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

theglobeandmail.com

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

#481
post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and people from Iran or Syria?

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/01/iranian-immigrat... Maybe Trump's mistake is being vocal about it while Canada maintains plausible deniability.

I feel like I'm not getting the whole story here. You don't need a security clearance to become a permanent resident.

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

#482

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…

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 muc…

> 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 believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.

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

#483

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…

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 muc…

Not everyone in my environment thinks as I do, but I can find enough that I can live a happy life.

This is not so in other areas.

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

#484
post #462
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where in Canada did you live and gone to school? I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'. But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.

Also Canadian (Vancouver / Victoria), spend a lot of time in SF. This has also been my experience but I'm wondering if its just a big city thing in CAD.

I’m a New Yorker, grew up there and now living in SF. Brooklyn was cool, but it didn’t “get” the kind of experimental intellectualism that’s needed in a tech startup scene. Not ripping on my old hometown. They have the intellectualism but haven’t applied it to tech. If I were to go back to New York, I wouldn’t go into tech, I’d go into finance because that’s where the nerds would be.

If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.

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

#485
I have heard the compensation is a big drag for tech jobs in CA. But I don't really understand why that is. If tech hiring is so brutal, why wouldn't the wages be more in line with what their neighbors just south in the USA are paying? After all, if there is a brain drain and tech works from CA are leaving (in part due to comp, presumably), then why not pay more?

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

#486
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…

This thread and it's comments have been super enlightening. Living in California my whole life has skewed my perception of what is normal with respect to ambition. Ambition is not inherently good, but Eve as a small child we are inundated with messages about success, "hard work" (whatever that means), and reaching

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

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because Canada is socially liberal and financially conservative.

Socially liberal in some ways, but not in everything. 4 states decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana before any Canadian provinces. 2 of them did it years before Canada was even planning to do it. That is very telling of the two cultures.

marijuana has been de facto legal in vancouver for two decades

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

#488
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, one of my euro immigrant friends in Vancouver was a window cleaner. IIRC she basically showed up at the border with some education certificate (some non-fancy arts degree), her intent to make a living and proof she could sustain herself for a few months; definitely not sponsored by a tech company or anything like that. A few years later she was a citizen. OTOH I know two very capable (although not "rock…

I'm pretty sure there are some important details missed in your story, because you either don't know them, or don't understand why they are important. My European, but non-EU, friend is a software engineer with certified knowledge of both En, and Fr, clean records, and all that stuff, decided to go to Canada for some not particularly economically rational reasons (like love of northern nature). This year it's going t…

What is the race of your friend?

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

#489

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…

[deleted]

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

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Canadian healthcare any good? Where I live, you pay for this privilege quite a lot of tax at still you have to go privately, because the quality is just not worth your health. I really wish "universal healthcare" was scrapped, so I could afford better services privately.

Canada has good Healthcare up to the level of US medtech about 20 years ago. Anything invented in the last 20 years is not available through Canada Health Care. They will have an occasional crock of s * like one or two radiation machines for cancer for an entire province of 5 million people.

I think the thing that improves country wide healthcare outcomes in Canada is that everyone can go to a doctor. However, outcomes for complex cases are not as good.
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