Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley • Hacker News Board

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

#631

Post by eloff » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:26 PM UTC

swat535 wrote: post #628

eloff wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do remote work for this reason. Although I did manage to recently find a contractor position that pays competitively here in Canada, I find that very rarely. If you do remote contract work, mostly for US or Swiss companies, you can make 2-3x a top Canadian salary. Just throwing that out there as an alternative to moving to the US.

Well this is interesting.. Based on my own experience of finding remote work for US companies. I usually get lowballed on the offers because I am based in Canada. In other words, US companies pay average salaries calculated based on my local salary rates. In fact I just had a phone interview with a SF startup for a remote position and they were shocked to hear that I was asking for an AVG salary rate in SF instead of…

Yes that happens. I explicitly exclude any US company with a presence in Canada - as that implies an HR department in Canada with Canadian salary guides. I got an offer from IBM that made me laugh. On top of that they wanted to own anything I did on my own time. Stay away from IBM.

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

#632

Post by tonyarkles » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

richardpap wrote: post #178

Raphmedia wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also not do anything risky at all and not worry about losing your housing. It's very comfortable to let life carry you around when you know that nothing bad can happen to you. Pessimism aside, there's not much education about the whole concept of being an entrepreneur. Most people wouldn't even know where to start. Everyone is being pushed to either college or a trade school right after high school. Not once…

What is different in Canada that prevents you from losing housing? What happens if you can't pay rent?

Well, there's a couple things related to employment:

- "At-will" employment isn't a thing. Unless you get fired for gross negligence or criminal reasons, you're going to get severence pay, which will help bridge the gap while you look for a new job. Anecdotally, I've seen people get fired for going on swearing rants at the owner, and the Labour Board required the owner to pay severence.

- Continuing with that, employers also understand the labour board's interpretation of what it takes to let someone go for being bad at their job. If you're past your probation period (nominally 3 months), you're probably going to have a good idea that you're going to get fired. There's going to be written documentation, Performance Improvement Plans, etc. You get a hint that the writing's on the wall and you should start looking elsewhere.

- Maternity/Paternity leave is federally mandated, and for a long time (35 weeks? 50 weeks? I'm not entirely sure, haven't gone through it). Having a kid isn't going to result in you losing your job, unless your employer really likes to live dangerously. The pay while on leave comes from the gov't, not the employer.

- If you're legitimately laid off (e.g. didn't quit), Employment Insurance benefits are apparently reasonably straightforward to get (I've never used this myself). They're capped and probably won't cover extravagant housing, but you'll be able to get by, especially if you've saved a bit of money.

- No real concern about healthcare costs bankrupting you.

Going back to the parent comment and projecting my current city (Regina, SK) onto it... if you go ahead and get an IT/Software job in the provincial gov't or one of the large employers here, there's a pretty good chance that you could carry on there for 20-30 years. There's occasionally layoffs and things, but as a whole there's a decent amount of stable ok-paying employment around if you want it. Projecting my own take on it: it'll probably be uninspiring and mind-numbing, but if you're looking for a 9-5 salary that can pay the bills and contribute to an RRSP... go for it.

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

#633

Post by ng12 » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:28 PM UTC

simonbarker87 wrote: post #583

ng12 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 basic…

Yeah, that's the point. If you're wealthy, highly employable, and culturally compatible it's easy. Everyone else gets a big fat "no". Trump's gotten flack for suggesting the USA do the same.

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

#634

Post by ttul » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

IMHO, while everyone whines about Canada’s lackluster funding environment or culture of risk avoidance, the real problem is SR&ED.

American investors and founders are always stunned to learn that a Canadian small business can get about 60% of each engineer’s salary back in the form of a refundable tax credit. This amounts to a silent partner in every Canadian tech startup - a partner who is non dilutive and (crucially) who doesn’t care at all whether the venture makes money.

Sounds great, but here's the catch: SRED allows companies that should have died long ago to keep on living, draining the talent pool for projects that are commercially “meh” at best.

And it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that if a country rewards non performing companies through government incentives, investment will be crowded out. And that’s exactly what we see in Canada. In essence, we don’t have great venture capital because we “don’t need it”. SRED is the big game in town, and it doesn’t reward companies that succeed commercially. It rewards far too many losers.

We should get rid of SRED, let the bad companies perish, and then allow private investment to fund risk.

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

#635

Post by Immortalin » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:39 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #73

52-6F-62 wrote: post #14

It's because of the pay and type of opportunities. You either take below market rate (like myself) or you work in something like one of the 300 ad-tech or we'll-build-your-website/app dev mills (more often than not it's both). There are a limited number of opportunities for truly interesting or innovative work if you don't want to work for "we're changing the world by creating the next uber/airbnb/cryptocurrency/coup…

> You either take below market rate (like myself) or you work in something like one of the 300 ad-tech or we'll-build-your-website/app dev mills (more often than not it's both). This is probably feeding the problem. You need good engineers to create high-value products in order to afford to pay high salaries for good engineers. Economies can't get ahead when they waste engineering talent developing trivial software t…

Avro Arrow cough

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

#636

Post by t1o5 » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

jkaplowitz wrote: post #617

t1o5 wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 importan…

I have no further interest in taking this conversation forward. I immigrated to Canada on Express Entry in which I got points based on my skills and that too within 3 months.

I feel for my colleagues in Quebec whose applications are on hold in Quebec with no explanation from MIDI for the past one year. If you start asking cites for all these from official source which is MIDI, I can't give you because MIDI don't have it either.

If MIDI publishes those numbers, it will reveal their discriminatory practices. Don't bother about replying. Have a great weekend.

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

#637

Post by neuromantik8086 » Sat, May 05, 2018, 4:51 PM UTC

AlphaSite wrote: post #620

neuromantik8086 wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep. That's why I moved away, although I'd imagine it would be nice for remote work. That said, I'd argue that it's not really that expensive compared to New York, especially if you consider living in less popular parts of the city like West Hill or surrounding towns like Lansing/Dryden.

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

#638

Post by dagmx » Sat, May 05, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

digianarchist wrote: post #267

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen... If you consider stock options and bonuses, you could be making at least double that in the valley. Canadians getting a raw deal by comparison. Cost of living in Toronto is not half of that of the Bay Area. Most like 2/3rds.

What matters to me is how much I can bank at the end of the month. With that in mind I've been looking hard at Austin but I'd need a H1-B. I'm not willing to lose a quarter of my household income because my wife cannot work.

I'm kind of in the same boat. Vancouver making 135k approximately (based on 40hr week, since wage is hourly)

Have an offer at a FAANG company that when converted to CAD is the same as what my wife and I make combined.

Unfortunately we'd still lose a big chunk of our household income till she can find work there. Fortunately she's American but still in a relatively niche field so might take some time.

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

#639

Post by bproven » Sat, May 05, 2018, 5:16 PM UTC

taysic wrote: post #388

trhway wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sunnyvale (current ground zero of Apple) median is close to 2M - that is only 5x of $400K which a lot of FANG and other engineers pull yearly (and that is the main reason for current SV home prices as, during such low mortgage rates, the market is naturally self-adjusting to 5-6x of prevalent salaries. In 2008 those houses were $700-800K+ - the 5-6x of those $120K-150K salaries back then).

Is 400k really for a lot of engineers? How many years of experience?

Its not true. Most engineers are in the 150-200K range at the most. It is true that some companies like Netflix do pay much more, but Netflix goes for the best of the best. This is the not the majority of engineers. So realistically if you are talking 80% of engineers, then no, they are not making 400K (so they can easily buy a 2million dollar house in SV) they are making about a 1/3 of that.

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

#640

Post by dagmx » Sat, May 05, 2018, 5:19 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #164

lainga wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coming from BC (west coast) I believe the taxation rate would work out about the same.

Income taxes BC CA are pretty similar, but other taxes aren't. Gas is the equivalent of $6/gal in Canada right now (due to taxes), sales tax is 12% and a lot of products (electronics, etc) are just generally more expensive in Canada.

This is something I've been comparing. I'd pay a little less in income tax in California actually for my brackets, but even though rents etc in SV are higher, I also would be paying less for gas, groceries and any entertainment and tech purchases.

The savings look like they will add up over time.