I've been recently asking my Engineer friends about this very topic. I've always known that it's not the same as it was. I wish I was wrong. Quite a few have left the field, and others have left the country. I've been working in the high tech sector in Ottawa for 10 years now.
I started out working for (big surprise) a start up telecom company as a co-op student. I loved it. Then tried the government. I wanted to kill myself. So I tried hard to stay in the private sector. I got a job at Newbridge, which had just been acquired by Alcatel, a company from France. (Alcatel is now Alcatel-Lucent). I was there when they started laying off people. It was around 2001 when things started going south. The start up I worked for went bankrupt shortly after.
So now I was done school. Quite a few friends from different universities had gone south to Cisco, Nvidia, etc. Meanwhile, I tried to get into QNX, but then money became an issue for them and nothing materialized. Jobless, I waited and took anything I could get my hands on, including the dreaded Government, which turned out to be OK. I told myself I'd do this until things settle down and then I'd jump right back to the private sector.
Boy was I wrong. Most of the people, as mentioned in the article, were still put-off by the Nortel debacle. I knew people my senior, who had 20+ years of Engineering who couldn't get hired because they had too much experience. Pretty funny. They took off to the US, eventually returning to start their own company, but swearing never to work for a big corp again. They said the were tired of making other people rich.
In fact, they never really cared at that point to grow a company into a giant one. They just wanted enough to enjoy life. Management in the high tech had a sort of arrogance about them. Too much of a show off in my opinion.
And here we are years after Nortel sunk. Nortel was full of mismanagement. Quite the ego they had. They would have keg parties almost every Friday. Where the hell was the money coming from?!?
The tech sector had been saturated with Engineers and Comp Sci people with the promise of big money. A dime a dozen they were. Most didn't really have what it took, but they did it for the job. We all know that's not sustainable.
It's as though the Canadian high tech people need to go see a Psychologist. They're stuck like a sports team who just had a bad losing streak. They love looking and emulating the US in the aesthetics and show, but don't realize that there's more to it than that. I don't know, I shouldn't speak on behalf of an entire sector, I don't know that much. But something about how they went about things.
Needless to say, the risk taking and drive is no longer here because most of the people that had it aren't here either. And the ones that did remain, are still a bit jaded and don't want to play that game anymore. You need risk takers, and our society is not that anymore. We've all been scared into taking the safe route. This includes myself. Yup, I changed to a different position in the government (really, really boring - but I have a baby now) and at the moment, don't plan to leave. Maybe once the mortgage is paid off, and the kid is older I'll take risks again, but until then, I'm not willing to take a risk. Working for a corporation is silly to me because you have ZERO control. That may be one reason why there aren't going to be many RIMs or Nortels coming up in Canada. People don't trust large corps anymore, so the odds of building one isn't going to get any better.
My 2 cents on this issue. Hopefully I'm wrong and people with guts (not like me) will take some risks. Who knows what the future holds.
Well, you are right but you are looking in the wrong areas of the City. I'm clearly biased, being the founder of Shopify, but we are here to change everything you mentioned above and we have succeeded so far when everyone told us we couldn't. Feel like going for a coffee?
I'm a big fan of shopify, so don't take this the wrong way, but would you really be a good fit for someone with a baby and a mortgage? Currently, he's making decent money, with great pension and benefits, doing incredibly boring work. He could leave all that behind and work for shopify, for what? A couple fun years of lower total compensation without the security?
As someone who's finishing up college, I'd hop on that in a heartbeat. If I had a kid and a house, though? Far less likely.
Ok this is super difficult to answer because you only gave me circumstantial information instead of data that I need to make a recommendation. The questions that need answering are:
* How high is the individuals potential on an absolute scale?
* Is the current environment providing a steady way to reach this high potential
in a reasonable time frame?
If the answer is something like "high,no" then it seems to me that the opportunity cost of not coming to Shopify would be very high.
We are huge on work life balance because this is something that we can do much better in Canada then in the Valley. There are about 5 core hours in the day that we want people to be there ( 11 to 4 ) for meetings. We pay child support bonus, gym membership, catered free high quality lunch every day, we do tons of offsite events etc etc etc.
Now, let me read between the lines. I assuming we are talking about a dev position. The fact is that there is essentially 100% employment for great programmers. That's unlikely to be change in our lifetime. The reasons for that are complex but googling for "Software is eating the World" is a good starting point. Given this, it worries me when people talk about risking their pension and secure jobs. The only thing that's at risk in ones career is to not hit your personal full potential. If you don't agree with that then Shopify will not be a culture fit.
Also: A ton of people at Shopify, including me, have kids and mortgage but.
Great programmers are not immune from recessions, bankruptcies, layoffs, hiring freezes, and ramen-profitable rivals. By all means cash in, but don't bet on the music never stopping. I've seen it happen twice so far and I'm only forty. Bank a really healthy runway.
I don't know about working conditions at Shopify but I don't think the same mindset exists in Canada about working yourself into the ground for your startup.
I work for another startup - Wave Accounting. I left a fairly safe, well paying job to come here. I'm paid well, my work-life balance is great, and I love my work. And I have 3 kids and a wife who is in grad school (paying off my mortgage early helped with the decision, to be fair)
As far as the GGP comment, I know a few of the Shopify guys because they have a Winnipeg office and they're brilliant people. I'm sure it would be a treat to work there.
When you're young and feeling a bit adventurous or idealist, sure, make mistakes and try different things.
Keep in mind that the parent (top) said he's working in government, that's top-notch benefit that you can't get anywhere else. If startups can offer the same level of pay and benefit, even with risk, people will flock to startups.
Having said that, there's one more scenario that I've seen people prefer to choose:
1) Get a fairly stable job (albeit boring one)
2) Do 8-4PM
3) Work on side projects/hobby/small businesses on your free time
Why work for startups or small-medium companies where you may have to work slightly harder and get paid either slightly or way less?
I definitely see the appeal to that. Having some free time to work on whatever you want or even not to work at all is crucial and it just doesn't make sense for someone who has 3 kids and mortgage to pour all their time into startups.
I think redthrowaway kind of summed it up. It's not you, it's me. In my current situation, I'm probably the last person that you'll see trying to work for a start up. Not right now at least. There's a time and place for everything.
While going for coffee would be fun, I don't want to waste your time seeing as you're doing what our city needs to be done. We need more people like you, and more companies like Shopify.
Hijacking this here, but I absolutely enjoy developing Shopify themes on the side. You've made it incredibly easy for frond-end devs and designers to build awesome shops and to that I thank you. Good job.
Shopify are not in Kanata, they're right in the middle of the market!
I remember this spring at an event (SPAC), they were at the career fair with a banner saying something like "Don't go work in Kanata, it sucks" or something similar, I don't remember the wording exactly. It was pretty funny given they had their banner right in the middle of the hallway, next to the other companies that are actually in Kanata. It was pretty badass!
I'm afraid your situation reflects quite well the reality. I'm working from France with a Canadian to create a Canadian startup. My co-funder is clearly bright and talented, but he could not really find an experienced and motivated developer in the Toronto area. So he went "international".
i was a co-op student at nortel through high school, those keg parties were great! kegs are cheap, but it probably didn't do much for productivity on friday afternoons.
I started out working for (big surprise) a start up telecom company as a co-op student. I loved it. Then tried the government. I wanted to kill myself. So I tried hard to stay in the private sector. I got a job at Newbridge, which had just been acquired by Alcatel, a company from France. (Alcatel is now Alcatel-Lucent). I was there when they started laying off people. It was around 2001 when things started going south. The start up I worked for went bankrupt shortly after.
So now I was done school. Quite a few friends from different universities had gone south to Cisco, Nvidia, etc. Meanwhile, I tried to get into QNX, but then money became an issue for them and nothing materialized. Jobless, I waited and took anything I could get my hands on, including the dreaded Government, which turned out to be OK. I told myself I'd do this until things settle down and then I'd jump right back to the private sector.
Boy was I wrong. Most of the people, as mentioned in the article, were still put-off by the Nortel debacle. I knew people my senior, who had 20+ years of Engineering who couldn't get hired because they had too much experience. Pretty funny. They took off to the US, eventually returning to start their own company, but swearing never to work for a big corp again. They said the were tired of making other people rich.
In fact, they never really cared at that point to grow a company into a giant one. They just wanted enough to enjoy life. Management in the high tech had a sort of arrogance about them. Too much of a show off in my opinion.
And here we are years after Nortel sunk. Nortel was full of mismanagement. Quite the ego they had. They would have keg parties almost every Friday. Where the hell was the money coming from?!?
The tech sector had been saturated with Engineers and Comp Sci people with the promise of big money. A dime a dozen they were. Most didn't really have what it took, but they did it for the job. We all know that's not sustainable.
It's as though the Canadian high tech people need to go see a Psychologist. They're stuck like a sports team who just had a bad losing streak. They love looking and emulating the US in the aesthetics and show, but don't realize that there's more to it than that. I don't know, I shouldn't speak on behalf of an entire sector, I don't know that much. But something about how they went about things.
Needless to say, the risk taking and drive is no longer here because most of the people that had it aren't here either. And the ones that did remain, are still a bit jaded and don't want to play that game anymore. You need risk takers, and our society is not that anymore. We've all been scared into taking the safe route. This includes myself. Yup, I changed to a different position in the government (really, really boring - but I have a baby now) and at the moment, don't plan to leave. Maybe once the mortgage is paid off, and the kid is older I'll take risks again, but until then, I'm not willing to take a risk. Working for a corporation is silly to me because you have ZERO control. That may be one reason why there aren't going to be many RIMs or Nortels coming up in Canada. People don't trust large corps anymore, so the odds of building one isn't going to get any better.
My 2 cents on this issue. Hopefully I'm wrong and people with guts (not like me) will take some risks. Who knows what the future holds.