I'm from Indianapolis, but currently in South Korea, where accelerator/incubator programs are funded by the government. Angel investors work in some government agency. Centrally planned and controlled "capitalism". Engineer salaries much lower than US or Canadian salaries. Yet somehow, the Republic of Samsung/Hyundai keeps churning.
How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
21–30 of 165 posts
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#22As someone who has worked in the Canadian tech scene for 25 years, and rode two startups all the way to exit (i.e. acquisition by US companies), in my opinion the problem has nothing to do with exit mindset, good angels, bad angels or SRED. It is all about talent retention. Up until early 2000, Canadian tech salaries at least somewhat kept pace with US salaries, albeit 20-30% lower. After the dot com crash, however,…
> Every year the HR departments in Vancouver and Toronto do a hush-hush survey among each other and fix their salaries to the exact same level - maybe 2% but usually closer to 1% higher than the previous year. Collusion like that would almost certainly be illegal - do you have a source for that?
There is an entire industry around the collection of and aggregation of salary, benefits, and perk information. Every year your HR department pays a firm, fills out these surveys, and a few months later gets a report on salary ranges and perks for their industry.
If you think about it then it makes perfect sense, how else do businesses know they're offering competitive salaries, benefits, and perks?
Source: I consulted for a company that does these surveys and aggregates the results.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#23Who says it doesn't work? If it produces viable companies, it does work (sure, it might fail to do that, but the parent haven't showed that). Don't have to ve FAANG sized. If anything, in my book, it's more of a societal success and healthier for them to NOT be FAANG sized - and screw the VCs.
It's not just about size, at least not directly. FAANG companies are big in large part because they radically changed the world for the better, and most people who identify as part of the "startup scene" are hoping they can be a part of something similar.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#24Building a successful startup is hard. Even a software startup. You don’t just need a few engineers who know what they’re doing. You need designers, product managers, data analysts, marketeers, PR, some sales people maybe, finance folk, people ops, and maybe even a lawyer or two who understands tech. On top of that, you need people who are capable of bringing it all together and operate different orgs as a real tech company should, ie managers.
If you have any hope of succeeding, you need to eventually fill all those positions with experienced hires. Where are all the experienced tech workers? They’re in the already established tech hubs. How do you get those experienced tech workers to move to your aspiring tech hub? I don’t know, but certainly not with lower salaries and skimpy benefits. I don’t think I would leave SF to work at a startup in Toronto, or, let’s say Houston, where I couldn’t be confident that the company would be able to fill all the other roles it needs to to succeed.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#25I think you could put any non-Valley country/region name there instead of Canada
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#26As someone who has worked in the Canadian tech scene for 25 years, and rode two startups all the way to exit (i.e. acquisition by US companies), in my opinion the problem has nothing to do with exit mindset, good angels, bad angels or SRED. It is all about talent retention. Up until early 2000, Canadian tech salaries at least somewhat kept pace with US salaries, albeit 20-30% lower. After the dot com crash, however,…
But doesn't what you're describing reinforce the author's point? Tech firms in Canada aren't paying high enough wages to keep talent in their pool in order satisfy profit milestones rather than pursuing growth. That's the exact difference in mindset the author points out.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#27I think you could put any non-Valley country/region name there instead of Canada
One exception is that Canadian talent can migrate to US with very little friction (both immigration wise and culture wise) but you can't do it from many other countries. For many valid reason someone talented living in China, Japan, South Korea may not end up moving to US, instead set up companies in their home country.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#28I’m 10 years into my career and been in Toronto the entire time. I often feel like I’m slowly wasting my talent here that would be better utilized somewhere else. Maybe Shenzen or the West coast.
I work days at a job and nights and weekends on my business. The business is doing good, it’s slowly scaling, just a long slog.
In the last 10 years I worked at around 15 different places as a contractor. I met a lot of developers and tech people in general. I get the sense that people here just don’t have the motivation or ambition for business. Maybe because house prices have shot up the last few years, or because it’s the financial capital of Canada. People just want to make money (again the house, living costs, and taxes are high) or move up the ladder. Or maybe because life is comfortable so everything moves at a slower pace.
On the technology front, growing up learning about Nortel and RIM/Blackberry, I just feel like the Innovation Ecosystem is just not here compared to other places. Maybe it’s partially because Toronto Is just too conservative (eg. East Coast vs. West Coast mentality). There’s a lot of Fintech, Marketplace (Shopify), and SaaS Apps. Pretty much safe bets in terms of Businesses.
I think as a tech Founder part of your goal is to try to balance money generation with innovative ideation. Companies here adhere to money generation before innovative ideation, which results in “meh” businesses.
Being Asian I also feel disadvantaged. It’s like if I moved to Shenzen I would have an advantage because I’m westernized people there would value me more. But the grass is greener on the other side (aka. 996).
I think the Government protects businesses too much vs in the States. Seeing how there’s so many monopolies it’s hard for the small startups to rise up. Look at the telco monopolies and how verizon gets blocked into coming to Canada. Or how the marijuana LPs get a huge head start before the micro craft growers can enter, and you still need a bunch of license to grow and distribute.
It’s a comfortable life here though. I’m mainly here because of family.
My last point is that there is a big problem with startups being acquired by US companies. Tim Hortons got bought out by BK, North got bought out by Google. When I first started, this notable design company behind Medium, Teehan+Lax got bought out by Facebook.
Also, I think North got propped up by the tech media here even though their product was never good. v2 showed promise though, maybe they just burned too much VC/Angel/Grant money so they had to sell to Google.
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Every year the HR departments in Vancouver and Toronto do a hush-hush survey among each other and fix their salaries to the exact same level - maybe 2% but usually closer to 1% higher than the previous year. Collusion like that would almost certainly be illegal - do you have a source for that?
There is an entire industry around the collection of and aggregation of salary, benefits, and perk information. Every year your HR department pays a firm, fills out these surveys, and a few months later gets a report on salary ranges and perks for their industry. If you think about it then it makes perfect sense, how else do businesses know they're offering competitive salaries, benefits, and perks? Source: I consult…
> how else do businesses know they're offering competitive salaries, benefits, and perks?
I would assume from how many applicants negotiate - or outright reject - their job-offers
But yeah - I forgot about the consulting companies that do the survey thing.
But we have our own! https://www.levels.fyi/
Re: How the Canadian Tech Scene Encourages Finite Gameplay
#30Interesting. I wonder if Canadians insist that only Canadians must be hired by the FAANG companies in Canada.