I'm reaching the point where I need to hire developers soon. I'm worried about what kind of talent I'll be able to find, simply because most people worth their salt are already employed, or work in the Bay.
Remote is an option of course, but it adds a lot of complexity that most early-stage startups can't manage well.
I'm seriously considering going back to SV.
You do know that tech centers in the US are outliers and general policy in the US is basically the same as Canada, and other countries that have a large mass of natural resources, Australia for example.
Mass exploitation of every resource in reach will make us rich. Or, to put it another way 'Drill baby drill.'
Silicon Valley and those that think it's different live in a little bubble that doesn't reflect the way the rest of the country thinks or acts. So moving to Silicon Valley because you don't like the short sighted drain every resource because it's cheap right now line of thinking won't be an act to change any of that, it will just let you ignore that it's happening.
Your odds are vanishingly low when it comes to succeeding in a startup. As a founder, you should do everything you can to stack the odds in your favour.
Edit: I can't respond to your reply, so I'll do it here. It's not just about funding. It's about finding like-minded individuals that are similarly motivated. It's about finding talent. It's about culture.
I love Toronto, and I love Canada. I want to be here. But it's better in SV for tech startups.
If you want talent, it's certainly available, and it's cheaper than SV.
If nothing else I'm hoping they're hard at work making the next Deus Ex game at Eidos Montreal :)
What am I missing here? Every time I read about this stuff I always get the impression that tech is this abstract thing that barely makes profit and lives on investments while "traditional" businesses lives on selling actual things that creates profit.
Which is why I'm neurotically nervous over an impending tech crash when the dust settles and App Startup X, Y and Z will probably never be profitable with current tech salaries.
Most startups in the tech sector are exactly as you describe. And that's the point. Eventually, one of those startups finds something that can turn a profit. They build something that people want and are able to push on a few levers and ramp up profitability.
Apple, Google, Facebook, and many more, started out as small startups that barely made profit and lived on investments. Eventually, they got their shit together and became some of the world's largest companies. However, most startups that existed at the same time as them, heck, may have even had similar ideas as them, crashed and burned. That's the nature of venture capital. Throw a bunch of money at a bunch of ideas and see what sticks.
And if you think that's a very haphazard way of investing, you're right, it is. But as a percentage of total investments made by many funds, VC funding is a very minor portion, so they can somewhat afford to make these bets (and lose).
I'm curious what these growth sectors are? Are you referring to software companies? Because though I agree that's a growth sector, it's hard for me to envision how many jobs that creates in the long run. Wouldn't it create the same problems as manufacturing, i.e. it's cheaper to outsource or automate so its job pool will shrink over time? Resources and manufacturing are real, tangible things that have real tangible value. Services, though the natural growth of an economy it seems, are fleeting and easy to do without when things go wrong.
I agree that we can't lean and need to encourage a diverse economy, but I would also argue that investment in any area is a gamble, and gambling is hard for a government to do when under constant public scrutiny.
I was doing my Masters in Medical Imaging at the University of Toronto (did not complete). The number of talented students and professors that I interacted with on a regular basis was astounding. And they were working on really amazing things.
Here's a group of potentially 100s of well-educated students that came out of the Canadian education system, so our tax dollars went towards a lot of their training. And once they're done their PhD, they're stuck trying to compete for very limited faculty positions, or finding a post-doc program somewhere, usually abroad.
The brain drain in biotechnology is the one we should be worrying about. We have fantastic resources available here in terms of teaching hospitals and facilities, but no one's taking advantage of it. And the space of biotechnology is so broad and unexplored, that we could be investing in a number of avenues to try to achieve something in the area.
To quote the cliched Wayne Gretzky: Skate to where the puck is going, not where it is.
Who exactly is this "we"? You personally can invest in whatever sectors you like, and so can your neighbours. How is that not enough?
As a Canadian in tech, moving to SV is something I regularly consider. However, the nonsense that is Bay-area politics is really off-putting. Unfortunately, the state and federal politics are hardly any better. Americans seem to hate each other.
There are many things that are attractive about the United States. The politics are definitely are not up there on my list.
(That being said, from Toronto maybe it's not such a big step down. The Rob Ford fiasco appeared to be a symptom of deeper problems.)
It's like living in 1999 again.
Also, getting people right of school is a good way to get talent before it moves south.
If you listened to people talk, Alberta's oil sector was supporting the whole economy. Snarky message board comments from people from out west (where I'm from originally, BTW) making comments about Ontario being a "have-not" province being propped up by the superior entrepreneurial hard-working western oil sector.
Meanwhile through all of this as a % of GDP, exports in manufacturing were _still_ triple those of oil and gas. Ontario's beleaguered auto-sector was still the primary export in the country. Followed by agriculture and other sectors.
I said it at the time, and now it is obvious. They were lying through ideological teeth, and telling a story to the country about resource driven prosperity which was factually incorrect. And it has led to our country as a whole inheriting many of the problems Alberta as a province has been plagued with for decades: highly cyclical, with a political culture verging on corrupt, and environmentally dirty dirty dirty.
And I'm afraid the new gov't is only half-heartedly interested in remedying any of this.
Ontario and Quebec could be the "Germany of North America"; the deliberate assassination of our manufacturing and engineering sectors by everyone from federal gov't officials to fund managers has been disgusting. We have a heavy infrastructure debt, are saddled by decades of ideologically-driven mismanagement, and an ineptitude at actually getting anything done.
If the government invested all that money in small to middle sized local companies instead the province would be so much more prosperous. Right now, profits are our biggest export. Not only that but the government insists on propping up big, mismanaged companies like CAE and bombardier time and time again [2] instead of investing in startups.
[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how-far-wi... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-milke/bombardier-corporate...
How exactly is anyone helped by money taking a round trip through the government rather than the same thing happening through free markets? You've made the cycle slower, you've made the recipients dependent on government bureaucratic decisions (who are not well-incentivized to decide well), and have reduced incentives for efficiency. And you've gained nothing.
Don't get me wrong. Government has important roles to play in our economy and society. We need government to create basic infrastructure, create regulations encouraging public goods, provide a stable system of law, and so on. But unless you are serving some legitimate purpose, channeling daily economic activity through the government is a net loss compared to doing the same through private enterprise.
Quebec being full of people who believe that the economy should go through the government seems to be its second largest economic mistake, and one it is still making on a large scale. People like you complain about the predictable results of this mistake, but don't see that it is a mistake.
Quebec's largest mistake was, of course, Bill 101. That made your province so hostile to anglophones that 1/3 of them "voluntarily emmigrated" within a few years. (The ones I know are inclined to dispute how voluntary that emmigration was...) They took with them the headquarters of many major companies, the associated jobs, and the general economic activity that would have come from those professionals spending locally. This is why, for example, The Bank of Montreal is now headquartered in Toronto.
There is a collective blind spot in Quebec to the true cost of this for your society. Major companies need to have a stream of professionals moving to their headquarters from elsewhere because that is how you move up in the hierarchy. If you have made professionals unwilling to move to Quebec (for instance by forcing their children to receive education in a language they don't speak), companies have to choose between moving headquarters or losing their most valued employees to competitors.
It proved to be cheaper to move headquarters. And they did. Quebec's economy has never recovered from this. (Though you did adjust your ethnic ratio by enough that you nearly managed to get a 50% vote to secede in the 90s...)
It seems like Canada is prone to buying into extremism. Be it separatism or the recent love-affair with Putinist style economics banking soley on oil/gas and expecting there never to be a shake-up in the market when clearly the industrialized West was going full tilt into renewables.
That's because Ontario's government managed to drive out most industry with an energy policy that created high and unstable electricity prices.
As a result Ontario became a receiver of federal equalization payments for the first time ever.
That's what the jokes were about.
http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commentary/2013/03/30/money_s...
In a way, all stories about resource driven prosperity are incorrect. Natural resources are exported and so is the wealth they bring. You never hear about the prosperity of mining towns because they never have any, and when the resources run out they don't have jobs either.
Even the way we do provincial transfer payments is sane. While one industry is booming (Oil, manufacturing, tech) other "have not" provinces get payments through the federal government. This brings a measure of stability to the system.
No rational economist can look at the situation in Canada and say that "Canada forgot to plan for its future by leaning on oil and the loonie" it's a ridiculous statement.
Criticizing Canada's action on climate change is warranted, but our federal economic policy has been quite level headed.
Luckily, political capital is a fiat currency and can be created or destroyed by the CBC in moments.
Even the way we do provincial transfer payments is sane. While one
industry is booming (Oil, manufacturing, tech) other "have not"
provinces get payments through the federal government. This brings
a measure of stability to the system.
Any rational economist can say that Canada went all-in on oil because that is exactly what it did. A prolonged stretch of an inflated loonie has resulted in a long-term reduction in manufacturing capacity which means that the country is not poised to take proper advantage of the decline in the dollar that has now occurred. Instead there will be a ramping-up period where productivity is lost.
Look at the allocation of most mutual funds that a Canadian owns as part of their retirement portfolio.
Look at the nature of the previous gov'ts budgetary and economic planning (in as much as they did that kind of thing). Overwhelmingly in favour of the resource sector.
1. American / international subsidiaries. 2. Mid-sized CCPCs. 3. Owned by private equity firms.
I agree that Canadians do not allocate their retirement savings correctly and that our stock market is not a reflection of our economy, but our government has common sense measures to support a variety of industries.
You seem quite married to this simplistic thesis that oil is Canada's downfall, but "just look" isn't an argument. I looked, and the non-oil economic output continued to grow through the oil boom, just not as fast as the oil and gas sector. Yes, oil was a temporary boost, but the country isn't any worse off than if it hadn't extracted that oil. By the way, the government does not enforce oil production quotas in Canada. The fact that the world oil price soared above $100USD causing massive production increases in Canada was not an economic policy of the Canadian government. That's the market economy functioning, not central planning as you imply. The government didn't peg the CAD to world oil prices, the international currency markets did. NOT producing oil in the highest price environment in the history of the world would have been an economic loss for Canada.
Furthermore, the last government, like the current one and every Canadian government in living memory, gave billions in handouts to every sector of the economy, especially manufacturing. The federal government spent billions balling out the US automakers in Canada. Yet manufacturing has been declining since the 1990s, long before the current oil boom. Have you seen a chart of labour productivity in Canada vs. the US and Mexico over the last 20 years? We're a high-cost low-productivity environment and not just because of a high dollar. Having actual social security programs and higher unionization rates places a big, structural role in failing to attract and retain manufacturing capacity within NAFTA.
It's puzzling that you think the oil production boom in Canada was caused by the Canadian government when production was booming in every petroleum producing country in the world because of high global demand. It's even more puzzling that you think the oil boom of the last 10 years and the supposed policies of the last federal government account for global macroeconomic trends that have existed for 20-30 years.
Signed, Someone from Houston, Tx
I grew up in Alberta. It is cold and dry and has a short summer. I prefer the weather here even if the summers can be a bit too humid and hot for me.
But aside from that it's a great place to live. Land is cheap, you can get good local food anywhere, and we're safe from nearly every natural disaster you can think of. Just bring a jacket.
Unlike Houston, where it's crazy hot and humid all the time, and there's nothing you can do about it except for hide inside in the air conditioning.
No, the problem with Canada recently has been that it's been too warm. It's hard to really appreciate winter if it's too warm to go skiing or skating. We got close to an inch of rain on Sunday here in Ottawa that really messed up our snow. :(
I'll take the weather in pretty much anywhere in Canada over the weather in Houston any day.
I will complain about the lack of sunshine in the wintertime here, though. That's just depressing.
It's 65 and sunny in Houston today, it's 16 and snowing in Ottawa.
There's little snow, and we get tons of sunshine. When it does get cold, it's dry, so it doesn't feel as bad as a warmer temp on the coasts. You get reprieves in the form of chinooks too, where the temperature will jump up 20 degrees for a week or two. It's above freezing here today, but it was at -20C on Friday.
There is a tech scene here as well, and it's starting to get a bit more traction now that oil and gas aren't eating up all the brain power. Getty Images has offices here, and there are start-ups in and out of the energy industry. It'll be interesting to see what the city looks like in 10 years. Lots of folks are calling for it to be the next Detroit, but it doesn't really seem to be going that way.
That said, free healthcare counts for a lot. Also, as a dev in a Canadian tech company, you are probably not going to see as much stress and volatility as your average Silicon Valley company.
The high property prices are messing up lives of young people who don't have rich parents. In my friend circle, I can see it as a key source of strife among married couples. Buying a house ties you to a city .. even if you get a better offer some place else. I don't think real-estate is being recognized as the beast it is. The last Bank of Canada rate decrease seemed only about oil prices and oblivious to the flames in YVR and YYZ housing.
Sigh ... what a mess :(
I now work at Google in Kitchener, and commute from a hobby farm near Hamilton. Quality of life is outstanding. I dread ever having to work in Toronto proper again.
The startup scene in Toronto is a clique. The quality of management talent is sad. After working as employee #4 in a Toronto startup, I jumped ship to work for a late stage startup HQ'd in NYC and the contrast in their management skills and treatment of employees was night and day. Working at a 'hip' company in Toronto they expect you to feel blessed and to take intense sacrifice on their behalf just because you have the privilege of working for something that isn't a bank or insurance company. Meanwhile compensation lags significantly behind what you'd get elsewhere in NA.
And then the rest of the non-startup scene in Toronto is primarily large financial companies, and the work is soul crushingly boring.
https://angel.co/shopify/jobs/88003-software-developer?utm_s...
And it goes up from there, especially once you start looking at positions that include less sexy startups, less common technologies, or more responsibility (like being a team lead).
It's not really better than the inexpensive healthcare that comes with any good job in the US. If your choice is between $70K with free healthcare, and $120K with inexpensive healthcare, I know which I would pick.
If you're young and childless, it really doesn't.
I can live with lower pay but after years of nothing but female rejection I'm really tempted to run to the US just for this reason. (Again, only anecdotally, but the way I'm treated by women in social settings is night vs day anywhere but Toronto.)
I think you'll find that those things grease the wheels of conversation basically everywhere
all i can say is, don't expect different results if you keep doing the same things. it's on you to produce the outcomes you want in your life.
I know the places you're talking about, and I can't stand them because they're dehumanizing and hypocritical. But believe me I've looked, and in my experience a disproportionate number of these men are actually from Toronto! I'm not saying men don't feel like this elsewhere, but it was surprising to me how this city sticks out.
http://www.returnofkings.com/58796/15-reasons-why-toronto-is...
(Edit: I don't endorse the above article, it's demeaning and ridiculous, but I'm using it as an example of how this city often comes up in "worst of" discussions.)
YES!
I live in Quebec city and there is a rampant idea in the population that the status quo is the only way forward. More petroleum exploration, larger highways, big government mining investments/subsidies initiative like 'plan Nord', big fat houses in the suburbs that you can spin after 2 years for 20% gain... we never allow ourselves to think outside the box.
I'm glad the US is 'embracing' successes like Space X, Tesla, Uber, AirBnb, ... to really show us what innovation looks like. You CANT innovate if your mind live in the status quo.
With the $CAD drop and the rise of remote work we should also expect a massive brain drain... although it's anecdotal, my brother just accepted a job (remote from Quebec) for a US-based company at double the salary he would have got from a local one. That can't be good for locally-made innovation.
Refs: http://www.petrolia-inc.com/en/corporate/projects/anticosti-... http://plannord.gouv.qc.ca/en/
Pour être plus positif: connais-tu le secteur aérospatial de Montréal? C'est une partie importante de l'économie qui est souvent méconnue (manifeste dans la réaction vis-à-vis l'aide d'un milliard de $ offerte à Bombardier). http://www.aeromontreal.ca/sector-aerospace/
Many "rational economists" have made that statement. Even the head of the Bank of Canada himself has suggested it is regrettable that our currency is so tied to oil. He can't openly criticize gov policy and so that's about as close as Poloz can get to condemnation.
Classic hacker news comment. "I must disagree with whatever the post says and declare that no rational person could disagree with my criticism."
That is even more of a "classic hacker news comment", in the bad sense, than the one you're objecting to. I've noticed that generalizations about HN in arguments always degrade the quality of the discussion. The trouble is that community members (on all sides of any divide) tend to extrapolate whatever they notice and dislike into an image of the community as a whole, which then resembles the image of their adversaries. This is bad for the community, especially because we have no face-to-face contact to mitigate it.
I don't mean to pick on your comment in particular. It's a pattern that comes up a lot when commenters diss the community.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10887769 and marked it off-topic.
Anytime I see commentary that include words "rational," "logical," or the term "man of science" I know I'm at least dealing with someone reductionist, pedantic, and usually extremist or marginalized.
(yes I know the contradiction I just made)
I left Toronto 8 years ago for the US but have close ties to home and keep regular tabs on the labour market. Even at 1:1 CAD:USD, before factoring in increased cost of living in Toronto (vs. where I am, which is not SF), I'm making close to double what I'd hope to fetch back home. If I really bust my ass and kill it where I am, the disparity is only going to grow.
Once you account for other factors like the increased cost of everything and the general rarity of high-paying tech jobs, returning to Toronto feels like too much of a risk: even if I were to strike relative "gold" and make $120k-140k+ CAD as a senior engineer (a far cry from what I get how), what happens when I move on to something else? A close, highly-talented friend of mine has one of those jobs but feels trapped and doesn't even know where else he could go.
I love that the Toronto startup scene is growing and maturing and I have friends who are really working to, but I fear what's going to happen when funding in the US begins to contract. SF, NYC, and Seattle all have profitable "anchor" employers which will continue to bid for talent even when startup funding won't sustain high tech salaries. Toronto has small branch offices of American companies and some banks (I'm skeptical about the latter). Is there much else?
As far as I can tell there just isn't as much good work. I want to go home some day, but as someone who was fortunate enough to land a good tech job in the US: returning is a massive step down in pay for: fewer choices of work, a more fleeting labour market, a less ambitious environment, an expensive city with overpriced real estate, and a public transit/commute crisis which might not get materially better before I retire. I really do love the place though.
tl;dr I'm an exceptionally fortunate Canadian spoiled by great career prospects in a major American tech hub and find it hard to justify returning home :(
I think its largely cultural. Theoretically Canada should be more welcoming to entrepreneurship. You don't have to worry about your health insurance when you quit and start your own company - and the safety net limits your fall in the case of failure. The government also heavily subsidizes new startups.
But entrepreneurship is generally looked down upon in a way that isn't true in America. A failed startup in the US is chalked to "at least you tried" whereas in Canada its looked upon as a moral tale of the risks of chasing childish dreams. This goes throughout society - from raising capital to what your in-laws hassle you about over the dinner table.
Canada has what's known as Dutch disease. When the loonie is strong the natural resource sector booms since they get more value in return for selling these assets, however the services and manufacturing sector tend to fall off a cliff since labour cost become too high.
Historically the Ontario govt has banked on this cycle. When the loonie rises and Ontario crashes then govt spending increases to compensate. When the loonie crashes and employment increases, tax revenue increases and then they payoff the debt from the crash. Ditto can be said for Alberta using the opposite scenario.
The federal tax transfer system adds additional funding mechanics to level the playing field between provinces.
That all said, everything has become very different. Oil has crashed due to external forces and the loonie has crashed too. That's fine, but I think govt is trying to figure out why the manufacturing services sectors are not gaining traction as they historical would (which is because other countries are now more equipped to compete within Canada and are still much cheaper... Example Mexico has taken all the auto manufacturing work). At the same time housing prices are 30 to 50% overpriced and the energy sectors nose dive is not a typical down cycle, it's a long term structural change.
I'm probably wrong, but my spidey senses are telling me that Canada is going to go through a rough time and will continue to do so until the govt models these structural changes to compensate. If the Canadian govt jumps into a thoughtless spending spree (which is the current plan) using the old economic model then in 5 to 10 years Canadas outcome could be dire.
[Edit: removed "Greece 2.0" as it highlighted aspects that could not compare to Canada's circumstances.]
So Greece had no option to devalue it's currency in response to a slowing economy. Whereas Canada can devalue currency (as we're doing). We have the additional benefit that our debt load is in our domestic currency, so we don't face the debt appreciation challenge many countries face when they devalue their currency.
I think Canada's in trouble, but the Greek situation is fundamentally a different type of problem.
(I didn't downvote)
This more an anecdote than an argument, but I know quite a few people who can barely pay their mortgage or have crazy margin debt (with mortgage) in Canada. I doubt their situation will get any better soon. There is this mentality around here that owning a house is a must or you are some kind of loser.
In Edmonton and Calgary I can echo that there is a strong social influence in buying real estate. Owning a home is expected. With homes appreciating over 9%/year for 10 years, people assume that that will continue into the distant future.
Same newspaper that endorsed Conservatives, whose economic policies for the past decade was to put oil sands above everything else, the government under which we saw Canada withdrawing from Kyoto and generally have terrible environmental record, is now having seconds thoughts when oil tanked as well as other commodities tanked dragging loonie with it.
Boo-hoo, sir, boo-hoo.
Refs: their endorsement -- http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/editorials/the-t...
The Globe has for the last 15 years at least been schizophrenic about which of these two camps it supports. Its editorial board is a little different from the rest of the content in the paper.
I know a few others with cross border operations and they're also shifting towards US markets.
I noticed product sales to Canadians also dried up, as my products are now 40% more expensive.