The problem of trying to get Canadian tech up to par with the US is much deeper than pulling some tax/incentive levers, I think. There are some really deep cultural issues that I don't think can be solved for a few generations.
You're absolutely right that the culture of respecting changemakers is not as present in Canada. But the SFBA is the world leader here. There probably isn't any place on earth that's more optimistic about innovators.
I don't think this is a culture thing, exactly. It's just that everyone who became rich in the SFBA did so by exploiting trends or innovating – since like, the 1890s. And the USA plowed zillions of dollars into the tech ecosystem in the Bay Area since World War II. Once you have that tech investor class, culture bends a lot towards their way of thinking.
Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with. Or, they made their money in an old-school industry, like resource extraction, and they flip out at the risk levels in tech startups.
In terms of prevailing national norms, I'd say Canada is slightly more change-friendly than the USA. Think about all the ways that the USA tries to kill immigration, stifle innovation in favor of incumbents, and put regulatory barriers in the way for entrepreneurs.
In contrast, Canada has lots of official policies to support tech entrepreneurship and skilled immigration. Plus, socialized medicine really does make it easier to be an entrepreneur. Politically and culturally, Canada isn't that into retro stuff, or trying to revive earlier, more conservative eras. People think their best days are ahead of them.
It's true that the people in Canada are not super interested in overturning anyone's applecart, for its own sake or just to get rich. That's not as respected here. People are more likely to be interested in innovations that improve the general social welfare. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
As a Canadian I'm a little shock by this description. Stifle innovation? The gov't ran the phone system in Alberta until the 1990's (or so). There was no innovation because it was determined "that's the job for the gov't, not private businesses" and they did it terribly.
Look at the cellular phone networks in Canada. Nothing changes unless the CRTC OKs it. Those companies would be eaten for lunch without the gov't backing them.
My own experience in the US is that things change much quicker when it comes to innovation. Are their stupid regulations? Sure, but they seem to change pretty quickly down here when people get pissed.
Not to defend the cellular oligopoly in Canada (because it's one of the worst in the world) but things aren't perfect in the US either.
T-Mobile and Sprint just agreed to merge, which means the US will have only 3 major wireless providers: AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/T-Mobile.
> My own experience in the US is that things change much quicker when it comes to innovation. Are their stupid regulations? Sure, but they seem to change pretty quickly down here when people get pissed.
The US government just defacto banned (or outright, I can't recall) using ZTE/Huawei equipment in their mobile networks.
Say what you want about the Chinese, and I have no doubt they have ambitions of an NSA-like agency, but the rest of the world is fine to use their equipment and it smacks of protectionism for America to block their use.
I totally agree though that the Canadian government doesn't do nearly enough to encourage competition, and is usually quite content to let an oligopoly remain if it means avoiding foreign ownership.
The coastal cities embrace some kinds of individualism for sure.
That's also why when people do tend to leave the Bay Area, they go to other liberal areas like Seattle/Portland/Boulder/Asheville/Austin/Boston/NYC, even though those areas also have housing crises and the cost of living is rapidly approaching the Bay, rather than places like Mississippi, West Virginia, or Detroit, where their dollars would stretch a lot farther.
It was definitely a world of difference from where I grew up, even though it wasn't that far away. My experience in my hometown (Utica) was that it was a constant uphill battle fighting with idiots to try to get sensible policies in place to make the quality of life there better (context: It's a rust belt city with 0 industry or jobs, but a sizable amount of the population there actively makes things worse for themselves). For me, moving to a liberal area wasn't just a tolerance thing, it was a "I want to be around like-minded folks who actually care about improving their city and have the competence to do so". I don't want to come across the wrong way here- there were some people in Utica who really did try to make it a nice place to live, but I always felt like they were drowned out by fools.
Wow, that's true for all those cities? I might have guessed it for Boston and NYC, maybe Seattle too, not so much about the others. But don't know a lot about this area.
http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/05/pf/oregon-unaffordable-calif...
https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/01/10/austin-ho...
The best solution to high demand is a land value tax. That applies not just to houses, but to offices, shops, parking lots, etc. This means that land owners have to use their land efficently. If parking triples in cost, so be it. If road tolling is required, c'est la vie.
The proceeds of those tax must then be pumped into the local economy - funding services and improvements, like new bridges, or metro lines, or higher wages for central services (like schools and police)
I think a better solution would be relaxing zoning/making new development easier in areas of high scarcity.
It's also a feature that it would have a larger impact in areas where land value is high and less impact in areas where land value isn't high (so "most of the US" doesn't really matter).
The money goes to the local administration, who then can spend it on truly public places like parks, offering tax breaks to businesses they want to attract, subsidising housing, etc, which everyone benefits from.
Its is also the loss of opportunity suffered by those excluded with left uncompensated leads to a net transfer of incomes, capitalised into rental incomes and selling prices, and a misallocation of resources. Housing issues are purely a symptom of this economic injustice.
A Land Value Tax ends that net transfer, which is why the selling price of land falls to zero.
If you can make an acre of land in SF generate $1m profit a year, even with a 10,000% LVT it would still be worth $10k. With a more realistic 2% LVT, it would be worth $980k.
However if your acre of land makes $15k a year in profit as a parking lot, a 2% LVT means that you'll sell it to someone who can utilise the space in a better way, rather than make a $5k loss.
That person may build a house, and pay $20k a year in tax, setting a rental value of $1700pcm. Or they may build a 5 home building and pay $4k a year in tax per home, setting a rental value on each home at $350pcm.
If they want a $36k a year profit, then those prices mean renting out a single home for $4700pcm, or 5 homes for $850pcm each.
Zoning laws vary the value of the land of course. Land zoned as 'a park' is pretty much worthless (but not valueless). Land zoned as 'single story house' is worth at least $8m an acre ($2.5m for a house on a 1/4 acre plot). Land zoned as 'multi story' may be worth say $20m an acre.
However at 2% LVT, the single story home will be paying $160k per acre per year. The multi story with 40 homes will pay $10k a year per acre per home. Far cheaper, thus able to attract more buyers.
On top of that, there's a large incentive for residents in single story homes to rezone their area to multi story -- land price increases 150%, they sell up their (current) $2.5m home for $5.5m, making a cool 3M in profit.
If you allow a 1% LVT to accrue as a charge on the value of the home, that's only paid on disposal, there's no affordability problem either. Own a $2m piece of land at age 18, each year 1% of the value gets added as a charge. Die age 108 and 80% of the land value is then taken to pay the back-charges, leaving 20% for the estate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_218_(19...
Proposing it as a sales tax might avoid Prop 13, but continues the problem where new buyers fund the state budget and homeowners/Baby Boomers get everything for free.
Also, schools and local services might not get funded every year, I assume the rate of sales isn't constant.
If it's a majority, then I think it's safe enough characterize the individualistic attitude as American.
The ecosystem [1] that provides dollars to high-risk investments (like tech startups) just doesn't exist on the same scale in Canada. The only players with that kind of money are the federal and provincial governments, which are by nature very conservative.
[1] For example, one source of funding is large pensions and endowments, who take a tiny percentage of their overall portfolio and put it into "high-risk" investments. The funds are so large that the tiny percentage amounts to millions and millions of dollars.
It's having some issues getting off the ground though, it just kicked off a few months ago and I think they are way behind handing out funding. There's only been a handful of challenges and not many applicants (I submitted a proposal, which was serialized as a submission number just over 300). They are supposed to be distributing about $100M/yr, or 1% of the federal R&D budget.
Fuck, ain’t that the truth. Or their great-grandad made the money and each subsequent generations job is to not fuck up the gravy train.
To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too."
I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. Dogmatic adherence to the way it's done, because change is dangerous is the default state of many Canadians. For those who it's not, well, you know them, they're already living in the US.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/jordan-peterson-c...
Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it.
I found that people in Canada were much more focused on happiness and were more willing to make sacrifices to improve their quality of live, though in Vancouver the housing crisis was a gut check for anyone who's goals include owning a home, or starting a family.
There is money to be made here in the valley, especially in tech, but it is not where I intend to be permanently. I want to retire one day, and I probably can't do that here. I definitely couldn't do that in Vancouver with a local salary.
Because they could be very easily if they don't have a family safety net. I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.
You could also look at it the other way. The lack of a safety net is like burning the bridges: it encourages you to be more productive and creative precisely because if you're not, then you've got nothing to fall back on.
Poor people get free healthcare in the US. I'm not sure how you could not know that after decades of that being the case. Medicaid has existed since 1965. Not only has it broadened out considerably, today there is also CHIP and SS disability to further supplement that along with countless smaller programs.
Just Medicaid + CHIP covers 70 million people, about 22% of the US, or twice the entire population of Canada.
The US also has vast housing subsidization programs for poor people.
After Medicaid expansion, Medicaid is offered to those with an income of below ~130% of the federal poverty line: roughly $16k a year for an individual. I think we'd both agree that $16k/yr is abjectly poor, and those making even 50% more than that are still very poor.
However, only 33 states have expanded Medicaid. Some of the poorest states in the Union have not expanded Medicaid. Therefore, Medicaid is still strictly for disabled population under a certain income in those states.
To say poor people get free healthcare in the US isn't a true statement. Some very poor people in the US have access to Medicaid, depending on their location and income. Some poor people in states that have expanded Medicaid will still not get free healthcare because, while they are objectively poor, they do not meet the income requirements for Medicaid.
For those with a low income, and without access to Medicaid, health insurance premiums are very high and have deductibles that people would need to take a car loan out to pay.
Over 67 million people are enrolled in Medicaid, over 6 million are in CHIP. That's over 22% of the population.
Your definition of objectively poor is suspect, because the cost of living varies so widely across the US.
I think the bay area tends to do a lot more experimentation darwinian style, but I suspect it's because they can (more seed money/angels, etc)
West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture?
I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger the US is (population is 10x too though).
Not surprisingly they moved out west soon after school and I've been forever poisoned to the east!
That's a truly awful saying that's emblematic of the stupid prejudices brought about by American exceptionalism and the even more obnoxious (to me) West Coast exceptionalism.
You very much can. Parent didn't ask Californians to build infrastructure in Yosemite or the Death Valley. Heck, not even in Bakersfield.
How's that L.A, San Diego, and San Francisco public transportation infrastructure? Places that, if anything, have more population density than the most populus German cities?
Everyone complains how few things can be built in SF or LA, but suddenly having a lot of space available is something negative? Californians have a dream scenario on their hands as the high cost of construction can relatively soon be offset by the huge gains in capturing the global tech market. Something that will pay off for a century. And they should have the money to do it. It is probably one of the best infrastructure investments available anywhere.
Instead, New Yorkers are more likely to call bullshit on an idea when it isn't good or at a minimum challenge it to be better. You don't have nearly the same survival of the fittest attitude in the Bay Area from my impressions, and as a result tons of crackpot ideas end up funded. Admittedly, crackpot ideas in NYC also get funded (Juicero, oy) so I'm not sure if the difference can totally be attributed to New York's adversarial nature.
Mostly what it boils down to here I suspect is that start-ups just aren't as visible because all of the software devs and engineers realized that they could go work in finance rather than a "tech company" and make millions of dollars more. In this sense, lots of New York's innovative spirit gets channeled into problems relating to designing custom ASICs for HFT and trying to outwit the market.
As another point, who claim that the East Coast is averse to experimentation have a marked tendency to ignore counterfactual examples like BBN and Bell Labs. Even Xerox (in Rochester) and Kodak were pretty deep into R&D before they fucked themselves.
It exists out West too but in my experience so far is less prevalent and is given less weight. People out East often start a presentation, pitch, or interview with where they went to school. Out West I have done a dozen VC meetings and have only been asked once or twice and I didn't get the impression it was a major data point for them.
Dominant mentalities are:
East: who are you? What is your background?
West: what can you do?
Winters in the East Coast are harsh so it forces people to be more 'realistic'. Whereas the sub tropical West Coast gives people an environment to think in more imaginitive ways.
Also Juicero was headquarted in San Fran?
Weather certainly does have an effect on culture. That said, the East Coast vs. West Coast, U.S. vs the World rivalry is mostly contrived, and claims that one area is more innovative than another are dubious. It's reasonable to claim that the Bay Area has more of an engineering-centric culture, but that is likely due to a) Intel and b) the presence of multiple well-funded National Labs within close proximity.
If you look at the case of Leland Stanford, for instance, you'll notice that he maintained pretty deep personal and economic ties with his hometown of Albany up until his death- a lot of his success wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been able to rely upon his extended family in the East Coast for support.
Stanford University was actually originally supposed to be in Albany, but was the location was switched to Palo Alto- allegedly because people got greedy. Instead Albany got a children's orphanage sponsored by Stanford's wife, which didn't last past the 30s. [1]
[1] http://alloveralbany.com/archive/2010/10/01/why-stanford-isn...
I expect the enormous wealth captured by computers and software gives people the leeway to experiment.
When those people meet those ideas at the end of said journey is when then magic happens
This is just flat out wrong and a bit egotistical. Now the west coast thinks it’s the “experimenters” rolls eyes
I don't think it's egotistical though.
To infinity and beyond guys
You stand out, you become a target.
It makes Americans easily manipulated and exploited.
Just as he was passing I realize it was one of my professors. That surprised me and I turned my head as he went by to take it in. But what surprised me more was that I was the only person who gave a shit that a 50-year-old guy in dress pants and a sweater just road past on a skateboard. That's when I first realized people were much more open-minded.
It took me about 10 years after University to move back to California and I can't imagine I'll ever move away.
I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'.
But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.
If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.
[1] https://www.ted.com/talks/steven_johnson_where_good_ideas_co...
But if you're in it for the money, the 2x salaries can't be beat.
But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me.
If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...
I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.
I believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.
This is not so in other areas.
When you discovered a deposit you'd stake a claim (e.g. patent) and then seek investors to exploit it (e.g. venture funding). If the discovery turned out to be genuine and the mine was successful the returns would often be extraordinary.
Thing is, a lot of mines fail. Maybe there's resources there but extracting them isn't practical or profitable. Maybe there wasn't as much there as theorized. Maybe it was all a lie.
The paradox is that once you have a successful mining industry built up, people think of those as the conservative play, the safe bet, and are reluctant to go through that process all over again with a new industry.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/g...
A growth in the value of land isn't, in and of itself, an actual product, though I do agree the construction is. However, how much of that construction is actually in service of a different industry (i.e. would never have happened but for, say, mining and oil)? Similarly, how much of that real estate value would drop to approximately zero if the industries supporting it disappeared?
I'm sure there's some construction, especially residential, that must be happening just due to population growth, but I'm skeptical if that accounts for even a majority of that number.
http://www.investorsfriend.com/canadian-gdp-canadian-imports...
I'm pretty confident that someone who, according to that chart, is in the "real estate" industry who works selling houses in newly-built mining towns knows full well what industry really supplies his income.
A very brief search resulted in this:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/607742/gdp-of-manitoba-c...
If that's accurate, it suggests that Manitoba, which, though known as more agricultural and manufacturing rather than mining, has the same pattern of "real estate" accounting for individual income. Of course, the significant majority of the population is in Winnipeg, but I don't think that qualifies it as a major, on the same scale as Vancouver or Toronto.
Again, I think that even real estate "industry" workers in Winnipeg know their money really comes from manufacturing, just as the ones in Edmonton know their money really comes from oil.
Maybe in the major cities you mention it's not so obvious, but "real estate" still fails to eclipse the sum of all the industries that actually produce something (manufacturing, resource extraction, construction).
If resisdential RE tanks in Canada, a real possibility with rising interests rate and extreme debt levels, the economy goes down with it.
Mining / Oil & Gas isn’t going to save it.
(Those charts also fail to show how much of that income is from residential transactions/management versus commercial ones.)
It just doesn't stand to reason that if people entirely stop paying other people to buy and sell each other houses (even if it does account for the vast majority of that 13% of the GDP) that the economy would collapse completely.
However, if housing values collapse due to questionable (or worse) lending practices, as happened in the US around 2008, could collapse the financial system and thereby the economy. It might even increase the GDP of the real estate category, especially as a percentage, at the expense of the finance category.
More importantly, though, I don't think there are any voters that buy the notion that they could, for example, do away with their real industry, such as mining or manufacturing, and replace it entirely with selling each other their houses. Because of that, whatever conservatism they may hold would remain from that real industry, regardless of what category the statisticians put their income in.
So to escape the uniformity of Canada you left and went to find a place were people think like you and value the things you do?
Isn't that what those Canadians are all about as well? Seeking the company of other similar thinking people?
The really open mind thing would be to recognize that some cultures like to experiment, others not, and both are fine.
Agreed. Ontario is a few weeks away from voting in a conservative government with Doug Ford at the helm.
In the political sense, Germany is more liberal than the US (especially economically), but there's this sort personal conservatism that manifests in paranoia about data/privacy, aversion/skepticism around change and technology and risk, less acceptance of weirdness. German culture just feels...rigid. It's stable and very functional, but also inflexible.
And the constant skepticism to anything that is not a physical product. Writing Software in the eye of the layman is something between boring and con-artistry.
Software is different in that problems can be fixed instantly (since online updates) and the first to build the user base is often the winner.
The real problems occur when the "software startup" model is applied to a product that it does not fit.
Canadian federalism is incomplete in that regard.
However Ford could pull a Mike Harris and start firing nurses. His economic plan promises a balanced budget with no job cuts and no tax rises. He claims there are efficiencies to be had whatever that means.
As of legal cannabis, it is better when it is federal. In US you will go to jail in one state, and can be just fine in another.
Republican authored bill: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/975/
And Diane Feinstein opposed California’s 2016 legalization.
It’s ridiculous to suggest Democrats are more likely to legalize than Republicans because the facts don’t really support that. It’s much less of an obvious partisan issue. Remember, Democrats controlled the house, senate and White House in 2009-2011 and not a single legalization bill even made it to the floor.
Frankly, as a Toronto area dev Doug Ford winning the election would definitely cause me to consider looking for work in the US. Toronto's in a pretty crucial moment right now wrt growth and infrastructure, and I don't really see the point staying if the party of stagnation wins - whatever tax cut they may introduce is dwarfed by higher salary + lower CoL in the US anyways.
I'll say that there's a huge difference in values between the big cities, the suburbs, and Alberta.
Alberta is much more socially conservative than most of the states (if you ever see a Canuck unironically call someone a "cuck", 9/10 times they're Albertan).
Montreal/QC are cool but still hosts an extremely ethnonationalist element that's all but crippled their local economy (remember that a little over a year ago, we had a terror attack where some altright guy shot up a mosque in QC).
Toronto is incredibly progressive (I'd argue it's the most diverse city on the planet), but is surrounded by some of the worst, overtly racist, politicians you'll ever meet. Because of a first-past-the-post voting system, even though they're in the minority, the vote among reasonable people is split among reasonable candidates, and hateful buffoons get a consistent voting bloc. (The late) Rob Ford was mayor, in spite of making violent rants, being repeatedly publicly drunk, using every racial epitaph in the book, smoking crack (sometimes on video), and smoking crack with his KKK-member sister. His brother, reported former drug dealer Doug Ford, now stands a real chance of being Ontario's next premier.
Vancouver is a great city, but somewhat isolated from the rest of Canada. Toronto's pretty expensive, but Vancouver is even worse. Unlike Toronto, though, there aren't a lot of options for anyone but the most wealthy who want to live there. While the Conservative party is very weak there (they didn't even have a location there hosting the federal leadership convention, when even people in PEI had one in driving distance), BC's influence federally is minimal. You could argue they're becoming something of an oligarchy due to the huge influence of corporate money. You either need to have a high-paying job, or be very old, to live there.
Just being a conservative or a right-winger is bothersome and ignorant and dangerous and destructive and lots of bad things. What a way of seeing the world. :-)
That had me LOL because I think it’s so true. If you were to suggest perhaps to start a business that innovates you’d be considered crazy. Although of course the new tech out of the USA will be adopted by all immediately.
You'd also be considered crazy if you expressed those ideas in Chicago or San Diego, or Charleston, but that doesn't mean that we stereotypes about America not respecting 'changemakers' are accurate.
My exposure is more western Canada than eastern Canada, but I find that your statements couldn't be further from the truth. People here are constantly trying new things and exploring and experimenting with new business ideas. I see great optimism and people who see potential.
And in terms of being constantly questioned, I just don't see that where I am, but I also don't view being questioned as a bad thing. When it comes to launching any new idea, it seems that being questioned is the very least of the difficulty you need to put up with.
Ambition toward innovation is not tightly coupled with remuneration here, but it does not mean that Canada is averse to innovation. America has loved that myth since the Avro Arrow and has sought to suppress it after that, or at least it can seem that way.
It's not just western Canada, though western Canada is no small contributor (after having lived in Alberta, and loving and longing for return to BC but originating from rural Ontario and now living in the "center of the universe"/Toronto).
I grew up with farmers, and they were/are consistently more liberal in all regards than what I hear in American news and forums. Those were the first places I saw solar panels and wind farms popping up to contribute to the larger energy grid as well as supplement extraneous local power consumption by isolating supplies to certain devices. They never seemed to care so much about asserting their opinions about how society should run except that people should generally treat each other with decency no matter who you are. I liked that. I could go on for hours. It's not to say conservative types (as expressed in this thread—against change) exist, nor other groups of social conservatives, but they don't occupy the majority. That's another subject altogether...
I also agree that being questioned isn't a problem. It can reach a severely challenging point, but most decent people will hear you out as well. It's a challenge— it challenges you to be better. Just as you've said.
Refining an idea isn't a problem, nor is it censorship, nor is it an aversion to innovation. It's fundamental to science.
I only wanted to speak up because of the majority comments opposing your own.
I grew up in suburban Minnesota. It's not exactly ambition central, but it's miles ahead of small town America. You're talking about a country that elected Trump here. It's afraid of immigrants, "foreign" religions (as though American Christianity weren't a shambling syncretic nightmare), doesn't believe in evolution, and believes overwhelmingly in hell. We incarcerate more of our citizens per capita than any other developed country. We're not exactly free-wheeling dream seekers, at the median. We ridicule weird people, we spit on people who fail, and we hate anyone who is ugly, awkward, old, or otherwise socially disadvantaged.
Getting ahead is seen as fine - be ambitious! - but only because we think our friends are "winners" and won't be hurt by the risks they take, which is nonsense. We also don't prize reflectiveness as a culture, so when people gain sufficient experience to learn that this perspective is idiotic, they don't internalize it.
I'm not a giant fan of American culture, and I'm sad to see that anyone from Canada (I watch your Supreme Court proceedings for entertainment, full disclosure!) would idolize anything about they way Americans do things.
A move clearly demonstrating the willingness to take a risk.
That kind of boldness is not a thing in Canada.
> It's afraid of immigrants
And is that unreasonable? Why?
It's obvious immigration can do serious harm to the lower and middle classes.
What's surprising is how open they are to immigration despite the risk.
For example most of the western world enforces stricter skilled visa requirements.
> "foreign" religions
And again is that unreasonable? Why?
Even so the US is incredibly accomodating - just look at the Amish for a good example of tolerance.
> We incarcerate more of our citizens per capita than any other developed country.
Because Americans are more willing to take risks. Good and bad.
> and we hate anyone who is ugly, awkward, old, or otherwise socially disadvantaged.
Who is we? I certainly don't think that's true. Maybe you could argue indifference?
> I'm not a giant fan of American culture
You seem to only see the negatives. Why is that?
There is a lot of pros for moving fast and getting things done, jobwise. Weather also is amazing.
Now for personal life, the older you become, the more I realize that this place (the bay area) is really not the best quality of life you can get. People all think the same way, diversity is only visual, and there is not that much diversity of thought. Everything gravitates around work and tech. People are happy to work a crazy amount of hours and feel cool for doing so.
I loved it for a couple years then started to become bored.
The tech industry only makes up a small percentage of the bay area population.
... or a condo to put on Airbnb.
You are definitely onto something when you say that there are some deep cultural issues within Canada; Look at RIM, the company believed that its central business customers cared more about security and efficient communication and that the iPhone presented no threat to them. The iPhone was just a crazy idea to them, who would want to use that clunker with a horrible battery life and browse the net on it?
Canada has talent, without a doubt, but it also keeps people subdued as you stated because they are constantly questioned by everyone else. Canadians are a lot like accountants, they want to buy that fancy Harley and take it out on the road and live a little, but only on the weekends. :)
They tried that a few times. I know because I was an advisor to one of the biggest incubators in Canada. The government even gives cash grants to startups.
But as soon as the company gets big, they either 1) open an engineering office in the Bay Area or 2) Sell, and the move to the Bay Area because they were just acquired by a Bay Area company who is making them move (or they just want to move now that they can afford it).
The startup scene in Canada has huge demand from Canadian engineers who want to start startups there, but they have a really hard time attracting local capital. Most of their capital comes from SV VCs who like the fact that it is cheaper to start a company there because of the low salaries, and a lot of the successful exits leave.
This is news to me. I tried have tried talking to an incubator several times and every time they tell me to come back when I have $10k/mo in revenue. Sorry but I have a full time job and I can't grow a business to 10k/mo without some help. Seems to me like they didn't try very hard.
It's also very telling when you see American incubators/investors tie directly into universities to get people funded; They clearly see the talent and opportunities and want to get into it very early on while the Canadian incubators and governments want to be risk averse and then cry foul when people move south. Sadly I don't think this will change anytime soon.
FTA: 'A lack of successful “scale-up” tech firms in Canada has been cited as one of the reasons research development spending and productivity here have lagged other developed countries.'
> but they have a really hard time attracting local capital.
So is the problem, then, that "trying" has, so far, involved running incubators and grants and what's necessary, in addition, is incentivizing local capital to invest?
Other commenters have suggested tax breaks, which I personally believe is a state's greatest incentive "lever". Perhaps a lower (maybe even zero) capital gains tax rate on startup investments?
Otherwise, it doesn't seem like there's been any aggressive encouragement/funding/facilitation, as proposed by the parent comment.
- Canada does offer some tax breaks [3] and grants to startups, but more is also welcome.
- Agreed that there should be a bigger focus on startups. I wonder if having provinces create VC funds (like Investissment Quebec [4]) tailored specifically to startups would help here.
[1] http://mgalligan.com/post/52327738889/canada-h1b
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-20/h-1b-work...
[3] https://www.investinontario.com/incentive-programs-and-servi...
While I agree that the efforts are working, this is very much like using a tea spoon to bail water out of the Titanic. You also have to consider that given a choice between the US and Canada, very few people would pick Canada so many of the people that arrive would leave the minute an opportunity in the US opens up.
This is an interesting point. I feel like Canada does do this, but it sort of backfires on itself. Something my wife once pointed out is that a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers, whose cultures are heavily conservative cultures that tend to celebrate social status over risk-taking innovativeness
https://venturebeat.com/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravit...
"Twenty five percent of the nation’s startups and 52% of those in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. Indian immigrants were the leading company founding group. They founded 13.4% of Silicon Valley’s startups and 6.5% of those nationwide."
Regardless of cultural differences, I recall reading that immigrants as a whole are far more entrepreneurial than similarly positioned natives. A lot of this is through self-selection: saying goodbye to all your friends and moving to a whole other country/continent is extremely "scary". Hence by definition, the average immigrant is far more comfortable heading off into the unknown and taking the plunge.
Aren't a lot of immigrant tech talent in Silicon Valley Chinese and Indian too? Or maybe even the majority?
Besides, China has a very vibrant VC culture, second only to the US. Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.
My chinese in-laws can comfortably live there without speaking a word of English because there's that much chinese cultural infrastructure - from church groups to supermarkets to gardeners, handymen, doctors and real estate agents whose _entire clientele_ is 1st-gen chinese. Chatting with the neighbor in chinese about so-and-so's grandson is a fairly normal thing.
In contrast, my wife would consider the chinese community in SF heavily "americanised" - Similar to how Sao Paulo has "nihongakkous" (immersion schools for 2nd/3rd gen japanese), some schools in SF have "immersion" programs. These basically indicate that the community as a whole doesn't have cultural momentum to imprint onto new generations. By contrast, at my kid's kindergarten in Toronto, the teacher would at times actively have to discourage kids from speaking chinese in class (when it would be disruptive/exclusionary to the minorities - caucasians - of the class)!
WRT VC culture, my understanding is that in China, there's a great deal of literal politics (IIRC, Didi and many other prominent startups were owned by family members of prominent politicians), but that culturally speaking, "success" tends to be narrowly defined as doing well in school and getting a socially desirable job after that. I'm told that indians have similar cultural pressure to raise to management positions. (Women have it even worse, with pressure to get married in their 20s, give their parents grandchildren, etc). I feel like in SF, tech workers are heavily immersed in liberal ideas (e.g. risk taking, individualism) and tend to "detach" from their birth culture to a much higher degree than in Toronto.
As for Chinese taking risks, I think you have to look at the alternative safer investments that basically don’t exist, you have no choice but to take risks in China, or in most other developing econonies for that matter.
I think the author is pointing out that being a Chinese/Indian immigrant is in conflict with risk taking.
You don't have to look too hard for this. Most Chinese/Indian immigrants gravitate to low-risk jobs, specifically at larger companies, usually for visa/immigration related issues.
Seems to me that the risk-aversion is caused by their (not-yet-)immigrant status, not their cultural roots.
Unfortunately, this is offset by very high housing prices relative to salaries, inadequate or absent freeways, and significantly higher fuel prices, making even a "drive 'til you qualify" strategy for housing unattractive.
Is there adequate apartment stock near public transit? That could make it attractive enough for workers of a certain age, but, at least in the US, suburbs are remarkably popular for raising kids.
I live in Portland, Oregon, which has weather that is essentially identical to Vancouver. It is amazing here. Winters are gray, which I have actually grown to enjoy, but not cold. And it snows a couple of times of year, which is the perfect amount of snow. But spring, summer, and autumn are so much better than what I grew up with in California.
Lucrative perks sticks because of tax breaks like you mentioned.
I would be going all-out on #3. Having local businesses has benefits beyond just avoiding brain drain as well.
This is why it blows my mind at how little funding there is for early stage companies in Canada. I personally tried twice now already, as have several friends, and we didn't get anywhere because local investors here want you to already have a finished product with a validated business model and 10k/month in revenue. I'm sorry but the only way you stop a promising new grad from turning down a huge salary is by giving them the chance to work on their passion.
Expecting them to already have a 10k/mo business is just a big F-you. Might as well go to the states where I can at least make enough money to take some time off. And heck, while I'm there someone might even fund my idea anyways.
Which is not to discount California's tremendous housing crunch. I am merely pointing out that its a much lower risk for a young single US citizen to just move to CA, try it out for a few months, if they can't get a job or make it, then just drive back. It is much harder for people from outside the country to do the same.
Bit pedantic but this really is a far cry from being the "vast majority" of Canada's population.
I mean really, it creates about 10k high-paying tech jobs, okay... but Walmart employs 1 million. A lot of the support staff, e.g. in moderation, are distributed around the world.
Then it generates tons of revenues and profits for its shareholders, but FB is a public company, it could in theory be completely owned by non-Americans who profit off of the American company.
Then it provides a service to people around the world.
And then it has strategic value, but it appears it was misused by foreign powers to manipulate domestic elections, rather than furthering American interests.
FB does pay quite substantial federal taxes, far greater than it does in the rest of the world, you can't easily disregard that. The rest of the world is missing out on that, but that's also a question of the rest of the world not using its tax mandate fully.
It doesn't appear like Facebook is tremendously more important to the US than it is to the rest of the world. Of course brain drain is always an issue we should be concerned about, but one feature of publicly-owned digital companies is that their benefits aren't as restricted to their locality as traditional companies are.
Where does this perception come from? Canada has stricter immigration rules than the USA.
EDIT: Specifically what I'm talking about is that Canada only allows in immigrants who are economically desirable and speak English or French.
Also, even if you get the H1B and apply for Permanent Residency, the wait time can be obscenely long depending on where you were born. If you were born in China, you'll have to wait for 6+ years. If you were born in India, you'll have to wait for 12+ years.
Ironically enough, if you're a not-very-qualified applicant, you'll likely have a easier time applying here in USA. The Canadian system might be more stringent, but rolls out the red carpet for those who are truly qualified, and in greater numbers too. The American system is the exact opposite.
1) Do a PhD and hope to produce original, well cited research that qualifies you for EB1.
2)Similar to above, but if you are in a research team and can get good papers out that qualify you for EB1.
3)Wait and hope for promotions that qualify you for EB1.
4)Move back to India after a couple of years.
5)Try to move to Europe or Canada. Everyone is kinda fuzzy on this since no one really has clear idea of immigration laws in other countries.
6)Get enough money from some IPO to pay for investment based green card and hope for the best.
This is if you currently qualify for EB2 i.e 5 or more years experience or a Masters from US. I don't even know what is the condition for people in EB3. As one of my friend put it memorably, there is a person whose parent's haven't even met, that will get a green card faster than me, if born anywhere but India, China, Mexico and Philippines.
I know, barring a recession, I'll be in US for the next couple of years, but after getting a family, I think my tolerance for having my residence in the country coupled with my job would drop and I'll look and see if one of the above option works for me. Plus ageism in tech is something I fear as well.
I would love to settle here, but barring a law change, it is right now impossible for me.
EDIT: Separate line numbers for the numbers points.
It's unclear whether you mean that FAANGs do or don't abuse the system. I've heard both sides of that.
There is some fixed number of employment based green cards that are awarded per category(EB1,2,3) with rollover between categories. The reason why there is a delay is that there is a country-wide cap on a percentage of total green cards awarded that year. So countries with higher number of people immigrating have a queue. If there were thousands of Australians immigrating, there can be a queue there too.
I am not sure about Canada though, as there maybe some other category for it.
The wait times referenced are the wait times for an immigrant visa, whether you are applying for it as an already-resident H-1B holder (as permitted by it's dual-intent nature) or as someone who is not yet resident in the US.
The wait times have nothing to do with the H-1B not being an immigrant visa.
We can get a permenant residency Canada visa straight off the bat without a job offer (quicker with a job offer though granted).
We can’t work out how to get a US visa for love nor money and have basically given up thinking about it.
Canada certainly seems easier from where we are.
Start a US business with a partner so you own just 50% then petition for an H1B for yourself every year until you win.
E1 or E2?
You have a fair bit of options if you really want it and are willing to jump through hoops.
From what I can US the US still says no even if you meet the above criteria.
The USA on the other hand has a relatively open employer-backed system in addition to the wealth/education-agnostic quota system.
In that sense the USA seems more random, but not more open. But I guess we're just using different criteria.
Pretty sure you are missing some key details, you can get a Canadian permanent residency if you the required number of points which are based on your education, language, work experience etc.
For majority of the cases if you have the points you will get the PR visa. Once you get the visa you can move to Canada and look for jobs you cannot do that with the US.
As I said you are missing some details, people get a resident visa in 1 year even if they are outside Canada, so either you dont know the full story or your friend is probably misleading you.
The one thing that is a little sticky is that you can't get across the border if you have had a DUI within so many years. An issue for some of my dad's hunting buddies.
The US side coming back was always a bigger pain in the neck. Part of that is because of the way Border Patrol rotates their agents. You could always tell the ones that had recently rotated from the Mexican border because they were twitchy and kept a hand on their holster at all times. I'm sure it's a hard habit to break, but not really appropriate at a backwater crossing in Northern Maine where 95% of the traffic is log trucks and local Canadians coming over to fill up their gas tanks or pick up things they've ordered online.
The only two times I've been aggressively grilled including accusations of smuggling and personal questions that were intrusive were coming back into Canada.
Even when I only had a green card, most of the time the US CBP just said "welcome home" and waved me on.
I don't think it was the difference between being a visitor (to the USA) vs a resident (in Canada), because the couple of times I went abroad while I was a resident in the USA were very similar.
Straightforward business trips for both countries for me, but Canada is a little more casual than average, but otherwise uninteresting. The officials smile, ask a straightforward question ("where are you staying?"), and stamp the passport ("enjoy your stay in Canada").
In the US, I feel like I'm being interrogated. "You don't look like a software developer" "who is paying for this trip?" and lots of scowling.
That would be considered unacceptable and unprofessional at U.S. border control.
We had six people and a ton of luggage and they seemed to be seriously considering searching all our bags just because of Texas IDs. :|
They were very nice when I activated my PR card though.
There's also the cliche (spread by the internet and political groups) that conservative/Republicans/etc... are against all immigration. This is 90% incorrect.
I worked as support staff during a conference in Seattle of conservative business leaders around 2010. Their #1 topic of discussion was how to get more people into the country because they couldn't find enough workers with the right skills domestically. And no, it wasn't the tech sector that was hurting the most.
Apparently the problem the conservatives have isn't immigration as an umbrella policy. It's legal versus illegal methods (though some of the speakers advocated for both). Kind of eye-opening. I no longer believe the regurgitated talking points from either party.
I don't know what groupthink you are talking about, but there is a wife perception that the US has recently become hostile toward immigrants. Which is reflected not only in fuzzy attitudes, but concrete policy, and it does explain changes in immigration, both legal and otherwise.
> There's also the cliche (spread by the internet and political groups) that conservative/Republicans/etc... are against all immigration. This is 90% incorrect
It would be more accurate to say that there is a wide (and accurate) perception that conservatives are generally more negatively inclined to immigration, and that this is generally correct on balance (though obviously not a reliable guide to individual attitudes.)
> Apparently the problem the conservatives have isn't immigration as an umbrella policy. It's legal versus illegal methods
That's what they usually say, but they also usually oppose policy which would make legal immigration easier and relieve pressure that creates illegal immigration, and frequently support policies to restrict legal immigration. And it's not just 10% of conservatives supporting this kind of policy.
This reveals that the rhetoric that it it is only illegal immigration that is the concern is not reflective of the actual concerns.
Look, I'm a liberal but I will call out the Dems when I need to. Most of the reforms to legal immigration have always been a sort of addendum, or a two-part deal with relief for the illegal immigrants included in them. Democrats haven't proposed a bill which purely targets legal immigration. So its a little unfair to say that conservatives are opposed to all kinds of Immigration.
Perhaps, but conservatives have frequently put forward bills (or, when in the executive, instituted executive policy without Congressional action) that further restrict currently-legal immigration and non-immigrant entry and privileges, which is more significant sign of opposition to legal immigration than merely voting against expansions to legal immigration, whether pure or not.
Maybe it is just posturing and lies, but the conservative viewpoint has been to have a merit-based system for permitting immigrants into the country, as opposed to immigration based on familial relations. Every country gets to decide what kind of people that they want coming into their country and I think its perfectly fine for conservatives to feel that way (it is a different matter that I don't agree with that idea). My perception (again, which might be wrong) is that that is essentially what Republicans have been getting at for the past couple of decades (perhaps more).
Now, that being said: these are the same folks who were about Family Values, Fiscal Purity etc. So, like I said before, I don't think the arguments are being made in good faith. But the argument does have merit.
Go look up the stuff that Orin Hatch and Rubio sponsored with regards to H1B visas. The stuff that they sponsored would double the number of H1Bs and was majority sponsored by republicans.
further restrict currently-legal immigration
This has nothing to do with debates over executive authority to choose how to prioritize enforcement and to make transparent commitments regarding that (which the executive clearly has in some cases, outside the obvious pardon power, since literally every grant of immunity from prosecution, or plea bargain to reduced charges, is an enforceable commitment by the executive not to enforce some law in some well-defined circumstance based on policy priorities.)
difficult to plan for the future where this is a possibility
Maybe Trump's mistake is being vocal about it while Canada maintains plausible deniability.
The Obama admin did the same thing. Sure it was technically possible to get a visa but in reality it was impractical and deliberately so.
Canada is importing talent from Hong Kong and Shanghai to work for American and Canadian companies, at salaries that are below market in US tech hubs, but appealing enough for those who wish to move to North America. At the same time, Canada is exporting talent to the US because of those same good-but-not-good-enough salaries.
4/20/18 Bloomberg: Engineers Are Leaving Trump’s America for the Canadian Dream
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-20/h-1b-work...
What really prevents braindrain on a large scale is stationary opportunity's.
Take Shenzhen for example, it is one ocean away from California and should be constantly bleeding out towards it. The contrary is the case, due to the relatively cheap and flexible factories of hardware- being opportunities for which California cant or wont any longer compete.
But shouldn't all these Chinese hardware founders create fab-less hw-design companies and mass-migrate? No, because connections and opportunities would not migrate with them.
Such opportunities are usually created by long-term protectionism and clever industrial policies.
What is canadian culture? What are canadian values? I've never heard anyone mention canadian culture or values before.
> would love to live in Canada one day.
You are one of the rare individuals. Most canadians I've met want to live in the US. Especially those with money or skills to make money. Better food, weather, culture, history, life, etc.
> - Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.
But they can't compete because of scale. Canada isn't large enough and it certainly has too little internal talent to compete with the US. California by itself can out compete canada by itself. Thrown in the other 49 states.
Even if canada retained all its "brains", it wouldn't matter. We outnumber canada 10 to 1 and outrank canada in every economic facet from resources, ports, infrastructure and foreign talent.
Foreigners with skills, from china to india to the middle east to eastern europe, all want to come to the US to study and work.
It's almost impossible for canada to compete with the US. They have nothing going for them vis a vis the US and their internal market isn't large enough to compete with the US.
Some solutions I can think of, which might help:
- Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions.
- Offer very lucrative perks to the major software companies, to expand their engineering presence in Canada. Yes, it stinks having to offer tax-breaks, but at least it will help build initial momentum.
- Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.