I find it very strange that they picked BufferBox instead of Thalmic Labs.
University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
61–70 of 158 posts
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#62There is something special about Waterloo. We noticed it a couple years ago.
What's special about UW students/grads, and what do you attribute it to?
In this case, I would attribute it to the province and wise choices with the allocation of government money.
Ontario, the province Waterloo is located in, has historically been pretty good about pushing technology, especially in rural areas. For instance, in the early to mid-nineties the rural public schools local to me had high speed internet connections, while I was reading articles about schools in big city USA that had no access to the internet at all. Today, we have a fibre optic internet connection to the farm, while I read about farms in the US still struggling with dialup connections. Additionally, programming has virtually always been a part of the school curriculum. My father even talks about programming on punch cards in high school. Again, I read about US schools only thinking about introducing this today.
I think that lead to a disproportionate number of young people growing up in the area of Waterloo with a strong technological mindset, due to availability of technology that much of North America did not have easy access to. Then, Waterloo, due to its reputation, gets the best of that bunch.
With all that said, I feel the government has pulled away from a lot of that technology spending in more recent times, so it will be interesting to see if Waterloo can maintain the quality of output for decades to come as the young children today come up through the system.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#63Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#64I find it very strange that they picked BufferBox instead of Thalmic Labs.
Why?
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#65There is something special about Waterloo. We noticed it a couple years ago.
We used to recruit there for my prior employer. Everyone thought it was because one of the big bosses got his engineering degree there. Then we found the folks were just as talented as their ivy league peers, and very honeset, down to earth, and willing to work hard too.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#66Pretty simple really.
They throw their students into the deep end and have them do multiple internships versus my public school in CA where I was the exception to the norm for doing an internship at all.
These people come out of school with the abilities of someone 2 years out of school but with the same freshness and excitement of other new grads.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#67Former Waterloo student here... It's a shame that more Waterloo folks don't stay in Canada and build their businesses here. Unlike when I was at UW, nowadays there is plenty of investment money available in Canada and significant tech hubs in Vancouver, Toronto and Waterloo itself. Not to mention the fact that even in less major Canadian cities (or the US Midwest) there actually is a tech scene happening and people a…
Every time I've looked into it in detail, I feel Canada's VCs/angels are essentially bankers. Too much risk minimization going on (at the expense of the entrepreneur). What I find is a travesty is that the recent govt of Canada investment in developing startup activity will most likely go to these glorified bankers to help them further reduce risk.
Look at how much YC has spent on its startups ... my memory might be faulty but when I heard pg give the number it was around 6 million. If the govt of Canada did a program similar to startup Chile where they would invest in people's startups for a few months, THAT would have been a game changer for the smart Waterloo and UofT grads. Squandered opportunities ...
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#68There is something special about Waterloo. We noticed it a couple years ago.
Like all great schools what makes the students great is selection bias. Waterloo has a great reputation, so it gets the first pick of the best students. The great graduates give the school a great reputation. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Not that I'm complaining as I was part of the system and have benefited greatly from it. Co-op is a very, very big deal. But the professors and the school itself is not appreciably differ…
There is a positive cycle that happens, no doubt, but I think it's more than this. McGill also gets great students, but my experience with Waterloo alums has been better.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's roughly $6000/term (for engineering, cheaper for CS students though) not including paying for food + housing (an additional $1600-3000 depending on where you decide to live on or off-campus). I'm in the boat of Waterloo grads who graduated with no debt. But I would hazard a guess that the majority of engineering students have little to no debt. And the students who do co-op in the US most definitely earn more mo…
I study Software Engineering at Waterloo right now; I paid 7600 this term including tuition, incidental fees, co-op fees, etc. but not including food or residence.
Oh wow it's increasing fast. When I started Soft Eng in 2008 it was like $5000. At graduation it was $6500. This is nuts.
Re: University of Waterloo: Silicon Valley's Canadian Feeder School
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
CS with coop is $6300 a term. I think engineering is a few hundred more.
When I started in 2000, it was around $3000 per term all in (tuition, co-op fee, and all the other misc. fees). When I graduated in 2005, it was $4200 per term. That's an increase of 7% per year on average. From 2005 to now (@ $6300), it's gone up 8.5% per year on average. Good to see that the university is keeping tuition affordable by keeping up with inflation. Not.
Ken I won't tell you what we're paying down here for tuition then ;)