacker rank or other similar tools.

* 2nd Stage: white boards (most went well apart from [0]). One hired an internal referral (and rejected me).

* 3rd Stage: Rejected because they had better candidates. One offered me a Job Offer (but not in my field at all - it was a call center support role - they why even interview my coding skills? :/)

Notes:

Overall, while I didn't have a lot of success at HN Who's hiring, the quality of interviews was much much better than from other places I had applied. If I were looking for a job again, I'd definitely use it as a source of Jobs.

[0] - It was at an American car manufacturer: First stage: phone call with coding questions over the phone (and verified against answers his paper) and 2nd stage: in person, they kept asking me THE EXACT DEFINITIONS of various stuff in Java (I explained what they were, and what they did but they were not the exact definition as in Wikipedia - WHICH THEY WERE VIEWING AS THEY WERE INTERVIEWING ME)

Throwaway so as to not associate with my main account.

1. They always copy paste their comment every month (been noticing since May)

2. They never reply to emails sent (neither confirmations nor updates)

3. A friend interviewed there for a support role - they had a 1 hr long exam of sorts (on paper with pen in a room with other candidates)

As for what they do...it's some kind of education startup that seems to have some traction(enough to hire ~50+ engineers and easily ~25+ support staff) in Canada and USA.

Very recently, a close friend was looking for a job (as a junior dev - focused on web). After applying and getting rejected, we decided to try a different approach - he basically gave up and decided to the following:

1) added buzz keywords in his resume

2) hosted an instance of gitlab and took various open source projects (stuff that was not popular, but had enough polish), modified them and uploaded them.

After a week, he was able to land multiple interviews. While he did get called out once, almost all engineers/non-tech hr didn't bother calling his bluff.

I am not suggesting that you should lie on your resume or steal open source projects, just that depending on one factor (like github, or resume, or white boards) is futile and that tech hiring in general is broken.

While I was interested in computers since I was young (at about 3) - my interests started with gaming and "hacking". Over time, I wanted to be a "hacker" and I started to look into actual software development. But till about Grade 8 - computers for me were a form of entertainment. I took CS classes but in all honesty, most teachers treated it as an extra-curricular activity (we were told to use MS paint, or play around in MS office etc.)

Over time, my interests grew and I wanted to make websites so I started off with some HTML. I got a basic hang of it and I wanted everything to be pretty - so I did some basic CSS and then I got in JS. (All of this was done in Notepad - I was not even aware about auto-complete and tab indentation till I got to university and started using Visual Studio and Eclipse)

I got into Software Engineering in university because I was passionate about computers - not "programming" in general. But the course of my education, I got into everything from web and mobile dev, to creating file systems (it was extremely basic) - and now, I'm extremely passionate about programming. All that said...from personal experience, I would say that if you combine game dev, CS and SE - more than 80% of the incoming class came in with no prior experience in programming.

In my specific class, out of the graduating students (in Software Engineering)- at max 2 of the 15 are what I would consider "good/skilled" programmers. The rest got in because of various reasons (thought it was easy, thought they'd get a huge salary after leaving etc.) and don't really give a damn about programming/tech and their code/skills display that - but in the end, it does not even matter because companies like TCS/FDM hire such students, have a "intense" training program (read: basic Java/C# skills) and then pass on these "trained" students to enterprise (banks, hospitals etc.) and pay them extremely low (min. wage during training period, 30 - 40k CAD for the next 2 years - which these students will accept because they are aware of their deficiencies and this sets a bad precedence for even skilled workers)

It's not TCS/FDM's problem, managers/enterprises don't care either as long as you have that many hours/day and work gets done (quality and ownership does not really matter) and your co-workers generally have a similar skillset and play hot potato when it comes to getting actual work done. All the workload finally falls on that one skilled guy / team who basically does everything (who'll keep getting more and more frustrated and finally quit)- rinse & repeat. And worst of all - co-workers will have the audacity to make fun of the skilled worker for having an interest in programming/work (because having a passion for what you do is somehow a bad thing /s) all while offloading as much work as possible.

I have seen quite a lot of friends (skilled and mediocre) basically fall into the above cycle and in the end - the skilled are the ones who finally give up and stop giving a damn about their work/skills (which then sets a bad example - I have heard this as an example in uni - "why bother studying this framework/tech?, just find the guy who knows it and offload it to em") while mediocre workers basically get skilled at just that - not getting work done while not getting fired - which is considered a perfect 9 - 5 life.

BTW the above are my experiences and incidents I heard from friends/co-workers etc.

all 3 startups were bootstrapped. One of them is in the process of finding investors, the other 2 are still in their early stages (with no new hires).

I'm in the process of applying for Canadian Citizenship so I can't leave the country at the moment - but I am open to moving to BC if I have to.

I'm just graduated and living in Toronto.

I have gone to over 100 interviews at various companies - startups, major corps, banks (no I'm not kidding...in fact, once I do get a job, I'll do a massive write-up on what it's like to interview at different companies) and almost every single company seems to want "more experience" or "too experienced" (while they claim I can't do senior positions because I don't have experience) for entry level positions,.

I can do web (JS, and backend with nodeJS) and android (java) dev (and have previous experience of working at 3 startups). and in all honesty, I'm a quick learner and can pickup other languages/stacks in a few weeks at worst - yet I am not even given that chance to prove myself. :(

EDIT: to add to the above - I'm also told I'm lucky if I get paid more than 60k/yr (and basically no benefits) as that's what it is starting out.

Most decent companies there, generally don't do that. However, there are always exceptions.

Furthermore, this issue generally plagues the contractor companies (those that provide workers to bigger govt companies - who don't really care and use contractors to get around this in the first place)

Quite a lot of private companies do the same as well.

Very recently (just 6 months back), a friend of mine, got an offer from an import/export company in UAE. They had a few interviews over the phone and agreed upon the everything (including salary, accommodations and so on..)

Once my friend (a Canadian citzien) landed in UAE, the company took his passport and then demanded that he sign a different contract (reduced salary, longer period, etc.) and refused to hand over his password till he signed it. He had to threaten to visit the Embassy, for them to hand it back to him. However, if he was a citizen of some 3rd world country like India, Pakistan or anywhere from Asia, or even some European countries - he'd not have a choice but to sign the new contract.

Furthermore, when he tried to leave - as he was no longer interested in working for the company, they refused to pay for his flight back as well.

I'm not too sure about iMessage (I was a kid when it first debuted in UAE).

But I do remember them having an outright ban on BBM (for about 3 days) till Blackberry had a local datacenter (and I believe provided the govt access to the messages - I am not sure about the details in parenthesis).

that was a bad choice of words from my end. Sorry.

By "have fun", I meant - go around, visit places, hang out with friends, shop etc. While I am personally not aware of premarital sex, alcohol consumption is fine (as long as you have a licence, and do it indoors)

kissing in public, adultery, blasphemy, homosexual sex, criticizing rulers - yep, all these are big no-nos.

I lived in UAE for 10 years.

All I can say is...it's not a "bad" place if:

1) you are working as a direct hire for any of the govt companies (Adnoc, Etisalat, etc.).

2) if not, you are contracted directly by those companies

3) if you are on contract and your visa's sponsor is good (won't take your passport on arrival, won't create issues when you need to leave, etc.)

4) If you keep your head down basically - go to work, come home, have fun - Don't get involved in politics, using encrypted chatting applications, talking about human rights or anything along those lines.

oh and there's definitely a lot of brain washing going on. Almost everyone claims that it's the best place to be, discrimination ain't a thing (yes it is), everyone's fair (nope) and so on...