Work in Silicon Valley and Spooked About Trump? Canada Wants You

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-01/work-in-silicon-valley-and-spooked-about-trump-canada-wants-you

by kushti • 10 years ago

29 81 10 years ago

ap22213• 10 years ago

I would love to help pump up the GDP at a new country. What I'm looking for: Efficiently run government, low corruption, policies that encourage education and health, and progressive expanded rights and freedoms. I'm in. But, based on what I know about Canada, I don't think it's it.

elthran• 10 years ago

Sounds like you want a Scandinavian country

Matachines• 10 years ago

IDK about the rest but Sweden has definitely not encouraged good education in a while.

ar02• 10 years ago

Could you expand on your reasoning for this conclusion a bit? What knowledge of Canada does not fit to these requirements? Which countries would in your opinion be a better fit?

caiob• 10 years ago

Canada is the closest thing you will get to those goals without being trapped in a boring isolated Nordic European country.

padobson• 10 years ago

You mean Europe's Canada?

S4M2• 10 years ago

How about France and Germany?

pmoriarty5• 10 years ago

Take a look at the Netherlands. It fits the OP's criteria, is not isolated, and Amsterdam, for instance, is at the opposite extreme from boring.

Grishnakh10• 10 years ago

A "boring" Nordic country sounds good to me... but how hard is it for Americans to move there and get software jobs there?

meric• 10 years ago

Take a look at New Zealand.

konart• 10 years ago

Efficiently run government
Low corruption
policies that encourage education and health
progressive expanded rights and freedoms.

You can chose only 3.

Ntrails• 10 years ago

You can chose only 3

I'm pretty sure you're lucky to get 1

refurb5• 10 years ago

progressive expanded rights and freedoms

If that includes freedom of speech, you may want to rethink Canada. Say something politically incorrect and expect to be pulled in front of the on Human Rights Commission to explain yourself and potentially be fined.

In terms of corruption, try googling "Sponsorship Scandal".

jbob20003• 10 years ago

No, we don't want people who, at the first sign of trouble, pack their bags and leave. If you don't like Trump, stay there and fight for your home.

furyofantares• 10 years ago

That's an interesting stance on immigration.

pmoriarty5• 10 years ago

The problem is that this is far, far from the first sight of trouble in the US. I'll spare the detailed history lesson, but Trump would not be the first right-wing, reactionary President in the US, and there are plenty of other reasons to leave. Many in the US feel helpless to affect politics for a variety of reasons. Trump may be, for some, more of the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

jbob20003• 10 years ago

Oh please, every country has problems, the US is just in the limelight because they own like 90% of the world's media. Canada just kicked out a right-wing government that held power for almost 10 years. The people who would leave for greener pastures would come to Canada, find that it's not so green, and head for the next "fad".

neom• 10 years ago

Wonder what visa they want us on. (I'm Canadian, but still)

n00b101• 10 years ago

What exactly do they propose is the incentive for founding a startup in Canada instead of just doing it in the US? It can't be Waterloo because those grads don't want to stay here, as things stand (brain drain effect). It can't be the weather, or taxes. It definitely isn't the investors, Canadian investors are notoriously conservative when it comes to new ventures (unless your business is to dig a new hole in the ground and pull out rocks). It isn't the cost of living, the average price of a home in Toronto is $1M. The only support for startups is a decades old tax credit program called SRED which requires you to domicile your company as a Canadian owned private corporation (e.g., no Delaware corporations) and it is notorious for being beuraucratic and it clearly favours larger established companies over true startups. The government has failed miserably at incentivizing startups. This latest pitch seems to be based on nothing more than dusting off the old canard of Canada being more "multi-cultural" than the US, and using Donald Trump to attract startup entrepreneurs? This coming from the institutions that gave us Stephen Harper and Rob Ford? These gimmicks are more of an indication that they're not serious abot incentivizing startups, they are just trying to score political points at home.

altotrees• 10 years ago

My uncle is an engineer in Toronto, and often speaks positively of the startup scene in parts of Canada. I know Waterloo loses quite a few grads to the Bay Area and other major U.S. cities, but haven't some companies actually relocated to be closer to the scene there? I am thinking Pivotal Labs and Google off the top of my head.

I am genuinely curious on your take, since you seem to have direct knowledge. I have seen many people say things in the same vein, but also hear positive things from people in Canada and outsiders as well.

nibs• 10 years ago

SRED is impossible to get, and has been for several years. We make novel manufacturing plant floor technology that is sold inside and outside of Canada and seen as unique IP. Getting SRED is harder than building the technology, so we just gave up. I would gladly trade places with an American running away from Trump, to escape Liberal^2 here in Ontario. Google "Ontario Sunshine List" if you want to see our California-esque problems with government misinvestment.

gavingmiller2• 10 years ago

I can speak a bit for western canada; Vancouver has seen many of the larger/top companies open offices: Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc. so plenty of jobs to be had there. I live in Calgary and have seen many peers move to Vancouver for better job prospects.

Re: SRED credits - I've been a part of the application process twice. Documentation can be a bit cumbersome, but not much more than 5 minutes summarizing the weeks work in a spreadsheet (for each employee), and tracking their hours spent on related tasks. Add in source control and the numerous artifacts that software devs come up with, means low amount of effort for high payout. And by high payout, I'm talking 1-2 devs salary in a 10 dev shop. We also hired a consulting company that specialized in SRED applications which saved us a ton of overhead. Cost 10-20% of payout, but was worth not having to deal with the application and/or any audits had they occurred.

miguelrochefort4• 10 years ago

There are none.

Moving to Canada from the USA lowers your quality of life by 50%.

ybrah• 10 years ago

What are the reasons that lead you to believe that?

I have lived in both the US and Canada, I prefer Canada.

stuxnet792• 10 years ago

Please explain yourself. If you are conflating QoL with salary then sure but I've heard stories of Canadians moving from Ontario to the Bay Area and their opinions on the move are mixed.

jordigh4• 10 years ago

Québec actually gives a lot of tax breaks for tech businesses. There's a pretty lively startup scene in Mtl, perhaps for this reason:

http://builtinmtl.com/

not serious abot

True Canadian confirmed.

robk• 10 years ago

And if you do need to leave at some point, good luck because you're going to have a huge cap gains tax bill for your startup equity!

bryanlarsen3• 10 years ago

There's an $800,000 lifetime capital gains exemption for 'qualified small business corporations'. To qualify, basically you have to be Canadian-controlled for 2 years.

jnordwick• 10 years ago

I'd love to create a statup in a bureaucratic, third-world country. Canada sounds perfect!

(preparing for modbomb oblivion)

JMCQ87• 10 years ago

Not even Trump would make we want to work in adtech.

cabernal• 10 years ago

This is true, a lot of startups (in the Toronto area at least) work on ad/marketing tech, but if you look closely you can find places that are working on interesting projects (WealthSimple, Quandl, TopHat)

pbourke• 10 years ago

I saw the Sortable ad in my Facebook feed. Good for a few laughs. Presidents come and go, but the opportunities in the US have been consistently better than Canada for decades now in tech.

Canadians come to the US for a better standard of living, comparatively more affordable housing (yes, even in the Bay Area!), a diverse and booming job market with interesting opportunities and a less conservative startup culture. None of that seems to be changing anytime soon.

maxsilver• 10 years ago

I love the idea of relocating to Canada. But every time I've looked into it, companies seemed to only pay entry level wages for experienced positions (80K-100K CAD which is 60-75K USD), while having high coastal-type housing costs (500K - 1M CAD, which is 400k to 760k USD)

Sure, greatly reduced health care cost. But even accounting for that, it still seemed like a big financial setback.

Unless I'm missing something, it seems like if you could afford a home in Toronto, you might as well sell it and buy a house in NYC or SF or Boston. Your cost of living would be about the same, but your income would jump roughly 2x or higher.

EDIT : For example, Sortable is the Canadian company in the article. Their "3+ year experience" Software Engineer position on their website maxes out at 100K CAD, a salary 25% lower than Amazon's Seattle interns make (~100K USD).

jordigh4• 10 years ago

Downtown Toronto is probably the most expensive place for housing. The salaries are about comparable elsewhere in Canada, with much cheaper housing options elsewhere in the GTA, or in Mtl or Vancouver.

I wouldn't say I'm making bank in Mtl, but my salary is comfortable and gives me slack. Most people I know start buying homes here in their mid-30s.

at-fates-hands2• 10 years ago

The insanity about this is HE'S NOT EVEN THE NOMINEE YET.

Considering how pissed the establishment Republicans are that he might be the nominee, they're all betting on an open convention followed by some combination of a Walker, Cruz, Rubio, Ryan ticket.

I can't believe how people have lost their minds and he most likely won't get the amount of delegates required to get the nomination outright before the convention in June. Clearly whatever he's doing, he's struck a HUGE nerve somewhere, because there is a fuck ton of panic in the streets and it's still very, very, very early in the process.

pmoriarty5• 10 years ago

Candidates like Trump often serve the useful purpose of making candidates that would otherwise seem extreme look moderate. I'm almost surprised there isn't some sort of loud-mouthed, extreme liberal anti-Trump candidate on the Democratic side to make some of their other candidates look more moderate by comparison.

beeboop2• 10 years ago

Taking extreme positions doesn't win elections unfortunately. Trump has a few of his own extreme opinions and I feel relatively confident he's going to lose pretty bad to Hillary because of it. Hillary is the master of no extremes.

Mikeb852• 10 years ago

No kidding. Not too long ago Ted Cruz was a xenophobic, extreme-right religious nut. Now the media is playing him up to be some sort of moderate (he's still a religious nut).

By contrast, Trump is a moderate masquerading as a conservative caricature.

The worst part is that it looks like you guys will be stuck with an 'establishment' president who'll simply continue the status quo of funnelling money to the rich and waging wars in 3rd world countries (Hillary).

randcraw• 10 years ago

It's interesting that angry exclusionary interests have not had more traction among liberals. For example, there's nothing like Fox News to attract and organize such dissatisfied folk on the liberal side. (MSNBC has tiny viewership by contrast to Fox, and no democrat leaders have insisted on interviewing ONLY at MSNBC, unlike Fox. The same goes for talk radio.)

Historically, extremists on the liberal side have focused more on policy than personality, like Sanders, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and to a lesser extent, Jesse Jackson. These guys aren't populists. They promote the interests of folk who are below average economically and civilly, raising their prospects upward toward the mean, rather than promoting the economic or moral interests of those already in the mainstream.

IMHO, that difference is less likely to attract megalomaniacs, like Trump.

refurb5• 10 years ago

Once you've witness a few elections, you start to see this stuff repeat over and over again.

"Oh my god! Candidate X won New Hampshire, what an upset! Who knows what will happen!!!"

[5 months later...]

"As expected, the candidate everyone thought would win the nomination did."

It's a bit of a farce. I swear the nomination process was created solely to see newspapers.

pcmaffey2• 10 years ago

Hah, I was denied access to Canada for a 3 day business trip to meet with a client.

So we applied for a visa, and that was denied because there's no category for software developer or designer or PM in NAFTA. And even if there was, I would have required an engineering or graphic design degree to be eligible... without doing a costly analysis to make sure no one else in Canada could do my job.

Agreed with above comment about this being a gimmick.

jordigh4• 10 years ago

Business trip, NAFTA? I guess you're Mexican? I don't think you need a visa otherwise. Trudeau said he would work on lifting the visa requirements for Mexicans. So, perhaps this problem will resolve itself soon.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-proposes-lift...

In the meantime, you probably can get an ordinary tourist visa? I don't think you really need to go through the NAFTA categories or get a Labour Market Opinion for a 3-day business trip, do you?

pcmaffey2• 10 years ago

US citizen. There on business (client meetings), denied access for visitor visa. Applied for work visa, denied because didn't fit NAFTA categories.

I should have said I was there for pleasure, but I was trying to be ya know, honest. Now my passport is flagged for 7 years, so I better have a rock solid vacation plans if I want to try to enter on a tourist visa.

gist• 10 years ago

Absurd. Even if for some odd reason you buy into the unproven idea that things would be bad for what you do with Trump as President, moving to a new country when someone might only be in office for 4 years is ridiculous and shows that you act on emotions, not rational and logic.

Grishnakh10• 10 years ago

I'm sure someone said that back in 2000 just before Bush got elected. Bush's reign has had a huge effect on the American economy and culture, lasting far longer than just 4 years.

Work in Silicon Valley and Spooked About Trump? Canada Wants You

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