9 ms·

Vancouver’s high-tech hurdle: Attracting top-level talent

61 points by curiousjorge 11y ago

mahyarm 11y ago
Your a new grad from uvic, UBC or SFU. Recruiters from Seattle are contacting you. You interview at Seattle, and get a job offer. The Seattle recruiters tell you the visa process is easy with this TN thing. You have no idea what the job market is like so you go interview in Vancouver. Your shocked to find out that the pay is literally half in Vancouver. Housing is also half in Seattle, everything is cheaper in Seattle. You really can't tell the difference between the two cities otherwise, and home is 3 hours away. You do the sensible thing and move to Seattle. 2 years later, you work for microsoft or some company down the bay area and start getting your green card. Later on you see that the average income in vancouver is comparable the average income of Reno,NV. Anyone with half a brain who is from the area will move to Seattle.
- msie 11y ago
  Very eloquently put. I would be working in the states if I weren't so worried about my parents' health.
- rohamg 11y ago
  > Your [sic] shocked to find out that the pay is literally half in Vancouver. I think this is changing. There are great new companies to work for in Vancouver who depend on access to top-tier talent and are willing to pay for it. We [1] have hired several folks from SF and most of our alums tend to head straight to the Valley, so it's clear that we're competing on the global stage for talent. This by nature means average compensation that must be competitive. Others must be seeing this too. [1] Axiom Zen: https://axiomzen.co https://axiomzen.co
- Serow225 11y ago
  I'm a Canadian by birth and when I graduated with my M.Sc. 10 years ago, the jobs I interviewed for in Canada were offering a salary half of their Canadian equivalents, never mind the difference in exchange rate. As a new grad with education debt to pay off, it's not hard to choose between $110kUSD and $50kCAD... I'm still in the U.S., haven subsequently gone through the TN1>GC>citizenship process.
- Zombieball 11y ago
  This accurately describes the situation. Even if you land a higher paying job in Vancouver your salary is probably around 80% of what you would get in Seattle and you are paid in $CAD vs. $USD.
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    80% is a bit too generous based on my experience. I'd be happy with 80% of market salary in Seattle if it means I could work in Vancouver. The reality is actually closer to 50% like the OP mentioned, even before taking into account exchange rates: https://angel.co/salaries https://angel.co/salaries From the perspective of someone who wants to stay in Vancouver, this is just sad.
    - djmips 11y ago
      Agreed, and one of the factors is tax which is lower in the US.
- x0x0 11y ago
  Weird, it's almost like Seattle/Vancouver is a natural experiment proving compensation matters. Now if only we could convince all the employers in the valley whinging about their inability to hire while paying maybe $150k/year in sf, where the median rent for a 1-bedroom is $3500 and condo buyers now are paying more than $1k/ft2 [2]. [1] http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/07/02/sfs_median_asking_rent_for_a_onebedroom_tops_manhattans.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/07/02/sfs_median_asking_r... [2] http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/S-F-condo-market-passes-precrash-peak-5361934.php http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/S-F-condo-market-pa...
  - djmips 11y ago
    Note that there are plenty of people who won't take a job in Seattle because they don't want to leave Vancouver for reasons of family, loyalty to country, fear of America. Yes, that last one is actually quite prominent amongst people I've asked.
    - lewisl9029 11y ago
      That last one is actually one of my biggest concerns, and one of the primary reasons why I haven't given up looking for jobs in Canada yet. I have a fair number of concerns about Canada, but personal safety usually isn't one of them. I can't confidently say the same about the states though. A non-negligible percentage of the population there just seems actively hostile towards visible minorities. Being born in China myself, I'd definitely fall into the visible minorities camp in the US, and with the lax gun laws and whatnot, I'd be extremely worried for my life if some conflict arose between the US and China and I was still around. I realize it's probably not a very rational fear, and I don't have any hard statistics to back any of it up. But safety of mind does have a tangible value to me. Whether or not it's worth more than half of my potential salary is another story though.
      - x0x0 11y ago
        If it reassures you in any way, CA is 15% asian and SF is 35% (21.4% of chinese descent.) imo, African-Americans and people who are visibly muslim or appear to so be to morons, such as Sikhs, get the bulk of the discrimination. Fingers crossed neither our government nor the Chinese government are stupid enough to get into a shooting war. Both sides seem to bluster a lot but the ties that bind are massive exports from China to the US. I think the chances of serious conflict in a peaceful relationship spanning 4 decades continue to decrease.
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  The major 'culture shock' difference I've heard from Vancouverites that have gone to Seattle is that the dense, urban lifestyle of Vancouver isn't quite as easy to take advantage of in Seattle. In Vancouver it's pretty easy to live without a car and bike everywhere in protected bike lanes, but Seattle is much more spread out, is more car oriented, with has weaker transit and cycling infrastructure, and the hills can be a drag. This has not been a deal breaker for anyone I know in Seattle but they've mentioned their disappointment, having gotten used to a certain lifestyle in Vancouver. Depending your interests Vancouver's easily car free lifestyle might not matter at all, or it might be worth the paycut.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  As a recent Waterloo grad, this definitely rings true with me. I lived in Vancouver for most of my life, and love the city. I'd love nothing more than to live and work here all my life, but I'm really having trouble justifying not crossing the border and more than doubling my salary like most of my friends have done. From my experience job searching so far, even without mentioning salary, the sheer number of interesting jobs is just sorely lacking, even when comparing to other Canadian tech hubs like Toronto. Seattle, SF, and other US cities are just in an entirely different league. A quick, unscientific comparison on AngelList definitely matches my anecdotal observations: https://angel.co/salaries https://angel.co/salaries To employers in Canada: If you want world-class talent, you need to be willing to pay world-class salaries. Slightly above market salary in Canada just isn't enough anymore, because market salary in Canada is just crap, and anyone who isn't a complete sucker knows this. This isn't even about trying to steal talent from the states or elsewhere. Canada is literally bleeding talent from its own top schools. Anyone who's good enough to be hired across the border tends to end up leaving because they'd have to sacrifice so much potential earnings to stay. And if you do offer a world-class salary, you need to advertise the crap out of it by giving us the cold, hard numbers. Otherwise candidates tend to assume that by "competitive salary" you mean competitive with the pitiful salary we usually hear when we apply to Canadian companies.
elchief 11y ago
I interviewed with PoF and BuildDirect for a data science job. PoF did a 3-against-1 behavioral interview with no whiteboard. The BD interview was supposed to be a friendly tech phone chat but actually was a grilling by an HR lady that knew nothing about tech. What I'm trying to say is these companies don't know what the fuck they're doing.
bretthopper 11y ago
Someone else touched on this below but this article ignores the brain drain problem. It's true that Vancouver can attract talent from SF/Seattle easier than Toronto, for example, but conversely it also means Vancouver/BC natives are way more likely to jump to SF/Seattle since they are so close.
msie 11y ago
They mention Vancouver's high real estate prices as a factor but Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York have that problem too. Rather, as they have mentioned, it's the lack of other Unicorns in the area, the scene is still too small. Also it just seems futile to me to try to find that one special talented executive when we've seen so many times where a high-priced executive is hired only to see them not make a difference and resign early with a huge golden parachute.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
  SV and SF have BART and Caltrain bringing in people from the East and South Bay, and NY has train lines to the outer boroughs, but I don't think of Vancouver as having really much of anything beyond traffic jams.
  - garyrichardson 11y ago
    Vancouver has the West Coast Express, which is a passenger train that runs east from Downtown out to the valley. The furthest stop is about 75km away and the longest journey is about 70 minutes. We also have light rail called Skytrain that heads south and east from Downtown, but I suspect the furthest this reaches is about 30km away.
    - djmips 11y ago
      The West Coast Express isn't really designed with my hours in mind (or many devs?). I lived out east for a while and tried to use that train but it doesn't run after 6 pm and it doesn't go on weekends!
  - Tiktaalik 11y ago
    Unfortunately the referendum that would have given Translink (Vancouver's transit authority) the steady revenue to expand light rail service deep into the Fraser Valley failed as anti-tax crusaders framed Translink as an ineffective organization. The reality couldn't be more different, as Translink is one of the most effective transit systems in western North America and is a model for transit planners. https://www.biv.com/article/2015/3/who-takes-transit-work-metro-vancouver-info-graphi/ https://www.biv.com/article/2015/3/who-takes-transit-work-me... Once one leaves Vancouver proper the Metro Vancouver area has the same sprawling highways as any other region, but Translink's service area is massive (imagine every transit service and organization in every town in the Bay Area being one service (ok Bay Area is a bit bigger)) and you can seamlessly go from Vancouver all the way to White Rock at the border within the system on one ticket. The Evergreen line which will connect the system to Port Moody and Coquitlam should come on line in 2016.
volandovengo 11y ago
The challenge facing vancouver is that the population can't afford to live there. While there may be a few tech companies in town, overall, the city doesn't have an industry. Canadian visa policies got all kinds of foreigners investing big money into real estate in the city while not creating any actual jobs in the process. So there isn't much of an economy supporting the city + thus a pretty small talent pool for any prospective startups to draw from...
- paulsutter 11y ago
  Yeah "nobody goes there anymore - it's too crowded"
  - 001sky 11y ago
    Real estate is weird. Easy to have absentee owners. Easy to house money not people. Etc.
- msie 11y ago
  San Francisco has the same problems of high real estate prices but if the pay were better and we have bigger companies here (and the Canadian dollar were stronger) then we'd attract more people. There is all this talent in the States and they'll just stay there. Plus lots of strong Universities in the area pumping out more talent.
  - ryanobjc 11y ago
    As one of the talent in the united States, which ironically I went to school at ubc, there is very little chance I'd move back. I heard a senior dev maxes out at $85,000 a year. And with housing prices equal to the bay area, that's just a bad deal. But aside from money there is the respect factor. I'm not convinced that tech is respected in Vancouver. So take a triple downgrade and work for business folks who hate you?
    - van_developer 11y ago
      At my level CAD $120k/yr is average salary I've been offered locally, with no options, though after taxes that's $87k/yr and my rent is $24k/yr for a one bed condo so I would have $63k to spend per year. Instead I make remotely USD $160k, which is $210k CAD, and it goes to a consulting corporation that I write off everything I can including rent so pay much less taxes to my incredibly corrupt provincial government. I also have standard options everybody else in SV gets. Edit: I work for a startup that advertised here in the monthly who's hiring threads.
deleted 11y ago
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seminatore 11y ago
Interesting if very high level article, would have been great to see a deeper dive into the fast-growing startups in Van too.
paulsutter 11y ago
The challenge facing all these potential "startup hubs" is lack of exits. Investors invest to make a return. Silicon Valley's environment for exits is unmatched. Tokyo, Singapore, Vancouver, all the same issue. Weak environment for exits means weak environment for investment means weak environment for recruiting, etc. I spent most of the last few years traveling, lots of time in Asia, and this is the disappointing truth. China is the notable exception where there are real exits and (no surprise) lots of investment money, talent, and ideas.
- garyrichardson 11y ago
  I think this is the most important/accurate analysis in this comment thread. Vancouver had a large AAA game industry for a decade or so. It was very much driven by exits -- all the small/medium studios got bought by Microsoft/EA/etc. The fever is over and AAA has all but collapsed in BC (and possibly the world -- I think there's been a big shift to indie games). I wonder if the lack of exits is a Canadian vs US culture thing? Is there data that shows fewer exits per capita? Are we Canadians more likely to settle for less? There's not that many huge Canadian tech companies, and I can think of a couple that failed due to hubris (RIM, Nortel).
- danudey 11y ago
  The other factor is return on exits. In SF, exiting with 7+ figures means you turn around and start your own startup (or, if you were the founder, another startup). In most other countries, you take your cash and put it into property and other mid- to long-term investments. There are so few investments, successes, or exits that the idea of taking $10m and turning it back into another company is less appealing. In SF, you can get a great idea implemented and exit via acquisition or acquihire before you've figured out how you're going to turn users into revenue. The money flows relatively freely in the right circumstances. In Canada, that feels far less likely, so even if I exit with $10m I still have to figure out not just how to make a great idea into a great product, but also how I'm going to make revenue from it, since I can't make any assumptions about being able to drum up external investment (since I don't have rich friends) or arrange an acquisition (unless I shop it around internationally).
jbarciauskas 11y ago
Disappointing that they only featured white males in this article. Maybe that's part of the problem?
- Canada 11y ago
  Care to name anyone else who you feel should have been interviewed for this article?
  - forwardslash 11y ago
    Roham Gharegozlou of Axiom Zen, perhaps.
  - jbarciauskas 11y ago
    I'm not from Vancouver so not specifically, I just found the lack of diversity striking and was curious if it was reflective of the paper's lack of imagination or Vancouver's actual lack of diversity. Sounds like the former.
- van_developer 11y ago
  Vancouver is prob the most multi cultural city on earth and everywhere I've worked here is full of female executives, so American problems with ID politics don't manifest here. Just walk the streets for 10mins you will hear a dozen different languages. The problem is I get paid 2x the local salary to work for US startups remotely, and paid in USD a stronger currency. Everybody I know works remotely for Toronto, or US companies so I imagine power execs from around the world don't want to come here for the same low compensation and high income tax reasons that force us lowly devs to contract outside the province. I haven't seen much local hiring with options either, and if they do offer options they are tiny so why would I dedicate a huge chunk of my life to make somebody else's company rich while making half the salary of my clone in SV who has full options.
  - jbarciauskas 11y ago
    It's great to hear that Vancouver is really diverse, it's just disappointing that it wasn't portrayed that way then.
ced 11y ago
there is an absolute shortage of experienced and talented senior executive-level people Not quite what I was expecting from the title. As a data scientist in Montreal considering a move to Vancouver, how is the hiring situation for technical work?
- ivarv 11y ago
  There are definitely opportunities but salaries are not anywhere near what you can expect from the Valley. For some reason tech employers get away with low wages despite the very high local cost of living.
  - msie 11y ago
    Yes, employers would say Vancouver is such a nice place to live so that's part of the compensation package. So, if you want to mountain bike and snowboard, all in one day, then this is your place. :-)
- danudey 11y ago
  There's quite a few companies, all competing for a lot of talent. The problem is that when you get into specialized roles, you get into the 'only need one' problem – a company might need a data scientist (e.g. mine is actively hiring for one last I checked), but they only need one data scientist. A competitor might also need a data scientist, but they probably also only need one data scientist. That said, Vancouver also has a lot of biotech and energy firms, though they're not as flashy and well-publicized, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have data which needs sciencing. That might be worth looking into as well.
pookieinc 11y ago
Aside from the high cost of living in Vancouver, another problem is that Canadians are extremely inward-focused in their efforts to hire individuals from both startups to larger companies. From my own experience this past year: California-born and raised, I was in the market over the last 6 months, looking for software engineering jobs and applied to dozens and dozens of jobs in Vancouver, ranging from tiny startups to large companies. Not only did I receive hardly any callbacks, the ones that did politely mentioned that they were looking for Canadians first, then they'll look outside (then never got back to me). When applying to startups / larger companies in the Bay Area, I was interviewing, writing code challenges, etc., constantly as well as courted for positions. On the flip side, for Canadians across their own country, Vancouver does seem like the "hip" place to be. I have tech friends in Toronto, Montreal, and smaller cities and the lot of them are considering heading westward, and understandably so. When I visited Vancouver (Gastown, etc.), it seemed very exciting and full of the startup life. My own couple friends showed me their own startups and it felt very "Silicon Valley"-esque. I should also point out that one of my friends did offer me a position at his company, but the pay was incredibly low (while rent would remain very high), which I believe to be a symptom of most places outside of California (or maybe America, not sure).
- mahyarm 11y ago
  I don't think the hiring demand or sophistication is high enough for them to consider visas basically, which shows you how immature the software industry is there. Also very sr. devs in vancouver make less than new grads in the bay area.
- kbrosnan 11y ago
  I have heard that Vancouver was overflow office for large growing tech companies on the west coast. When they could not get the candidates H-1B status in the US they placed them in YVR. I know of a couple companies that had/have offices. Through friends that work at the companies the Canadian government became more exclusive about allowing tech workers into the country. This may explain a bit of the reluctance to interview you.
ryandrake 11y ago
> But talk to any hot tech entrepreneur in the Lower Mainland and you will hear the same story: While the city is awash in startups, “there is an absolute shortage of experienced and talented senior executive-level people” Ahh, there it is. The mythical "engineer shortage" was bound to pop up, as it does in every single article about tech labor. If there is really a shortage of engineers (supply), then wages (price) would increase to the point where supply met demand. Is this happening?
- fraserharris 11y ago
  They aren't referring specifically to engineering. Sales, marketing, finance, and operations proportionally grow as a business scales. Engineering (R&D) trends downwards to 6 - 10% of expenses (whereas at a seed-stage it could be 50 - 80% of expenses). Senior leaders for these business operations are not readily found in Vancouver or any other locale without a critical mass of public / mature technology companies. This is actually part of Silicon Valley's enduring success: a readily available workforce for all stages of technology companies.
  - ryandrake 11y ago
    Hmm, I wonder what companies could do to attract sufficient talent into Vancouver? If only there was some way to "compensate" people for moving somewhere to take a job!
    - fraserharris 11y ago
      It's more than that and the article alludes to it. Vancouver doesn't yet have the critical mass of tech companies for employees to land at if the startup fails. For a senior executive with a family, that means relocating to another city if things don't work out. Thats a significant dis-incentive to join.
- dasil003 11y ago
  What you are stating is a truism. The unspoken assumption you are responding to is that there is a shortage at the wage they are willing to offer. However you are replacing it with an assumption that wages should go up until sufficient positions are lost through attrition by being too expensive to fill. I don't think this is a very useful hair to split because it doesn't tell us much about what dynamics are actually going on. As someone with a lot of experience on both sides of the tech company hiring equation, and I think there are two main issues. First is notorious difficulty of quantifying tech skills. It's worse than a market for lemons, because even the potential hire themselves is prone to misestimate their own skillset. Second, tech skills aren't really fungible. Yes, we often talk about how a skilled engineer can easily pick up a new language, but it's not just languages, it's also problem domains, and work environments which vary widely and can greatly impact the utility of a given person. With job tenures being so short these days, it's difficult to invest a lot in training someone when you fear they will leave in a year and you'll be back to square one. I might be willing to raise the salary dramatically for the perfect candidate (who may not even exist), but I can't compete with Google and Facebook for the undeveloped talent because my company just doesn't have the cash flow.
Animats 11y ago
161 days of rain per year.
- msie 11y ago
  Yes, but in the summer it seems like less than a week of rain over four months. :-(
grownseed 11y ago
Working and living in Vancouver as a foreigner, I'll share my experience. About two years ago, I decided I wanted to settle in Vancouver and therefore proceeded to find a job here. I contacted a whole bunch of startups, maybe 5% got back to me. Half of those would call me, tell me they were interested, until I reminded them I needed a working visa (which I systematically mentioned in my emails), following which they would pretty much immediately drop me. As for the remaining half, I went to interviews, most of which went really well, only to be told weeks later that they assumed I would be able to just get the visa on my own. All I needed was for the company to be willing to sponsor me, which is a relatively easy process on their end. One particular company had the guts to call me, tell me they really liked me but wouldn't hire me because of the visa situation, and asked me if instead I could direct other people like me in their direction. It doesn't get much more rude than that. Bottom line, I ended up working for the public health sector, who not only sponsored my visa but also helped me through the process. So, dear Vancouver startup scene, if you want to attract talent, start by getting off your high horses.
idibidiart 11y ago
Money makes the world go round. Where there is money flowing thru the system there is life and opportunity. And it's not the absolute amount of money or net worth of the place, though that is correlated, but the rate of flow of that money within the larger ecosystem. In most countries and places outside of SF/SV, rich people sit tight on their money, and don't take risks. In this way, they are conservative, and risk averse, and as a result the ecosystem is weak. People here in SF/SV are risk takers and that benefits everyone. We're more optimistic, or dangerously optimistic sometimes but that's why we lead the world in terms of innovation and opportunity.
qjighap 11y ago
I am wondering if the BC government is going to start cracking down on this sub-contractor situation. A common situation that I am seeing is a company will hire a recruiter. Then recruiter will rent out their "contractor" to the company. The recruiting company will not call their contractor an employee and include any of the stability or rights associated with that, but they will give them all the tools and other things they need for their job barring them from claiming any of the contractor tax breaks.
ryanSrich 11y ago
There is no tech talent shortage. You just have to pay reasonable rates. You want top talent? Your offer better be at least 6 figures. It's pretty simple.
sshrinivasan 11y ago
Important to note that the article is talking about executives, not the riff-raff (by that I mean the software devs). Executives typically have families, kids, schools, mortgages etc, stuff that engineers like myself do not have in general. A 40 something exec vs a 25 year old engineer have very different requirements and lifestyles. Getting developers to come here (I live in Vancouver as a Senior Software Developer) is not too difficult, we offer a salary that's about 80% what you can get in silicon Valley, and you're not in Silicon Valley. To many (including myself) that's a good thing. I prefer a theoretically lower pay for a way better lifestyle, since I put value on my free time as well as my work time. Given the choice between 100k in Vancouver and 140k in San fucking Jose, to me its a no brainer to live here. And the people who believe you max out at 80k are flat out wrong, or are working for the wrong company. We are willing to pay 6 figures for a senior developer, and starting at 85k for a junior one, and we are a smallish company of about 45 people. Salaries here are going up with the advent of bigger companies like MS, Amazon, Hootsuite etc, and it wont be long before 6 figures is just a baseline. However for executive level people, yeah I can see it being a really difficult option. Assuming you want a house and have 2 kids, thats like a minimum of 150k (1M for a house, childcare is a fucking nightmare at $1500 per kid per month) right there to even hope of having a decent lifestyle.
- blazespin 11y ago
  Yeah, except that 140K USD is the equivalent of 182K CAD versus the 100K CAD you just quoted. So, you're not exactly comparing apples to apples there. USD/CAD exchange is insane (1:1.3)
  - sshrinivasan 11y ago
    Right, but rents in SJ are 2k USD vs 1400 CAD for a perfectly acceptable 1 bedroom. So for renting a nice place, commuting 15 mins by public transit and living in Vancouver, still a pretty good tradeoff to some.
- curiousjorge 11y ago
  >I prefer a theoretically lower pay for a way better lifestyle You are insane. Are you even being honest with yourself here? Why would you put up with less pay and higher cost of living? What better lifestyle is there to speak of that bigger cities south of the border doesn't provide you? The mountains and ocean? They got that over there too. The only reason I think you might be saying this is the same thing people without any other choices say, that it is the best choice. This is textbook cognitive dissonance. edit: well looks like you are a recruiter which explains a lot why you might be pushing this crazy idea. I've ever heard of Zymeworks Inc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337161.
Mikeb85 11y ago
Pretty much any time the question is "How do you attract top-level talent?", the answer is "Pay more". The problem with the tech scene (or even starting any business in Canada) is that there's a lack of investment dollars (many rich Canadians would rather park their money in foreign stocks), and real estate prices are absurd relative to wages (since real estate is seen as the 'safest' place to park your dollars). Corporate business culture in Canada isn't great either - it's overly conservative and very slow to change and adopt new ideas. Apart from our banks, we have no corporations that are even remotely competitive on the world stage (maybe Bombardier). I love Canada, but when I'm done my degree, I'll probably be moving abroad, like most of my educated relatives have already done...
- white-flame 11y ago
  The interesting thing about this article vs others is that it's not talking about lacking qualified technical people, but "senior executive-level people". This is just my anecdotal sampling, but I wouldn't assume there's a shortage of tech _workers_ in the area. And remember, much of the "tech" startup scene is all about pushing automated marketing ideas based on commodity software out the door, not pushing the boundaries of tech itself. This really doesn't require top-tier tech worker talent, just reasonable competence and follow-through.
  - Mikeb85 11y ago
    No there isn't a shortage of tech workers per se, just a shortage of tech workers that want to work for them. Just like when people complain about a lack of STEM workers, what they mean is a lack of STEM workers willing to work for their shitty wages... In either case, as the offered wages go up, workers magically come out of the woodwork.
fhfhchc 11y ago
Seriously, what is with talking about programmers like they're porn stars? Programming skill isn't something you're born with and stuck with for the rest of your life: it comes and goes depending on the project at hand how much practice you've had. You might be stuck with the same size of penis but your programming ability is fluid and able to change. It says something about the labor market when employers refer to potential workers like they would talk about a show dog.
sirbetsalot 11y ago
Vancouver has a real problem, these company founders aside from dwave and shoes.com are fundamentally weak on the vision side. They often have some bizarre cultural aesthetic that drives away people who can actually perform in high tech. I mean the HR person for hootsuite probably cant even add together integers for gods sake. This isn't silicon Valley, this is shitty vancouver where "me too" companies are the norm. D-wave is the only company going for a moonshot here.
px1999 11y ago
Vancouver's main problem with attracting top-level talent is pay. I live in Vancouver but don't really work much here anymore (mostly remote now) because of pay. The article focusses on the high cost of housing, though in practice renting isn't too bad (particularly if you're happy living in a sardine can or someone's basement). I have had serious job offers here at less than 1/3 of my usual rate. I've been told that what I'm looking for (what I'm already getting for remote work) is director or C-level. "There's much more to consider than compensation" is a reasonably common excuse from recruiters, but the fact of the matter is that if you are trying to hire competent senior engineers for $30/hr, of course you're going to lose out to places that are paying amounts that are above a living wage. Vancouver's okay, for sure, but being the self-proclaimed "lifestyle capital of the world" only carries weight if you get a good work-life balance, and can afford to do the things that you want to do.

61 points by curiousjorge 11y ago

Your a new grad from uvic, UBC or SFU. Recruiters from Seattle are contacting you. You interview at Seattle, and get a job offer. The Seattle recruiters tell you the visa process is easy with this TN thing. You have no idea what the job market is like so you go interview in Vancouver. Your shocked to find out that the pay is literally half in Vancouver. Housing is also half in Seattle, everything is cheaper in Seattle. You really can't tell the difference between the two cities otherwise, and home is 3 hours away. You do the sensible thing and move to Seattle. 2 years later, you work for microsoft or some company down the bay area and start getting your green card. Later on you see that the average income in vancouver is comparable the average income of Reno,NV. Anyone with half a brain who is from the area will move to Seattle.

msie 11y ago
Very eloquently put. I would be working in the states if I weren't so worried about my parents' health.
rohamg 11y ago
> Your [sic] shocked to find out that the pay is literally half in Vancouver. I think this is changing. There are great new companies to work for in Vancouver who depend on access to top-tier talent and are willing to pay for it. We [1] have hired several folks from SF and most of our alums tend to head straight to the Valley, so it's clear that we're competing on the global stage for talent. This by nature means average compensation that must be competitive. Others must be seeing this too. [1] Axiom Zen: https://axiomzen.co https://axiomzen.co
Serow225 11y ago
I'm a Canadian by birth and when I graduated with my M.Sc. 10 years ago, the jobs I interviewed for in Canada were offering a salary half of their Canadian equivalents, never mind the difference in exchange rate. As a new grad with education debt to pay off, it's not hard to choose between $110kUSD and $50kCAD... I'm still in the U.S., haven subsequently gone through the TN1>GC>citizenship process.
Zombieball 11y ago
This accurately describes the situation. Even if you land a higher paying job in Vancouver your salary is probably around 80% of what you would get in Seattle and you are paid in $CAD vs. $USD.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  80% is a bit too generous based on my experience. I'd be happy with 80% of market salary in Seattle if it means I could work in Vancouver. The reality is actually closer to 50% like the OP mentioned, even before taking into account exchange rates: https://angel.co/salaries https://angel.co/salaries From the perspective of someone who wants to stay in Vancouver, this is just sad.
  - djmips 11y ago
    Agreed, and one of the factors is tax which is lower in the US.
x0x0 11y ago
Weird, it's almost like Seattle/Vancouver is a natural experiment proving compensation matters. Now if only we could convince all the employers in the valley whinging about their inability to hire while paying maybe $150k/year in sf, where the median rent for a 1-bedroom is $3500 and condo buyers now are paying more than $1k/ft2 [2]. [1] http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/07/02/sfs_median_asking_rent_for_a_onebedroom_tops_manhattans.php http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/07/02/sfs_median_asking_r... [2] http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/S-F-condo-market-passes-precrash-peak-5361934.php http://www.sfgate.com/realestate/article/S-F-condo-market-pa...
- djmips 11y ago
  Note that there are plenty of people who won't take a job in Seattle because they don't want to leave Vancouver for reasons of family, loyalty to country, fear of America. Yes, that last one is actually quite prominent amongst people I've asked.
  - lewisl9029 11y ago
    That last one is actually one of my biggest concerns, and one of the primary reasons why I haven't given up looking for jobs in Canada yet. I have a fair number of concerns about Canada, but personal safety usually isn't one of them. I can't confidently say the same about the states though. A non-negligible percentage of the population there just seems actively hostile towards visible minorities. Being born in China myself, I'd definitely fall into the visible minorities camp in the US, and with the lax gun laws and whatnot, I'd be extremely worried for my life if some conflict arose between the US and China and I was still around. I realize it's probably not a very rational fear, and I don't have any hard statistics to back any of it up. But safety of mind does have a tangible value to me. Whether or not it's worth more than half of my potential salary is another story though.
    - x0x0 11y ago
      If it reassures you in any way, CA is 15% asian and SF is 35% (21.4% of chinese descent.) imo, African-Americans and people who are visibly muslim or appear to so be to morons, such as Sikhs, get the bulk of the discrimination. Fingers crossed neither our government nor the Chinese government are stupid enough to get into a shooting war. Both sides seem to bluster a lot but the ties that bind are massive exports from China to the US. I think the chances of serious conflict in a peaceful relationship spanning 4 decades continue to decrease.
Tiktaalik 11y ago
The major 'culture shock' difference I've heard from Vancouverites that have gone to Seattle is that the dense, urban lifestyle of Vancouver isn't quite as easy to take advantage of in Seattle. In Vancouver it's pretty easy to live without a car and bike everywhere in protected bike lanes, but Seattle is much more spread out, is more car oriented, with has weaker transit and cycling infrastructure, and the hills can be a drag. This has not been a deal breaker for anyone I know in Seattle but they've mentioned their disappointment, having gotten used to a certain lifestyle in Vancouver. Depending your interests Vancouver's easily car free lifestyle might not matter at all, or it might be worth the paycut.
lewisl9029 11y ago
As a recent Waterloo grad, this definitely rings true with me. I lived in Vancouver for most of my life, and love the city. I'd love nothing more than to live and work here all my life, but I'm really having trouble justifying not crossing the border and more than doubling my salary like most of my friends have done. From my experience job searching so far, even without mentioning salary, the sheer number of interesting jobs is just sorely lacking, even when comparing to other Canadian tech hubs like Toronto. Seattle, SF, and other US cities are just in an entirely different league. A quick, unscientific comparison on AngelList definitely matches my anecdotal observations: https://angel.co/salaries https://angel.co/salaries To employers in Canada: If you want world-class talent, you need to be willing to pay world-class salaries. Slightly above market salary in Canada just isn't enough anymore, because market salary in Canada is just crap, and anyone who isn't a complete sucker knows this. This isn't even about trying to steal talent from the states or elsewhere. Canada is literally bleeding talent from its own top schools. Anyone who's good enough to be hired across the border tends to end up leaving because they'd have to sacrifice so much potential earnings to stay. And if you do offer a world-class salary, you need to advertise the crap out of it by giving us the cold, hard numbers. Otherwise candidates tend to assume that by "competitive salary" you mean competitive with the pitiful salary we usually hear when we apply to Canadian companies.

elchief 11y ago

I interviewed with PoF and BuildDirect for a data science job. PoF did a 3-against-1 behavioral interview with no whiteboard. The BD interview was supposed to be a friendly tech phone chat but actually was a grilling by an HR lady that knew nothing about tech. What I'm trying to say is these companies don't know what the fuck they're doing.

bretthopper 11y ago

Someone else touched on this below but this article ignores the brain drain problem. It's true that Vancouver can attract talent from SF/Seattle easier than Toronto, for example, but conversely it also means Vancouver/BC natives are way more likely to jump to SF/Seattle since they are so close.

msie 11y ago

They mention Vancouver's high real estate prices as a factor but Silicon Valley, San Francisco and New York have that problem too. Rather, as they have mentioned, it's the lack of other Unicorns in the area, the scene is still too small. Also it just seems futile to me to try to find that one special talented executive when we've seen so many times where a high-priced executive is hired only to see them not make a difference and resign early with a huge golden parachute.

GFK_of_xmaspast 11y ago
SV and SF have BART and Caltrain bringing in people from the East and South Bay, and NY has train lines to the outer boroughs, but I don't think of Vancouver as having really much of anything beyond traffic jams.
- garyrichardson 11y ago
  Vancouver has the West Coast Express, which is a passenger train that runs east from Downtown out to the valley. The furthest stop is about 75km away and the longest journey is about 70 minutes. We also have light rail called Skytrain that heads south and east from Downtown, but I suspect the furthest this reaches is about 30km away.
  - djmips 11y ago
    The West Coast Express isn't really designed with my hours in mind (or many devs?). I lived out east for a while and tried to use that train but it doesn't run after 6 pm and it doesn't go on weekends!
- Tiktaalik 11y ago
  Unfortunately the referendum that would have given Translink (Vancouver's transit authority) the steady revenue to expand light rail service deep into the Fraser Valley failed as anti-tax crusaders framed Translink as an ineffective organization. The reality couldn't be more different, as Translink is one of the most effective transit systems in western North America and is a model for transit planners. https://www.biv.com/article/2015/3/who-takes-transit-work-metro-vancouver-info-graphi/ https://www.biv.com/article/2015/3/who-takes-transit-work-me... Once one leaves Vancouver proper the Metro Vancouver area has the same sprawling highways as any other region, but Translink's service area is massive (imagine every transit service and organization in every town in the Bay Area being one service (ok Bay Area is a bit bigger)) and you can seamlessly go from Vancouver all the way to White Rock at the border within the system on one ticket. The Evergreen line which will connect the system to Port Moody and Coquitlam should come on line in 2016.

volandovengo 11y ago

The challenge facing vancouver is that the population can't afford to live there. While there may be a few tech companies in town, overall, the city doesn't have an industry. Canadian visa policies got all kinds of foreigners investing big money into real estate in the city while not creating any actual jobs in the process. So there isn't much of an economy supporting the city + thus a pretty small talent pool for any prospective startups to draw from...

paulsutter 11y ago
Yeah "nobody goes there anymore - it's too crowded"
- 001sky 11y ago
  Real estate is weird. Easy to have absentee owners. Easy to house money not people. Etc.
msie 11y ago
San Francisco has the same problems of high real estate prices but if the pay were better and we have bigger companies here (and the Canadian dollar were stronger) then we'd attract more people. There is all this talent in the States and they'll just stay there. Plus lots of strong Universities in the area pumping out more talent.
- ryanobjc 11y ago
  As one of the talent in the united States, which ironically I went to school at ubc, there is very little chance I'd move back. I heard a senior dev maxes out at $85,000 a year. And with housing prices equal to the bay area, that's just a bad deal. But aside from money there is the respect factor. I'm not convinced that tech is respected in Vancouver. So take a triple downgrade and work for business folks who hate you?
  - van_developer 11y ago
    At my level CAD $120k/yr is average salary I've been offered locally, with no options, though after taxes that's $87k/yr and my rent is $24k/yr for a one bed condo so I would have $63k to spend per year. Instead I make remotely USD $160k, which is $210k CAD, and it goes to a consulting corporation that I write off everything I can including rent so pay much less taxes to my incredibly corrupt provincial government. I also have standard options everybody else in SV gets. Edit: I work for a startup that advertised here in the monthly who's hiring threads.

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seminatore 11y ago

Interesting if very high level article, would have been great to see a deeper dive into the fast-growing startups in Van too.

paulsutter 11y ago

The challenge facing all these potential "startup hubs" is lack of exits. Investors invest to make a return. Silicon Valley's environment for exits is unmatched. Tokyo, Singapore, Vancouver, all the same issue. Weak environment for exits means weak environment for investment means weak environment for recruiting, etc. I spent most of the last few years traveling, lots of time in Asia, and this is the disappointing truth. China is the notable exception where there are real exits and (no surprise) lots of investment money, talent, and ideas.

garyrichardson 11y ago
I think this is the most important/accurate analysis in this comment thread. Vancouver had a large AAA game industry for a decade or so. It was very much driven by exits -- all the small/medium studios got bought by Microsoft/EA/etc. The fever is over and AAA has all but collapsed in BC (and possibly the world -- I think there's been a big shift to indie games). I wonder if the lack of exits is a Canadian vs US culture thing? Is there data that shows fewer exits per capita? Are we Canadians more likely to settle for less? There's not that many huge Canadian tech companies, and I can think of a couple that failed due to hubris (RIM, Nortel).
danudey 11y ago
The other factor is return on exits. In SF, exiting with 7+ figures means you turn around and start your own startup (or, if you were the founder, another startup). In most other countries, you take your cash and put it into property and other mid- to long-term investments. There are so few investments, successes, or exits that the idea of taking $10m and turning it back into another company is less appealing. In SF, you can get a great idea implemented and exit via acquisition or acquihire before you've figured out how you're going to turn users into revenue. The money flows relatively freely in the right circumstances. In Canada, that feels far less likely, so even if I exit with $10m I still have to figure out not just how to make a great idea into a great product, but also how I'm going to make revenue from it, since I can't make any assumptions about being able to drum up external investment (since I don't have rich friends) or arrange an acquisition (unless I shop it around internationally).

jbarciauskas 11y ago

Disappointing that they only featured white males in this article. Maybe that's part of the problem?

Canada 11y ago
Care to name anyone else who you feel should have been interviewed for this article?
- forwardslash 11y ago
  Roham Gharegozlou of Axiom Zen, perhaps.
- jbarciauskas 11y ago
  I'm not from Vancouver so not specifically, I just found the lack of diversity striking and was curious if it was reflective of the paper's lack of imagination or Vancouver's actual lack of diversity. Sounds like the former.
van_developer 11y ago
Vancouver is prob the most multi cultural city on earth and everywhere I've worked here is full of female executives, so American problems with ID politics don't manifest here. Just walk the streets for 10mins you will hear a dozen different languages. The problem is I get paid 2x the local salary to work for US startups remotely, and paid in USD a stronger currency. Everybody I know works remotely for Toronto, or US companies so I imagine power execs from around the world don't want to come here for the same low compensation and high income tax reasons that force us lowly devs to contract outside the province. I haven't seen much local hiring with options either, and if they do offer options they are tiny so why would I dedicate a huge chunk of my life to make somebody else's company rich while making half the salary of my clone in SV who has full options.
- jbarciauskas 11y ago
  It's great to hear that Vancouver is really diverse, it's just disappointing that it wasn't portrayed that way then.

ced 11y ago

there is an absolute shortage of experienced and talented senior executive-level people Not quite what I was expecting from the title. As a data scientist in Montreal considering a move to Vancouver, how is the hiring situation for technical work?

ivarv 11y ago
There are definitely opportunities but salaries are not anywhere near what you can expect from the Valley. For some reason tech employers get away with low wages despite the very high local cost of living.
- msie 11y ago
  Yes, employers would say Vancouver is such a nice place to live so that's part of the compensation package. So, if you want to mountain bike and snowboard, all in one day, then this is your place. :-)
danudey 11y ago
There's quite a few companies, all competing for a lot of talent. The problem is that when you get into specialized roles, you get into the 'only need one' problem – a company might need a data scientist (e.g. mine is actively hiring for one last I checked), but they only need one data scientist. A competitor might also need a data scientist, but they probably also only need one data scientist. That said, Vancouver also has a lot of biotech and energy firms, though they're not as flashy and well-publicized, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have data which needs sciencing. That might be worth looking into as well.

pookieinc 11y ago

Aside from the high cost of living in Vancouver, another problem is that Canadians are extremely inward-focused in their efforts to hire individuals from both startups to larger companies. From my own experience this past year: California-born and raised, I was in the market over the last 6 months, looking for software engineering jobs and applied to dozens and dozens of jobs in Vancouver, ranging from tiny startups to large companies. Not only did I receive hardly any callbacks, the ones that did politely mentioned that they were looking for Canadians first, then they'll look outside (then never got back to me). When applying to startups / larger companies in the Bay Area, I was interviewing, writing code challenges, etc., constantly as well as courted for positions. On the flip side, for Canadians across their own country, Vancouver does seem like the "hip" place to be. I have tech friends in Toronto, Montreal, and smaller cities and the lot of them are considering heading westward, and understandably so. When I visited Vancouver (Gastown, etc.), it seemed very exciting and full of the startup life. My own couple friends showed me their own startups and it felt very "Silicon Valley"-esque. I should also point out that one of my friends did offer me a position at his company, but the pay was incredibly low (while rent would remain very high), which I believe to be a symptom of most places outside of California (or maybe America, not sure).

mahyarm 11y ago
I don't think the hiring demand or sophistication is high enough for them to consider visas basically, which shows you how immature the software industry is there. Also very sr. devs in vancouver make less than new grads in the bay area.
kbrosnan 11y ago
I have heard that Vancouver was overflow office for large growing tech companies on the west coast. When they could not get the candidates H-1B status in the US they placed them in YVR. I know of a couple companies that had/have offices. Through friends that work at the companies the Canadian government became more exclusive about allowing tech workers into the country. This may explain a bit of the reluctance to interview you.

ryandrake 11y ago

> But talk to any hot tech entrepreneur in the Lower Mainland and you will hear the same story: While the city is awash in startups, “there is an absolute shortage of experienced and talented senior executive-level people” Ahh, there it is. The mythical "engineer shortage" was bound to pop up, as it does in every single article about tech labor. If there is really a shortage of engineers (supply), then wages (price) would increase to the point where supply met demand. Is this happening?

fraserharris 11y ago
They aren't referring specifically to engineering. Sales, marketing, finance, and operations proportionally grow as a business scales. Engineering (R&D) trends downwards to 6 - 10% of expenses (whereas at a seed-stage it could be 50 - 80% of expenses). Senior leaders for these business operations are not readily found in Vancouver or any other locale without a critical mass of public / mature technology companies. This is actually part of Silicon Valley's enduring success: a readily available workforce for all stages of technology companies.
- ryandrake 11y ago
  Hmm, I wonder what companies could do to attract sufficient talent into Vancouver? If only there was some way to "compensate" people for moving somewhere to take a job!
  - fraserharris 11y ago
    It's more than that and the article alludes to it. Vancouver doesn't yet have the critical mass of tech companies for employees to land at if the startup fails. For a senior executive with a family, that means relocating to another city if things don't work out. Thats a significant dis-incentive to join.
dasil003 11y ago
What you are stating is a truism. The unspoken assumption you are responding to is that there is a shortage at the wage they are willing to offer. However you are replacing it with an assumption that wages should go up until sufficient positions are lost through attrition by being too expensive to fill. I don't think this is a very useful hair to split because it doesn't tell us much about what dynamics are actually going on. As someone with a lot of experience on both sides of the tech company hiring equation, and I think there are two main issues. First is notorious difficulty of quantifying tech skills. It's worse than a market for lemons, because even the potential hire themselves is prone to misestimate their own skillset. Second, tech skills aren't really fungible. Yes, we often talk about how a skilled engineer can easily pick up a new language, but it's not just languages, it's also problem domains, and work environments which vary widely and can greatly impact the utility of a given person. With job tenures being so short these days, it's difficult to invest a lot in training someone when you fear they will leave in a year and you'll be back to square one. I might be willing to raise the salary dramatically for the perfect candidate (who may not even exist), but I can't compete with Google and Facebook for the undeveloped talent because my company just doesn't have the cash flow.

Animats 11y ago

161 days of rain per year.

msie 11y ago
Yes, but in the summer it seems like less than a week of rain over four months. :-(

grownseed 11y ago

Working and living in Vancouver as a foreigner, I'll share my experience. About two years ago, I decided I wanted to settle in Vancouver and therefore proceeded to find a job here. I contacted a whole bunch of startups, maybe 5% got back to me. Half of those would call me, tell me they were interested, until I reminded them I needed a working visa (which I systematically mentioned in my emails), following which they would pretty much immediately drop me. As for the remaining half, I went to interviews, most of which went really well, only to be told weeks later that they assumed I would be able to just get the visa on my own. All I needed was for the company to be willing to sponsor me, which is a relatively easy process on their end. One particular company had the guts to call me, tell me they really liked me but wouldn't hire me because of the visa situation, and asked me if instead I could direct other people like me in their direction. It doesn't get much more rude than that. Bottom line, I ended up working for the public health sector, who not only sponsored my visa but also helped me through the process. So, dear Vancouver startup scene, if you want to attract talent, start by getting off your high horses.

idibidiart 11y ago

Money makes the world go round. Where there is money flowing thru the system there is life and opportunity. And it's not the absolute amount of money or net worth of the place, though that is correlated, but the rate of flow of that money within the larger ecosystem. In most countries and places outside of SF/SV, rich people sit tight on their money, and don't take risks. In this way, they are conservative, and risk averse, and as a result the ecosystem is weak. People here in SF/SV are risk takers and that benefits everyone. We're more optimistic, or dangerously optimistic sometimes but that's why we lead the world in terms of innovation and opportunity.

qjighap 11y ago

I am wondering if the BC government is going to start cracking down on this sub-contractor situation. A common situation that I am seeing is a company will hire a recruiter. Then recruiter will rent out their "contractor" to the company. The recruiting company will not call their contractor an employee and include any of the stability or rights associated with that, but they will give them all the tools and other things they need for their job barring them from claiming any of the contractor tax breaks.

ryanSrich 11y ago

There is no tech talent shortage. You just have to pay reasonable rates. You want top talent? Your offer better be at least 6 figures. It's pretty simple.

sshrinivasan 11y ago

Important to note that the article is talking about executives, not the riff-raff (by that I mean the software devs). Executives typically have families, kids, schools, mortgages etc, stuff that engineers like myself do not have in general. A 40 something exec vs a 25 year old engineer have very different requirements and lifestyles. Getting developers to come here (I live in Vancouver as a Senior Software Developer) is not too difficult, we offer a salary that's about 80% what you can get in silicon Valley, and you're not in Silicon Valley. To many (including myself) that's a good thing. I prefer a theoretically lower pay for a way better lifestyle, since I put value on my free time as well as my work time. Given the choice between 100k in Vancouver and 140k in San fucking Jose, to me its a no brainer to live here. And the people who believe you max out at 80k are flat out wrong, or are working for the wrong company. We are willing to pay 6 figures for a senior developer, and starting at 85k for a junior one, and we are a smallish company of about 45 people. Salaries here are going up with the advent of bigger companies like MS, Amazon, Hootsuite etc, and it wont be long before 6 figures is just a baseline. However for executive level people, yeah I can see it being a really difficult option. Assuming you want a house and have 2 kids, thats like a minimum of 150k (1M for a house, childcare is a fucking nightmare at $1500 per kid per month) right there to even hope of having a decent lifestyle.

blazespin 11y ago
Yeah, except that 140K USD is the equivalent of 182K CAD versus the 100K CAD you just quoted. So, you're not exactly comparing apples to apples there. USD/CAD exchange is insane (1:1.3)
- sshrinivasan 11y ago
  Right, but rents in SJ are 2k USD vs 1400 CAD for a perfectly acceptable 1 bedroom. So for renting a nice place, commuting 15 mins by public transit and living in Vancouver, still a pretty good tradeoff to some.
curiousjorge 11y ago
>I prefer a theoretically lower pay for a way better lifestyle You are insane. Are you even being honest with yourself here? Why would you put up with less pay and higher cost of living? What better lifestyle is there to speak of that bigger cities south of the border doesn't provide you? The mountains and ocean? They got that over there too. The only reason I think you might be saying this is the same thing people without any other choices say, that it is the best choice. This is textbook cognitive dissonance. edit: well looks like you are a recruiter which explains a lot why you might be pushing this crazy idea. I've ever heard of Zymeworks Inc. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7337161.

Mikeb85 11y ago

Pretty much any time the question is "How do you attract top-level talent?", the answer is "Pay more". The problem with the tech scene (or even starting any business in Canada) is that there's a lack of investment dollars (many rich Canadians would rather park their money in foreign stocks), and real estate prices are absurd relative to wages (since real estate is seen as the 'safest' place to park your dollars). Corporate business culture in Canada isn't great either - it's overly conservative and very slow to change and adopt new ideas. Apart from our banks, we have no corporations that are even remotely competitive on the world stage (maybe Bombardier). I love Canada, but when I'm done my degree, I'll probably be moving abroad, like most of my educated relatives have already done...

white-flame 11y ago
The interesting thing about this article vs others is that it's not talking about lacking qualified technical people, but "senior executive-level people". This is just my anecdotal sampling, but I wouldn't assume there's a shortage of tech _workers_ in the area. And remember, much of the "tech" startup scene is all about pushing automated marketing ideas based on commodity software out the door, not pushing the boundaries of tech itself. This really doesn't require top-tier tech worker talent, just reasonable competence and follow-through.
- Mikeb85 11y ago
  No there isn't a shortage of tech workers per se, just a shortage of tech workers that want to work for them. Just like when people complain about a lack of STEM workers, what they mean is a lack of STEM workers willing to work for their shitty wages... In either case, as the offered wages go up, workers magically come out of the woodwork.

fhfhchc 11y ago

Seriously, what is with talking about programmers like they're porn stars? Programming skill isn't something you're born with and stuck with for the rest of your life: it comes and goes depending on the project at hand how much practice you've had. You might be stuck with the same size of penis but your programming ability is fluid and able to change. It says something about the labor market when employers refer to potential workers like they would talk about a show dog.

sirbetsalot 11y ago

Vancouver has a real problem, these company founders aside from dwave and shoes.com are fundamentally weak on the vision side. They often have some bizarre cultural aesthetic that drives away people who can actually perform in high tech. I mean the HR person for hootsuite probably cant even add together integers for gods sake. This isn't silicon Valley, this is shitty vancouver where "me too" companies are the norm. D-wave is the only company going for a moonshot here.

px1999 11y ago

Vancouver's main problem with attracting top-level talent is pay. I live in Vancouver but don't really work much here anymore (mostly remote now) because of pay. The article focusses on the high cost of housing, though in practice renting isn't too bad (particularly if you're happy living in a sardine can or someone's basement). I have had serious job offers here at less than 1/3 of my usual rate. I've been told that what I'm looking for (what I'm already getting for remote work) is director or C-level. "There's much more to consider than compensation" is a reasonably common excuse from recruiters, but the fact of the matter is that if you are trying to hire competent senior engineers for $30/hr, of course you're going to lose out to places that are paying amounts that are above a living wage. Vancouver's okay, for sure, but being the self-proclaimed "lifestyle capital of the world" only carries weight if you get a good work-life balance, and can afford to do the things that you want to do.