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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

#611

Post by neonate »

csomar wrote: post #572
dang wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> people on this forum snicker at me I hope you just mean that metaphorically, but if it's actually happening, please let us know so we can scold them. Putting others down that pettily is a breach of civility. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think he just didn't get the right words dang. No one is snickering at him for $65k. Probably the opposite. I, a relatively selfish person, get upset when I see a person being taken advantage of.

Sorry to nitpick, but I remembered from this previous comment that Kluny is a woman: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16425273, and it feels bad to leave that without mention.

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

#612

Post by dghughes »

dkasper wrote: post #477
dghughes wrote: post #474

In my small town I'm trying to find a junior sysadmin/network admin job but 99.8% of the jobs are developers. I say nay to the news people leaving in fact they seem to be hiring! And anytime I see news about Canada it seems Waterloo is mentioned making amazing things, quantum radar was the last story I read about.

Think you've got it backward. It's not that there aren't jobs in tech in Canada, it's that the people who could fill them are leaving.

Oh I understand that but from my perspective my small city of 70,000 seems to have a really vibrant developer scene. Each year it seems to grow more it's nice to see such a different industry do so well here.

Twenty years ago jobs here would have been food service or blue collar jobs like farming, fishing, welding. Now there are people coming here to work many are not locals which is also great they bring a new perspective on the world.

There wasn't even an official computer science program at the local University until roughly the mid 90s. I made an attempt at a CS degree in the early 2000s and the assistant prof (my age!) said he had to leave to get his CS degree at another Uni.

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

#613

Post by neuromantik8086 »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #435
vhodges wrote: post #360

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…

I hear this explanation floated around a lot, but I have extreme doubts that it has any bearing in reality. I live in NYC, and it's not that we're adverse to experimentation. Far from it; we mix and match cultures obsessively until the most bizarre "only in New York" moments come about.

Instead, New Yorkers are more likely to call bullshit on an idea when it isn't good or at a minimum challenge it to be better. You don't have nearly the same survival of the fittest attitude in the Bay Area from my impressions, and as a result tons of crackpot ideas end up funded. Admittedly, crackpot ideas in NYC also get funded (Juicero, oy) so I'm not sure if the difference can totally be attributed to New York's adversarial nature.

Mostly what it boils down to here I suspect is that start-ups just aren't as visible because all of the software devs and engineers realized that they could go work in finance rather than a "tech company" and make millions of dollars more. In this sense, lots of New York's innovative spirit gets channeled into problems relating to designing custom ASICs for HFT and trying to outwit the market.

As another point, who claim that the East Coast is averse to experimentation have a marked tendency to ignore counterfactual examples like BBN and Bell Labs. Even Xerox (in Rochester) and Kodak were pretty deep into R&D before they fucked themselves.

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

#614

Post by neuromantik8086 »

privacypoller wrote: post #514
antoniuschan99 wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My dad has a good saying: "what takes three hundred years to accomplish in western Europe takes 3 generations on the east coast, takes 30 years on the west coast". Not surprisingly they moved out west soon after school and I've been forever poisoned to the east!

Yeah, that's why Germany has maglevs and high speed rail and California can barely get it's own HSR off the ground.

That's a truly awful saying that's emblematic of the stupid prejudices brought about by American exceptionalism and the even more obnoxious (to me) West Coast exceptionalism.

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

#615

Post by neuromantik8086 »

nostrademons wrote: post #394
neilk wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People say that a lot but I'm not so sure. Half of my American friends had to move to the SFBA not just for a job, but because nobody understood them back home, or they'd be literally persecuted for being who they were. And these aren't always tiny rural towns. The coastal cities embrace some kinds of individualism for sure.

And similarly - the reason people don't move back (despite the high housing costs) is usually fear of persecution, or a perceived inability to be their true self, or a perception that they'll be a pariah without any true friends. That's also why when people do tend to leave the Bay Area, they go to other liberal areas like Seattle/Portland/Boulder/Asheville/Austin/Boston/NYC, even though those areas also have housing…

I actually really enjoyed living in Ithaca personally, and it had the advantage of being only a 2 hour drive from where I grew up in upstate New York. I moved there after college to try to find a good balance between cost of living and economic opportunity, basically using it as a stepping stone to move to NYC (although I'd consider moving back if I were going to raise a family or wanted to retire).

It was definitely a world of difference from where I grew up, even though it wasn't that far away. My experience in my hometown (Utica) was that it was a constant uphill battle fighting with idiots to try to get sensible policies in place to make the quality of life there better (context: It's a rust belt city with 0 industry or jobs, but a sizable amount of the population there actively makes things worse for themselves). For me, moving to a liberal area wasn't just a tolerance thing, it was a "I want to be around like-minded folks who actually care about improving their city and have the competence to do so". I don't want to come across the wrong way here- there were some people in Utica who really did try to make it a nice place to live, but I always felt like they were drowned out by fools.

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

#616

Post by okatsu »

Sytten wrote: post #588

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…

I'm in QC as well and was lucky enough to land a 65k job right out of school, so it was awkward to see my classmates not only accepting 45-50k salaries but also trying to rationalize them. I think you might be right about the taboo.

But otherwise I love Montreal. My salary today is definitely peanuts compared to SV but I live comfortably here and I saved way more than 12k during school thanks to internships and the low tuition costs you mentioned. The city is very culturally rich and I just really enjoy it here.

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

#617

Post by jkaplowitz »

t1o5 wrote: post #594
jkaplowitz wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The Global Skills Strategy is only for a certain category of employers, mainly large ones. A startup cannot use that to hire a worker. [1] > more points for an applicant with a bachelor's degree in computer science from anywhere in the world Quebec's immigration system is not point based as of now. Its FCFS. Though they say its points based, there is no indication from statistics that MIDI selects workers based on po…

I'm going to have to defer a substantive reply due to weekend plans, but if I have time Sunday night or Monday and this topic is still receiving enough attention that it would be broadly useful, I'll do so then. (No point in a delayed reply if it's just two strangers arguing at each other in isolation from the community discussion.)

But again, many of these statements rely on inaccurate assumptions, overlook important nuances or past/present/near-future changes on each system, are not supported by the linked cites, or are otherwise inaccurate or leave the wrong impression.

I have no reason to doubt that you're discussing in good faith with good motives. But if you're learning conclusions like those in these comments from media pundits or social network posts, you may want to prefer primary sources, pay close attention to details when examining or discussing any source, and give targeted cites corresponding precisely to each point you want to support.

Have a good weekend, and see you here Sunday night or Monday if this post's conversation activity is still going.

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

#618

Post by [deleted] »

robbrit wrote: post #602
itronitron wrote: post #522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less Because they could be very easily if they don't have a family safety net. I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.

> I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer. You could also look at it the other way. The lack of a safety net is like burning the bridges: it encourages you to be more productive and creative precisely because if you're not, then you've got nothing to fall…

[deleted]

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

#619

Post by ttul »

systemBuilder wrote: post #228

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…

That’s just not true. Some of the core VLSI innovations came out of the semiconductor lab at SFU. You just went to the wrong school, professor.

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

#620

Post by AlphaSite »

neuromantik8086 wrote: post #615
nostrademons wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And similarly - the reason people don't move back (despite the high housing costs) is usually fear of persecution, or a perceived inability to be their true self, or a perception that they'll be a pariah without any true friends. That's also why when people do tend to leave the Bay Area, they go to other liberal areas like Seattle/Portland/Boulder/Asheville/Austin/Boston/NYC, even though those areas also have housing…

I actually really enjoyed living in Ithaca personally, and it had the advantage of being only a 2 hour drive from where I grew up in upstate New York. I moved there after college to try to find a good balance between cost of living and economic opportunity, basically using it as a stepping stone to move to NYC (although I'd consider moving back if I were going to raise a family or wanted to retire). It was definitely…

Ithaca is an expensive place with not a lot happening. Its lovely, but not a place to wok.
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