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Canada Facing 'Brain Drain' As Young Tech Talent Leaves For Silicon Valley (theglobeandmail.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Globe and Mail: Canada's best and brightest computer engineering graduates are leaving for jobs in Silicon Valley at alarmingly high rates, fueling a worse "brain drain" than the mass exodus by Canadian doctors two decades ago, according to a new study. The study, led by Zachary Spicer, a senior associate with the Munk School of Global Affairs' Innovation Policy Lab at University of Toronto, found one-in-four recent science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) graduates from three of the country's top universities -- University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia and U of T -- were working outside Canada. The numbers were higher for graduates of computer engineering and computer science (30 percent), engineering science (27 percent) and software engineering, where two out three graduates were working outside Canada, mostly in the United States. Nearly 44 percent of those working abroad were employed as software engineers, with Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Amazon listed as top employers.
If were young again, I would leave Montreal as if it were a medieval plague city.
Sky high taxes, dirty, gray downtown, corruption everywhere, low wages, endless regulations, terrible weather.
Young people! You are free! Enjoy what you can.
Mostly random stuff.
This is unlikely, since we all know from comments on Slashdot that the US is a third world hellhole no one would want to even visit, much less live in. Surely they meant they fled to Europe, which as we all know is a welcoming, enlightened place for humans to live in peace and harmony.
Who writes these summaries? An exodus implies that there is a mass. It's like white mustang, ATM machine, LCD display, and free gift.
Two weeks ago, we learned that Engineers Are Leaving America For Canada.
Do the stories cancel out ?
Will we get a follow-up story about (for example) how young Canadians come to the Silicon Valley to get credentials, then leave because of the high cost of living / insecurity over employee buses attacks ?
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of killer sig, which this margin is too narrow to contain.
AFAICT, top grads from top schools move to Silicon Valley. Period. We only have a couple of the top schools in the bay area so that implies that the rest of them are coming from top schools outside the bay area. We have top people from Waterloo, Georgia Tech, IIT, basically everywhere. It's not even complicated, the top jobs are mostly here, most people don't want to play second fiddle in a securities trading shop or insurance company when they can be top dogs in a software firm. Silicon Valley's position as the dominant region is gradually changing over time, but the jobs aren't dispersing evenly into the world, there are just other concentrated locales you can also consider these days like Seattle.
I thought the techies were leaving the US for Canada because they couldn't stand Trump?
You mean a US country like the UK?
Public Transportation. Clean Water and Air. Free healthcare.
As for the States? 2 hour commutes... one way. Smog days... in summer. Lead in my water. Lax safety regulations. High taxes that pay for nothing but a big 'ole military empire. And education system that's been gutted.
If I had it to do over again I'd moved to Canada in a heartbeat.
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NOPE
Canadian developer here, and I would rather not go to the United States. Much like everyone else here I have heard some extremely disturbing and negative things about the USA. I also was a trucker and drove through the United states as well as visiting. Quite frankly the poverty can be shocking. I went through some town and the grocery store had nothing fresh to eat, it was all just dry stuff in boxes, the fruit area consisted of two box tops with apples or oranges and they both looked rotted. That was the best food I had come across at any grocery store. The people had some pretty severe dental challenges and seemed a little 'methed up'. Racial slurs seemed to be slung around in the background at lineups.
None of that even approaches the infrastructure along with toll roads everywhere (you would think one would negate the other, you would be wrong).
I kept away from drinking the water after hearing about serious problems with heavy metal contamination.
Should I make the journey my expectation is thus: there would be no job at the end of the rainbow, attempting to chase a fruitless dream would leave me pennyless in a place that HATES poor people and has utilized them for mass entertainment sport (bum fights). Along with nearly daily reports of unarmed (poor) people being outright murdered by police with no convictions.
There really isn't anything good about the place. That is not just me talking, much of the international community has begun to avoid the united states and will probably continue to do so, we have just throughout our lives seen it decay so much that even if it magically sprang back to glory it probably would not be enough to offset that ingrained memory of what a hell hole it is.
I and most other developers are doing fine here, I live along a pristine area where eagles follow my bike above on sunny days and I get to see the sunset over the beach. I could not leave a veritable garden of Eden to travel to some polluted backwater police state.
That is not to say the same is not creeping in here, I lived in Ottawa for 17 years and found it to be a jobless shite hole of people talking about hockey and schools pretending Canada does not have a history of racism and even slavery (we do, we've just tried to eliminate it from the books). I do not want to paint us here as being some how better, I cannot stand people who do that and refuse to be so guilty, we have serious unaddressed and hidden problems as well. We just do not have as many.
Without numbers from other non-US countries to compare against, we can't say whether 27% and 30% are actually that bad. I'd like to see comparison numbers for other commonwealth countries (UK, Australia, New Zealand), the U.S., and possibly Mexico since it's close to the US. It's possible Canada's numbers are "normal".
Seriously, lots of engineers and good non-software talent is leaving America and going to Canada. Smart on their part.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
So last week all the tech conferences were moving to Canada: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... Two weeks ago all the Engineers were moving to Canada: https://news.slashdot.org/stor... And this week all Canadian tech is moving to Silicon Valley.
... and they want their news back.
Old news is so exciting.
15 years ago a buddy told me "you have nothing lost here in Germany, you should go check out Silicon Valley". For just about 2 decades I've dealt with plain and utter idiiots when it comes to IT and the Web and professional work in those fields and it's slowly dawning on me: The places where I can meet people who understand me are very rare and one of those places where I would be in my waters professionally is Silicon Valley and the bay area.
At a certain point it becomes more and more difficult to even move on. I've still go some much to learn and still haven't found a single web agency that has a professional pipeline. For my recent job I'm biulding one now and it's going better than ever, but I still get the feeling that this can't be all.
The Valley is to IT what Paris is to fashion and Buenos Aires to Tango: other places simply can't compare because they are so far ahead. So, yeah, I get it. SF and the valley is where it's at.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Earlier this year I discovered I only knew one other Canadian born and Canadian university educated engineer still working as an engineer in Canada. Excluding that one person all my class mates are either in the USA, immigrated to Canada as kids or are no longer doing engineering. All but one of my coworkers at my last 4 jobs is foreign born. When I worked in the Bay area I had lots of Canadian born co-workers and friends. I've been asked at engineering pickup soccer games in Ottawa, Canada where my accent is from.
I don't even work for any Canadian companies, I do contract work for American companies. The pay isn't even close. I probably get 70% more pay working remote for an American company than I would for a local one.
This just means that the Silicon Valley computer industry is larger than any Canadian counterparts. People go where there are the most jobs in their field. Tech companies in particular locate jobs where qualified people are looking.
That creates a Catch-22, and there's something to be said for a contrarian strategy where you locate jobs where the cost of living means people can live better on lower salaries. But it doesn't entirely negate the networking effect advantages of being the biggest technology center.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Well work "in" vs "on".
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
"Engineers Are Leaving America For Canada" https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
When you institute redistribution in a society, the people who are redistributed to like it, and the people who are redistributed from leave.
So, the problem with socialism is not that you run out of other people's money, it's that you run out of highly productive people whose money you can take.
Canada has better overall health outcomes than the US. That's just a fact. Also, studies show the US would save $17 Trillion (with a 'T') dollars switching to single payer.
Opponents of single payer like to point out that Canadians come here for heart surgery, ignoring that it's because we have more heart surgeons. Meanwhile 45,000 Americans die every year from completely preventable diseases. I saw a heart doc here for some palpatations. I have some of the best healthcare in the country and he told me to eat better and excersise more. Cost me $800 USD.
America's healthcare system is awful. You have no idea how good you've got it.
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says Average wait times for surgery in Canada is around 9 weeks. e..g 2 1/4 months. Pretty bad. Same search for US says 12 weeks, e.g. 3 months. Worse.
Facts are overwhelmingly on the side of single payer healthcare. And this is not at all surprising. When in your life has a middle man been a good thing? Especially a middle man who is actively trying to keep you from using the service you paid for? You do understand that insurance companies make money when they collect premiums and don't pay claims?
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I live in Vancouver. I'd totally pack up and head to the states if I wasn't sharing custody of my kids, who go to school here. It's an instant 40% raise as soon as you cross the border, especially when you consider the USD/CAD spread. Salaries in Vancouver are terrible even before you start considering the cost of housing, and the government markets us as a place to get world-class talent at cut-rate prices, so that's unlikely to change.
I went from California to Canada. I lived in British Columbia and in Quebec and I really really deeply hated both; it's cold, rainy, boring as hell, and I felt like I had stepped 20 years backward when it came to infrastructure and services. I know that Canadians are raised to believe Canada is the promised land, but the only reasons to like the place is if you love nature (which is amazing there), or you're from there and haven't seen much elsewhere. As someone that spent half his life in North America and half in Europe, I have to say that the only reason i would ever go back there is if we have a world shortage of fresh water and I would need to move there to survive.
I'm a US citizen that moved to Toronto because I loved the city. What I found is that the tech jobs just don't pay there, while the city is rapidly increasing in price. My understanding is Vancouver isn't much different. I took a pay cut to move there, and ultimately left for a Seattle-based job. After the exchange rate, my salary in Seattle is double that of Toronto - while the cost of living isn't that much more. I talked to many tech people in Toronto, and never found someone who was making 6 figures Canadian even.
I would love to move back to Toronto, but the low salaries, high cost of living, and poor benefits (most companies only wanted to offer 2 weeks of vacation time, and my company didn't even offer retirement plans) made it a poor financial decision for me. If Canada wants to stop the brain drain, they need to fix the salary problem.
Late last year a guy named Matthew Harris posted some salary data on Quora comparing the most expensive cities to hire a Python developer in the US and Canada. It costs more to hire a python dev in Madison WI (#5 on the U.S. list) than it does in Ottawa (#1 on the Canadian list) by a wide margin ($95k vs $78.5k). So it seems like the message to Canada is, "Pay up or shut up". In the meantime, I have some great colleagues from up North that I get to work with. https://www.quora.com/How-diff...
I looked several times into moving to the US but it never made sense.
Reasons I never moved from Canada:
1) I wanted kids, and didn't want to pay for some stranger to bring them to swimming classes, music classes. Having my parents do it saved me thousands, and the kids got to know their grandparents.
2) I like nature, prefer at least an acre of land. Definitely don't want to live in some concrete land where you can touch your house and the next one at the same time. I like a private lot.
3) I don't like spending time in a car
4) Cheap mortgage
5) We still have communities here. Our kids played on the front street with other kids in the neighborhood, while the neighbors chatted. IN the US it seems like everyone just looks out for themselves.
6) Peace of mind for healthcare. I have to dick around with insurance companies for dental and I hate it. Can't imagine fighting for health. We ended up having a lot of health issues in my family and I would have hit a lifetime cap a long, long time ago. I would have been bankrupt right now.
I always put a cost to myself and my family on those things and no matter what job offer came up, it just wouldn't cover it.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Yes, but robbing Peter to pay Peter comes a lot closer, both to the truth, and to sustainability.
I'm going to read that / as a jaunty cigar.
Have you ever hard that possession is nine-tenths of the law?
There's a huge government apparatus to (generously) define the boundaries of intellectual property, so that Peter can litigate in public courts (well below the net cost of the institution) to Peter's great advantage.
Without the fiat power of government, there would be no patent and copyright systems. There would just be trade secrets. Reverse engineering would be the new Right to Bare ARMs. Defamation? Open season, subject only to your powers of economic retaliation. (Just a heads up on that one: the cost of defending turf in the drug trade is very high, and few in the business find themselves on the black side of the ledger for very long—long enough to bling trance some lusty chicks as a young adult male, before they send you off for a couple of years of daily practice in keeping a wet bar of soap on the up and up; this institution is also a great public expense, benefiting the most those who already have the most).
Peter doesn't really like to talk about how 70% of the defense of property is socialism. Not his favourite talking point, by far.
So a lot of what Peter sees as excess taxation to Paul's benefit is the chunk the government takes from Peter to fund the giant public industry of keeping Paul from aggressively spilling out of the Paul bucket.
———
Here's another thing. Behind every Peter, there's usually a couple of grand pappy Pauls, who managed to scrounge their way out of the Paul bucket, and not by means that the prevailing Peter ruling class wasn't trying to extirpate by stuffing their fat fingers into every feasible escape option.
Of course, Paul can invent a better mouse trap. There are at least 200 million Pauls (and Paulettes) in American right now.
It would only take circa forty million SUCCESSFUL mouse trap innovations per year, to reliably expand the Peter class to universal suffrage.
The metaphor of the invisible hand is remarkable in having no metabolism. With no metabolism, it never suffers from overwork or fatigue. It never goes "don't fucking bring me one more member of your huddled masses—and I mean it!—I'm totally fucking bagged." So we pretend that a narrow path that works for the special few (driven individuals with broad skills who can maintain a 125+ IQ on an average of five of six hours sleep, long term), that this narrow path can accommodate the entire population, side by side, arm in arm, if only they'd rise up off their lazy asses.
———
While I have few socialist sympathies, I certainly think the wealthy and advantaged complain too damn much about an already good thing. Peter/Paul rhetoric makes me want to puke, because every institution in society has differential Peter/Paul dynamics, and not just the tax system.
So what really anchors this Peter/Paul meme in the public discourse, despite its superficial stupidity?
Because there's a severe scarcity of noddables. The tax system is one of the few transfer payments where you get an actual receipt. All of our greedy, self-interested anger over all the ways that our value is transferred to others is focused on that tangible document of distress on tax day. We are, of course, really poor at adding up all the ways that values invisibly comes home to roost in exchange for the taxation exacted. We're neurological wired to always believe that the net transaction is hopelessly rigged.
So the tax thing is one of the few memes where every agrees to nod together: taxation sucks.
That's why the slippery Peter/Paul narrative is anchored, first and foremost, to the mechanism
Didn't we just have a story a week or two ago about how Canada's attracting tech talent from the USA? Is it really brain drain if they're draining in both directions?
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Development is one thing. No need to bring race into it though.
People moving for tech jobs are going to be mostly men [citation not needed]. This means that Canada is draining men into the biggest sausage party in the Western Hemisphere. Which means there will be a surplus of women left behind. So, the clever guy who is having some trouble finding himself a girlfriend can just head north and have a darned good chance at picking up a Canadian girlfriend.
Only downside? Nobody's going to believe he has a Canadian girlfriend.
They have to pay for the Language Police with something. It's a very important government service to deny people the right to use english, which the most commonly used Language in Canada and one of our official languages.
some karma... and kinda lukewarm about it.
Didn't slashdot run the exact opposite story within the last two weeks about how all the young tech talent was heading to Canada?
Ken
If you are highly educated though, good luck, f**k you, go work elsewhere, shut up and pay your obscenely high taxes so we can pay some idiot to tighten a bolt.
That's supply and demand baby. We spent decades pushing every Joe, Dick, and Harry to get a university degree, and steering them away from the trades. So they went out and got them. Turns out we don't actually need 5 million software engineers and 10 million "communications" technicians, so now only the best of those who got a degree can actually get a decent job. Meanwhile we do actually still need plumbers, mechanics, and general labourers, and since we've successfully depleted the pool of people working in those jobs their value has gone up significantly.
I tried to explain this to my contemporaries while I was still in highschool but, apparently, "supply and demand" was a difficult concept for the college-bound crowd to grasp.
Your ignorant "analysis" of Gladue reports is enough to mark you as an utter moran. Go hang you racist cunt.
Go tell it to the 3yr old girl who was repeatedly anally raped by her own father, required 24 surgeries and the native offender was given 6mo weekends only, and was released on his own recog before trial. Why don't you go look up the case on Gerald Stanley, who was put on trial for shooting the native. The native who'd had a laundry list of criminal offenses from assault (physical disfigurement of a person w/weapon), multiple instances of robbery(w/weapon) and so on. Oh did I mention he was a great example of gladue? Just like his parents who were involved in the same thing. He got slaps on the wrist until he got shot and killed while trying to rob someone.
Om, nomnomnom...
Wait, what? I thought Slashdot just told me the other day that they were all fleeing to Canada because Trump.
I'm going to disagree partially: heritage and culture have a LOT to do with the success of a nation. Kipling said it best, in "The Sons of Martha"
The Sons of Mary seldom bother, for they have inherited that good part;
But the Sons of Martha favour their Mother of the careful soul and the troubled heart.
And because she lost her temper once, and because she was rude to the Lord her Guest,
Her Sons must wait upon Mary's Sons, world without end, reprieve, or rest.
It is their care in all the ages to take the buffet and cushion the shock.
It is their care that the gear engages; it is their care that the switches lock.
It is their care that the wheels run truly; it is their care to embark and entrain,
Tally, transport, and deliver duly the Sons of Mary by land and main.
Some cultures tend towards 'sons of Martha', and those are the ones that tend to be successful. The problem is, that for all too many of the cultures immigrating in, that the culture of the "sons of Mary" predominate. And when a nation changes from a, for lack of better term, "Marthite" culture to a "Maryite" culture. . . .things get. . . .interesting. In the Chinese sense. . .
Canada is not experiencing a brain drain to the US but a brain drain FROM the US. And as long as Trump and his policies are in place educated US citizens in the Stem fields will choose to live in Canada rather than stay in the States. So I advise Canada to maintain its immigration policy, you will gain much more than you will lose.
It is likely this falls under the realm of politics. In Canada we're not all that far away from a Federal election, and indeed Ontario is only a couple months away now. Papers like these are unfortunately used to wave around to support whatever agenda you're trying to espouse, be it how terrible the current government is and the choices the made, or what your plan is for the future and how you would fix the problem in said paper.
Some of these are more overt than others. Usually coming from a politically biased "think tank" which is funded by like minded politically motivated people/industry. In Canadian politics there is also some severe spending limited as to what you can spend on a campaign and where that money can come from. These "independent" think tanks can be a bit of an end run around some of this by essentially providing "facts" or fodder depending on your political leanings.
This particular one seems a bit more independent and less overt than some, so it takes a bit of digging to take a more critical look. So while this particular instance is associated with the University of Toronto, it as it's name suggests was largely funded by a fellow called Peter Munk, which brings into question how independent it really is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Apparently there were strings attached to the money that was "donated" in that the school should "fit with the political views and sensitivities of Peter Munk".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Which then begs the question about what political views Peter Munk has, and when you look, and see for example that he apparently exceeded donation limits for the Conservative Party of Canada 3 times. So it is safe to say he is pretty right of center politically.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/busines...
Soooo after all that, I'd say I would be pretty confident given the conclusions of the study that it will be used by Conservative Politicians around election time to point out how un-competitive we are in comparison to the US and that the obvious solution is to lower corporate tax to attract large tech corporations so that we can keep our tech talent from leaving Canada. Likely also suggest lower income tax for wealthy under the same guise and perhaps other "incentives" to attract corporations like cash bonuses, other waived taxes, real estate etc... I'm reminded of Ontario giving an auto maker 300 million to locate a new plant there, to which they did, while closing one of their other ones located there at the same time... Whoops! Here is 300 million to make a new plant for zero net new jobs.
Anyway I find it a bit sad that every time I seemingly come across some new "academic" paper purporting new facts, you need to do a critical analysis of where it came from because half the time it is part of some self serving political agenda.