4 ms·

As a Canadian who has lived in NYC for 2 years, and just had to go back to Canada for 2 weeks, this is spot on. There are tons of smart Canadians due to the gr

by zmitri 14y ago

As a Canadian who has lived in NYC for 2 years, and just had to go back to Canada for 2 weeks, this is spot on. There are tons of smart Canadians due to the great education system, but Canadians in general don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do. When I quit my job to start my own thing in America, all my co-workers and friends were pumped up and excited, while many Canadians were perplexed and asked questions like: "Don't you have a great job? Don't you make enough money? Why would you quit?" They concluded there was something wrong with me for quitting a decent job to do my own thing. They didn't understand that being as upper-middle class as I could wasn't my goal. My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Americans get that because it's part of the American dream. If you are talented, entrepreneurial and a good hacker, get down to NYC or SF. I used to be worried about visa issues, but then I realized it didn't matter, you can figure them out as you go along.

peterarmstrong 14y ago
The challenge is that as a Canadian it's a lot easier to get a TN-1 or H1-B as an employee than as a founder. So the valley is full of Canadian expat employees, not founders. Hopefully some of those will return to Canada and become startup founders. (That's what I did.)
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  >>The challenge is that as a Canadian it's a lot easier to get a TN-1 or H1-B as an employee than as a founder. It's the same in the US. If you're an immigrant, it's incredibly difficult (if not outright impossible) to get a work visa to work at a company you founded. There are a few "founder visa" type bills being discussed in the Congress, but all of them require the company you have founded to have a hefty revenue as well as a handful of employees. In other words, they are only for founders who are already successful.
  - peterarmstrong 14y ago
    That's what I meant: the TN-1 and H1-B visas are the US visas that Canadian employees get in the US.
- zmitri 14y ago
  Yep. Need to have x00K in the bank to legally work for my own company.
bentlegen 14y ago
> Canadians don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do > My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Can I counter your personal anecdote about your friends not appreciating success, with your own personal story of founding a business? I grew up outside of Toronto, and I'm friends with a dozen Canadians that have founded technology companies. I wouldn't say that we "don't appreciate success". The point isn't that I'm right and you're wrong. The point is that you can't make gross generalizations about an entire country based on your anecdotal life story.
- zmitri 14y ago
  Definitely fair point. There are plenty of Canadian entrepreneurs who absolutely crush it, and definitely appreciate "success". I could have said "Building something great out of nothing and trying to be the best" is very much embedded into American folklore and culture, but not so much in Canadian. I had a very long conversation about this with 3 generations of Canadian entrepreneurs (none of them tech mind you) and we all had a good laugh about this very topic. Again, sorry if anecdotal evidence doesn't do it for you.
  - ckevinc 14y ago
    I think anecdotal evidence is good to a point.. we can only know so much before starting to make larger generalizations. In all this, there is some sense that we (as Canadians) are fundamentally different than our American friends. I do agree (it's just a feeling) that these perceived differences are holding us back in many ways. Could this be culture? Could this be our more left-leaning ideologies? Could there be some small thinking involved? As a Canadian who was invited to partake in the American workforce more than once but decided on staying here - I believe Canada has more to offer than America.
HorizonXP 14y ago
As the founder of taab (http://taab.co http://taab.co), I'd have to mostly disagree. I know that I'll need some help from SF or NYC, but so far, I've received tremendous amounts of support from friends, family, colleagues, and networks here in Toronto and Waterloo.
rozap 14y ago
I'm an American going to school in Canada, studying computer science. Before I started, I was so excited about all the people I was going to meet that would be interested in pursuing tons of computing projects outside of class. It's three years later now, and I've found a total of two guys that share the same interest in creating something from nothing, and putting it out there for the world to see. People aren't totally floored by the idea of a good idea, they just do their classwork, get good grades, maybe do some internships, but that's about it. Now, this is a somewhat sweeping statement, based solely on a small amount of anecdotal evidence. Maybe it's due to the fact that I go to UBC and not Stanford, maybe some ideas are just too ambitious or overwhelming, maybe I haven't run into all the right people, but those are my observations, and my frustrations parallel those discussed by the OP.
- msbarnett 14y ago
  Almost any comp sci program, on either side of the border, is going to have a lot of dead-weight students who just want to put in the classroom hours and would never dream of programming on the side. These are the kids who never really learn how to program (there aren't nearly enough classroom hours in a 4 year degree to turn you into a competent coder; building your own side projects is a necessity). These are the kids who give rise to all the complaints about Why Johnny Can't Code, and why academia doesn't prepare people for industry. These are the kids who make up the bulk of the anecdotes about people interviewing 10 candidates for a programming position and finding out that only 1 of them could actually program at even a novice level. It doesn't really have anything to do with being in Canada.
  - rozap 14y ago
    Good (well, not really) that this how it works down in the states. It's hard to gauge these things, because it's always entirely anecdotal evidence. So yes, my frustration is not with Canadian students, but with students in general.
mhurron 14y ago
I think you're misunderstanding risk aversion as not appreciating success. Risk aversion "why are you quitting when you have a great job" is an individual personalty trait, not one of a whole unrelated group of people. You can find plenty of Americans who would say the same thing. On top of that, you can't appreciate success that isn't there. You quit your job to start something, that's not succeeding so they weren't appreciating success. Odds are that you would fail miserably. No, my bet is that what your seeing here is your friends are happy you're trying something you've probably been talking about doing for a while. They're probably your friends because they share some of these same interests, so in addition to seeing a friend do something they want they have the same drive to do it and understand why you would take that risk. Others around you that are not so close are making a risk assessment based on if they were in your shoes what would they think. If starting a business wasn't their interest, that's a huge risk to take for little/no reward. None of it has to do with Americans or Canadians. Actually, you're a part of why Canada has a struggling tech sector. You moved to the US to start a business. Probably for the same reason doctors do, if you make money, you'll make a shitton more in the US. Other than money, there is no real reason to move to the US from Canada to start a business.
- zmitri 14y ago
  I upvoted this the first time I read this for your point on risk aversion. The thing that I disagree with is that people move to the US to make more money. I had a job that paid very well in the US and there's a very good chance I would have made much more doing that than starting my own company. The US is often years ahead in design, advertising, the latest tech trends, etc. American brands are more likely to try new things out/it's easier to reach larger scale adoption more easily. Through out my life I have always waited for American products/chains/innovations (no matter how novel -- Easy Mac, Yogurt Tubes, MTV, Old Navy) to make it up to Canada. In my opinion those are definitely reasons to move to the US. So much of starting/running your own thing is dealing with mental blocks. When you are around more people who are breaking through those blocks, or have done so before you, it's quite advantageous.
foobarqux 14y ago
Regarding visa issues: Do you mean to suggest that Canadians should just move to SF and then figure out how to get a visa later?
- zmitri 14y ago
  I am not a lawyer so my obviously it depends on what you are like. If you are someone who can get shit done, have enough money to last a year on your own, and don't have a wife or kids there's not much stopping you. I just didn't think it was worth waiting for a greencard. I was on an H1B for a year, and realized I'd have to wait 5 more years for a greencard. Now I look back and just think it was a mental road block (a big one albeit it).

by zmitri 14y ago

peterarmstrong 14y ago

The challenge is that as a Canadian it's a lot easier to get a TN-1 or H1-B as an employee than as a founder. So the valley is full of Canadian expat employees, not founders. Hopefully some of those will return to Canada and become startup founders. (That's what I did.)

enraged_camel 14y ago
>>The challenge is that as a Canadian it's a lot easier to get a TN-1 or H1-B as an employee than as a founder. It's the same in the US. If you're an immigrant, it's incredibly difficult (if not outright impossible) to get a work visa to work at a company you founded. There are a few "founder visa" type bills being discussed in the Congress, but all of them require the company you have founded to have a hefty revenue as well as a handful of employees. In other words, they are only for founders who are already successful.
- peterarmstrong 14y ago
  That's what I meant: the TN-1 and H1-B visas are the US visas that Canadian employees get in the US.
zmitri 14y ago
Yep. Need to have x00K in the bank to legally work for my own company.

bentlegen 14y ago

> Canadians don't appreciate success in the same way Americans do > My goal was to try and build something out of nothing and hopefully be the best in the world. Can I counter your personal anecdote about your friends not appreciating success, with your own personal story of founding a business? I grew up outside of Toronto, and I'm friends with a dozen Canadians that have founded technology companies. I wouldn't say that we "don't appreciate success". The point isn't that I'm right and you're wrong. The point is that you can't make gross generalizations about an entire country based on your anecdotal life story.

zmitri 14y ago
Definitely fair point. There are plenty of Canadian entrepreneurs who absolutely crush it, and definitely appreciate "success". I could have said "Building something great out of nothing and trying to be the best" is very much embedded into American folklore and culture, but not so much in Canadian. I had a very long conversation about this with 3 generations of Canadian entrepreneurs (none of them tech mind you) and we all had a good laugh about this very topic. Again, sorry if anecdotal evidence doesn't do it for you.
- ckevinc 14y ago
  I think anecdotal evidence is good to a point.. we can only know so much before starting to make larger generalizations. In all this, there is some sense that we (as Canadians) are fundamentally different than our American friends. I do agree (it's just a feeling) that these perceived differences are holding us back in many ways. Could this be culture? Could this be our more left-leaning ideologies? Could there be some small thinking involved? As a Canadian who was invited to partake in the American workforce more than once but decided on staying here - I believe Canada has more to offer than America.

HorizonXP 14y ago

As the founder of taab (http://taab.co http://taab.co), I'd have to mostly disagree. I know that I'll need some help from SF or NYC, but so far, I've received tremendous amounts of support from friends, family, colleagues, and networks here in Toronto and Waterloo.

rozap 14y ago

I'm an American going to school in Canada, studying computer science. Before I started, I was so excited about all the people I was going to meet that would be interested in pursuing tons of computing projects outside of class. It's three years later now, and I've found a total of two guys that share the same interest in creating something from nothing, and putting it out there for the world to see. People aren't totally floored by the idea of a good idea, they just do their classwork, get good grades, maybe do some internships, but that's about it. Now, this is a somewhat sweeping statement, based solely on a small amount of anecdotal evidence. Maybe it's due to the fact that I go to UBC and not Stanford, maybe some ideas are just too ambitious or overwhelming, maybe I haven't run into all the right people, but those are my observations, and my frustrations parallel those discussed by the OP.

msbarnett 14y ago
Almost any comp sci program, on either side of the border, is going to have a lot of dead-weight students who just want to put in the classroom hours and would never dream of programming on the side. These are the kids who never really learn how to program (there aren't nearly enough classroom hours in a 4 year degree to turn you into a competent coder; building your own side projects is a necessity). These are the kids who give rise to all the complaints about Why Johnny Can't Code, and why academia doesn't prepare people for industry. These are the kids who make up the bulk of the anecdotes about people interviewing 10 candidates for a programming position and finding out that only 1 of them could actually program at even a novice level. It doesn't really have anything to do with being in Canada.
- rozap 14y ago
  Good (well, not really) that this how it works down in the states. It's hard to gauge these things, because it's always entirely anecdotal evidence. So yes, my frustration is not with Canadian students, but with students in general.

mhurron 14y ago

I think you're misunderstanding risk aversion as not appreciating success. Risk aversion "why are you quitting when you have a great job" is an individual personalty trait, not one of a whole unrelated group of people. You can find plenty of Americans who would say the same thing. On top of that, you can't appreciate success that isn't there. You quit your job to start something, that's not succeeding so they weren't appreciating success. Odds are that you would fail miserably. No, my bet is that what your seeing here is your friends are happy you're trying something you've probably been talking about doing for a while. They're probably your friends because they share some of these same interests, so in addition to seeing a friend do something they want they have the same drive to do it and understand why you would take that risk. Others around you that are not so close are making a risk assessment based on if they were in your shoes what would they think. If starting a business wasn't their interest, that's a huge risk to take for little/no reward. None of it has to do with Americans or Canadians. Actually, you're a part of why Canada has a struggling tech sector. You moved to the US to start a business. Probably for the same reason doctors do, if you make money, you'll make a shitton more in the US. Other than money, there is no real reason to move to the US from Canada to start a business.

zmitri 14y ago
I upvoted this the first time I read this for your point on risk aversion. The thing that I disagree with is that people move to the US to make more money. I had a job that paid very well in the US and there's a very good chance I would have made much more doing that than starting my own company. The US is often years ahead in design, advertising, the latest tech trends, etc. American brands are more likely to try new things out/it's easier to reach larger scale adoption more easily. Through out my life I have always waited for American products/chains/innovations (no matter how novel -- Easy Mac, Yogurt Tubes, MTV, Old Navy) to make it up to Canada. In my opinion those are definitely reasons to move to the US. So much of starting/running your own thing is dealing with mental blocks. When you are around more people who are breaking through those blocks, or have done so before you, it's quite advantageous.

foobarqux 14y ago

Regarding visa issues: Do you mean to suggest that Canadians should just move to SF and then figure out how to get a visa later?

zmitri 14y ago
I am not a lawyer so my obviously it depends on what you are like. If you are someone who can get shit done, have enough money to last a year on your own, and don't have a wife or kids there's not much stopping you. I just didn't think it was worth waiting for a greencard. I was on an H1B for a year, and realized I'd have to wait 5 more years for a greencard. Now I look back and just think it was a mental road block (a big one albeit it).