Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

theglobeandmail.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 715 posts

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#511

Post by [deleted] »

vkou wrote: post #387
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of being an entrepreneur, in the GTA especially, is buying a second house in the suburbs and hoping the housing market continues rising. That had me LOL because I think it’s so true. If you were to suggest perhaps to start a business that innovates you’d be considered crazy. Although of course the new tech out of the USA will be adopted by all immediately.

You'd be considered crazy, because you can't throw a brick, and hit a VC that will give you money for a no team, no product, no idea startup. You'd also be considered crazy if you expressed those ideas in Chicago or San Diego, or Charleston, but that doesn't mean that we stereotypes about America not respecting 'changemakers' are accurate.

[deleted]

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#512

Post by Kelbit »

spoonie wrote: post #507
Kelbit wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That already happened, to a degree. Canada's dot-com darling was Nortel, which at peak accounted for 1/3 of the total valuation on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Then the bubble burst and Nortel collapsed. A lot of institutional investors swore off tech after that, and it hasn't really rebounded.

Nortel was an actual fraud though, as well as collapsing as a company. Changing financial reporting rules could prevent another Nortel-style fraud.

Agreed! But that wasn't the message that Bay Street took from it.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#513

Post by jknoepfler »

_xzxj wrote: post #134
whack wrote: post #66

Canada is in a really tough spot here. I've always admired Canadian culture/values, and in the abstract, would love to live in Canada one day. However, as a Software developer, the compensation and opportunities that one can find in SF/Seattle/NYC dwarf anything in Canada. Until this changes, Canada is always going to lose its brightest engineers, which will in turn worsen the problem even further. Some solutions I c…

Canadian here (who lives outside of Canada but recently did a stint there for a bit) and this will sound negative but f-it. Canadian culture sucks when it comes to trying new things. Canada has some extra safety net but the culture is puritanical and conservative and nobody wants to go out on a limb and try something new and crazy. Not like Americans. Those that do are constantly questioned by everybody. The idea of…

I believe you are comparing your Canadian upbringing, which reflected an adolescent perspective on a broad spectrum of society, to your adult experiences in a tech bubble. This is a pretty obvious fallacy (the tech bubble is a highly self-selected population of intelligent, well-educated people who like to build things).

I grew up in suburban Minnesota. It's not exactly ambition central, but it's miles ahead of small town America. You're talking about a country that elected Trump here. It's afraid of immigrants, "foreign" religions (as though American Christianity weren't a shambling syncretic nightmare), doesn't believe in evolution, and believes overwhelmingly in hell. We incarcerate more of our citizens per capita than any other developed country. We're not exactly free-wheeling dream seekers, at the median. We ridicule weird people, we spit on people who fail, and we hate anyone who is ugly, awkward, old, or otherwise socially disadvantaged.

Getting ahead is seen as fine - be ambitious! - but only because we think our friends are "winners" and won't be hurt by the risks they take, which is nonsense. We also don't prize reflectiveness as a culture, so when people gain sufficient experience to learn that this perspective is idiotic, they don't internalize it.

I'm not a giant fan of American culture, and I'm sad to see that anyone from Canada (I watch your Supreme Court proceedings for entertainment, full disclosure!) would idolize anything about they way Americans do things.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#514

Post by privacypoller »

antoniuschan99 wrote: post #435
vhodges wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree there's more ambition/drive in the US (Just observed, never having worked there), but there's lots here too. People do start companies. I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)

It's the East Coast vs West Coast mentality. West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture? I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger…

My dad has a good saying: "what takes three hundred years to accomplish in western Europe takes 3 generations on the east coast, takes 30 years on the west coast".

Not surprisingly they moved out west soon after school and I've been forever poisoned to the east!

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#515

Post by moltar »

spoonie wrote: post #507
Kelbit wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That already happened, to a degree. Canada's dot-com darling was Nortel, which at peak accounted for 1/3 of the total valuation on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Then the bubble burst and Nortel collapsed. A lot of institutional investors swore off tech after that, and it hasn't really rebounded.

Nortel was an actual fraud though, as well as collapsing as a company. Changing financial reporting rules could prevent another Nortel-style fraud.

And all of the tech was siphoned away by Chinese spies!

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#517

Post by aban »

slavik81 wrote: post #481
ng12 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2018/05/01/iranian-immigrat... Maybe Trump's mistake is being vocal about it while Canada maintains plausible deniability.

I feel like I'm not getting the whole story here. You don't need a security clearance to become a permanent resident.

Security clearance not as in the kind that you need to work government jobs. Security clearance as in "basic" background checks.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#518

Post by eloff »

52-6F-62 wrote: post #265
eloff wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do remote work for this reason. Although I did manage to recently find a contractor position that pays competitively here in Canada, I find that very rarely. If you do remote contract work, mostly for US or Swiss companies, you can make 2-3x a top Canadian salary. Just throwing that out there as an alternative to moving to the US.

How did you find your way into rates like that?

Without really planning it or advertising myself much. I don't have a website even. So I'm not the right person to ask. All I can say is just be persistent, don't sell yourself short, and most importantly always do an excellent job that wows your client. Work harder than your peers. I've always worked 6-7 days a week (always working challenging side projects after work), and after 15 years of doing that I'm better than most of my peers - it's like making a slowly compounding investment in yourself.

I haven't enjoyed life as much as my peers perhaps, although I do have a good time and I love what I do. But I'll retire early in my fourties and spend the rest of my life working on whatever I find interesting, traveling, or whatever else catches my fancy.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#519

Post by solitus »

r-s wrote: post #166

Canadian tech worker here. Base salary is 120k CAD in Calgary which is far above market rate but I am educated, experienced etc. That is 93k USD. I am looking to move to the USA because of higher salaries, but I am not 22 years old anymore and moving a family (with 2 earners) is no easy task. It falls on deaf ears though, 120k CAD is a good income, I can afford a house, cars, no debts etc so there is very little unde…

Wait what. 120k base salary? That's wayyy better than Montreal. Base salary in Montreal is probably between 50k and 60k...

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#520

Post by burfog »

ido wrote: post #264
padobson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Canadian companies make that much less money than American ones? Why should they get to pad their profit margins because 120k CAD is "good income"?

You can replace "Canadian" with almost every other country on earth and the question stays the same. I live in Germany, which has similar wages for software engineers as Canada. And in a 2 hours train ride I can be in Poland, where software engineers earn 1/3 their German counterparts.

This isn't due to any failure in Poland. It takes money to make a person choose Germany over Poland. Poland is really really nice.
Post reply on HN