Canadian Startup Uses Trump to Lure Tech Workers (siliconbeat.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A Canadian startup "is using Republican front-runner Donald Trump in its latest campaign to recruit tech talent," reports Silicon Beat. The company's site claims that 31% of Americans they'd surveyed would consider moving to Canada if Trump were elected President. "Now, while we don't think Americans will actually move en masse to Canada if the election doesn't go their way, we do want to extend an offer. Because it's the polite, Canadian thing to do." The Washington Post reported a surge in Google searches in March for "how can I move to Canada," actually slowing down the Canadian government's immigration web site. Meanwhile, a coalition of Canadian mayors is visiting California this week to promote Canada's booming technology sector. Toronto's mayor told Bloomberg, "The embracing of diversity as opposed to it being some sort of political issue is a huge advantage we have."

Comments

Re:Consider

[arbiter1]

He can't do any worse then idiot we have in office atm.

Easy to take the tech workers

[srichard25]

Sure, it's easy to say they would take the tech workers. But would Canada gladly take the 10 million illegal immigrants who may not be as skilled? Those are the ones who really want to flee Trump.

This is new?

[YrWrstNtmr]

claims that 31% of Americans they'd surveyed would consider moving to Canada if Foo were elected President.

As has been said every 4 years for the last few decades.

Re:Nothing of value would be lost.

[BarbaraHudson]

The loss of backbone was a purely American thing. You bailed out the banks because you got scared, and now Wall Street is crazier than ever. Iceland didn't blink.

Ditto with your reps voting to invade Iraq. No backbone - they were scared and would do anything rather than think.

These policies didn't inflict pain on a small number of people for the greater good - quite the opposite.

Re:Consider

[JoshuaZ]

If you think this then you need to spend ten minutes thinking about various things Trump has said and imagining what happens if he tries to implement any of them or follow through on what they imply. If you really think that Trump can't do much damage, that says more about you than it says about the situation or Trump.

Let 'em go.

[cshark]

You're not going to get very many good workers that don't like Trump.
It's been my observation that those who work hardest, and have the most skill either don't care about politics at all, or they like Trump.

Trump has consistently come out on our side, on this one. He doesn't like the fact that wages are being artificially lowered in high skilled professions. He wants American workers to have first priority of any job, and for the H1b Program to be revised so that it's no longer abused by billionaires. Also, he has a softer stance on intellectual property restrictions than Obama (or any democrat for that matter) does, which is important to both open source and freedom of speech. He did come out on the wrong side of the encryption debate, but in his defence... it's a complicated topic.

He's also called for less fraud, waste, and abuse in government, which means more and better software for the plebs like us that write the stuff. And that means more work. The wall he's proposing is also employment positive for programmers, nerds, and IT, as is Keystone XL, which he's in favor of.

I understand the populist Left, but they have yet to propose anything that benefits me as a common programmer and knowledge worker personally. Trump has proposed a dozen unrelated things that do. And I think the overwhelming majority of the tech community is smart enough to see that.

With the industry the way it exists today, my honest feeling is that less domestic competition from people who would rather go to Canada, than stick it out is a good thing. So I encourage all far Left liberal tech workers to at least take offers like this seriously, and consider them. But the way I see it, our professional world gets better if someone with a billionaire’s mindset is running the economy. Not worse.

Re:Let 'em go.

[cshark]

See, this is the problem with people on the authoritarian Left. At no point did I ever say that you were defective for having a view I disagree with. And yet, you refuse to offer me the same courtesy. You assume that your view is the absolute correct one, and that anyone who disagrees with you is either defective mentally, evil, or some other arbitrary defective thing you can think of. It's straight out of the handbook, which, incidentally, I've read. But it isn't have you have an honest conversation, friend. There can be no meaningful discussion if we can't agree that we're equals.

Take care.
And good luck.

Re:Let 'em go.

[PopeRatzo]

Really shitty business man? With a success rate over 99%?

If Donald Trump had taken the million dollars he was give by his father and just invested it in a S&P index fund, he'd be worth $10,000,000,000 more than he is right now. Yes, when you're business has underperformed the stock market over a 30 year period by that much, you are a shitty business man.

http://www.moneytalksnews.com/...

Re:Let 'em go.

[quantaman]

You're not going to get very many good workers that don't like Trump.
It's been my observation that those who work hardest, and have the most skill either don't care about politics at all, or they like Trump.

I disagree strongly, in fact from what I've seen the most fervent supporters of Trump are the people who haven't had the professional success they expect and are looking for somewhere to put the blame.

Also, he has a softer stance on intellectual property restrictions than Obama (or any democrat for that matter) does, which is important to both open source and freedom of speech. He did come out on the wrong side of the encryption debate, but in his defence... it's a complicated topic.

Trump is pushing some kind of authoritarian nationalism, he's repeatedly talked about changing liable laws so he could sue people who criticize him and threatening the media. He'd be a disaster for free speech.

He's also called for less fraud, waste, and abuse in government, which means more and better software for the plebs like us that write the stuff. And that means more work.

He built his career off of crony capitalism, why do you suddenly expect him to clean up the system that kept him rich?

The wall he's proposing is also employment positive for programmers, nerds, and IT, as is Keystone XL, which he's in favor of.

Ehhhh, that's some very dubious reasoning. You claim any big project is a boon for programmers through secondary benefits, yet when it comes to cheap labour coming in and injecting extra wealth into the economy it's suddenly a disaster.

I understand the populist Left, but they have yet to propose anything that benefits me as a common programmer and knowledge worker personally. Trump has proposed a dozen unrelated things that do. And I think the overwhelming majority of the tech community is smart enough to see that.

With the industry the way it exists today, my honest feeling is that less domestic competition from people who would rather go to Canada, than stick it out is a good thing.

For someone criticizing the populist left you have a remarkably populist anti-capitalist understanding of economics.

The standard understanding is that more workers, more competition, means more wealth in general. There can be some specific losers when you open markets, in this case it might be American programmers. But for the US as a whole it's a benefit.

Re:Let 'em go.

[serviscope_minor]

He's also called for less fraud, waste, and abuse in government,

You believe that? I mean sure it's a lovely platitude because who isn't against fraud, waste and abuse? The thing is though it's an incredibly difficult, nuanced problem to deal with and without actually a real, firm, detailed plan on how to begin tackling it, such a platitude is not worth the air it's exhaled in.

The government it large, very large. This is inevitable and also not fixable because the country is large. Sure it can grow and shrink, but it is always going to be big. Big organisations have waste, or at least the appearance of waste. Anyone who's dealt with a large company, especially as a small contractor where you get the unpolished view into the guts of legal and purchasing, not the carefully curated customer service view will know that.

They are wildly, horrifyingly, insanely inefficient. Anyone who thinks otherwise has frankly had little to to with large companies, and anyone who thinks the governent should be better than that might as well wish for unicorns.

The thing is waste is not just present and inevitable, it's necessary, because redundancy is by definition waste. Small companies can be frighteningly efficient, no doubt. The thing is, that's indicidual ones, not en masse. En masse, small companies aren't efficient because small companies also go out of business ALL the time. The redundancy is having many of them, but if you look at one, you'll miss that. The reason individual one can be efficient is they lack redundancy and so there is no slack. If something bad happens, then they fail.

Big companies and even more so the government simply cannot afford that.

You *cannot* have key employees, because they will die. The governemnt is older than any human. Notonly that, you know those horrifyingly rare 1 in a million cancers? Well, that happens to someone in government on average several times per year. People do get run over by busses, die in freak accidents, never mind get old, retire, change jobs, move all the time when you're a large organisation.

If you have no waste (redundancy) then the organisation will collapse after a 4 hours when the first person cops it.

Secondly, a small company, or a small tech department in a big company can affor to hire the bst 0.1%. However 0.1% of the entire US population is less than the size of the governement and many large companies. They cannot hire only the best of the best because frankly those people don't exist.

And then there's the coupling or anticoupling of fraud and waste. Time was Joe Civil Servant could give the contract to his nephew with no oversight and make a nice little packet on the side. Naturally everyone thought this was a bad idea. The huge, insane bidding processes that exclude small efficient companies are set up precisely because of those problems. What is not clear is how you can allow in small companies which can't do rigorous auditing (because they don't have a full timeaccountant let alone department and besiade that is expensive and therefore wasteful) and can't go through massive hoops to "provably" prevent fraud, while being able to get contracts. In other words how can you remove the burdensome oversight without removing the oversight?

That's a tiny set of why platitudes of "reducing waste etc" are mindlessly stupid without somethig to back them up. Any fool can claim waste is bad (no shit!), but said fool can't actually do anything about it.

And no, just slashing budgets does not work, because all the same mechanisms are still in place.

Re:Consider

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess, if you're a spineless twat who thinks anyone to the right of lenin is some kind of fascist.

Re:Consider

[Plus1Entropy]

Yes! Let's turn the US military into a global protection racket! Who cares about global security and preserving the Long Peace when we could be wetting our beaks!

I can hear it now, in a particularly obnoxious Brooklyn accent: "You gotta real nice country here, South Korea, it'd be a shame if something happened to it."

Let's consider then

[huckamania]

Trump says he will build a wall on our southern border and enforce our immigration laws.
Trump says he will enforce the H1B program in the way it was intended instead of allowing foreign workers to take American jobs.
Trump says he will halt immigration of Islamists until we can be sure they are not radicalized.
Trump says he will allow health insurance companies to compete across state lines and take other measures to make health care affordable.
Trump says he will renegotiate trade pacts that do not favor the United States.
Trump says he will reform the VA and ensure our vets get the care they were promised.

Maybe you can actually post some more things he said about what he is going to do. Those seem to be the main things that I've heard. Not sure what is so scary about any of that.

This election for me is about the rule of law. Either we are a country where everyone is equal under the law and laws have to be obeyed, or we are not. It's as simple as that. All the talk about Trump being a fascist is way off base. Trump doesn't have a fascist organization behind him. He's got no brown shirts or brigades, it's just the democratic process and some people reckoning that at least he might do some of things he has promised.

If nothing else, a Trump presidency would shake up the Washington first virus that has infected both parties.

Re:Consider

[110010001000]

The job of the US military is NOT global security.

Re: Let 'em go

[Anonymous Coward]

Billionaire's mindset? Draft Bloomberg or Buffet.

With Trump what you get is an entitled misogynist brat mindset. His entire political process is to listen to angry people and then sell them a fantasist's parody solution to their fears; a wall to keep out the invaders, locking down the internet, torture as retribution..l

Trump wants America to be his trophy wife. He's going to make you so happy, baby. It's going to be beautiful. You're going to be so rich. Everyone will fear us. It's just you and him against the world. What do you mean, you don't want to have sex with him? He's got no problem there, he guarantees it. If you don't want to have sex with him you must be disgusting, a terrible human. He wishes someone would punch you in the mouth, seriously. He'll pay the legal fees.

Re:Consider

[Immerman]

Good thing too - because we're REALLY bad at it. Since out disastrous response to 9/11 the US is often rated as the greatest destabilizing force on the planet.