Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 715 posts

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#91

Post by leonroy »

octorian wrote: post #75
leonroy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well.. grabbing the light rail in the Bay Area and changing at Santa Clara around 9pm was an eye opening experience. Let’s just say an old man snapping at my geeky reading would’ve been the least of my concerns. I had one guy pushing a cart trying to sell me drugs, a bunch of school kids leering at everyone and making a nuisance of themselves and just a general feeling that everyone with any sort of reasonable level…

Which train was this? There are two major train systems going through the area. There's Caltrain, which will be full of professionals if you ride it close to working hours. Then there's VTA Light Rail, which is effectively "the bus on rails." Later in the evening it will be full of the type you describe.

Edited my post too late - it was light rail from Gish maybe to Ohlone/Chynoweth. Had to change at Santa Clara.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#92

Post by cfcf14 »

leonroy wrote: post #78
cfcf14 wrote: post #32

Canadian living in London for about 4 years now - of course people are leaving. The pay is incredibly low in major Canadian cities like Vancouver & Toronto; I was looking at 50-60k/yr there, ~150k in the US, or about 60-70k GPB in London. Now, London isn't exactly cheap, and my overall buying power here is probably only mildly superior to what it would be in Canada, but I get to live in a great city with all the amen…

London isn’t as we’ll paying for engineers as SV either unless they’re in finance or contracting - how’re you finding the pay gap here vs the US?

It goes without saying that SV pays dramatically more than London, and certainly more than mainland EU (Paris, Frankfurt, etc).

My point is more that as a Canadian you can go pretty much anywhere else and be better paid (even if only a little bit relative to cost of living), and sometimes there are substantial other advantages too, such as proximity to desirable locations, cultural stuff, and so on.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#93

Post by privacypoller »

andechs wrote: post #79
bradlys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like an outlandishly high number. Where did you get that? You're saying that close to 25-33% of foreigners in the bay are Canadian.

The TN - (nonimmigrant NAFTA Professional) visa makes it very easy to move to the US as a Canadian vs a foreigner from any other country.

*For now - as you say, that's a NAFTA visa and some professions are already having issues crossing the border (nurses and medical professionals lately). It's very unclear what will happen if talks don't lead to another deal, and I don't think most small start-ups could handle the fallout if they all of the sudden need to convert their Canadian staff to another entry mechanism.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#94

Post by genieyclo »

bradlys wrote: post #52
martinshen wrote: post #25

I recently moved back from the US (SF then Detroit) to Toronto to start a new startup. I was shocked when some entrepreneurs were upset that an Amazon HQ2 may raise the prices on engineering talent in Toronto. That may be true but is extremely short-sighted (and probably means those startups aren't VC-ambitious). The Toronto area really needs Amazon, Google or another large tech company to create a signifiant enginee…

That seems like an outlandishly high number. Where did you get that? You're saying that close to 25-33% of foreigners in the bay are Canadian.

Total Canadian population in the bay area is 19,500.

LA county has more by itself at 29,200 Canadians. California as a whole has only 132,000 Canadians.

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/programs/data-hub/charts/us-...

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#95

Post by handsomechad »

cfcf14 wrote: post #32

Canadian living in London for about 4 years now - of course people are leaving. The pay is incredibly low in major Canadian cities like Vancouver & Toronto; I was looking at 50-60k/yr there, ~150k in the US, or about 60-70k GPB in London. Now, London isn't exactly cheap, and my overall buying power here is probably only mildly superior to what it would be in Canada, but I get to live in a great city with all the amen…

What industries pay better in Canada? What industry is Canada a good place for? At least, better than tech. Or is it just that tech workers have so much opportunity and mobility that there's too much incentive for them to leave their domestic labor markets.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#96

Post by arcticbull »

whack wrote: post #66

Canada is in a really tough spot here. I've always admired Canadian culture/values, and in the abstract, would love to live in Canada one day. However, as a Software developer, the compensation and opportunities that one can find in SF/Seattle/NYC dwarf anything in Canada. Until this changes, Canada is always going to lose its brightest engineers, which will in turn worsen the problem even further. Some solutions I c…

- Canada is already pursuing non-American engineers, even advertising along the 101 [1], and it's working [2].

- Canada does offer some tax breaks [3] and grants to startups, but more is also welcome.

- Agreed that there should be a bigger focus on startups. I wonder if having provinces create VC funds (like Investissment Quebec [4]) tailored specifically to startups would help here.

[1] http://mgalligan.com/post/52327738889/canada-h1b

[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-20/h-1b-work...

[3] https://www.investinontario.com/incentive-programs-and-servi...

[4] http://www.investquebec.com/international/en

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#97

Post by djrogers »

criddell wrote: post #31

I've often wondered why Canada doesn't have way more entrepreneurs. With a strong social safety net, you can work on your startup and not have to worry about losing your health insurance.

Probably because health insurance is only one of many costs of living that you have to account for? Housing, transpo, food, utilities, etc - all account for far more than my healthcare costs for any given month/year.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#98

Post by privacypoller »

Kluny wrote: post #56

Canadian here. I get $65,000 USD from my remote American job. That's low enough that people on this forum snicker at me, and high enough that companies in the "tech town" that I live in physically wince when I tell them my salary expectation. I'd rather work locally, but what can I do?

And you're in Victoria? that's not a cheap place to live, especially if you're considering buying a home.

That companies think you're paid highly for your area is kind of this entire problem in a nutshell.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#99

Post by johan_larson »

Archio wrote: post #74

I experienced this myself as a dual citizen that considered working in Canada. I received an offer in the US that was $60k higher than offers I received from Canadian startups. Does anyone know what factors (cultural, political or other) contribute to Canadian companies paying so much less than the American ones? You'd think competitive businesses would notice this affect and adjust?

There simply are no large native top-tier tech companies like Amazon or Google in Canada that need large amounts of top-tier talent. The local players are much smaller and are competing for local talent with banks and insurance companies. Less competition means lower wages. Because of permissive immigration laws, there has also been a lot of immigration of software developers from Asia and eastern Europe, which is great for the employers, but exacerbates the problem for local talent.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#100

Post by downrightmike »

bluGill wrote: post #69
ahelwer wrote: post #53

I'm a Canadian software engineer working in Seattle. One time on a flight back to the homeland I sat next to a Canadian tech VC. We spoke about the tech scene in Canada, and eventually she started complaining about how all the good engineers leave for the States. I mentioned my experience with the massive 50% pay gap in software engineer salaries, and she said something about how it was the fault of the exchange rate…

They don't actually want tech talent, they want CHEAP tech talent.

Hence the "hour of code" and "everyone should code" movements.
Post reply on HN