Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)

Vancouver Startup Hackathon Oct 8-10: cperciva & A Thinking Ape (YC W08)
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"Plug and Play Tech Center" is opening an incubator here, and the Grow Conference happened over the summer at the new conference centre which housed the media during the Olympics.

Still plenty of dopey heavily-government-subsidized green tech, but I have hope for the future.

On a more serious note, I think the event is an awesome idea and would like to see event more startups in Vancouver. I think we've got the right culture and city to do it in. Also, VHS (Vancouver Hackspace)does a hack night on Tuesdays if anyone is interested. http://vancouver.hackspace.ca/wp/

There are also a few acquired startups in the past 2-3 years. LayerBoom (Joyent), Smallthought (Twitter).

Some solid companies such as: ElasticPath, VisionCritical, etc.

Despite the list of startups and "solid" companies. I wouldn't bet on their balance sheet. I've been here since 2001 and while there are several key buyouts in the networking/hardware/embedded industry (in the range of hundreds of millions dollars) back then, things have been relatively slow and possibly in declining state.

There has been a few lay-off within 2 years. EA closed their downtown office and laid off 300. McKesson laid off 80 people. Nokia is full of management engineers, bottom-lines are either outsource of contractors. One game studio that shows big potential closed their door early 2009. A few mid-size companies that used to grow 4-5 years ago are in hiring freeze. A few small companies died quietly.

Most of my friends are leaving Vancouver to go to Ontario, Silicon Valley (or US in general), or to Asia where mobile and IT are booming like mad (if you know the channel).

Here's a few problems with Vancouver:

1) Laid back culture

Vancouverites are well-known for enjoying their life; rain or shine. They have the "let's do it tomorrow" or "it's almost 5 PM on Friday" attitude. This caused a hit on software quality. Almost anywhere you go in Vancouver, you'll meet huge pile of technical debts with no plan to pay them. There is even a health software company build their product around MS Access even until today.

2) SR&ED

SR&ED is a grant given by the government to hi-tech companies. The point of having this is to attract people to build hi-tech industry in Vancouver. So far it looks like it has been back-firing us: companies neither-living-nor-dead. Some of them rely heavily on this grant since their business model isn't strong or their sales are not hitting the target or a combination of both. Their balance sheet with SR&ED will look positive but we all know that they're lying to themselves. They should be toasted.

SR&ED also attracts the wrong kind of investors.

Because of this, workers aren't getting paid enough. I think in general, hi-tech workers in Vancouver might get paid 30% below the average (by skill, by age, by experience) compare to US or Ontario with no chance of increase or bonus at all.

3) Competition is getting tougher and the culture of technology for technology sake

It's hard to find a job in Vancouver without 4-5 years of .NET experience with WCF, WPF, HTML, AJAX, CSS, SQL-Server 2005. Or 7-10 years of Java experience with Oracle, XML, XQuery, XPath, XSLT, XSL, Spring, Struts2, Hibernate, JSF, Seam, JBoss, WebSphere. There's one more choice though: LAMP + HTML, CSS, jQuery but working for marketing companies. They too, usually are looking for someone who has 3-5 years of experience. To some people this might be a good sign: barrier to enter is high. But with code quality is so low, I can't and won't understand this particular situation. Shouldn't you get better software from senior/more experienced people? Apparently not.

4) The rise of Business Analyst

Instead of educating software developers/engineers in here, Vancouver rewards Business Analyst more than the implementors. Schools have been offering continuing studies toward BA diploma degree so they can be employable in some enterprise/corporate with better pay, less work, more politics, and quite possibly more vacations. This lure many people to join the wave.

5) Weather

While it's milder here but imagine 10 months of gloomy, raining, and cloudy. It can affect your mood (according to scientific research).

It's a vicious cycle in here and it looks like it'll be worse. Kudos for people who can be successful building and maintaining a solid company here.