patrick_99

Low corporate tax rates and laughing young people are the harbingers of WW3?

They say $40k is the median salary for new developers in Canada, this is much lower than I've observed and it makes me question the quality of the entire dataset. Are these really professional software developers who answered the survey?

I read the second edition of Code Complete when I started my first job. Very good book to transition from fresh grad to professional. It has some very dry sections (eg. a chapter on how to name variables) but these are the little things that make a big difference and allows you to 'level up' as an engineer.

I'm from Toronto, good senior engineers that aren't working in a sweat shop make $100k CAD or more, you can rent a nice apartment downtown for $2k per month.

I've always used R for analysis, but using Python opens up the world of PySpark and more scalable ML environments. I think long term Python will become more prevalent in Data science for this reason.

Maybe they're betting on the British pound to drop so they can hire engineers on the cheap. My understanding is that salaries (for software developers) in London are already pretty low compared to the US and even Canada.

This. Canadian salaries are low, compared to the US. They're much better than Europe.

People who can't get visas to the US

I understand the author's frustration but this sounds like sour grapes. Sure, the interview questions that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft and pretty much every big tech company asks are hard and abstract. But it shouldn't be a surprise. As the author mentions, there's numerous books on programming interview questions. Every software engineer I know will spend a lot of time studying common interview questions like maze solving before interviewing for jobs.

You can argue the process is flawed, but what's the point of applying to these jobs without preparing and just hoping you would get a different outcome? The flip side is that these hard interviews makes programmers that can pass them scarce, which drives up salaries.

I think the lack of assets explains the angst shown by many Americans this election cycle much better than the employment rate. Enough people are working, they're just not making enough.

Reminds me of Mark Cuban's Ultimate Stress Test: http://blogmaverick.com/2016/02/08/some-thoughts-on-the-pres...

Houses are many baby boomers' retirement savings. Governments are stuck because if they pop the bubble to make housing more affordable, they'll be pissing off a lot of people about to retire who are counting on the value of their house.

I was about to share this on hipchat at work until I realized it's April 1st. Very well written April Fools post!

The company brings up research that says 25% of people that drink A1 milk feel discomfort, yet they don't have a number for their own a2 milk, just anecdotes. An experiment comparing the discomfort of a1 vs. A2 milk would be very cheap to run and potentially very valuable to the company. So I'd assume they've done that test and the fact they're not reporting positive results means the experiments don't show any benefit to A2 milk.

Another issue is the level of government providing the solution. If one town gives all homeless people a place to live, that could act to attract homeless people from other towns. So the burden of fixing a whole region's homeless problem falls on one town.

I wonder if it makes sense to develop these next gen fighter jets. 10 years from now, could air forces just use swarms of drones? Stealth wouldn't be as important when you don't have a pilot that dies when the plane gets taken down.

My thoughts exactly when Amazon decided to build a phone

I visited the US Midwest for the first time in my life a year ago on a road trip. Saw places like Kansas City and St. Louis. They were actually a bit more vibrant than I thought. There were some cool pockets with creative businesses. Good food and nice craft beer. The cost of living is so cheap there, I imagine it would be a lot easier to start a little craft businesses there compared to Brooklyn. If you could expand your customer base beyond locals you'd be doing well.

Totally agree and government could have a big role here. A majority of government budget goes to healthcare; they need innovation to improve. Why not throw some money to Canadian biotech companies?

I'd argue Canada made concerted efforts to support natural resource industries at the cost of all other industries. Eg. expending massive political capital with the US to push for Keystone XL. We've hurt our image abroad by fighting climate change action, Canada even refused to consider asbestos a hazardous material because there's a single asbestos mine in the country. As soon as that mine closed we switched to considering it hazardous. These are short termed, unprincipled policy decisions that help the resource industry at the expense of the Canadian brand.

It seems like the effect of the low dollar is already helping the tech sectors. Companies like Shopify make their money in USD while salaries are a bargain. American companies like Amazon are expanding their offices in Toronto and Vancouver. The brain drain is real though. I feel like there's a problem when police officers make more than most software engineers.

I did an olive oil tasting at a local shop dedicated to olive oil. Unlike the grocery store olive oil I've always had, their olive oil had a bit of a burning sensation in my throat. Lots of flavour; I buy my olive oil from them now.

Random predictions from the top of my head: 1. Funding for start ups is lower than 2015 2. Genomics and anything related to autonomous vehices (including drones) will be the hottest sectors 3. Google's revenue from non ad based products will double