Twenty-eight years across staffing, software, games and IT services

Mandate

Build a people function for a company hiring forty people a month, then lead it through a reduction, a down-round financing and the change in junior engineering work brought by AI tools.

Outcomes

• Planned the February 2023 reduction of 214 roles around three discontinued initiatives instead of a 22% even cut; no further round since.
• Designed the 2024 repricing of 612 underwater option holdings; 571 accepted and regretted engineering attrition fell from 10.9% to 6.2%.
• Published all pay bands internally in September 2025 after lifting 187 people to their band minimum; offer acceptance rose from 76% to 85%.
• Kept 72 co-op terms and 22 graduate hires a year and redesigned first-year engineering work; time to first independent production change fell from eleven to six weeks.
• Completed the francization of the Montréal office, grown from 46 to 190 people after the 2022 acquisition of Atelier Sorbier.

Decisions in context

I joined Kestrelford when it was hiring forty people a month and its people function was a recruiting team with payroll attached. In my first year I built a band structure, an equity administration process and an immigration team, introduced monthly gathering weeks for hybrid work and led the people side of acquiring Atelier Sorbier in Montréal, whose 46 engineers had worked entirely in English. Growth then slowed, and my work changed from building to choosing. I designed the 2023 reduction around discontinued work, the 2024 repricing and equity statements, and the 2025 publication of pay bands. Through the 2025 planning cycle I argued for keeping early-career hiring when AI tools made it easy to stop. I prepare the people and compensation committee's papers, attend its meetings apart from executive sessions and present to the full board on reductions and equity. I am not a director.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; completing the 2027 equity cycle and the first year of published equity statements.

Mandate

Reduce consultant attrition, build a career structure for a firm moving from staff supply to managed services, and put the firm's French-language obligations on a sound footing.

Outcomes

• Reduced voluntary consultant attrition from 21% to 14% through a published career framework and pay bands.
• Removed an English-language requirement from 41% of postings after reviewing each against the work.
• Supported about 260 international hires on work permits, with paid advice on permanent residence.
• Moved 2,300 people to remote work within a fortnight in March 2020 without a fall in billable utilisation beyond two points.

Decisions in context

Brévalle was moving from placing consultants inside client teams to running managed services under its own name, which required a different kind of employee and a different career path. I introduced a career framework with published bands, so that a consultant could see what a move from developer to technical lead to engagement manager required and paid. Attrition fell from 21% to 14% over three years. The French-language work taught me the most. Our clients often worked in English, while our employees were entitled to work in French, and many postings demanded English without a reason anyone could give. We reviewed each one against the actual work and removed the requirement from 41%. I also learnt international mobility at scale, supporting about 260 colleagues on work permits. In March 2020 I helped move the whole firm to remote work within a fortnight.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Kestrelford to build its people function during rapid growth; the role offered equity and committee work that a partner-owned firm could not.

Mandate

Staff the studio's growth from two production teams to four, and bring overtime and crunch under control without missing the publisher's release dates.

Outcomes

• Hired about 480 people in five years, roughly a fifth of them from outside Canada on work permits.
• Introduced overtime caps before milestones, repaid in time off that was scheduled and tracked; average overtime in the final three months of a project fell by 40%.
• When the publisher cancelled a project in 2015, moved 52 of the 170 people affected to other teams; 118 roles ended.
• Supported all 27 permit holders among those 118 with immigration advice and introductions to other studios.

Decisions in context

Corvelle grew quickly, and much of my work was finding and keeping people the Montréal market could not supply alone. About a fifth of our hires came from abroad, which taught me immigration practice and its consequences for families. The other half of the job was crunch. Studio culture treated long hours before a milestone as a mark of commitment, and our turnover after each release showed what it cost. In 2013 I persuaded the studio head to cap overtime and to repay it in time off that was scheduled, not promised. When the publisher cancelled a project in 2015 after three years of work, I found places for 52 of the 170 people affected on other teams, and handled the departure of the other 118, including 27 colleagues whose right to work in Canada depended on their job with us. I left to work in a larger, bilingual firm.

Reason for the move

Recruited to lead people at a larger, bilingual IT services firm.

Mandate

Partner the R&D leadership on hiring, retention and organisation design; from 2008, carry out workforce changes in R&D and operations.

Outcomes

• Supported R&D hiring of about 300 engineers in 2006 and 2007.
• Carried out the R&D and operations parts of reductions in November 2008 and June 2009, about 400 roles in total.
• After the second reduction, led an engineering retention review that identified 85 critical engineers and kept 79 of them through 2010.
• Introduced a technical career ladder to principal engineer, so that senior engineers could progress without managing people.

Decisions in context

I moved to Ottawa to learn how a larger listed technology company worked, and I learnt most from its worst year. As HR business partner to research and development, I supported a period of rapid hiring. Then the 2008 downturn reached our carrier customers, and Tamberlane cut 9% of its roles in November 2008 and another 11% in June 2009, each time evenly across departments. I helped plan and carry out both reductions in R&D and operations. The first removed people without removing work; the second followed partly because the people who stayed were exhausted. I led the retention review that came after, keeping 79 of 85 engineers we considered critical, and introduced a technical career ladder that let senior engineers progress without becoming managers. Those two reductions are the source of almost everything I now believe about how to plan one.

Reason for the move

Returned to Montréal for family reasons and to lead HR at a growing studio.

Mandate

Create the company's first HR function: pay structure, policies, recruiting process and employee relations.

Outcomes

• Built the first salary bands for 180 people and corrected 31 salaries that sat well below peers in the same role.
• Wrote the first overtime and on-call rules for support staff during year-end payroll peaks.
• Reduced first-year attrition in customer support from 38% to 22%.
• Managed the people side of the 2006 sale, including retention letters for 24 product and support staff.

Decisions in context

Ormeval was my first chance to build something rather than recruit for it. The founder had set every salary personally, and the result reflected the market of the month each person joined rather than their work. I built bands, corrected the worst gaps and wrote the rules for overtime and on-call during the year-end payroll season, when our support staff handled most of the year's calls in six weeks. I completed my graduate diploma in compensation management in the evenings over the same period, and much of what I studied I applied the following morning. When a US software group bought the company in 2006, I managed retention for the product and support staff the buyer most wanted to keep. HR then moved to the buyer's head office, and I left to see how a larger technology company organised its people.

Reason for the move

After the 2006 acquisition, HR moved to the buyer's US head office; I chose to join a larger technology company.

Mandate

Recruit mainframe and application programmers for Y2K remediation, then manage relations with contractors as the work ended.

Outcomes

• Recruited about 230 contractors between 1998 and 2000, many from France, Belgium and Romania.
• From 2001, coordinated the end of about 140 contracts as remediation work and the technology market declined.
• Placed 61 of those contractors in new assignments within six months.
• Created the firm's first contractor handbook on assignment terms and notice.

Decisions in context

I came to Varennor straight from university expecting a temporary job and stayed almost five years. The firm placed programmers with organisations racing to fix date-handling code before 2000, and I learnt quickly to read a résumé for mainframe languages and to judge whether someone would last a six-month contract in a bank's basement. Many of our contractors came from abroad, and I learnt the first lessons of international hiring there. When the remediation work ended and the technology market fell, I became the person who told contractors their assignments had ended and then looked for the next one. About 140 contracts ended over two years, and I placed 61 people in new work within six months. It was the first time I saw how a decision made in a meeting room landed in someone's kitchen, and I wanted to learn how to make those decisions better.

Reason for the move

Moved to an employee-based software company to learn HR beyond recruiting.