
The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle) - DanBC
http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2012.01-cities-the-invention-of-waterloo
======
reso
In my opinion, the engine of Waterloo's success is the university's unique co-
op program. UW operates on a four-month rotating co-op system, each student
does four months of school, then four months of internships, repeat for the
duration of their degree. Many of us land in the Valley, or NY, or London, and
bring what we learn back here. Most of my friends have multiple
google/facebook/valley start-up internships on their resume by the time they
graduate.

I was a little disappointed that they didn't mention our vibrant start-up
scene. I write this now from Velocity, the university's start-up incubator,
from which four YC companies have graduated. There are Union Square and
Sequoia-funded companies in town, and we account for every Google acquisition
in Canada, ever.

~~~
shazow
Funny, I came here to say the exact opposite--how the four-months-at-a-time
thing doesn't make any sense to me because I've always experienced the vast
majority of learning during the 4-12 month range of my employment periods.

University of Toronto (my alma mater) does 18 month coop terms which make
marginally more sense to me. I'm generally anti-coop for people who would have
no trouble finding a job when they graduate without coop.

> We [Waterloo grads] account for every Google acquisition in Canada, ever.

That's completely untrue. There are plenty of UofT grads acquired into Google,
off the top of my head: Bumptop[1] (or even myself[2] if you count that). A
bunch more from BC and Montreal, I'm sure. I'd be skeptical of a claim that
Waterloo even accounts for a majority of Canadian acquisitions into Google.

\--

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumptop>

[2] [http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/10/google-acquires-
socialgrap...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/10/10/google-acquires-
socialgrapple/)

~~~
potatolicious
UW alumnus here, IMO the PEY makes very little sense to both the student and
employer. From the employer side, you're committing yourself to 18 months of
full-time employment for someone who is an unknown value - I've heard this
from multiple employers that the four-month terms are more attractive, since
it's not nearly as damaging to make a bad hire. Worst case scenario you let
the kid sit around and twiddle their thumbs for the last month or two. Long
terms lead to more conservative hiring, leading to less placements overall.

From the student side, co-op isn't just about learning how it is to work in-
industry, but also to gain a breadth of experiences and find out where you
want to be (or more cynically, where you stand a chance). I had 6 co-op terms
spread over 5 companies, and it's been a huge career accelerant - I started
off working at a no-name code shop, which paved the way to a brand-name code
shop, which convinced someone at a highly algorithmic code shop to take me on
for 4 months, and that finally got the Big Boys (Goog, Facebook, Amazon, MSFT,
etc) to take me seriously enough to hire me. I simply could not have achieved
the end result after graduation if I was limited to only a single co-op term.

The way I see it, UW's co-op system takes your first few years of ladder
climbing and compresses that into, well, almost no time at all. I've been able
to bypass a great deal of the drudge work right off the bat simply by having
good names and solid reviews on my record.

~~~
shazow
Correct me if I'm wrong but there is no employment obligation for 18 months.
You go through the same interview process and you can get fired just like any
other employee. This is no different than hiring any other employee.

> Long terms lead to more conservative hiring, leading to less placements
> overall.

I would argue that less higher-quality placement is a Good Thing.

> From the student side, ...

As a student, your goal is to start building your value and getting
proportionally compensated as quickly as possible. Since most value as an
engineer is gained well after the first few months of ramp-up you experience
at every new job, you end up getting very minimal value out of a bunch of 4
month terms. Not to mention you won't be getting paid nearly as well as
someone who is not labelled as a "student".

18 months is marginally better because you're actually growing your skillset,
integrate as an important and dependable part of the team, and gain valuable
engineering experience. On the other hand, you're still under-compensated and
it's trickier to switch jobs half way through if you realize that you've made
a mistake.

Finally, my argument is that the most optimal path is skip coop/PEY and find a
relevant job right out of school. Even if it's not the best job in the world.
You'll be far better off sticking around for 12-18 months, quitting, and
getting a second real job, than to do 18 months of PEY and getting your first
real job. Both in terms of real valuable experience and compensation.

When big companies look at your "industry experience", the counter doesn't
start until you're no longer a student. I've been building and selling
software since I was 14, but none of that went into account with HR of big
companies when they were deriving the offer for my salary or position.
Negotiation and positioning, on the other hand, did make a big difference. But
that's another story.

The best value for coop/PEY/internships is to students who lack confidence or
experience in finding a job right out of school, or they simply have no idea
what they want to do when they grow up or want to drag out their student
status for as long as they can. These are all very valid reasons.

~~~
karamdeep
I think you'd be surprised to see how much responsibility is given to co-op
students after their first or second work term, and how well they are
remunerated for doing so. My last work term was in Sunnyvale, came with a
$5,000 US a month salary, $1000 monthly rent allowance, $400 a month car
allowance, plus a travel allowance for 2 trips home. Upon graduation, most of
my class went into "real" roles at their companies, none of this entry level
bullshit that usually beckons for new grads who have never shipped code before
and can't be trusted to handle anything north of double checking bug reports.
Finally, the variety of work experiences helps you find a niche in terms of
the types of projects and companies you'd like to be associated with post
graduation. It's a giant red flag to see employees move on to new gigs every 4
months after graduation, so even if you hate your job you're somewhat
obligated to stick around for at least a year to prove you're capable of
fulfilling a "commitment". Why not start off doing something you already know
you'll enjoy, with people you've worked with before, and a pay cheque that
gives you proper credit for what you've already proven you can do?

------
mdkess
The tragic thing is that software companies in Waterloo don't pay that well.
Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. are offering new college grads
around $100k salary, while companies such as RIM and OpenText in the Waterloo
region pay maybe $60k, so all of the talent in the region leaves. Having gone
through Waterloo's co-op program, I found that Canadian software companies
tend to be very management heavy, which is not what an ambitious college
graduate is looking to get into. There is a lot of potential, but there are
some big cultural problems that I think need to be fixed.

~~~
shazow
The salary is scaled to the cost of living. Even Google doesn't pay the same
if you're working in Mountain View or Waterloo or Australia.

$100k base salary in Waterloo adjusted for cost of living would be like an
$180k base salary in Mountain View. (Disclaimer: From personal experience,
don't have a citation on the exact ratio.)

I suspect people leave to Silicon Valley for the opportunities, tech culture,
and weather far more than the salaries.

~~~
potatolicious
Your point is valid in theory, but having spent the last 3 years in the US and
keeping in a keen eye on the market continent-wide, it just doesn't bear out
in reality.

I started off after graduation in Seattle, where the living costs are
downright identical to what you would find in Vancouver or Toronto - except I
was making $100K+ total comp. Compare this with the $50-55K offers I was
getting from Canadian companies, and it was a complete no-brainer.

The gap has only widened - I'm now in SF making _over double_ what my going
rate in Canada would be. The cost of living is higher (well, mostly just the
rent, everything else is similar), but it doesn't even come close to canceling
out the raw pay difference.

But sometimes the pay is a red herring - I know a lot of Canadian expats in
the USA who would love to go home, and many are willing to take substantial
pay cuts in exchange for Canadian QOL, including myself. In fact, some of us
have actually investigated this option thoroughly, and the ugly truth is:

There just aren't that many interesting, challenging jobs for programmers in
Canada. It's a country full of code sweatshops and satellite-office monkey
labs. Interesting, fulfilling, high-impact jobs are few and far between, and
_incredibly_ hotly contested where you do see them. Compare with being in SF,
where someone practically begs me to go work on _their_ interesting, world-
changing problem every week. So in order for me to go back to Canada, I'd not
only have to take a >50% pay cut, but also resign myself to ye olde cubicle
and TPS reports. Entirely unacceptable.

~~~
wwhchung
We're a tech startup in Vancouver. If you're interested in coming back to
Canada, please look us up. We've build up our company to be very much like
what you can find in the US (i.e. ownership, high quality of talent, cool
things to work on). We're always actively hiring, and we compensate very
fairly, since we know we're looking for the best hackers in the world. :)

Ya, I know this sounds like a pitch, but if anyone in the US is thinking of
moving back to Canada, please contact us. We've written about our reasons for
opening up our primary dev shop up here, and one of them was specifically for
the really great devs that wanted a cool place to work in Canada.

Our website is www.athinkingape.com It might look like a social games
development shop, but it's actually much more. ;)

------
wwhchung
As a former Waterloo co-op (and founder of a YC company), I'd have to say that
the 4 month co-op program added a LOT of value. I learned more in each of
those 4 month co-op terms than each of my school terms. Additionally, from all
my interviewing experience (i.e. interviewing for full time hire's), those
that come from a co-op program (any co-op program, even UofT's) are way better
prepared and have much more practical knowledge.

This is a core reason why we still recruit heavily in Waterloo, for both co-
op's and full-times. In fact, we're going to be in Waterloo on January 19th,
2012 for a tech talk with YC and a number of other YC companies. Please feel
free to drop by if you're in town.

~~~
sabraham
have a link for the event?

~~~
wwhchung
Yup: <http://www.athinkingape.com/events/>

Hope to see some of you there.

~~~
sabraham
awesome, thanks

------
nano81
If you are interested in hiring Waterloo co-ops at your company, they intern
in four month intervals year round: <http://hire.uwaterloo.ca/>

~~~
fraserharris
Here is a good guide for hiring UW co-ops:
[http://barbaramacdonald.ca/post/11153941771/how-to-hire-
the-...](http://barbaramacdonald.ca/post/11153941771/how-to-hire-the-best-
coding-interns)

Written by my cofounder

------
canuc
I'm a recent UW grad and though I think there is huge value in the co-op
program I think the main driver is the University's tech-driven culture. Just
go to Davis Center (Waterloo's tech library) for an hour and it will be hard
not to get swept up in a discussion about new technologies, innovative new
applications and interesting points of view. Even the humanities curriculum
has a tech twinge; I graduated with a BA in Economics being able to code
concisely, and use an arsenal of open source tools to solve problems the are
discounted as being "too mathy/techy" by other economics programs.

You are going to see a whole lot more creativity coming out of Cambridge as
well. The architecture program has created some of the most talented designers
in the world and the admin are doing some great new things to have students
apply those skills to UX.

~~~
Intropy
I'm a recent alumnus of the UW Architecture program. I know the faculty there
are pushing hard to incorporate emerging technologies into the core undergrad
curriculum and many of the graduate students there are doing really
interesting work in computational design and UX.

Additionally I can't say enough good things about the co-op program. While I
was there every single one of my classmates got a placement every term at a
firm within our industry. The economy was better then, but most of us had our
pick when choosing what city we wanted to work in abroad. And this is on top
of the compulsory term at the school's Rome studio in 4th year.

Some of my classmates have gone on this year to create non-tech start-ups of
their own, such as Our Paper Life (<http://ourpaperlife.com/>) here in Toronto
and Factory Five (<http://www.wearefactoryfive.com/>) in Shanghai.

I wouldn't trade the education and the diversity of my experience there for
anything.

------
rll
One thing nobody has mentioned is also that most Waterloo students come out of
there with more money than they had going in. No crippling student loans to
deal with. Co-op terms aren't just great experience they also pay quite well.

(Unless things have changed, I graduated in 1993 and this was the case back
then)

~~~
potatolicious
UW engineering tuition is through the roof now. It's so bad now that I'm not
sure what I would've done had I had the unfortunate luck of being born 3-4
years later. Breaking even with co-op is out of the question for a lot of
students, though it still helps a lot.

After all, without co-op, for most UW engineering programs you're now looking
at $40-45K tuition + living costs + supplies/books... A $80-90K loan is not at
all out of the question.

~~~
ekosz
Is that per year or for the whole degree? I was living in Waterloo and the
students I talked to were paying $5-$15k a semester. To put that in
perspective for an American, at RIT I was paying $40k a year + all of those
living expenses.

~~~
potatolicious
That's for the whole degree. Waterloo engineering is $10-12K per year at this
point for just tuition. Stack living costs on top...

Definitely not as bad as the Americans have it, but education is starting to
approach unaffordability, and it'd be a shame if we had an American-style
system in Canada.

------
wavephorm
But there's no venture capital in Canada so it's nearly impossible to build a
large tech company. Most successful Canadian startups sell out early because
they know they'll hit major roadblocks. No capital plus a monopolistic telecom
industry backed by government makes for a particularly hostile environment for
small companies. Example: Kik got sued by Research in Motion IMMEDIATELY after
receiving venture funding. The Canadian government actually encourages this
type of anti-competitive behavior and does literally nothing to support any
kind of small-business tech innovation. Any "technology innovation" tax
incentives are geared toward saving oil companies billions of dollars per
year, and do absolutely nothing to help small businesses.

Canada is an absolutely horrible place to do a technology startup, I do not
recommend it, this article does not change this fact.

~~~
karamdeep
What a ridiculous statement. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of challenges
that entrepreneurs encounter when starting or scaling a business here, but
it's time to stop using the crutch of VC/Government/Telecom interference to
support the assertion that Canada is "an absolutely horrible place to do a
technology start up. The bottom line is that if you still think this is the
case, you haven't been paying attention to what's been happening over the past
few years in this country. Do the names Fixmo, Shopify, Achievers, Accedian
Networks or BeyondTheRack ring a bell? How about HootSuite or FreshBooks? A
Thinking Ape, Vidyard, Allerta, Upverter, Enflick, GoInstant, Wave Accounting,
Well.ca, Chango...the list goes on and on - all world class companies run by
entrepreneurs who spend their time executing, not complaining. Radian6 and
Q1Labs sold for almost $1B combined - is that large enough for you??? Last
time I checked none of those companies were being sued by RIM, being squeezed
out of SR&ED credits by oil companies or being held in check by
Rogers/Bell/Telus. We (iNovia Capital) have even funded some of them, and are
proud to stand behind them and every other entrepreneur in Canada who are
working their asses off to prove you wrong.

~~~
wavephorm
I am speaking from my personal experience. None of the Canadian investment
firms, or incubator even replied to my emails, let alone give any reasonable
valuation. The Canadian YC-copycat incubators seem more like vultures that
scoop 25% equity for $50K in seed funding which is pretty ridiculous compared
to what you can can get in the US. I was denied SR&ED and am currently in the
process of receiving venture capital and moving my startup, and all the
technology I've developed, to California far away from this abysmal
environment.

~~~
karamdeep
One bad experience should not tarnish an entire national ecosystem. There are
incubators like GrowLabs and FoundersFuel who offer terms that are on par or
better than YC, and there are investment firms that have invested hundreds of
millions of dollars into Canadian startups over the past few years, and SR&ED
claims seem to function smoothly for all our portfolio companies. I obviously
don't know the details of your particular case, but don't mistake it for the
status quo.

~~~
ak2012
karamdeep perhaps everything looks great because you are on the other side of
the table... and not creating a startup yourself...

