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

theglobeandmail.com

451–460 of 715 posts

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

#451

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How much is the rent where you live? I hope it is within expectation of your salary. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, have low salaries and high rents, which makes working there really hard.

Rents in Montreal are low.

Rent is low because augmentations are regulated, I pay 1350 for three bedrooms, buying is very expensive.

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

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No Canadian companies need to pay more. I suspect that Canada has inherited from the UK the attitude that STEM (apart from the Medical profession) is basically for greasy engineers who shouldn't be allowed to get to above themselves.

And improve the weather.

Vancouver's weather is very much to my liking.. and I live in the SFBA!

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

#453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And improve the weather.

Vancouver weather is amazing. I know that’s hard for Californians to believe, but it’s true.

It's good for Canada, that's for sure.

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

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Honestly I gotta agree with you here, bud. When I was growing up in Canada I had to keep my dreams a secret. If you had any grand goals people thought you were an egomaniacal weirdo. It wasn't until I seriously dated someone here in the US that I realized the difference: as part of the "delving into each others' inner lives" phase of the early relationship, I sheepishly admitted I had dreams of doing some pretty big…

As a German thank you...I feel just the same way about it!

To infinity and beyond guys

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

#455
post #197
post #182

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That's a weird comparison, I guess you say that because California's population (39 million) is close to that of Canada's (36.3 million)? No doubt California is diverse, and by no means homogenous, but Canada... is physically huge, and relatively speaking, very sparsely populated. This naturally leads to more diversity within an already "small" population. To develop a business with a target market of "all of Califor…

Not really. The vast majority of those 35 million live in 3 really small areas. Just like the vast majority of california lives on the coast. California is a physically huge state by the way, that is fairly sparsely populated in big swaths of the state.

Yeah, I guess (I was curious, and you're right, about 1/3 live in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal metro areas), but (to me) the culture varies a lot more between Toronto and Montréal than between SF and, I don't know, some of the more rural parts of California. Thinking like a business, the difference in regulations is much more significant as well.

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

#456

I used to be an ECE professor at UBC, the #2 school in Canada. At that school, ECE is part of applied sciences. And do you know what else is part? Yeah, nursing. The nurses earned the same pay scale as the ECE professors. And the bus drivers also earned the same pay scale at age 30 but had been working 10 years by that time and had no student loans to pay off. When I left my pay raise was 133%. There is no word in th…

I was a postdoc in EE/CS trying to make my way into academia in Montreal. Now I work remotely for an American company and make more than most professors at the University I left.. It's unfortunate really..

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

#457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there's more ambition/drive in the US (Just observed, never having worked there), but there's lots here too. People do start companies. I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)

It's the East Coast vs West Coast mentality. West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture? I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger…

California and Japan are the farthest people and ideas can travel...those who survive the journey will have been refined by it!

When those people meet those ideas at the end of said journey is when then magic happens

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

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most countries do. But the groupthink is that the USA is hostile to immigrants. Which doesn't explain all the immigrants (legal and otherwise). There's also the cliche (spread by the internet and political groups) that conservative/Republicans/etc... are against all immigration. This is 90% incorrect. I worked as support staff during a conference in Seattle of conservative business leaders around 2010. Their #1 topic…

> But the groupthink is that the USA is hostile to immigrants. Which doesn't explain all the immigrants (legal and otherwise). I don't know what groupthink you are talking about, but there is a wife perception that the US has recently become hostile toward immigrants. Which is reflected not only in fuzzy attitudes, but concrete policy, and it does explain changes in immigration, both legal and otherwise. > There's al…

I don't know why you are being downvotes, but it is the truth. Trump admin has raised the hostility towards high skill immigration towards a different level

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

#459
post #166

Canadian tech worker here. Base salary is 120k CAD in Calgary which is far above market rate but I am educated, experienced etc. That is 93k USD. I am looking to move to the USA because of higher salaries, but I am not 22 years old anymore and moving a family (with 2 earners) is no easy task. It falls on deaf ears though, 120k CAD is a good income, I can afford a house, cars, no debts etc so there is very little unde…

Get ready to spend a good deal of the difference in pay on healthcare.

But the differences in taxes reflect not covering health care. If you include that 20,000 a year spent on health care doesn't feel like a great deal anymore

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

#460
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…

> Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. They tried that a few times. I know because I was an advisor to one of the biggest incubators in Canada. The government even gives cash grants to startups. But as soon as the company gets big, they either 1) open an engineering office in the Bay Area or 2) Sell, and the move to the Bay Area because they were just acquired by a Bay Area company who is making them move…

This resonates with me. In a recent stint with a Canadian startup, an exorbitant amount of attention was paid to strengthening and increasing the number of ties we had to Silicon Valley. It seems so often that the end goal is to be able to move to California.
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