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

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

#401

Post by sbisker »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #295

Some reasons to stay in Canada: * Your spouse will not be able to work on your visa (TN / H1B) * "Full insurance coverage" does not mean for your spouse. Be prepared to pay for a delivery if you want to have children * Your child will have much higher post-secondary student loans * Crime, Firearms et al. IMO coming to SV is a young/single person's game (hence braindrain from grads). But a bad idea for established peo…

If you're working at a software company in the US, the odds are good you make enough that you're not living near any significant crime unless by choice (for instance, for "city life"). Crime is seriously pocketed in the US. And (perhaps fortunately) the number of people I've known who've ever seen an illegally owned or used gun is vanishingly small.

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

#402

Post by betaby »

monkeynotes wrote: post #108
Thaxll wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Montreal bigger than Vancouver? Also Montreal is cheap to live in.

Quebec has some of the highest income taxes in Canada.

About the same as in California for salaries over 100K

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

#403

Post by Kelbit »

jt2190 wrote: post #332
neilk wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here who worked in the Valley for ~7 years, and currently works for a US-based startup remotely. You're absolutely right that the culture of respecting changemakers is not as present in Canada. But the SFBA is the world leader here. There probably isn't any place on earth that's more optimistic about innovators. I don't think this is a culture thing, exactly. It's just that everyone who became rich in the SF…

> Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with. The ecosystem [1] that provides dollars to high-risk investments (like tech startups) just doesn't exist on the same scale in Canada. The only players with that kind of money are the federal and provincial governments, which are by nature very conservative. [1] For example, one source of funding is large pensions and endowments, who take a tiny pe…

There is the new Canadian SBIR analog (Innovative Solutions Canada [1]) which looks like a big step in the right direction.

It's having some issues getting off the ground though, it just kicked off a few months ago and I think they are way behind handing out funding. There's only been a handful of challenges and not many applicants (I submitted a proposal, which was serialized as a submission number just over 300). They are supposed to be distributing about $100M/yr, or 1% of the federal R&D budget.

[1] http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/101.nsf/eng/home

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

#404

Post by JBReefer »

rconti wrote: post #378
_mhyx wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Austin is a huge tech town, and rapidly growing. I get a lot of recruiter emails to go there. Same with KC, but to a lessor extent. I was just in Montreal - the difference in prices with the US was staggering. You forget how wealthy we are, sometimes, even compared to the rest of the developed world. (Had an incredible French meal with 2 bottles of wine over 3 hours and it came out to ~$90 a head American)

I'm not clear what you're saying here, possibly because I don't often have 3 hour French meals. $90 sounds neither outlandishly expensive for a fine meal, nor cheap.

It's very cheap

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

#406

Post by tomc1985 »

ryanobjc wrote: post #155
_xzxj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here (who lives outside of Canada but recently did a stint there for a bit) and this will sound negative but f-it. Canadian culture sucks when it comes to trying new things. Canada has some extra safety net but the culture is puritanical and conservative and nobody wants to go out on a limb and try something new and crazy. Not like Americans. Those that do are constantly questioned by everybody. The idea of…

The liberalness of Canada is overhyped. The reality is Canada is deeply conservative. It's possible to have universal health care and be conservative, that's only a oxymoron in the US. To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might ro…

My experience in here in the 'States exemplifies your comments "that I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value".

But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me.

If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...

I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.

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

#407

Post by netheril96 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #289
pembrook wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Burning through investors money in search of profitable ideas" has nothing to do with it. There's this huge misconception on HN about the size of the venture capital market. Start-ups are a miniscule portion of the tech economy by any measure of value. The reason engineers make so much money in the US is the public market giants like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc. The combined market cap of FAANG is…

FAANG can only hire so many engineers, the positions tend to be highly competitive, they pull them from all over the world, and the drop-off in compensation at the next level is pretty significant.

Can Canadian programmers good enough to be hired by FAANG be paid similar salaries in Canada?

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

#408

Post by nameisu »

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…

many people who are not getting H1B are going to Canada through express entry program. They plan to return to USA again after getting Canada citizenship on TN visa.

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

#409

Post by seanmcdirmid »

netheril96 wrote: post #399
lhorie wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions. This is an interesting point. I feel like Canada does do this, but it sort of backfires on itself. Something my wife once pointed out is that a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers, whose cultures are…

> a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers Aren't a lot of immigrant tech talent in Silicon Valley Chinese and Indian too? Or maybe even the majority? Besides, China has a very vibrant VC culture, second only to the US. Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.

That isn’t true. A friend of mine told me that Kai Fu (the Paul Graham of China) said something to the effect that Chinese VCs for a long time had focused on copying because they were much more risk averse than western VCs (copying an existing business model was a more sure bet than doing something new). It has only been in the last few years that they have been breaking away from that.

As for Chinese taking risks, I think you have to look at the alternative safer investments that basically don’t exist, you have no choice but to take risks in China, or in most other developing econonies for that matter.

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

#410

Post by pm90 »

netheril96 wrote: post #399
lhorie wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions. This is an interesting point. I feel like Canada does do this, but it sort of backfires on itself. Something my wife once pointed out is that a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers, whose cultures are…

> a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers Aren't a lot of immigrant tech talent in Silicon Valley Chinese and Indian too? Or maybe even the majority? Besides, China has a very vibrant VC culture, second only to the US. Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.

> Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.

I think the author is pointing out that being a Chinese/Indian immigrant is in conflict with risk taking.

You don't have to look too hard for this. Most Chinese/Indian immigrants gravitate to low-risk jobs, specifically at larger companies, usually for visa/immigration related issues.

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