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I'm a Canadian living in Australia. Australia has much more than just Atlassian. Canva is the 9th most valuable private company according to crunchbase [1]. B
by pedalpete 4y ago
I'm a Canadian living in Australia.
Australia has much more than just Atlassian. Canva is the 9th most valuable private company according to crunchbase [1].
But you need to look deeper than just "who has the biggest most successful companies. Note, the comment says "countries that understand software".
From what I've seen, and one of the reasons I moved here, Australia values quality production. They understand where software drives business and invest in that.
I'm former NICTA/CSIRO, and those organizations used to be drivers of technology and research.
Canada is a major technology hub. Microsoft and Facebook both have major development centres in Canada. Of course, being so close to the US, most of the brain drain goes directly out of the country, but that is part of the country and the people understanding the value of software. The education is good, and so people go to where the dollars are.
Canada and Australia are not going to be able to compete with the US from a dollar perspective. So many of the best Canadians, Australians, Chinese and Indian are going to end up in the US.
[1]https://www.crunchbase.com/lists/crunchbase-private-unicorn-company-list/f406c855-fff9-419b-9b44-324e1bfe3081/organization.companies?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Brand-Pro-NAM-DSA&utm_content=Conversion&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=SCH%20%7C%20Pro%20%7C%20NAM%20%7C%20DSA%20%7C%20Self%20Serve&keyword=&matchtype=&creative=559388413156&device=c&adposition=&campaignid=15154542434&placement=&network=g https://www.crunchbase.com/lists/crunchbase-private-unicorn-...
- gumby 4y agoAs an Australian I appreciate you understanding my root comment!
- kareemsabri 4y agoCanada has started to be competitive, mostly because of US companies coming in and bidding up wages, but when I left (~10 years ago) a top salary for a SWE was about $80k. I'm not sure it's because of some cultural appreciation of software as a value driver versus a cost center. The (self-proclaimed) branding as "Silicon Valley North" seems a bit excessive.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoI also left roughly the same time as you, so I agree with what they were, but the range is truly wild now. You'll still find $80k positions but the ceiling is now easily 3-4x as much. It's not the SV of the north yet -- local VCs are still a joke (expect one to two orders of magnitude worse terms) but it's getting better. The angel scene has actually been pretty incredible over the past few years.
- lokar 4y agoAtlassian certainly does not value software quality.
- WanderPanda 4y agoTo a point where Microsoft should consider acquiring Atlassian because they are so similar in this regard
- hef19898 4y agoNice, then how comes everyone and their grandparents are running Jira and MS Office? The latter across FAANG as well (maybe not the G with an in house competitor).
- jq-r 4y agoThat's really not an indicator of quality. They lack competition. There is some correlation there but that's a different story.
- gumby 4y agoThis is because both companies sell to the enterprise, not to the end users. This is how Microsoft drove their phone business off the cliff: they built a product that their customers (corporate IT) loved but the users detested. When the iphone showed up Microsoft famously knew it was dumb because it addressed nothing that their customers cared about. But the workforce demanded change.