
BlackBerry Inventor Says Canada's Challenge Is Keeping Techies - rbanffy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-14/blackberry-inventor-says-canada-s-challenge-is-keeping-techies?cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social
======
kogepathic
_> The biggest challenge as a country is retaining and recruiting the best
people to build industries in Canada and not lose them to other jurisdictions_

I'm so tired of hearing this complaint.

This is often stated as a problem, but the simple fact is that people can move
to almost any other developed country and make as much or more than they would
make in Canada.

Canada doesn't have a problem with talent exodous, they have a problem that
Canadian employers are stingy and then complain when all they have left are
people willing to settle for half they'd make in the US, or 2/3rds of what
they would make in Europe. [0]

Here's a free tip for any Canadian employers reading: want to have Silicon
Valley level talent at your company in Canada? Open your wallet. People are
more than happy to stay in Canada if you pay them what they're worth.

[0] Anecdotal evidence, I'm Canadian, living and working in Europe. I make as
much as people 10 years older than me make in Canada. Taxes are similar, cost
of living is similar, social benefits are similar, and 5 weeks paid vacation
(real vacation, not PTO).

~~~
cheez
Anecdotal evidence 2: I live in Canada and make US salary. It's amazing.

Canada is a joke when it comes to software salaries. For the last 10 years,
you'll get $110K tops as a senior dev. In 2009(?) I had an offer for $110K.
Last year I had an offer for $100K. Haven't made a Canadian dollar since 2007,
but figured I'd try.

If anything, Canada should be an offshoring panacea. We are among the best
educated, most creative, stable countries in the world and our developers are
stupid enough to work for peanuts.

~~~
91823915702
My senior team members and peers earn in the range of $120k - $140k in
Toronto. I earn quite a bit more, having management experience helps to break
past those ranges. I hear Amazon Toronto is paying up to $160k for IC's.

~~~
ryanobjc
The key part being "up to" and "senior team members"

All the numbers you quoted are for mid tier in SF. Yes cost of living is
higher here, but the salary taps out quite a bit lower.

Three of my colleagues own houses in San Francisco. Multiple of others own
homes in Oakland or San Mateo. None of us are very special people, in other
words just normal ICs and people who work hard, but not endlessly.

To work as a Senior Dev in Toronto means topping out at 160k. To work as a
senior dev here in SF means starting at 210k and only going up from there.
That's more than cost of living differences can cover.

------
rm999
I have a question that's been bugging me for a long time, ever since I worked
with a couple of brilliant Canadians who informed me of the dismal offers they
got before moving to the USA. Why does Canada pay tech people so little?
Market effects are clearly harming Canada, with an exodus of really strong
engineers from really great Canadian schools. It seems like a lose-lose for
Canada and its citizens.

~~~
Raphmedia
> Why does Canada pay tech people so little?

I've noticed from experience that IT is seen as a cost and not an investment.
A bunch of costly nerds that you can easily replace by outsourcing for $5/day.

People are also not aware of the price of working with software.

I gave up doing local freelance work because I had to educate every single
client that their totally custom and complicated project would cost them more
than $500 and that it would probably go above $2000.

Luckily, one can still find some interesting work. You simply have to look
very hard.

~~~
antoniuschan99
I live and work in Toronto.

Is the view of IT being seen as a cost an East Coast Mentality though?
Stemming from the days of Arthur Rock not being able to get any investment
money in New York.

The West Coast has always been more of a 'dream land', where even far fetched
ideas could see the light of day vs. here in the East Coast.

On another note, I heard rumours that the Liberal Government may tax small
corporations (up to $300k a year) as much as personal income?

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
These employee shortage posts are just bs. They really mean:

We don't like paying a high compensation to employees so we are asking
government to screw with the labor market supply so wages go down.

------
lyal
The solution is fairly straight forward - create economic and package parity
for Canadian entrepreneurs and workers.

It's hard for Canadian employers to pay similar wages to other countries for a
variety of reasons. Most of them are completely self-inflicted: things like
reliance on SRED to recoup salary costs (a program that's gotten increasingly
hard to qualify for, but as a retroactive program, devastating when not won),
priority selling into Canada as opposed to going global, etc.

The variability of the Canadian dollar is another huge factor. It shifts
around; leading to boon and bust against the US for compensation. When I left
Canada, it was at par, making $110k very competitive in the US nationally (if
not in the valley). It's obviously not there now!

The funding/exit end of things is the other big challenge. A huge chunk of the
"Valley Salaries" are RSUs from pubcos, options from startups, etc. It's a
chicken and the egg scenario that would be familiar in any secondary market in
the US; valuations are low, leading to low exit multiples, meaning that even
founders who exit often don't get life changing returns, before we even get to
employees. This means that options are discounted entirely in the compensation
structure.. making people more reluctant to give them out. It's a bad circle.

------
Thaxll
I've been to the bay area many many times for work and really there is no way
I would want to go work there, money is not everything when you see the
quality of life you get in Canada:

\- raise your family in a safe environment

\- not seeing crazy / homeless people in the streets

\- being able to buy a house

\- health insurance

\- public transport / traffic

ect ...

~~~
ryanobjc
As a Canadian who lives in SF, your bullet points really need qualifiers. In
general I find that Canadians over estimate the danger of living in the US.

As for that other stuff, it really depends on where in Canada. Don't tell me
that the public transit is great everywhere, because it isn't. Canada was
built on cars. Some cities, like exactly only Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal
have good public transit. Many do not.

BTW the amount of homeless people sleeping on the streets in Toronto was a
little surprising to me.

Vancouver has the same real estate market as SF. Good luck buying a $1.1m on a
$105k senior Dev salary.

As for health insurance, the system works if you have a good job with good
benefits.

~~~
okatsu
"As for health insurance, the system works if you have a good job with good
benefits."

That's kind of an important "if", though. My mother had a menial job when she
was diagnosed with lung cancer and I wouldn't have been able to cover her with
my health insurance. She unfortunately passed away but at least the attempted
treatments didn't cost us anything.

What do you do if you lose your job and suddenly fall severely ill? Return to
Canada?

~~~
ryanobjc
I do expect California to keep the ACA reforms regardless what happens
federally. I don't expect California to regress, and I expect health care in
this great state to improve over time. So, it seems like a non problem for
now.

Besides, the real issue in the US wasn't becoming sick, but becoming
chronically ill. That was the big problem with no escape, but ACA has helped
reduce that problem.

------
jgmjgm
For the time being Canada has a real advantage in attracting labor. It won't
last forever though.

The real problem facing Canada is a lack of coherent, fact-based innovation
policy. We have an innovation tax credit that is proven to be the most
inefficient in the developed world. Companies love it because they get free
cash (the program is also known as the "free money" program). As someone who
has worked in tech in Canada I have never, ever heard anyone say that the
credits made research possible. This is work that was going to happen anyway.

I recently heard Perrin Beatty from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce speak. He
argued that the government should no longer conduct long-term pure research
but should switch to improving incremental innovations because that what
companies need. Mr Beatty, a life long politician who inherited his wealth,
made it clear that he doesn't have a clue about industrial R&D or the
incentives underlying the different players. (Obviously, I've chosen a side in
this debate...)

As a Canadian this upsets me because there is a long history of poor
government investments, and putting political agendas ahead of economic ones.
I have a feeling that in four or five years the current feel-good story will
end with a lot of money spent but not a lot of actual money made. Or, more
typically, Canadian mid-sized tech companies sold to foreign buyers.

In short, there are many things governments do very well here. Industrial
policy does not seem to be one of them.

~~~
throw940427
I work for an e-commerce company in Canada. Essentially a glorified custom
shopify site. I watched a guy write a time sheet that said how many hours he
spent on "R&D" by coding ruby on rails. I think this is the program you're
talking about.

I forget how many thousands of dollars we got for that piece of paper. It
wasn't that much, but still outrageous.

~~~
nick_
Yep I've only seen misuse of the SR&ED program, assuming that's the program
you're talking about.

~~~
jgmjgm
Yes, it is. I have a contact that does consulting for one of the big
accounting firms. SR&ED credits are their bread and butter. A large part of
his job is to figure out how to get more companies to qualify as doing R&D.

Doing R&D to bake better bread? Check! Trying to make a better newsletter
online? Check! (Not kidding!)

Look for your local SR&ED consultants and see if you can get a map of where
they are located. Then tell me this program isn't a huge waste of money. There
are a lot of people employed in the job of making companies look like they are
innovative...

Don't even get me started on these tech hubs. Yes, they are important but they
have a vested interest in getting companies through them. To date, there are
very few statistics on dollar value invested and actual returns. i.e. there is
no hard data supporting these hubs aside from anecdotal evidence. Lots of
public money gets invested in them though.

------
corpMaverick
I can see that there may be a big difference in salary for a
google/facebook/microsoft/amazon engineer between Canada and the USA just
because there is very little work done at that scale in Canada.

But what about regular IT development work for fortune 500 companies ? Are
salaries comparable ?

------
simlevesque
Maybe I'm not looking hard enough but I don't see any reason to leave Canada
as a techie.

~~~
cheez
Try it. You won't want to come back. Techies are treated as royalty in the US
in certain areas.

~~~
simlevesque
I'm still not sure that I'd enjoy being treated as royalty.

------
corpMaverick
Bring the DACA kids to Canada. I know Mexico wants them, but many of these
kids don't really see themselves as Mexican anymore. May be they will better
identify as Canadian.

~~~
rbanffy
And they'll love the public healthcare, the good schools and the almost
complete lack of a mass-shooting-of-the-day.

------
rm_-rf_slash
"BlackBerry inventor says Canada's challenge is keeping techies, now read a
few paragraphs of speculative quantum computing bullshit and look at Taboola
headlines so we can get paid."

There, now you don't have to read the article.

~~~
flatfilefan
Yeah, article does not list a bit of evidence it is even true, forget about
explanation or proposed solutions.

------
throwawayhey88
I'd be genuinely curious to find out what Canadians on HN are earning. Title /
Tier/type of Company / Total comp

Sr. IT Analyst (DBA/developer) / Large Utility / 120k (115k base + premiums
for on call rotation, OT)

~~~
cakebrewery
It varies greatly here in Victoria. I've seen Jr. positions anywhere form 30k
to 80k. I've also seen senior positions as low as 50k. Java seniors earn
around 115k. People from Vancouver say it's worse there... Keep in mind the
Canadian dollar is significantly lower than USD right now, 100k doesn't get
far at all.

