5 ms·

I'm a Canadian that's been trying to get into this field. There is no "talent" issue. Any job that pops up is flooded with applicants. It's night and day compa

by Ralo 3y ago

I'm a Canadian that's been trying to get into this field. There is no "talent" issue. Any job that pops up is flooded with applicants. It's night and day compared to America. All the companies are in America, while we find only a handful of start ups or some branch's of corporations in Canada. Give a read to the /r/cscareerquestionscad subreddit There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job". Articles like this make me want to quit everything. I try so hard to get into these field then the government claims no one can fill these roles and we need to import more people instead.

throwawaysleep 3y ago
Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. The choice is between jobs going offshore or people coming to work here as most new grads are not job ready. I have interviewed ones who have never done a pull request before.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  I've also never written a press release.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    I’m guessing PR stands for pull request in this context. But it could also be project review or peer review. We may never know.
    - devoutsalsa 3y ago
      I was trying to be funny. PR stands for public relations.
- _yy01 3y ago
  How do you expect a new grad (assuming no internship experience) to have done a PR? I agree the university should've taught version control, though. I am an Indian graduate who has decent experience with actual programming, even contributed to open source, and yet struggled to get a job in between my peers who have done 300 Leetcode problems and nothing else. So I assume the hiring meter for most juniors is not "can use version control" or "can architect a 1000 line codebase with decent OOP". It's "can recurgigate 300-500 common Leetcode problems and can cheat in online coding tests". We are all in a bubble.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    I don't really care how they get it, just that I do not have to train them in it. An employee who requires tech training is a pain to have around. You need people ready to get to work. Some companies do focus on Leetcode, that is true. Mine do not, but on the other hand we expect you to fit neatly into the role of developer without needing to be told about Docker, GitHub, testing. Tons of grads have no idea of the difference between a unit test and an integration test.
    - aprdm 3y ago
      As someone who hired a bunch of recent grads in Canada, you couldn’t be more wrong in your assessment or in your conclusion, but, this is the internet so :shrugs:
- abigail95 3y ago
  Booming field that outsiders don't understand will continue to attract deadweight useless people. Of course there's a bunch of people that can't find jobs, a CS degree is not a rigorous endeavour, there's no bar exam, no MCAT. Just a bunch of people who think it's a free lunch surprised they have to compete for it.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    That is a lot of it. There has been a proliferation of Masters in Software degrees up here that anyone can sign up for, pay a few grand, and graduate with a degree from in a year.
- TMWNN 3y ago
  >Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. Presumably you exclude Waterloo, Toronto, UBC, and McGill from the list of awful programs. What do you have in mind? Brock? Guelph? UVic? UPEI? MUN? Lethbridge? USask?
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    > Brock? Guelph? UVic? UPEI? MUN? Lethbridge? USask? A lot of those are likely mediocre, but probably ok(I have never encountered a grad from those programs admittedly), but many aren't even coming from undergrad CS programs but from the diploma mill colleges like Seneca and Sheridan that hire fake professors or from one year masters in CS programs. Don't get me started on the career colleges, one of which offered me an instructional job in my third year of university.
  - mardifoufs 3y ago
    McGill doesn't have a particularly good CS program. Not even the best in Montreal actually
    - TMWNN 3y ago
      I'm surprised to hear that. I know that "AI superpower" is a punch line, but isn't Center for Intelligent Machines supposed to be at the heart of it?
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        Université de Montréal is a bit more involved in MILA and AI in general, hence the "not even the best in Montreal"
- jimbob45 3y ago
  99% of CS is about communication, not your ability to code and most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those... are incompatible with one another. Which is it, HN? Do you want the Indian guy who can't speak English, doesn't understand you, but can whip up a microservice architecture in a week or the Canuck with whom you can communicate, will learn from you, but does not know anything outside of Java?
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    > 99% of CS is about communication, not your ability to code There is a minimum level of useful skill that is required to avoid having to spend a bunch of time training them. Neither the Indian CS person or the new grad are great options. Ideally you want senior devs. But given the choice, I would prefer the Indian CS person as then the communications become more Product's problem than technical mentoring which is mine.
shagie 3y ago
The "digital nomad visa" is for foreign workers working for foreign companies to work while residing in Canada for up to 6 months (there are tax and residency implications if you stay longer than 6 months). This is not directly competing with Canadian citizens looking to work for Canadian companies. The directly part is because while in Canada, it is possible that a digital nomad may apply for and get a job for a Canadian company in which case the visa can get changed and they can stay longer. But the digital nomad 6 month part isn't competing... directly. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2023/06/canadas-tech-talent-strategy.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne... (different page than the article) Promoting Canada as a destination for digital nomads A digital nomad is a person who can perform their job remotely from anywhere in the world. Under current Canadian immigration rules, a digital nomad only needs visitor status to relocate to Canada for up to six months at a time while they perform their job remotely for a foreign employer. In the months ahead, IRCC will collaborate with public and private partners alike to determine whether additional policies to attract digital nomads to Canada would be desirable. We expect that some digital nomads who initially enter Canada to work remotely will decide to seek opportunities with Canadian employers. When they receive a job offer from a Canadian company, they would be able to bring their skills to a Canadian employer by applying for a temporary work permit or even permanent residence.
abigail95 3y ago
> There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job". That's bullshit, or you're looking at the tail end. Or these people are applying for jobs that require experience without any. What's their interview success rate? What's their target salary? They can't land any job? Ridiculous. If there really was an overload of talent in Canada, it would be pumping out unicorns - it's not. If there's 1M canadians in tech I would expect tens of thousands of those stories to be true. The more talent there is in Canada, the more talented work can be done. The two most famous tech companies were founded by people without college degrees, just access to the American talent market. You can look good on paper, complain to the world about it, or actually get shit done.
- saint_fiasco 3y ago
  It might not be CS talent that Canada lacks. Someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread that Canada has high taxes and a difficult bureaucracy. If Canada's government is business-unfriendly and their closest neighbor and competitor is the USA, then Canada might face a lack of people with talent for business. As in, the sort of person who would pump out unicorns would rather move to the US. Then they would have lots of talented CS people, but nobody to hire them.
  - ttul 3y ago
    Yeah that comments is bullshit. It’s very easy to establish a business in Canada. The bureaucracy is efficient by comparison to most developed countries including the US. The tax authority is not scary like the IRS and the rules are reasonable and easier to understand. The provinces have considerable control over economic policies and taxation, generating competition between regions. I’ve run tech companies in Canada for over 20 years. It’s a perfectly fine place to do business.
    - pcthrowaway 3y ago
      With the U.S. tax changes preventing early stage startups from deducting their employees' salaries from revenue outright, I wonder if we'll start seeing more Canadian-based innovation. I think historically the thing preventing startups here from taking off was lack of access to capital
ArtemZ 3y ago
I don't think it's day and night compared to the U.S. I was looking for a job for 7 months already and can't land anything. 10 years of experience as DevOps/SRE, permanent resident. So tried to find some basic job and it is even worse there. DoorDash is not hiring anymore, all my applications to custodian and similar jobs got rejected. I went to a bunch of restaurants around the town and applied to dishwasher, cook and similar positions, filled their forms and never heard back. I don't know what to do.

by Ralo 3y ago

throwawaysleep 3y ago

Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. The choice is between jobs going offshore or people coming to work here as most new grads are not job ready. I have interviewed ones who have never done a pull request before.

devoutsalsa 3y ago
I've also never written a press release.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  I’m guessing PR stands for pull request in this context. But it could also be project review or peer review. We may never know.
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    I was trying to be funny. PR stands for public relations.
_yy01 3y ago
How do you expect a new grad (assuming no internship experience) to have done a PR? I agree the university should've taught version control, though. I am an Indian graduate who has decent experience with actual programming, even contributed to open source, and yet struggled to get a job in between my peers who have done 300 Leetcode problems and nothing else. So I assume the hiring meter for most juniors is not "can use version control" or "can architect a 1000 line codebase with decent OOP". It's "can recurgigate 300-500 common Leetcode problems and can cheat in online coding tests". We are all in a bubble.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  I don't really care how they get it, just that I do not have to train them in it. An employee who requires tech training is a pain to have around. You need people ready to get to work. Some companies do focus on Leetcode, that is true. Mine do not, but on the other hand we expect you to fit neatly into the role of developer without needing to be told about Docker, GitHub, testing. Tons of grads have no idea of the difference between a unit test and an integration test.
  - aprdm 3y ago
    As someone who hired a bunch of recent grads in Canada, you couldn’t be more wrong in your assessment or in your conclusion, but, this is the internet so :shrugs:
abigail95 3y ago
Booming field that outsiders don't understand will continue to attract deadweight useless people. Of course there's a bunch of people that can't find jobs, a CS degree is not a rigorous endeavour, there's no bar exam, no MCAT. Just a bunch of people who think it's a free lunch surprised they have to compete for it.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  That is a lot of it. There has been a proliferation of Masters in Software degrees up here that anyone can sign up for, pay a few grand, and graduate with a degree from in a year.
TMWNN 3y ago
>Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. Presumably you exclude Waterloo, Toronto, UBC, and McGill from the list of awful programs. What do you have in mind? Brock? Guelph? UVic? UPEI? MUN? Lethbridge? USask?
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  > Brock? Guelph? UVic? UPEI? MUN? Lethbridge? USask? A lot of those are likely mediocre, but probably ok(I have never encountered a grad from those programs admittedly), but many aren't even coming from undergrad CS programs but from the diploma mill colleges like Seneca and Sheridan that hire fake professors or from one year masters in CS programs. Don't get me started on the career colleges, one of which offered me an instructional job in my third year of university.
- mardifoufs 3y ago
  McGill doesn't have a particularly good CS program. Not even the best in Montreal actually
  - TMWNN 3y ago
    I'm surprised to hear that. I know that "AI superpower" is a punch line, but isn't Center for Intelligent Machines supposed to be at the heart of it?
    - mardifoufs 3y ago
      Université de Montréal is a bit more involved in MILA and AI in general, hence the "not even the best in Montreal"
jimbob45 3y ago
99% of CS is about communication, not your ability to code and most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those... are incompatible with one another. Which is it, HN? Do you want the Indian guy who can't speak English, doesn't understand you, but can whip up a microservice architecture in a week or the Canuck with whom you can communicate, will learn from you, but does not know anything outside of Java?
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  > 99% of CS is about communication, not your ability to code There is a minimum level of useful skill that is required to avoid having to spend a bunch of time training them. Neither the Indian CS person or the new grad are great options. Ideally you want senior devs. But given the choice, I would prefer the Indian CS person as then the communications become more Product's problem than technical mentoring which is mine.

shagie 3y ago

The "digital nomad visa" is for foreign workers working for foreign companies to work while residing in Canada for up to 6 months (there are tax and residency implications if you stay longer than 6 months). This is not directly competing with Canadian citizens looking to work for Canadian companies. The directly part is because while in Canada, it is possible that a digital nomad may apply for and get a job for a Canadian company in which case the visa can get changed and they can stay longer. But the digital nomad 6 month part isn't competing... directly. https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2023/06/canadas-tech-talent-strategy.html https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne... (different page than the article) Promoting Canada as a destination for digital nomads A digital nomad is a person who can perform their job remotely from anywhere in the world. Under current Canadian immigration rules, a digital nomad only needs visitor status to relocate to Canada for up to six months at a time while they perform their job remotely for a foreign employer. In the months ahead, IRCC will collaborate with public and private partners alike to determine whether additional policies to attract digital nomads to Canada would be desirable. We expect that some digital nomads who initially enter Canada to work remotely will decide to seek opportunities with Canadian employers. When they receive a job offer from a Canadian company, they would be able to bring their skills to a Canadian employer by applying for a temporary work permit or even permanent residence.

abigail95 3y ago

> There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job". That's bullshit, or you're looking at the tail end. Or these people are applying for jobs that require experience without any. What's their interview success rate? What's their target salary? They can't land any job? Ridiculous. If there really was an overload of talent in Canada, it would be pumping out unicorns - it's not. If there's 1M canadians in tech I would expect tens of thousands of those stories to be true. The more talent there is in Canada, the more talented work can be done. The two most famous tech companies were founded by people without college degrees, just access to the American talent market. You can look good on paper, complain to the world about it, or actually get shit done.

saint_fiasco 3y ago
It might not be CS talent that Canada lacks. Someone mentioned elsewhere in the thread that Canada has high taxes and a difficult bureaucracy. If Canada's government is business-unfriendly and their closest neighbor and competitor is the USA, then Canada might face a lack of people with talent for business. As in, the sort of person who would pump out unicorns would rather move to the US. Then they would have lots of talented CS people, but nobody to hire them.
- ttul 3y ago
  Yeah that comments is bullshit. It’s very easy to establish a business in Canada. The bureaucracy is efficient by comparison to most developed countries including the US. The tax authority is not scary like the IRS and the rules are reasonable and easier to understand. The provinces have considerable control over economic policies and taxation, generating competition between regions. I’ve run tech companies in Canada for over 20 years. It’s a perfectly fine place to do business.
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    With the U.S. tax changes preventing early stage startups from deducting their employees' salaries from revenue outright, I wonder if we'll start seeing more Canadian-based innovation. I think historically the thing preventing startups here from taking off was lack of access to capital

ArtemZ 3y ago

I don't think it's day and night compared to the U.S. I was looking for a job for 7 months already and can't land anything. 10 years of experience as DevOps/SRE, permanent resident. So tried to find some basic job and it is even worse there. DoorDash is not hiring anymore, all my applications to custodian and similar jobs got rejected. I went to a bunch of restaurants around the town and applied to dishwasher, cook and similar positions, filled their forms and never heard back. I don't know what to do.