
Silicon Valley is making plans to move foreign-born workers to Canada - sply
https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/31/in-silicon-valley-plotting-to-get-foreign-born-workers-to-vancouver/
======
api_or_ipa
I'll say this everytime Vancouver comes up in HN. It's a stunning city, full
of modern amenities (including a public transit system that's actually awesome
and very well used) and incredible access to nature. None of this is remotely
enticing to young engineers when they make 2x-3x as much in SF and only pay
~30-50% more for housing.

Until wages rise in Vancouver, there will be much fanfare about tech companies
moving north, but very little actual movement.

~~~
mc32
Why doesn't silicon valley throw Mexico a bone?

I'm sure Mexico would be up to taking advantage of the new congress's policies
as a means to irk Trump.

Why not contribute to the economic growth of the underachieving neighbor
rather than the overachiever? People talk about sympathizing illegal
immigrants from Mexico, but when they have a real opportunity to help develop
the place, they kind of forget about them altogether, as if it's just an
opinion to have.

~~~
shostack
Many people don't want to live somewhere where the cartels rule and
disappearings ending in brutal murder are a thing.

~~~
mc32
If google can have offices in mdf, so can others --stay out of the illegal
drugs business and you'll be fine.

This protest business is strange. We have many Indians here fretting and
denouncing the temp refugee ban, but I'd bet most don't care about how the
Indian government treats refugees back home (some in UN camps), many not
recognized. etc., so it's all political selfishness which is why maybe
Americans can be selfish till we get our own poor out of the dumps.

~~~
bdavisx
>stay out of the illegal drugs business and you'll be fine.

It's not that simple. Imagine if you have a relationships with the daughter of
someone in the drug trade (or one of your children do) - and have a bad
breakup. Imagine if someone in a cartel decides to take a liking to your
daughter - it happens all the time in certain areas. It can happen in America
or anywhere - you or someone in your family can get in an abusive relationship
- but in Mexico, cartel members are used to getting what they want and acting
very violently when they don't.

~~~
ashwinaj
This happens in India too (replace drug lord with politician, someone
influential) that hasn't stopped companies having offices there. And BTW,
contrary to what seems common knowledge, there are a lot of expats in India
(probably not as many as in the US).

Maybe Mexico is radically different, I don't know. But this seems far fetched
to me.

Source: I'm an Indian living in the US

~~~
programmer_dude
>This happens in India too

This can happen anywhere. One or two isolated incidents cannot be used to
infer a trend. I can bet you it happens a lot less (like 10x) here than in
Mexico even though India's population is 10x of Mexico (so effectively the
situation in India is 100x better than Mexico).

------
rubyfan
This is a reality of technology and remote work. There is no need for most
tech workers to have any geographic proximity to an office.

I suspect the H1B situation will cause many that currently use the program for
low cost staff augment to just move their whole IT operation to managed
services. This yields a loss of American jobs since he majority of work is
done off shore. I believe this is happening naturally right now in some
companies but a $130k per unit cost might drive that much faster.

------
BjoernKW
What I probably will never get is why - of all places - Silicon Valley is so
obsessed with exclusively hiring locally.

You'd think that companies that are so eager to disrupt whole industries would
be more susceptive to adapting more modern and efficient ways of organising
work.

~~~
ashwinaj
As someone who has worked in Dallas, Austin and now Silicon Valley I can
answer this question with some perdonal anecdotes.

Silicon valley is miles ahead and will remain miles ahead of these other
upcoming "silicon whatevers". The environment is just different here; people
are willing to put their lives into building something (it's arguable if
that's healthy disposition), people are smarter (and also smart asses) and
there is general "itch" to do something entrepreneurial. To scratch this
"itch" there are people willing to put money and everything on the line which
I haven't seen in Texas. There is a reason why most major technological
developments come out from Silicon Valley and not elsewhere. Hell, if I were a
hiring manager, I wouldn't hire myself for a position here if I were working
in Texas :P (I'm exaggerating here, the point is that I never had the drive
and neither do most of the people there)

P.S: Please don't inundate with negatives of silicon valley, we all know about
it. What's unarguable is the technological output of Silicon Valley.

~~~
BjoernKW
I'm not sure you can say that most major technological developments come out
of Silicon Valley. Perhaps the most obviously world-changing ones do but the
majority of technological development still happens outside of Silicon Valley.
Even if you just look at the software industry, where Silicon Valley clearly
is leading, the majority of software is still developed outside of Silicon
Valley. When considering other industries and disciplines this becomes even
more obvious.

Regarding the entrepreneurial itch the same thing has been said about the US
in general in the past. People elsewhere are just as smart and can be just as
entrepreneurially-minded it's often just that the environment doesn't easily
accommodate this drive (e.g. lack of adequate infrastructure or conditions not
as amenable to entrepreneurship).

However, with the world becoming ever more connected and networked there is no
good reason (other than VCs with ulterior motives as mentioned in the other
comments) why people from different parts of the world shouldn't collaborate
on new projects and ideas. In fact, this stubborn insistence on location might
exactly be what's holding further innovation and entrepreneurship back because
it excludes a huge number of people from taking part.

~~~
ashwinaj
That's true. I didn't mean measure it by lines of code but more by impact and
forward thinking.

Despite the connectedness and networking in the other parts of the world, I'm
yet to see anything world changing come out from elsewhere. It seems everyone
outside the US is just reshashing what's being done in the US (social media,
networks, taxi apps, what have you in emerging markets). And my argument is
that it is the environment of Silicon Valley that facilitates this
enterpreneurship and is hard to replicate elsewhere (yet).

------
supercanuck
Canada, where you make less and pay more

~~~
3pt14159
You don't pay more in Toronto. You don't even pay more in _tax_ let alone
healthcare and housing. Vancouver is really the only place it could reasonably
be argued that you pay more while earning less, and it's one of the warmest
areas in Canada, with awesome giant mountains, and a beautiful coastline.

Live in Halifax[1], earn $80k a year as a decent, but unremarkable, software
developer and buy a house downtown or on the water for $250k. Don't worry
about your girlfriend or brother asking for help to pay their $20k medical
bill. Don't worry about getting thrown in prison for simple cannabis
possession or other small crimes. Don't worry about getting shot, while still
being able to buy guns if you're responsible.

[1] Or Ottawa, or Montreal, or Quebec City, or Kingston, or Waterloo. I choose
Toronto because it's more fun, but even here my rent right downtown for my own
place is only $1525.

~~~
kogepathic
> Live in Halifax

Yeah but that Atlantic Canada winter. Brrrh. Nope!

> Or Ottawa, or Montreal, or Quebec City, or Kingston, or Waterloo

These all experience winter. Although skiing does make up for some of that,
and in Ottawa you've got the Rideau canal.

~~~
infinite8s
Yeah, Ottawa is great. It's so cold for so long that the Rideau canal freezes
and hundreds of people can skate on it at a time (in fact there's a whole
festival that occurs on the frozen canal!)

------
arikrak
Right if they make H1B1 more restrictive, companies can just expand their
hiring overseas. Offshoring could also accelerate as technology improves so
being in the same office matters even less.

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sjg007
Smart, can US citizens go too?

~~~
wdcgu
No. There are plenty of unemployed Canadians. Americans will just steal those
jobs and bring down wages.

~~~
thecolorblue
Interesting opinion. Have you thought about moving to a red state in the US? I
think you would like it.

~~~
kaybe
I doubt the grandparent post was serious.

------
hedora
Wasn't the previous Canadian prime minister at least as xenophobic as Trump?
(e.g., they revoked a bunch of dual citizens' Canadian citizenship)

What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major
election?

(Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less
expensive than SF.)

~~~
conistonwater
WRT citizenship, if I googled it correctly, C-24 requires a terrorism-related
conviction, or having obtained the citizenship by misrepresentation or fraud,
in order to strip a dual citizen of their Canadian passport. It doesn't seem
to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things Trump's doing. I'd
say compared with Tories, the Republicans really are in a class of their own.

~~~
throwanem
> It doesn't seem to be in the same category of things as the sorts of things
> Trump's doing.

Indeed. While we have similar laws regarding denaturalization, Trump did not
make them. But you're probably right about the rest; I doubt a Tory PM would
demonstrate the same level of sloppy, slapdash, incompetent jackassery we're
seeing from the new occupant of the Oval Office.

Tangentially: I get there's a lot of fear going around on the subject of
authoritarianism, dictatorship, Nazis, et al. I don't buy it, not least
because we had the same with Bush, and the only difference of note in today's
rhetoric is that it's as much hotter and faster as the Internet that powers it
- remember that Facebook and Twitter weren't a thing back then. (So far we've
come!)

Trump is no Hitler, though, any more than Bush was. He's not even a Mussolini.
He might be some fraction of a Berlusconi, but most of all, at least to judge
his performance so far, he's an utter boob, and not the first we've had in the
office. I suppose an appeal for moderation in rhetoric, and awareness of
history in one's analysis, is foredoomed to mockery and oblivion in this age
of hot takes and clickbait. But it might ease the mind a bit to take, where
you can, a somewhat longer view.

~~~
conistonwater
It could be that we've been reading different things (Twitter and Facebook
aren't good for this sort of things IMO), but my impression is that people had
justified suspicions, and that these weren't just Hitler comparisons (which
really should be called out, they're too far out). Authoritarianism can mean a
range of things, none of them good, and so so long as people base their
arguments on things that Trump and his team said or things that they did,
people should be on solid enough ground.

As an example, you say "he's an utter noob", and, sure, that is _one_ of the
possibilities. But it's not the only possibility, so one would be wrong to say
that it's _obvious_ , for example, that he's an utter noob. He might be, or he
might not be. How do you _know_? And those other possibilities have to be
considered too, to be fair. It'd be wrong to dismiss them straight up as
clickbait without examining the merits.

(I'm not sure if you meant noob or boob, it looked like a typo to me, but as
luck would have it, my reply works both ways.)

~~~
throwanem
Not saying I'm certain, just that it seems the parsimonious conclusion right
now.

(I did mean "boob" \- see
[https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/boob](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/boob)
.)

------
samfisher83
Will they pay them us salaries?

~~~
general_ai
LOL, no. Don't be naive.

~~~
sctb
Please comment civilly and substantively on HN or not at all.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
serge2k
I'm so sick of the "moving to Canada" talk. You get to come if we say so, not
because it's your backup plan.

I like living where I am now, and I don't want to leave to go back to Canada
and earn drastically less with the same (optimistically) expenses. While
working on less interesting stuff.

~~~
eloisant
Let's be honest, Canada (like any other country in the world) is always happy
when a wealthy company comes to invest and open an office, especially if it's
to recruit qualified workers.

The equation is pretty simple: 1\. It will bring jobs to Canadians (the
offices won't be made only of expats, for many reasons) 2\. Employees will
spend their salary in Canada, and pay taxes in Canada 3\. Knowledge:
interns/employees go work to these companies then may move to Canadians
companies or create their own with the knowledge they acquired

Basically it's a big win for the receiving country. Just ask Ireland how it
worked for them.

~~~
serge2k
I'm not talking about Facebook opening an office in Vancouver, I'm talking
about "I'm moving to Canada if Trump wins".

~~~
tnzn
It seems like you have no clue what's going on and what this article is about.
It's not about Trump winning, it's about Trump having started to do its shit
and forcing companies to find a way to make their employees work since the US
doesn't accept them anymore.

