Being from Vancouver myself, I frequently go back and do the math on cost of living. No matter which way you bend the math, even accounting for the (massively) inflated housing prices in the Bay Area or NYC the American salary still comes out ahead. Far ahead, even. I've heard Canadian friends use this sometimes as a reason to not consider state-side opportunities, but in their cases it's simply not true.
Granted, this is math for a single guy with no children - so YMMV.
I don't disagree with any of the facts you've laid out - but I do disagree heavily on whether or not this is holding Canadian tech back. There are certainly people who won't move to the US for any number of reasons - family, lifestyle, geography, politics, etc.
But the fact of the matter is that there are over 300,000 Canadians in the Bay Area[1] - clearly the number of people willing to jump south of the border overwhelms the number of people who will not. This represents nearly 1% of the entire population of Canada. The brain drain is very real, it's biased towards the more desirable parts of the talent pool, and it's happening at a mind-bogglingly large scale. While the brain drain will never claim everyone, it's certainly claiming enough talent that I think it's hard to argue that it's not having a massively negative effect on the industry domestically.
I held highly similar views in my 20's when I was single with no children. I encouraged all my friends to move to the states, that Canada's brain drain was zombifying the country etc. I even had a dart board with John Roth (ex Nortel CEO)'s face on it because of the way he bragged about paying Canadians less than Americans.
This was in the 90's during the dot com boom... but the world kept turning, Canada didn't implode, there's still talent here, and I eventually moved back to have a family (no way do I want one raised in the USA).
I have plenty of friends staying in the USA for the reasons you state and I may go back some day when our kid(s) are older for the reasons you cite. But I'll just say that money isn't everything ... it's arguably the single most important thing.. others factors eventually add up however.
Don't get me wrong - what I'm saying is not meant to be prescriptive, for you or anyone. I'm not necessarily saying that Canadians should all move to the US to get paid more.
And hell, I may be back someday - I can't see it, but I can't discount it. I do like Vancouver too much to stay away forever.
My point is that empirically, money matters to people. Those 300,000 Canadians aren't hanging out in the USA for fun, they are largely there because of the market gap. This is an enormous loss of talent for Canada.
Now, we can argue about whether or not they're making the right decision being in California, paying Bay Area rent, etc etc, but the fact of the matter is that they're doing it, which puts them in the US, and not Canada, and harming the Canadian tech industry. We're training a huge number of capable technologists, exporting the bulk of them to the US, and the domestic tech industry is poorer for it.
I do not see anything slowing the brain drain by an appreciable degree, except to hugely raise engineering salaries in Canada. I don't think there's a chance in hell of this happening. And I believe that the brain drain, at its current scope and scale, is having a large chilling effect on creating the sort of companies and jobs that the blog author is talking about.
There are still certainly tech jobs in Canada, there are even (some) very well-paid ones, but Canada cannot hope to have even a sliver of the scale of the Valley's success unless it can retain its own talent pool.
It should be noted also that the link from my previous post is an op-ed by the CEO of HootSuite, itself one of the bigger successes to come out of the Canadian startup scene, where he claims that the shallow talent pool (and the brain drain) is a large growth-limiter on his business.
Where he and I disagree is that he advocates for more immigration and education as a solution. Based on what we've seen with Canadians moving south, I think it's a sure bet that the immigrants he proposes to import will likewise drift southwards, and the extra graduates he proposes to educate will do the same. Short of some kind of indentured servitude you can't prevent that from happening. We even have companies like Microsoft and Facebook who specifically set up Canadian offices for the purpose of greasing this "Canadian immigration as gateway to USA" process along.
Of course, IMO the real solution HootSuite's talent woes is to make their pay market-competitive with the American companies that are draining their talent pool...
Largely agreed, though I am skeptical about your southward immigration theory, and do think (in lieu of broad based salary increases) that immigration is a good solution to Canada's talent shortage. Why? Look at our whole discussion - clearly it is the US's solution! :)
My point is that (a) US immigration reform is dying in the house of representatives, there's a chance the US will make it harder and harder for Canadians to stay there. I know I had my complications. Canadians largely enter the US on TN visas, which have gotten easier (the 3 year renewal requirement vs. 1 year). An immigration-unfriendly administration could make this harder.
H1B's are also possible lately as the quotas haven't been being hit since the financial downturn, but they have always been highly controversial.
(b) Canadians require citizenship before they can be eligible for a TN visa to the USA. It's a long period of time for a Canadian immigrant to achieve citizenship in Canada and THEN move to the USA.
Anecdotally, I have seen what you're suggesting (a southwards movement), but not with the majority. For example - my colleagues & friends that have received permanent residency in Canada from India (usually engineers from Infosys or TCS that were part of the onshore crew of a contract) have mostly stayed in Canada, with a couple of exceptions that moved to the USA for a specific job opportunity and used the L1 visa to do it.
Granted, this is math for a single guy with no children - so YMMV.
I don't disagree with any of the facts you've laid out - but I do disagree heavily on whether or not this is holding Canadian tech back. There are certainly people who won't move to the US for any number of reasons - family, lifestyle, geography, politics, etc.
But the fact of the matter is that there are over 300,000 Canadians in the Bay Area[1] - clearly the number of people willing to jump south of the border overwhelms the number of people who will not. This represents nearly 1% of the entire population of Canada. The brain drain is very real, it's biased towards the more desirable parts of the talent pool, and it's happening at a mind-bogglingly large scale. While the brain drain will never claim everyone, it's certainly claiming enough talent that I think it's hard to argue that it's not having a massively negative effect on the industry domestically.
[1] http://business.financialpost.com/2013/07/10/why-canada-is-f...