31–40 of 121 posts
This is fairly true of pretty much every country except the US. Finland had Nokia, now in decline. Germany still has SAP but that's it. The UK has nothing large left, all sold abroad (last one was Autonomy). Most countries have never had a big tech company at all.
I am an Australian/British dual-citizen (born in Australia but lived and worked some ~3 years in London and ~1 year in Zurich) who now works in New York. I've had discussions with various people (mainly other engineers) on the topic of how one would go about starting a startup. These discussions--largely theoretical--have centered around three problems: 1. Where? 2. The route to funding/profitability; and 3. Visa/res…
engineers aren't even on the list of high-demand occupations Probably because there is no demand. My local municipal government was recently looking for someone to maintain their website, which is little more than a simple blog. The job description essentially laid out the job as your basic, run of the mill CRUD application. The kind of stuff kids in high school do for fun. When you read down to the requirements sect…
Engineers are in really high demand in Toronto for web/mobile.
It's amazing how most of these articles just talk about the difficulties of raising money. As if that's the only important thing missing in Canada for startups. What about the difficulty of finding out what users want (when your customers are all in the US), the lack of a concentrated talent pool of people in your sector (hard to network let alone hire), lack of sector-specific mentors. All much harder to do in Canad…
Our company spent over a year looking for a junior PHP developer. Literally couldn't find one anywhere (the few bites we did get had no clue how to actually program in any language). And on a personal level - I've never been able to find a decent mentor anywhere. Local user groups are anemic and tend to be filled with nothing but MBA's and "idea guys" looking for dev talent, so networking is a total bust.
While this situation is great for a contractor/young developer with talent (in demand, loads of bargaining power) - it's frustrating as all heck once you buy into a company and want to take it to the next level.
Our province is bursting with resource money - yet very little of it is being directed at creating a sustainable economic sector based on something other then crap that can be pulled out of the ground.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
engineers aren't even on the list of high-demand occupations Probably because there is no demand. My local municipal government was recently looking for someone to maintain their website, which is little more than a simple blog. The job description essentially laid out the job as your basic, run of the mill CRUD application. The kind of stuff kids in high school do for fun. When you read down to the requirements sect…
Where are you talking about in Canada? Engineers are in really high demand in Toronto for web/mobile.
I am an Australian/British dual-citizen (born in Australia but lived and worked some ~3 years in London and ~1 year in Zurich) who now works in New York. I've had discussions with various people (mainly other engineers) on the topic of how one would go about starting a startup. These discussions--largely theoretical--have centered around three problems: 1. Where? 2. The route to funding/profitability; and 3. Visa/res…
A lot of the points that are raised here are really valid - Canada has a lot going for it culturally and in quality of life.
But the infrastructure to help foster and grow companies simply isn't there. Surprisingly little is computerised - government, banking, even dealing with cellphone and internet companies (who are overpriced) almost always involves finding out that you can't do what you want online, or in any digital format, so you either need to send cheques and forms by mail or sit in an office somewhere while someone does the data entry of your form while you wait.
You don't even have a lot of the b2b services that you can get elsewhere. There's nothing like stripe, devpay, google checkout here, it's difficult/expensive to get your hands on mobile devices for testing, and even existing IT services all have the opaque "call us for pricing" bullshit that you get from services that don't have enough volume to be fair/transparent.
Canada seems to focus on one large tech company darling until it gets run into the ground for whatever reason, but along the way seems to ignore the small businesses that could turn into the next big-ish thing. Flickr, AbeBooks and PhoneGap all pretty much got sold under the radar, and companies that are still in Canada, like HootSuite, seem to be getting equally ignored.
Yeah, Canada's an awesome place to live, but in terms of a place for startups, it seems like it'd be much easier to move somewhere conducive to running your business.
edit: grammar/spelling
Even within EA, Bioware's not doing too hot as a division, isn't it?
"risk-averse"
I've been recently asking my Engineer friends about this very topic. I've always known that it's not the same as it was. I wish I was wrong. Quite a few have left the field, and others have left the country. I've been working in the high tech sector in Ottawa for 10 years now. I started out working for (big surprise) a start up telecom company as a co-op student. I loved it. Then tried the government. I wanted to kil…
It's amazing how most of these articles just talk about the difficulties of raising money. As if that's the only important thing missing in Canada for startups. What about the difficulty of finding out what users want (when your customers are all in the US), the lack of a concentrated talent pool of people in your sector (hard to network let alone hire), lack of sector-specific mentors. All much harder to do in Canad…
That's absolutely not the issue. In fact, Canada's national past time is to psycho analyse Americans. If anything we understand them better then they themselves.
Also there is tons of money available. The issue is smart money. We raised all our money in New York City.
I am an Australian/British dual-citizen (born in Australia but lived and worked some ~3 years in London and ~1 year in Zurich) who now works in New York. I've had discussions with various people (mainly other engineers) on the topic of how one would go about starting a startup. These discussions--largely theoretical--have centered around three problems: 1. Where? 2. The route to funding/profitability; and 3. Visa/res…
There's no need to prove that for H1B; it's only needed then sponsoring for employment based green card.