Canada still has plenty of talent. U of T has strong CS/Engineering programs. Only a few of my buddies are in the valley.
University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
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Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#12is Waterloo the only university in canada with similar startup culture and recognition from tech companies? i was unfortunately denied admission recently to Waterloo, and I'm planning to try UBC and UToronto. UBC in particular has a special program for people like me - college graduates seeking a second degree in CS, which sounds really good but I keep hearing these things about Waterloo which makes me feel really sad about not making it there.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#13The Waterloo CS co-op program got me down to the Valley in 1998. I wound up dropping out in 2000 to move to New York (I don't recommend this lightly, but it didn't harm my career and likely helped it due to timing).
It was a great program in that it actually tried to teach programming alongside classic CS (this was before the SoftEng degree), and forced you to get out in the real world as soon as possible. The biggest problem was that (due to the grind in years 3 and 4) most of my peers who graduated CS wound up hating computers and couldn't wait to get into management. Also, graduating tends to take 5-6 years due to the work terms. I left in 3B so didn't quite have those scars.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#14For anyone wanting to hire students from Waterloo / looking for work in the area:
https://uwaterloo.ca/jobmine/employers / https://uwaterloo.ca/hire/
http://waterlootechjobs.com/en/
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#15Waterloo is a sleepy, postindustrial city of 100,000, a little less than 200 miles northeast of Detroit. Ummm ... Waterloo-Kitchener-Cambridge form the K-W region (these 3 blend together with indistinguishable border) of ~ 1/2 Million peoople. Hardly "sleepy" the region is know as Canada's Tech Triangle and has a vibrant corporate and startup economy. While it is 200 miles northeast of Detroit, it may as well be 2000…
KW, like the rest of the 401 corridor, still has a huge industrial base, much of which is deeply involved with Detroit and the rest of the US manufacturing base.
The postindustrial side of KW may be the what gets all the PR and kudos, but as a whole, in terms of pure economic output and employment, manufacturing is still a substantially greater influence in the region.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#16There is something special about Waterloo. We noticed it a couple years ago.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#17Oddly once upon a time (back in '94) we were a feeder for Canadian high-tech and Microsoft, but very few students ended up in the Valley, at least not fresh out of school. In the intervening 20 years Canadian high-tech has stayed flat at best while the US has taken on more and more Waterloo grads every year. The increases in UW engineering & CS enrollment over the past 20 years are basically all going to the US (in m…
As an Ontarian this is a little sad, although I'm sure there's places in the US where the same thing happens. Certainly though I think companies should think of setting up engineering locations in KW. You can get quality people for way less money than you would have to pay in the Valley.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#18"Most years, we hire more students out of Waterloo than any university in the world" -Bill Gates
I think we topped Google one year too, but couldn't find a source.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#19If you are a tech/software company you should definitely consider taking on Waterloo co-ops. There is a lot of competition between the students to get the best jobs. This results in students that go above and beyond in their work to distinguish themselves for the next round of interviews for their next co-op job. On top of that, having this kind of ambition on your team can rub off on the rest of the team boost the teams productivity.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#20No mention of Chamath Palihapitiya or Eric Migicovsky. I think the title and intent of this article are spot on, but like so many things Business Week, the reporting doesn't hit the important datapoints. Why focus on BlackBerry, which certainly deserves mention, but totally ignore two huge successes that support the thesis of the article.