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A Damning Look at the Canadian Tech Sector
- sthomps 14y agofinally - a "realistic" look at canada's tech sector. there is a lot of work to be done.
- mhurron 14y agoStop moving to the US because you can make more money there. There, it's fixed.
- run4yourlives 14y ago> article = Article.objects.get(pk=int(article_id,36)) You (assuming op is the maintainer of the site) should really handle any django "get" with a try/except block. That, and you should also set debug to False on a production server. Once the article exists again, it might be worth reading.
- mattwdelong 14y agoI would recommend that get_object_or_404, with the 404 page enabled, would be better suited for this application. Very similar methods, but this way just handles all the heavy lifting. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/shortcuts/#get-object-or-404 https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/shortcuts/...
- run4yourlives 14y agoGood point, that would be better.
- Permit 14y ago"DoesNotExist" error. At first I thought it was a joke related to the title, but now I see that it's just a Django error page. Made me chuckle at least. Here's a cached version in the meantime: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Athrowww.com%2Fa%2F1fa&sugexp=chrome,mod=14&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Athrow...
- peterb 14y agoLOL. I think the error message appropriately describes the Canadian tech sector. BTW, I am Canadian.
- purplefruit 14y agoI don't know wtf happened... here it is again. http://throwww.com/a/1ft http://throwww.com/a/1ft
- zmitri 14y agoyou should change the link in the title as well. it points to 1fa
- ckevinc 14y agoI'd love to know how the author made the text larger/bold .. looks like a header tag <h1> but Throwww doesn't appear to accept that.
- ckevinc 14y agoOh.. I see.. Markdown.. Here's a test of the stuff.. nice http://throwww.com/a/1hd http://throwww.com/a/1hd
- dholowiski 14y agoThe author left out one point that is too often ignored.we just font have enough people.why don't we have amazon prime? Because Canada is just so huge,and our population is spread so thinly.the population is so much smaller than the USA that its so much harder to launch and support a country wide service. Plus,we don't have LLC or a proper equivalent.
- fghh45sdfhr3 14y agoHow do you do when compared to other small population nations like Switzerland or Israel, or others?
- notaddicted 14y agoIt isn't just the total number of people, it's that they're smeared across our ample coasts and the longest border in the world[0]. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_border http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_bo...
- alex_c 14y agoThat's only true for things requiring a physical infrastructure though. For example, Toronto has a reputation for being a hotspot for mobile development, and there are probably as many talented developers as in any other tech hub. But they all work for agencies. Where are all the Canadian "Angry Birds" success stories?
- redthrowaway 14y agoWe have a few, but in general it's large foreign firms and government agencies. Looking for internships through the school co-op offices is near-pointless here in BC; I had to reach out myself to Grow Lab to find anything interesting (although I ended up doing another semester of school, instead).
- goatforce5 14y agoCanada has almost the same land mass as the US (9,984,670 sq km vs 9,826,675 sq km) but only about 11% as many people (34,917,000 vs 314,362,000). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States
- manishsharan 14y agoThe Canadian tech sector has been getting hammered for quite a while. First there was the Nortel collapse, then ATI was acquired by AMD, RIM is slowly but surely sliding towards oblivion. Shopify is the only bright spot in Canadian Tech.
- jarek 14y agoAn amusing illustration of the last heading in the post.
- slantyyz 14y agoThere have been plenty of successes, although they have mostly been swallowed by multinationals. Many, however, still maintain a physical presence in Canada: Cognos (IBM), Changepoint (Compuware), Workbrain (Infor), Flickr (Yahoo!), Dundas (Microsoft), Opalis (Microsoft), Kobo (Rakuten), Alias (Autodesk)... etc, etc. And then there's also the likes of 500px, Cirba, etc.
- zmitri 14y agoAs 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 agoThe 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 agoThat's what I meant: the TN-1 and H1-B visas are the US visas that Canadian employees get in the US.
- peterarmstrong 14y agoAs a Canadian startup founder, I agree that we need to try to be the best in the world at what we're doing, not just best in our city or best in Canada. And I think we can do that while being our standard nice, even overly-apologetic selves. As a start, let's all have our Twitter taglines say what our startup is (or will soon be) the best in the world at doing. Here's what mine was before reading this article (@peterarmstrong): Co-Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to self-publish in-progress ebooks. Note how qualified that is: co-founder, self-publish, in-progress. That's because I'm Canadian, and I'm trying to be accurate. If I was in the valley, I'd probably have mine be: Founder of Leanpub, the best way in the world to publish ebooks. What's better? What's yours?
- jschem 14y agoTo me Canada's tech sector isn't damned; just dwarfed when it is compared to our much larger southern neighbour. The economy of Canada isn't really based around innovation and technology but rather primary industries like oil/gas/lumber/etc... so it makes sense that our business focus’ on our unique advantage. To me is seems that starting and growing a business is harder to do in Canada then in the States. Just as an example the rate of return for VC firms is roughly about -5% in Canada while in the States it is roughly %10. See: http://www.bdc.ca/EN/Documents/other/VC_Industry_Review_EN.pdf http://www.bdc.ca/EN/Documents/other/VC_Industry_Review_EN.p.... I am not sure why our companies have difficulty competing internationally but alot of the reasons in the article (Lack of Acquisition of Knowledge, Second Place is Good Enough and We Suck at PR) seem like symptoms rather than causes.
- adambard 14y ago> primary industries like oil/gas/lubber/etc. You're missing an m or a b there.
- bitwize 14y agoI got this: A server error occurred. Please contact the administrator. That's pretty damning of the Canadian tech sector, all right.
- faramarz 14y agoThis post is great! It gets the juices going. It describes everything wrong and everything right about Canada's tech market and i'm so glad you wrote this. It's the Manifesto we needed. I'm already excited about the opportunities ahead. I'm in. I'll do my part, starting Today! Aside: I think I finally found a use for my domain torontotech.org - colleagues and collaborators wanting to take part, get in touch
- msie 14y agoHow can you compare Canada to the unique place that is Silicon Valley? Edit: How about a damning look at Canada's film industry (hint: it's not Hollywood)?
- SohKai 14y agoMaybe part of the problem is that a lot of our tech talent ends up going down to where the money is instead of staying in Canada?
- jarek 14y agoMore accurately, the 'problem' is that it seems there is no overarching wish to have a Canadian internet consumer software sector. People are just fine going to do that in California, and there haven't been waves coming back. Nothing wrong with that, maybe Canadians as a whole are content doing other types of technology work. You don't hear a lot about mechanical engineers going to work in the U.S.
- dezwald 14y agoIt would be interesting to see how many students from Waterloo and UofT alone, leave Canada to go work in the tech industry in the US.
- SohKai 14y agoI bring it up because it appears to be quite a lot from my experience as a student at Waterloo. The prevailing thought is that you haven't "made it" unless you go down south when you look for tech jobs. Most of the people in my year have gone down when they can for co-op.
- greenyoda 14y ago"Quick test - name the sprinter who won the 2008 100m sprint. You probably guessed Usain Bolt - which is correct. Who came second? Exactly.... Want to know why? No-one cares. This is how the world works - in business and in life." The hugely hyped media coverage of celebrities is not really a good model for anything in the real world. We don't all buy products and services from only the largest business in any given market sector. If I'm buying a car, or cellphone service, or software, I'm certainly going to consider offerings from companies that are not the #1 company in their field.
- dezwald 14y agoThis is a great article! I myself am Canadian and agree with many of articles points. Living in Toronto it's noticeable to recognize it's the financial industry runs this city, then comes marketing and advertising. Tech here in Toronto primarily just service these industries. Now when it comes to getting people to invest in tech startups, is not a lack of money - it's the investors who have money and lack of knowledge in the tech industry. (Most of them having financial backgrounds)
- jarek 14y agoPersonally, as a Canadian in the consumer-and-internet-software sector ("tech sector" to HN), the constant comparisons to the equivalent U.S. sector appear far more annoying than the state of our sector. Nobody else does it with as much frequency as we seem to. Much of the discussion simply consists of pointing out and explaining in depth differences between the two sectors. It feels worse than the constant internet handwringing in the U.S. about their health care. I am getting attention fatigue. It is what it is. If you're unhappy with the current state and wish to change it, stop talking and start doing. Another post explaining that Canada doesn't have the VC scene or salaries or that Canadians are "nice" and happy with second best won't change these things.
- pyre 14y agoWell, part of discussing is determining where best to put resources. I.e. "What is necessary to change things?" If you can nail down places that are lacking, then you can actually attempt do something. That said, I understand you point, as none of these discussions ever really achieve much.
- albumedia 14y agoEntertaining but I disagree with most of the article. It's about time we stop comparing Canada to America. Canada is about the size of California in terms of population. This is like comparing a small tech company to Apple. Canada is great, but easier access to capital in America.