The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle) • Hacker News Board

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#21

Post by gdilla » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 1:02 AM UTC

shazow wrote: post #8

reso wrote: post #2

In my opinion, the engine of Waterloo's success is the university's unique co-op program. UW operates on a four-month rotating co-op system, each student does four months of school, then four months of internships, repeat for the duration of their degree. Many of us land in the Valley, or NY, or London, and bring what we learn back here. Most of my friends have multiple google/facebook/valley start-up internships on…

Funny, I came here to say the exact opposite--how the four-months-at-a-time thing doesn't make any sense to me because I've always experienced the vast majority of learning during the 4-12 month range of my employment periods. University of Toronto (my alma mater) does 18 month coop terms which make marginally more sense to me. I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have no trouble finding a job when they gradu…

Waterloo grad here - The 4-month co-op is the rule, but that doesn't mean the school isn't flexible. There were placements in Japan that required 8 month co-op terms (you just switch "streams" when you get back to school and can still graduate on time). I did a 12 month co-op in Japan and they had no problem with it. Great experience.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#22

Post by troymc » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 1:44 AM UTC

wonderercat wrote: post #5

reso wrote: post #2

In my opinion, the engine of Waterloo's success is the university's unique co-op program. UW operates on a four-month rotating co-op system, each student does four months of school, then four months of internships, repeat for the duration of their degree. Many of us land in the Valley, or NY, or London, and bring what we learn back here. Most of my friends have multiple google/facebook/valley start-up internships on…

As a UW alumnus doing a full-time startup a few blocks from UW, I actually don't see much of this "vibrant start-up scene" happening. This is entirely my fault, which leads me to the question I've been wondering about for a while now: Where in town would I go to get hooked in ? VeloCity has always been on my radar, but their site is terribly uninformative and doesn't give much of a place to start. I hang around the u…

Check out Gary Will's blog:

http://blog.garywill.com/

and StartupCampWaterloo:

http://startupcampwaterloo.org/

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#23

Post by wavephorm » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:08 AM UTC

But there's no venture capital in Canada so it's nearly impossible to build a large tech company. Most successful Canadian startups sell out early because they know they'll hit major roadblocks. No capital plus a monopolistic telecom industry backed by government makes for a particularly hostile environment for small companies. Example: Kik got sued by Research in Motion IMMEDIATELY after receiving venture funding. The Canadian government actually encourages this type of anti-competitive behavior and does literally nothing to support any kind of small-business tech innovation. Any "technology innovation" tax incentives are geared toward saving oil companies billions of dollars per year, and do absolutely nothing to help small businesses.

Canada is an absolutely horrible place to do a technology startup, I do not recommend it, this article does not change this fact.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#24

Post by shazow » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:41 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #13

shazow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I came here to say the exact opposite--how the four-months-at-a-time thing doesn't make any sense to me because I've always experienced the vast majority of learning during the 4-12 month range of my employment periods. University of Toronto (my alma mater) does 18 month coop terms which make marginally more sense to me. I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have no trouble finding a job when they gradu…

UW alumnus here, IMO the PEY makes very little sense to both the student and employer. From the employer side, you're committing yourself to 18 months of full-time employment for someone who is an unknown value - I've heard this from multiple employers that the four-month terms are more attractive, since it's not nearly as damaging to make a bad hire. Worst case scenario you let the kid sit around and twiddle their t…

Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no employment obligation for 18 months. You go through the same interview process and you can get fired just like any other employee. This is no different than hiring any other employee.

> Long terms lead to more conservative hiring, leading to less placements overall.

I would argue that less higher-quality placement is a Good Thing.

> From the student side, ...

As a student, your goal is to start building your value and getting proportionally compensated as quickly as possible. Since most value as an engineer is gained well after the first few months of ramp-up you experience at every new job, you end up getting very minimal value out of a bunch of 4 month terms. Not to mention you won't be getting paid nearly as well as someone who is not labelled as a "student".

18 months is marginally better because you're actually growing your skillset, integrate as an important and dependable part of the team, and gain valuable engineering experience. On the other hand, you're still under-compensated and it's trickier to switch jobs half way through if you realize that you've made a mistake.

Finally, my argument is that the most optimal path is skip coop/PEY and find a relevant job right out of school. Even if it's not the best job in the world. You'll be far better off sticking around for 12-18 months, quitting, and getting a second real job, than to do 18 months of PEY and getting your first real job. Both in terms of real valuable experience and compensation.

When big companies look at your "industry experience", the counter doesn't start until you're no longer a student. I've been building and selling software since I was 14, but none of that went into account with HR of big companies when they were deriving the offer for my salary or position. Negotiation and positioning, on the other hand, did make a big difference. But that's another story.

The best value for coop/PEY/internships is to students who lack confidence or experience in finding a job right out of school, or they simply have no idea what they want to do when they grow up or want to drag out their student status for as long as they can. These are all very valid reasons.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#25

Post by shazow » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:43 AM UTC

nano81 wrote: post #14

shazow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I came here to say the exact opposite--how the four-months-at-a-time thing doesn't make any sense to me because I've always experienced the vast majority of learning during the 4-12 month range of my employment periods. University of Toronto (my alma mater) does 18 month coop terms which make marginally more sense to me. I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have no trouble finding a job when they gradu…

What does an 18 month co-op give you that graduating earlier and starting work doesn't? The thing I liked about 4-8 month co-ops at UW was that I didn't necessarily know what I wanted to end up doing. This way I got to try working in a whole bunch of situations to find what I ultimately enjoyed most. I did co-ops in southern California, Silicon Valley, NYC, and around Canada. I worked for startups, big companies, and…

See the response I gave to potatolicious. Because you didn't know what you wanted to pursue and wanted to sample around, I'd say you're within one of the cases where coop is a good value.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#26

Post by shazow » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:45 AM UTC

redthrowaway wrote: post #12

shazow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny, I came here to say the exact opposite--how the four-months-at-a-time thing doesn't make any sense to me because I've always experienced the vast majority of learning during the 4-12 month range of my employment periods. University of Toronto (my alma mater) does 18 month coop terms which make marginally more sense to me. I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have no trouble finding a job when they gradu…

>I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have no trouble finding a job when they graduate without coop. I don't care how good a coder you are when it comes to personal projects, or how well you do in ACM comps, the skills you gain from working on large-scale projects are invaluable to employers. True, the top 5% of CS students might have no trouble finding work anyway, but co-op can turn the next 30% from risky…

Agreed, and I worked on some really cool large-scale projects when I got my first job right out of school.

I didn't have great grades, I didn't have the top scores on coding sites, but I did have some personal projects and I networked, interviewed at a lot of companies, got a few offers and chose the best one.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#27

Post by randlet » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:47 AM UTC

rll wrote: post #17

reso wrote: post #2

In my opinion, the engine of Waterloo's success is the university's unique co-op program. UW operates on a four-month rotating co-op system, each student does four months of school, then four months of internships, repeat for the duration of their degree. Many of us land in the Valley, or NY, or London, and bring what we learn back here. Most of my friends have multiple google/facebook/valley start-up internships on…

I went to Waterloo as well and absolutely loved the 4-month co-op terms and would have hated being limited to a single 18-month term with a single company. You get to try a little bit of everything. I did big companies (BNR, NT in Toronto), a smaller Toronto startup and mid-size (Novatel in Calgary) and after freezing my a in Alberta for a winter term went to southern Brazil for my next two terms.

Totally agree with this. By the time I'd graduated I'd spent 4 months at a large communications company, 4 months tutoring college-level math, 4 months coding in an astronomy/astrophysics lab and 4 months writing medical physics code at a privately funded research institute.

Getting to experience 4 different work environments/subjects (in 4 different cities) was much more valuable to me in the long run than it would have been sticking at one place for 16-18 months. Those varied experiences also look great on a job/grad school application.

Many of the programs do (did?) allow you to go for an 8month co-op as well.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#28

Post by wwhchung » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 2:57 AM UTC

As a former Waterloo co-op (and founder of a YC company), I'd have to say that the 4 month co-op program added a LOT of value. I learned more in each of those 4 month co-op terms than each of my school terms. Additionally, from all my interviewing experience (i.e. interviewing for full time hire's), those that come from a co-op program (any co-op program, even UofT's) are way better prepared and have much more practical knowledge.

This is a core reason why we still recruit heavily in Waterloo, for both co-op's and full-times. In fact, we're going to be in Waterloo on January 19th, 2012 for a tech talk with YC and a number of other YC companies. Please feel free to drop by if you're in town.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#29

Post by karamdeep » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 3:02 AM UTC

wavephorm wrote: post #23

But there's no venture capital in Canada so it's nearly impossible to build a large tech company. Most successful Canadian startups sell out early because they know they'll hit major roadblocks. No capital plus a monopolistic telecom industry backed by government makes for a particularly hostile environment for small companies. Example: Kik got sued by Research in Motion IMMEDIATELY after receiving venture funding. T…

What a ridiculous statement. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of challenges that entrepreneurs encounter when starting or scaling a business here, but it's time to stop using the crutch of VC/Government/Telecom interference to support the assertion that Canada is "an absolutely horrible place to do a technology start up. The bottom line is that if you still think this is the case, you haven't been paying attention to what's been happening over the past few years in this country. Do the names Fixmo, Shopify, Achievers, Accedian Networks or BeyondTheRack ring a bell? How about HootSuite or FreshBooks? A Thinking Ape, Vidyard, Allerta, Upverter, Enflick, GoInstant, Wave Accounting, Well.ca, Chango...the list goes on and on - all world class companies run by entrepreneurs who spend their time executing, not complaining. Radian6 and Q1Labs sold for almost $1B combined - is that large enough for you??? Last time I checked none of those companies were being sued by RIM, being squeezed out of SR&ED credits by oil companies or being held in check by Rogers/Bell/Telus. We (iNovia Capital) have even funded some of them, and are proud to stand behind them and every other entrepreneur in Canada who are working their asses off to prove you wrong.

Re: The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)

#30

Post by Intropy » Mon, Jan 09, 2012, 3:11 AM UTC

canuc wrote: post #19

I'm a recent UW grad and though I think there is huge value in the co-op program I think the main driver is the University's tech-driven culture. Just go to Davis Center (Waterloo's tech library) for an hour and it will be hard not to get swept up in a discussion about new technologies, innovative new applications and interesting points of view. Even the humanities curriculum has a tech twinge; I graduated with a BA…

I'm a recent alumnus of the UW Architecture program. I know the faculty there are pushing hard to incorporate emerging technologies into the core undergrad curriculum and many of the graduate students there are doing really interesting work in computational design and UX.

Additionally I can't say enough good things about the co-op program. While I was there every single one of my classmates got a placement every term at a firm within our industry. The economy was better then, but most of us had our pick when choosing what city we wanted to work in abroad. And this is on top of the compulsory term at the school's Rome studio in 4th year.

Some of my classmates have gone on this year to create non-tech start-ups of their own, such as Our Paper Life (http://ourpaperlife.com/) here in Toronto and Factory Five (http://www.wearefactoryfive.com/) in Shanghai.

I wouldn't trade the education and the diversity of my experience there for anything.