Top Hat Reviews
59% would recommend to a friend
(467 total reviews)
Joe Rohrlich
75% approve of CEO
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- "How many sales managers have both the Toronto and Chicago offices had in that time?" (in 21 reviews)
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Found 467 of over 496 reviews
Updated Nov 16, 2023
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- 5.0Nov 16, 2023Anonymous EmployeeCurrent Employee, more than 5 years
Pros
1. Smart, motivated, and collaborative coworkers. Most employees are highly qualified with Masters and PhDs from Ivy League schools or top Canadian universities. You'll learn a lot working here. 2. Amazing product that's making education better for students and professors. The products are better and more affordable than the other clunky old tech from legacy publishers, most of which have poor financial performance and are dragging their feet with EdTech innovation. 3. Great company culture that prizes autonomy, high achievement, and care for employees' well being. People are friendly and fun to work with and management takes quick action on employee feedback. 4. Lots of room for growth and advancement to leadership for high performers. 5. Compensation is fair with a wide range of useful benefits.
Cons
No pension or RRSP/401k matching scheme.
- 4.0Oct 18, 2023AnonymousCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearToronto, ON
Pros
Great office environment and energy when company-wide meetings took place on a periodic basis, benefits were satisfactory, WFH supportive, innovative product and diverse base of colleagues/customers to work with on a daily basis
Cons
Upwards mobility seemed far-fetched (could be because of the company’s position at this time with mass layoffs/ongoing restructuring), job titles are a bit misleading when you find yourseld doing more/irrelevant work to what is suggested by your title. Company-wide promises went unfulfilled over constraints which in my opinion were clearly foreseen ahead of time. Performance reviews need more explicit criteria set for employees as they are left wide-open for associates to decide what KPI’s to strive for and to know what to highlight as your “wins” but when it came to those meetings there were comprehensive KPI’s which were used to point/critique your shortcomings, which made those meetings overall discouraging to come out of. Overall gave the impression that those meetings were essential to clip not necessarily underperforming employees but rather the ones with the least “wins”. In summary, I think associate development/morale is a red area which the company needs to focus on. Better compensation/incentive programs could also be created and communicated by the People team as well.
2 - 2.0Sept 12, 2023AnonymousFormer Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
- Colleagues are overwhelmingly friendly and intelligent - Most middle managers are supportive - Fully remote, supports WFH with a small home office budget - Workload is usually manageable, but there are crash times where things are crazy
Cons
I was part of the second round of layoffs over a month ago - this sucked but fair enough, my position will be taken over by freelancers. But there have been some high-level (C-suite/director level) decisions that rub me the wrong way: 1) I saw ~10 individual contributors in my department laid off but all middle managers remain. As in there is now 1 middle manager per 2-3 individual contributors. How does this make any sense when resources were already being spread thinner and thinner throughout 2023?.. 2) The only ineffective manager I came across with got promoted. This person was often absent, accusatory, and unsupportive. Their project/department was mismanaged so poorly that it was shut down.. yet they later got promoted? Why aren't individual contributors asked to review managers, only vice versa? 3) Similar to my point above; a very unreliable 3rd party was recently hired at Top Hat. They had been working with Top Hat as a 3rd party for about a year before this. 4) Performance reviews are performative. The goalposts always seem to shift, no real way to move up in the company. Hiring decisions seem to be based off of old friendships rather than anything else.
6 - 2.0Oct 31, 2023Software DeveloperCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearToronto, ON
Pros
- Smart and helpful coworkers - good work environment
Cons
- Management cannot focus, cannot create a plan of action, cannot even interact with developers, forget about managing them. They do not have an inkling of how to develop software. The company is propped up almost entirely by a small set of very excellent engineers. - resources and day to day work is mired in ever-increasing upkeep. - projects are just kind of random. You just get assigned a project and then you do it. The next project is handed down to you, no input as to what it should be.
1 - 2.0Oct 15, 2023Staff EngineerCurrent Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
- Some really superb engineers who work there - So many things that are old broken that there's no end of opportunity to modernize things in fun and interesting ways (so long as you can justify spending time on those things)
Cons
- Three different heads of the engineering department in one year - Product is unwilling/unable to reduce our objectives, despite losing over 30% of the department in one year - Constant employee turnover means almost no historical context for legacy products - More than half the production services are not being actively worked on
8 - 5.0Oct 27, 2023Account ExecutiveFormer Employee, more than 1 yearToronto, ON
Pros
Leadership has strengthen a lot. Joe is a really incredible CEO and has a direction. Company is willing to invest in training for staff and perks are very solid as well
Cons
The industry (post secondary) is very divided. You have plenty of people in charge of these departments who are resistant to change and prefer the traditional approach to education. On the flip side there are younger innovative folks who will hopefully drive change later on
2 - 5.0Nov 12, 2023Office CoordinatorFormer Employee, less than 1 year
Pros
Great colleagues, office and communications manager is very helpful (Joel) - might be the best employer I’ve had. very understanding and such a fun environment to work at.
Cons
not the best job security
1 - 5.0Nov 10, 2023Account ExecutiveCurrent Employee, more than 1 yearToronto, ON
Pros
Good culture, fast paced, great product
Cons
Territory matters more than at most places
1 - 2.0Aug 30, 2023Software DeveloperCurrent Employee, more than 1 year
Pros
Depending on your team, work life balance can be good. I really enjoyed working with my colleagues. The devs here know their stuff.
Cons
It’s been a month since I was laid off from Top Hat. So, recent layoffs. I always felt less than, working here. Rarely felt encouraged or supported. It was hard to connect to the company’s goals. Whenever I would speak to management, I felt heard but always left with a feeling that questioning things were a problem and my requests unreasonable. Management attempts to be transparent but goes back on their plans often, leading to an overall confusing and unsatisfying experience.
7 - 4.0Sept 19, 2023Engineering ManagerCurrent EmployeeToronto, ON
Pros
Solid set of challenges for someone who's willing to take the initiative and ownership of problems.
Cons
A lot of potential challenges, too much focus on looking ahead and not enough on fixing debt.
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Top Hat Reviews FAQs
Top Hat has an overall rating of 3.7 out of 5, based on over 496 reviews left anonymously by employees. 59% of employees would recommend working at Top Hat to a friend and 54% have a positive outlook for the business. This rating has decreased by -5% over the last 12 months.
59% of Top Hat employees would recommend working there to a friend based on Glassdoor reviews. Employees also rated Top Hat 3.7 out of 5 for work life balance, 3.7 for culture and values and 3.5 for career opportunities.
