[wwhchung]

Hi there. While I agree with some of your points, i.e. issues with certain large companies being anti-competitive in the startup environment rather than being supportive, and the fact that the tax incentives offered could be better structured to be more accessible to technology startups, I still think Canada is a great place to build a company. Why? Well:

1. Canada does have great tech talent. Finding them is a bit more difficult, but talent retention is much better. And if you reward your employees well (i.e. competitively with any other company out there), you can attract world class talent.

2. Building a great company does not necessarily mean raising a huge VC round. In fact, if you can build a business that is growing quickly without the need for VC, they'll come looking for you. One thing that some people get hung up on is that you absolutely need to get funded to start a company. That's not true at all. Although, when the time does come to raise money, most US investors are actually comfortable with investing in Canadian companies.

There are a few things I do notice though. Canadian culture is a bit more conservative (i.e. less willing to take big risks, which also explains a bit of the lower valuation). It makes a bit of sense, since most of the larger industries are around 'traditional' sectors, like natural resources and finance. But this is changing. And as more and more successful tech companies emerge, the startup community will only get stronger.

Also, the tax incentives are well intentioned, however the way they're structure has been a 'one size fits all' approach. The rules put in place make sense for some industries (e.g. medical R&D), but make it a bit inaccessible to tech startups without a lot of effort.

[potatolicious]

> "Finding them is a bit more difficult, but talent retention is much better."

As an employee this seems alarming to me. My impression of the Canadian tech scene is that you've got a small number of innovative companies with great work environments amidst a sea of sweatshops and incredibly mind-numbing code outfits. When your alternative is that, of course retention is better.

For an employee it means you've essentially got them over a barrel. Don't rock the boat, don't ask for too much, because it's this way or work at some soul-sucking enterprise shop on Bay St.

I'm not sure I can ever return to an environment like that, where my employer holds all of the cards and I hold practically none.

[tptacek]

This is, for whatever it's worth, exactly what the tech scene in Ann Arbor Michigan was like, and I'm reasonable sure the management at the (relatively enlightened) company I worked for in A2 knew it.

[potatolicious]

Hilariously enough, I'm currently working in a satellite office of a company based out of Ann Arbor Michigan... I'm pretty happy with how things are run so far, but there's always the thought that maybe things are only great because of how mobile I am, and the worry that if I make myself immobile things will take a turn for the worse.

I've seen it happen to people more talented than I am...

[wwhchung]

I'm sorry that you feel that way, but let me clarify that statement a bit. Finding them is difficult, not because people don't want to work here, but Canadians are usually the ones more willing to work at Canadian companies, so the overall tech talent pool is a bit smaller to work with. In the US, you've got people from all over the world vying for positions. Canada has to present itself as a technology hub to attract more international talent.

Retention is better, not necessarily because there is a lack of innovative companies. In fact, there are definitely a a number of great companies to work for in Canada that aren't the sweatshops that you mention (and I would like to count ours among the innovative and great places to work).

The retention aspect is more about the mentality of people in Canada when they join a startup. In silicon valley, there are A LOT of companies, and every week it seems like there's some hot new startup. Given that, a lot of tech people there have the mentality of hopping from company to company just to maximize their own short term gains. We personally don't feel that that type of employee behavior is healthy.

Compare this to another area in the US which has a healthy tech scene, but WAY better retention. Seattle. There are definitely a significant number of tech companies there (Amazon, Google, Facebook, MS, etc.) with great working environments. But the reason retention is better there is because it's a bit further away from the silicon valley hype.

Similarly, in Canada (Vancouver), we try to offer something very similar. Great work environment, competitive compensation and a general good tech place to work. As employer's, we will NEVER hold all the cards (heck, all our guys could go get a job at any tech company in the world, including silicon valley). It's just that the people we've managed to find up here have been more focused on long term growth potential than short term gains.

[tptacek]

I'm always wary of the sentiment that "good-fit" developers at location-foo or company-bar don't think it's [healthy,smart,reasonable] to [optimize,maximize,consider] "short term" gains. Across the whole industry, especially if you discard the few gigantic outliers like Facebook and Google (but really either way), long-term loyalty to startup-trajectory companies is rarely paid off. You take the gains from equity and spread them across the years of employment and end up with a track record of bonuses that look good (only very rarely "great") but have a built-in survivorship bias that hides the extreme risk the developer took relative to other options.

Personally, I think the pendulum has swung too far in the "invest yourself with your company" direction, too far away from the "pay attention to your own bottom line, because you're the only one who will" direction. Developers should be more conscious of their short-term bottom line, not less. Developer interests are almost never aligned with that of a company's owners.

Like it or not, if you're not willing to move out of town on a moment's notice for your next job (ie, if you're over 27 or so), working in a market with fewer attractive employers is worse than working in a market with lots of them. It is a real disadvantage. It's not an emotional thing and it's not something you can paper over with mindset.

(Incidentally, all the things that make taking a job in a "backwater" market make starting a company in a backwater market more attractive. Talent is sticky. Every major market, whether it's first tier or third tier, has amazing talent that can't move because nobody is going to relocate their 4th and 6th grader kids to another state for an employee #8 role at a startup.)

All that said, Montreal is a beautiful city. I'd look for reasons to work there if I could.