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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

#581

Post by intended »

rayiner wrote: post #443
ahelwer wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it It makes Americans easily manipulated and exploited.

That’s unfair - any stable trait of any community will be used by people to manipulate and exploit them.

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

#582

Post by whack »

lhorie wrote: post #361
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…

> - 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…

I agree that it's a common perception, but the data in silicon valley does seem to disprove it.

https://venturebeat.com/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravit...

"Twenty five percent of the nation’s startups and 52% of those in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. Indian immigrants were the leading company founding group. They founded 13.4% of Silicon Valley’s startups and 6.5% of those nationwide."

Regardless of cultural differences, I recall reading that immigrants as a whole are far more entrepreneurial than similarly positioned natives. A lot of this is through self-selection: saying goodbye to all your friends and moving to a whole other country/continent is extremely "scary". Hence by definition, the average immigrant is far more comfortable heading off into the unknown and taking the plunge.

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

#583

Post by simonbarker87 »

ng12 wrote: post #160
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…

> who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions. Where does this perception come from? Canada has stricter immigration rules than the USA. EDIT: Specifically what I'm talking about is that Canada only allows in immigrants who are economically desirable and speak English or French.

My wife and I both have PhDs in electronics (her’s was 50% neuroscience) I have run a successful business for 7 years and she works for a high end car manufacturer in electrical design as a manager, both are native UK.

We can get a permenant residency Canada visa straight off the bat without a job offer (quicker with a job offer though granted).

We can’t work out how to get a US visa for love nor money and have basically given up thinking about it.

Canada certainly seems easier from where we are.

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

#584

Post by cmrdporcupine »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #509
privacypoller wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm curious, though, what professions are being able to avoid all these high cost areas in Canada? Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria - while not SF or NYC cost of living, they are still really expensive and their programming salaries appear to be 50% at best of comparable salaries in major US tech centers. Are other professions in Canada doing better? Are the only people who can afford the real estate people that just own…

It's getting that way. We never had the housing price crash that the US had in the late 2000s. Things have continued to climb, and it's getting ridiculous.

I make a Google employee salary + RSUs. It is really good. I have no complaints about my compensation at all. I live on a 6 acre hobby farm, own two vehicles, am doing really well.

But I bought 6 years ago. I could not afford to buy this now.

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

#585

Post by [deleted] »

jkaplowitz wrote: post #434
t1o5 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than Montreal's cheap cost of living and good public transportation, everything else is not so great. Talented engineers graduating from McGill and Concordia are leaving the province in droves because of Quebec's weird language laws [1], high taxes and obsolete immigration system. (Eg: KFC was renamed to PFK to comply with the language laws) MIDI, the immigration department of Quebec which has fully autonomy fo…

I'm a US-citizen immigrant to Canada, selected by Quebec and living in Montreal. Many of these assertions, though commonly believed, are half true. The Global Skills Strategy that the federal government here is running includes tech workers, and yes it includes Quebec. MIDI has facilitated processing for many of those. For kids of people here on temporary work permits, including that type, English schools are allowed…

[deleted]

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

#586

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ryanobjc wrote: post #187
turingcompeteme wrote: post #63

Me and most of my engineering friends faced this decision 5 years ago. We all had to decide between offers from one of the big 5, or remaining in the Toronto-Waterloo region. I'm the only one who stayed. And that's only because I was presented with a really interesting opportunity not available to most. I can only speak to the University of Waterloo, but there was this idea that the only goal worth perusing was a cal…

It's not so much that people are paid better in the bay area, but the jobs are plentiful, more interesting, more opportunities. Endless opportunities in fact. Bay area best case scenario is top of the world. Founder of a world-wide renowned company. Best case scenario for being in waterloo: Founder of a huge telcom handset manufacturer until shifting markets cause massive failure written about in economics textbooks…

Honestly, best case for being in Waterloo is come work for Google Waterloo. If you can get through the interview you won't find a better opportunity anywhere. Working for the FANG in the Valley sucks compared to working for the FANG while having Kitchener-Waterloo living costs.

Or go work for Google in SV and then transfer back here after a few years.

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

#587

Post by [deleted] »

okatsu wrote: post #546
branchless wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language laws thing is not a big deal. People just get on with it. Montreal is great. I'm here, and if my kids don't go into IT they will work in another sector and will be able to afford to live. I'd consider SV a death sentence. Who wants to work when you will never achieve financial independence because you'll never own your own land? And if you have a huge mortgage you are your boss's bitch forever.

Yeah I find the language laws thing funny. I've worked with a crapton of people who never had to learn a word of French, and if they ever have to, then so what? French is the language here. That's like complaining about Italian in Italy.

[deleted]

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

#588

Post by Sytten »

I'm also from Canada, but I have a very different experience from the other posts. I live in Quebec and speaking french as a primary language. I am still a CS student, but from what I have seen (I am involved a lot with other universities) the retention rate in Quebec is much higher. Only a minority is leaving Quebec for internships or jobs later on. Even if most of us speak perfectly fine english the culture is very different. I see very good people accepting 40-50k salaries for junior positions. Making a lot of money in Quebec is kind of taboo, so seeking a high salary is not well seen. Last thing, our education system is basically free (1600 CAD per semester). After 3 years of university most of people in CS have at least 10-12k in their savings already. If someone has numbers for Quebec only, I would not be surprised too see the emigration isn't really an issue.

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

#589

Post by weber111 »

isostatic wrote: post #556
nostrademons wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a "crisis" in the way the Bay Area is, where there is barely any inventory even if you're a double-Googler household, 3BR homes on 1/4 acre go for $2.5M, and if you're a teacher or other non-tech job you're either living with roommates or have an hour and a half commute. However, Portland/Boulder/Denver/Austin have all seen large increases in house prices, driven largely by Californian housing wealth finding…

1/4 acre is a large amount for a 3 bedroom house - where I live in the UK a typical plot size in a semi-rural area, from the 70s is about 1/10th acre, for new houses it's about half that. The best solution to high demand is a land value tax. That applies not just to houses, but to offices, shops, parking lots, etc. This means that land owners have to use their land efficently. If parking triples in cost, so be it. If…

1/4 acre is pretty normal for middle-class neighborhoods in much of the US. A land tax would have to be pretty drastic to force people to knock down houses, split/combine plots, and build new houses repositioned to be more dense than they are now.

I think a better solution would be relaxing zoning/making new development easier in areas of high scarcity.

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

#590

Post by maxerickson »

weber111 wrote: post #589
isostatic wrote: post #556

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1/4 acre is a large amount for a 3 bedroom house - where I live in the UK a typical plot size in a semi-rural area, from the 70s is about 1/10th acre, for new houses it's about half that. The best solution to high demand is a land value tax. That applies not just to houses, but to offices, shops, parking lots, etc. This means that land owners have to use their land efficently. If parking triples in cost, so be it. If…

1/4 acre is pretty normal for middle-class neighborhoods in much of the US. A land tax would have to be pretty drastic to force people to knock down houses, split/combine plots, and build new houses repositioned to be more dense than they are now. I think a better solution would be relaxing zoning/making new development easier in areas of high scarcity.

A land value tax would make it easier to convince people to do zoning differently.

It's also a feature that it would have a larger impact in areas where land value is high and less impact in areas where land value isn't high (so "most of the US" doesn't really matter).

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