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.
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...