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Never understood why they tried so hard to be the destination for offshoring instead of fostering home grown studios. That and pitching Vancouver as an ideal H

Never understood why they tried so hard to be the destination for offshoring instead of fostering home grown studios. That and pitching Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. Is this something that Canadians approve? [0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Vancouver-Amazon-HQ2-Proposal-Feb-2018.pdf?utm_source=Website&utm_medium=Button&utm_campaign=AmazonHQ2Download&utm_content=ViewPDF https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...

badloginagain 6y ago
You'd be shocked at what Canadians put up with. Look closely at any industry here and corruption/abuse run rampant.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
munk-a 6y ago
Nope, and most software developers in Vancouver aren't participating with foreign companies at those rates. The laws remain how they are mostly to disenfranchise QA testers which remain a very hard labour segment to mobilize. There are thousands of "I can make money playing games?!?" folks out there that drown out the really good QA folks and insure that EA can maintain its churn. For regular dev jobs, I think the market is less imbalanced than it appears on the surface. Cost of living isn't cheap in BC but free medical care is a big bonus and the city is quite pleasant. Senior devs will end up pulling senior dev money - it's mostly the entry level wages that are depressed.
- anonunivgrad 6y ago
  Any decent software employer in the US will have good insurance that basically guarantees your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. That doesn’t really account for the difference.
  - majormajor 6y ago
    Out of pocket maxes in the 10-20K range aren't that uncommon in the US. Even when I've seen places with plans where it's <5K, that's only for single workers, and it doubles with a partner or family.
    - ivalm 6y ago
      And I’d rather have extra 100k and pay the 10k for health.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
      I’ve never seen out of pocket maxes that high but I’m limited to my own experiences. I’d imagine the premiums would be super low for such a high deductible. Even the high deductible plans I’ve seen are no more than $3500/single or $7k family per year out of pocket max. And those allow you and your employer to put money into a high deductible savings account pre-tax like a retirement account. And it can be used for any qualified health payment for the rest of your life and is passed down upon death. It’s really like a 401k for health payments.
    - agensaequivocum 6y ago
      My plan for a family of 5 has an out of pocket max of 4K with no deductible.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    >>your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. Wait, that's meant to be good? What kind of insanity is this. Why do you have to pay anything out of your pocket at all??
    - mypalmike 6y ago
      In the US, there is no ceiling to your potential health expenses if you are without insurance. A few thousand dollars looks like a pretty good ceiling compared to infinity.
    - nemo44x 6y ago
- vkou 6y ago
  Actually, senior dev money is half as much in Vancouver as it is in the US. The higher up the tree you go, the more the gap widens.
  - 908B64B197 6y ago
    I wonder why. There must be a skill gap, else the senior engineers would simply drive three hours and double their earnings.
    - vkou 6y ago
      ... No, The answer is immigration. 1. If you have a problematic history (which includes things entirely outside of your control, like being born in the wrong part of the world[1]), it can be nearly impossible. 2. If you don't have a problematic history, it's incredibly stressful. If you're on a TN visa, you can be turned away at the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you're on an H1B visa, you can also be turned away from the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you lose your job, you need to immediately start dealing with immigration issues, while looking for a new one, or you have to leave the country. 3. If you're married, your spouse can't work for a long time. 4. If you aren't married, your girlfriend/boyfriend/whomever can't even try immigrate with you, even if they wanted to. 5. Being three hours and a border away is not remotely the same thing as being three hours away from your friends and family. 6. There is a long, long, long list of cultural reasons for why a comfortably-living Canadian may prefer to avoid living in the US, even for double the paycheck. [1] I had a friend whose family fled from Saddam's Iraq, due to their political activities, when he was a child. As an adult, he was consistently singled out for harassment, intimidation, and delays during his crossings at the US-Canadian border. [2] According to him, getting a work visa in the US was not remotely a possibility. [2] Isn't it wonderful how passports list your country of birth?
      - 908B64B197 6y ago
        That still doesn't explain the gap when they are working for the same company.
asdfaoeu 6y ago
That document is not saying they are "worth" less than in America but that they are undervalued which I imagine a lot of them would agree with.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  Well, according to the market they are worth less.
simonh 6y ago
Offshoring companies bring investment into the community, while funding startups costs the local community. Also if your startup needs skill and services not available locally that have to be sourced outside that’s more cost, whereas a company coming in will have to provide those services at its own expense. If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. If there was enough investment available locally and local companies had the resources to hire more workers and were successful enough to pay them well, those salaries would be higher, but the resources to make that happen have to come from somewhere.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  > while funding startups costs the local community I'm not sure I completely understand. > If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. It's interesting because a lot of capital is flowing into Vancouver right now in the form of real estate speculation.
Tiktaalik 6y ago
The theory goes that the big foreign corp (ie. EA) hires a bunch of locals, and over time those locals get good and leave to form their own company. There's a fair amount of evidence that this works. It's not like Vancouver is solely populated by foreign studios. Local game companies like Kabam, Black Bird Interactive, Relic, United Front, etc would have all either had their roots in EA workers or would have hired ex-EA workers.
shaggyfrog 6y ago
As a Canadian, Vancouver resident, and software developer, I certainly don’t approve of the discount all software companies get here, including ones based here. Not only do companies pay out 60 cents on the dollar, they can also qualify for large refundable tax credit subsidies from provincial and federal governments. In other words, there are plenty of your “home-grown studios” here, who benefit from the manipulated market created by the multinationals that came before them. Salaries won’t rise to meet parity until labour gets organized, but as a previous commenter pointed out about labour laws and overtime pay, it’s a massive uphill battle.
theflyinghorse 6y ago
I am honestly not sure why Canadian developers are paid so much lower than our American counterparts. Vancouver is a large market for tech as is Toronto, and now the rest of the cities in Canada are picking up. Anecdotally I have never seen this much recruiter activity in Alberta as we're seeing right now.

badloginagain 6y ago

You'd be shocked at what Canadians put up with. Look closely at any industry here and corruption/abuse run rampant.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

munk-a 6y ago

Nope, and most software developers in Vancouver aren't participating with foreign companies at those rates. The laws remain how they are mostly to disenfranchise QA testers which remain a very hard labour segment to mobilize. There are thousands of "I can make money playing games?!?" folks out there that drown out the really good QA folks and insure that EA can maintain its churn. For regular dev jobs, I think the market is less imbalanced than it appears on the surface. Cost of living isn't cheap in BC but free medical care is a big bonus and the city is quite pleasant. Senior devs will end up pulling senior dev money - it's mostly the entry level wages that are depressed.

anonunivgrad 6y ago
Any decent software employer in the US will have good insurance that basically guarantees your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. That doesn’t really account for the difference.
- majormajor 6y ago
  Out of pocket maxes in the 10-20K range aren't that uncommon in the US. Even when I've seen places with plans where it's <5K, that's only for single workers, and it doubles with a partner or family.
  - ivalm 6y ago
    And I’d rather have extra 100k and pay the 10k for health.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
    I’ve never seen out of pocket maxes that high but I’m limited to my own experiences. I’d imagine the premiums would be super low for such a high deductible. Even the high deductible plans I’ve seen are no more than $3500/single or $7k family per year out of pocket max. And those allow you and your employer to put money into a high deductible savings account pre-tax like a retirement account. And it can be used for any qualified health payment for the rest of your life and is passed down upon death. It’s really like a 401k for health payments.
  - agensaequivocum 6y ago
    My plan for a family of 5 has an out of pocket max of 4K with no deductible.
- gambiting 6y ago
  >>your max out of pocket health expenses won’t exceed a few thousand dollars. Wait, that's meant to be good? What kind of insanity is this. Why do you have to pay anything out of your pocket at all??
  - mypalmike 6y ago
    In the US, there is no ceiling to your potential health expenses if you are without insurance. A few thousand dollars looks like a pretty good ceiling compared to infinity.
  - nemo44x 6y ago
vkou 6y ago
Actually, senior dev money is half as much in Vancouver as it is in the US. The higher up the tree you go, the more the gap widens.
- 908B64B197 6y ago
  I wonder why. There must be a skill gap, else the senior engineers would simply drive three hours and double their earnings.
  - vkou 6y ago
    ... No, The answer is immigration. 1. If you have a problematic history (which includes things entirely outside of your control, like being born in the wrong part of the world[1]), it can be nearly impossible. 2. If you don't have a problematic history, it's incredibly stressful. If you're on a TN visa, you can be turned away at the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you're on an H1B visa, you can also be turned away from the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you lose your job, you need to immediately start dealing with immigration issues, while looking for a new one, or you have to leave the country. 3. If you're married, your spouse can't work for a long time. 4. If you aren't married, your girlfriend/boyfriend/whomever can't even try immigrate with you, even if they wanted to. 5. Being three hours and a border away is not remotely the same thing as being three hours away from your friends and family. 6. There is a long, long, long list of cultural reasons for why a comfortably-living Canadian may prefer to avoid living in the US, even for double the paycheck. [1] I had a friend whose family fled from Saddam's Iraq, due to their political activities, when he was a child. As an adult, he was consistently singled out for harassment, intimidation, and delays during his crossings at the US-Canadian border. [2] According to him, getting a work visa in the US was not remotely a possibility. [2] Isn't it wonderful how passports list your country of birth?
    - 908B64B197 6y ago
      That still doesn't explain the gap when they are working for the same company.

asdfaoeu 6y ago

That document is not saying they are "worth" less than in America but that they are undervalued which I imagine a lot of them would agree with.

908B64B197 6y ago
Well, according to the market they are worth less.

simonh 6y ago

Offshoring companies bring investment into the community, while funding startups costs the local community. Also if your startup needs skill and services not available locally that have to be sourced outside that’s more cost, whereas a company coming in will have to provide those services at its own expense. If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. If there was enough investment available locally and local companies had the resources to hire more workers and were successful enough to pay them well, those salaries would be higher, but the resources to make that happen have to come from somewhere.

908B64B197 6y ago
> while funding startups costs the local community I'm not sure I completely understand. > If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. It's interesting because a lot of capital is flowing into Vancouver right now in the form of real estate speculation.

Tiktaalik 6y ago

The theory goes that the big foreign corp (ie. EA) hires a bunch of locals, and over time those locals get good and leave to form their own company. There's a fair amount of evidence that this works. It's not like Vancouver is solely populated by foreign studios. Local game companies like Kabam, Black Bird Interactive, Relic, United Front, etc would have all either had their roots in EA workers or would have hired ex-EA workers.

shaggyfrog 6y ago

As a Canadian, Vancouver resident, and software developer, I certainly don’t approve of the discount all software companies get here, including ones based here. Not only do companies pay out 60 cents on the dollar, they can also qualify for large refundable tax credit subsidies from provincial and federal governments. In other words, there are plenty of your “home-grown studios” here, who benefit from the manipulated market created by the multinationals that came before them. Salaries won’t rise to meet parity until labour gets organized, but as a previous commenter pointed out about labour laws and overtime pay, it’s a massive uphill battle.

theflyinghorse 6y ago

I am honestly not sure why Canadian developers are paid so much lower than our American counterparts. Vancouver is a large market for tech as is Toronto, and now the rest of the cities in Canada are picking up. Anecdotally I have never seen this much recruiter activity in Alberta as we're seeing right now.