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I'm from Quebec and I have to agree with you that it could easily be north america's Germany. There is a lot of very talented software developers in Montreal bu

I'm from Quebec and I have to agree with you that it could easily be north america's Germany. There is a lot of very talented software developers in Montreal but a lot of them leave to get higher salaries or work for foreign companies that love the very low, government subsidized wages [1]. If the government invested all that money in small to middle sized local companies instead the province would be so much more prosperous. Right now, profits are our biggest export. Not only that but the government insists on propping up big, mismanaged companies like CAE and bombardier time and time again [2] instead of investing in startups. [1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how-far-will-quebec-go-to-nurture-its-video-game-industry/article14645301/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/how-far-wi... [2] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-milke/bombardier-corporate-welfare-trap_b_4705751.html http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-milke/bombardier-corporate...

drzaiusapelord 11y ago
I don't think Quebec gets a free pass here. It was once the financial capital of Canada until all this separatist talk. Toronto then became the financial capital of Canada, with something like 40% of its companies HQ'd there. Montreal now has about a third of the GDP of Toronto, yet Toronto only has 1m more people! It seems like Canada is prone to buying into extremism. Be it separatism or the recent love-affair with Putinist style economics banking soley on oil/gas and expecting there never to be a shake-up in the market when clearly the industrialized West was going full tilt into renewables.
- raverbashing 11y ago
  I agree It's ridiculous when people (not Quebeckers) can't get a job in Quebec, then they go to other provinces and get a job quickly. This is something I've seen from close Not to mention the big gap between provinces, it seems they're more apart than US states
- btilly 11y ago
  Check the timeline. It wasn't separatism that drove companies out, it was Bill 101. (OK, Bill 101 was driven by the same motives as separatism.) Thanks to that bill, you had a population of professionals who had moved to Montreal for good jobs who found that, because they were born in a different province, their children could not be educated in English. These professionals found it less painful to move to Toronto and find new jobs than they did to watch their children be forced into schools that didn't speak their language. Companies found that it was cheaper to relocate headquarters than to lose these employees, and this accelerated the brain drain. Quebec continues to be hostile to anglophone immigration, but most of the damage is now done and permanent.
  - Raphmedia 11y ago
    I'm from Québec. It's all about bilingualism. As someone who learned french from birth, I could not work in tech if I couldn't also communicate in english. That's a requirement for most jobs and I had to work really hard to get a good level of spoken english. We have people that speak french and spanish, french and english, french and german, etc. Bilingualism is strong here, pick it up if you want to work in the area. It's no different for people born in Québec. We learn french at home and then work really hard to learn english for work.
    - btilly 11y ago
      Consider this. I am a Canadian anglophone from British Columbia with highschool French. My children have been raised in the USA with no French. It would be easier for me to take a job and move my family to The Netherlands than to Montreal. (Not a hypothetical example. I turned down an offer a few years ago at a company that wanted to hire me there. My children would have had to learn Dutch, but would have gone to school in English.) If you are founding a company and want access to anglophone talent, would you prefer to start it in Montreal or Amsterdam? What are the economic implications of this fact for Quebec? Quebec has made a decision to value remaining French above economic growth. That's somewhat reasonable. But if you've chosen that, you should be honest with yourselves about the choice you made. And shouldn't be puzzled that your economy has not done so well.
      - Raphmedia 11y ago
        For a lot of people, it is more important to be strong in our values than to ignore them for the sake of the economy even if it means losing economical growth. For Québec to be strong it needs to be true to itself. Selling out our heritage for profit would be unthinkable. You could argue that some laws make no sense and I would agree on some points but people are very afraid to lose what makes Québec what it is and some harsh measures are put in place.
        btilly 11y ago
hackerboos 11y ago
As a non-Canadian software developer in Canada the brain-drain to the US via TN visas is strong. Most talented devs I have met in Canada are Americans that have left the US because of politics etc.
- lewisl9029 11y ago
  As a recent University of Waterloo grad, this has been my experience as well. I tried interviewing in Toronto/Vancouver for a while but have since given up in the Canadian job market. Not a single company I interviewed with was willing to even come close to US salaries. Everyone I know from school who's any good at all has already left for SF/Seattle/NYC and I'll probably be joining them soon. I'm not sure how these Canadian companies expect to retain great talent when just across the border, developers can make more money after deducting all living expenses + taxes, than the entire pre-tax salary they're offering.
  - hackerboos 11y ago
    It's worse in London. I seen a rant on Medium [1] about the lack of affordable talent in London and I could only think of some of the low ball offers I received which would leave me worse off than staying in the North West. I actually get paid more here in Toronto than I could hope to get in London. My only option for the US is H1B but I'm willing to stick around for a while and I'll consider my options when I'm Canadian. [1] - https://medium.com/@benjilanyado/an-open-letter-to-ed-vaizey-42285d55201c#.t6k1mcku3 https://medium.com/@benjilanyado/an-open-letter-to-ed-vaizey...
    - linkregister 11y ago
      Thanks for that link, it was a good laugh. The dissonance with reality was strong there. A single look at indeed.co.uk will reveal nary a single 600£ daily rate even for senior developers. Best of luck getting a pay increase; hopefully you don't have to deal with the horror of the H1B process to get paid what should be the global rate for software developers.
btilly 11y ago
If the government invested all that money in small to middle sized local companies instead the province would be so much more prosperous. How exactly is anyone helped by money taking a round trip through the government rather than the same thing happening through free markets? You've made the cycle slower, you've made the recipients dependent on government bureaucratic decisions (who are not well-incentivized to decide well), and have reduced incentives for efficiency. And you've gained nothing. Don't get me wrong. Government has important roles to play in our economy and society. We need government to create basic infrastructure, create regulations encouraging public goods, provide a stable system of law, and so on. But unless you are serving some legitimate purpose, channeling daily economic activity through the government is a net loss compared to doing the same through private enterprise. Quebec being full of people who believe that the economy should go through the government seems to be its second largest economic mistake, and one it is still making on a large scale. People like you complain about the predictable results of this mistake, but don't see that it is a mistake. Quebec's largest mistake was, of course, Bill 101. That made your province so hostile to anglophones that 1/3 of them "voluntarily emmigrated" within a few years. (The ones I know are inclined to dispute how voluntary that emmigration was...) They took with them the headquarters of many major companies, the associated jobs, and the general economic activity that would have come from those professionals spending locally. This is why, for example, The Bank of Montreal is now headquartered in Toronto. There is a collective blind spot in Quebec to the true cost of this for your society. Major companies need to have a stream of professionals moving to their headquarters from elsewhere because that is how you move up in the hierarchy. If you have made professionals unwilling to move to Quebec (for instance by forcing their children to receive education in a language they don't speak), companies have to choose between moving headquarters or losing their most valued employees to competitors. It proved to be cheaper to move headquarters. And they did. Quebec's economy has never recovered from this. (Though you did adjust your ethnic ratio by enough that you nearly managed to get a 50% vote to secede in the 90s...)
- guiomie 11y ago
  "Quebec's largest mistake was, of course, Bill 101" ... I thought it was the almost won referendum that drove this exile, not Bill 101. My impression is that if you lowered the income tax in Quebec (much higher then Ontario), most probably more professionals would be willing to work there, english or french or any other language. I agree with your statement of "Quebec being full of people who believe that the economy should go through the government".

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

I don't think Quebec gets a free pass here. It was once the financial capital of Canada until all this separatist talk. Toronto then became the financial capital of Canada, with something like 40% of its companies HQ'd there. Montreal now has about a third of the GDP of Toronto, yet Toronto only has 1m more people! It seems like Canada is prone to buying into extremism. Be it separatism or the recent love-affair with Putinist style economics banking soley on oil/gas and expecting there never to be a shake-up in the market when clearly the industrialized West was going full tilt into renewables.

raverbashing 11y ago
I agree It's ridiculous when people (not Quebeckers) can't get a job in Quebec, then they go to other provinces and get a job quickly. This is something I've seen from close Not to mention the big gap between provinces, it seems they're more apart than US states
btilly 11y ago
Check the timeline. It wasn't separatism that drove companies out, it was Bill 101. (OK, Bill 101 was driven by the same motives as separatism.) Thanks to that bill, you had a population of professionals who had moved to Montreal for good jobs who found that, because they were born in a different province, their children could not be educated in English. These professionals found it less painful to move to Toronto and find new jobs than they did to watch their children be forced into schools that didn't speak their language. Companies found that it was cheaper to relocate headquarters than to lose these employees, and this accelerated the brain drain. Quebec continues to be hostile to anglophone immigration, but most of the damage is now done and permanent.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  I'm from Québec. It's all about bilingualism. As someone who learned french from birth, I could not work in tech if I couldn't also communicate in english. That's a requirement for most jobs and I had to work really hard to get a good level of spoken english. We have people that speak french and spanish, french and english, french and german, etc. Bilingualism is strong here, pick it up if you want to work in the area. It's no different for people born in Québec. We learn french at home and then work really hard to learn english for work.
  - btilly 11y ago
    Consider this. I am a Canadian anglophone from British Columbia with highschool French. My children have been raised in the USA with no French. It would be easier for me to take a job and move my family to The Netherlands than to Montreal. (Not a hypothetical example. I turned down an offer a few years ago at a company that wanted to hire me there. My children would have had to learn Dutch, but would have gone to school in English.) If you are founding a company and want access to anglophone talent, would you prefer to start it in Montreal or Amsterdam? What are the economic implications of this fact for Quebec? Quebec has made a decision to value remaining French above economic growth. That's somewhat reasonable. But if you've chosen that, you should be honest with yourselves about the choice you made. And shouldn't be puzzled that your economy has not done so well.
    - Raphmedia 11y ago
      For a lot of people, it is more important to be strong in our values than to ignore them for the sake of the economy even if it means losing economical growth. For Québec to be strong it needs to be true to itself. Selling out our heritage for profit would be unthinkable. You could argue that some laws make no sense and I would agree on some points but people are very afraid to lose what makes Québec what it is and some harsh measures are put in place.
      - btilly 11y ago

hackerboos 11y ago

As a non-Canadian software developer in Canada the brain-drain to the US via TN visas is strong. Most talented devs I have met in Canada are Americans that have left the US because of politics etc.

lewisl9029 11y ago
As a recent University of Waterloo grad, this has been my experience as well. I tried interviewing in Toronto/Vancouver for a while but have since given up in the Canadian job market. Not a single company I interviewed with was willing to even come close to US salaries. Everyone I know from school who's any good at all has already left for SF/Seattle/NYC and I'll probably be joining them soon. I'm not sure how these Canadian companies expect to retain great talent when just across the border, developers can make more money after deducting all living expenses + taxes, than the entire pre-tax salary they're offering.
- hackerboos 11y ago
  It's worse in London. I seen a rant on Medium [1] about the lack of affordable talent in London and I could only think of some of the low ball offers I received which would leave me worse off than staying in the North West. I actually get paid more here in Toronto than I could hope to get in London. My only option for the US is H1B but I'm willing to stick around for a while and I'll consider my options when I'm Canadian. [1] - https://medium.com/@benjilanyado/an-open-letter-to-ed-vaizey-42285d55201c#.t6k1mcku3 https://medium.com/@benjilanyado/an-open-letter-to-ed-vaizey...
  - linkregister 11y ago
    Thanks for that link, it was a good laugh. The dissonance with reality was strong there. A single look at indeed.co.uk will reveal nary a single 600£ daily rate even for senior developers. Best of luck getting a pay increase; hopefully you don't have to deal with the horror of the H1B process to get paid what should be the global rate for software developers.

btilly 11y ago

If the government invested all that money in small to middle sized local companies instead the province would be so much more prosperous. How exactly is anyone helped by money taking a round trip through the government rather than the same thing happening through free markets? You've made the cycle slower, you've made the recipients dependent on government bureaucratic decisions (who are not well-incentivized to decide well), and have reduced incentives for efficiency. And you've gained nothing. Don't get me wrong. Government has important roles to play in our economy and society. We need government to create basic infrastructure, create regulations encouraging public goods, provide a stable system of law, and so on. But unless you are serving some legitimate purpose, channeling daily economic activity through the government is a net loss compared to doing the same through private enterprise. Quebec being full of people who believe that the economy should go through the government seems to be its second largest economic mistake, and one it is still making on a large scale. People like you complain about the predictable results of this mistake, but don't see that it is a mistake. Quebec's largest mistake was, of course, Bill 101. That made your province so hostile to anglophones that 1/3 of them "voluntarily emmigrated" within a few years. (The ones I know are inclined to dispute how voluntary that emmigration was...) They took with them the headquarters of many major companies, the associated jobs, and the general economic activity that would have come from those professionals spending locally. This is why, for example, The Bank of Montreal is now headquartered in Toronto. There is a collective blind spot in Quebec to the true cost of this for your society. Major companies need to have a stream of professionals moving to their headquarters from elsewhere because that is how you move up in the hierarchy. If you have made professionals unwilling to move to Quebec (for instance by forcing their children to receive education in a language they don't speak), companies have to choose between moving headquarters or losing their most valued employees to competitors. It proved to be cheaper to move headquarters. And they did. Quebec's economy has never recovered from this. (Though you did adjust your ethnic ratio by enough that you nearly managed to get a 50% vote to secede in the 90s...)

guiomie 11y ago
"Quebec's largest mistake was, of course, Bill 101" ... I thought it was the almost won referendum that drove this exile, not Bill 101. My impression is that if you lowered the income tax in Quebec (much higher then Ontario), most probably more professionals would be willing to work there, english or french or any other language. I agree with your statement of "Quebec being full of people who believe that the economy should go through the government".