As a developer working in Ottawa, I'd like to say that working for the government and working for a start-up are very different experiences. I don't think that the government takes so many developers away from the high-tech community here that an aspiring entrepreneur should consider them competition for employees. They're different kinds of jobs for different kinds of people.

I think there is a large concentration of talented people here who are far more interested in working in high-tech than working for the government.