After curling last night we were, of course, talking about Trump. The majority of us are involved in tech and it seemed like the general consensus was that Trump could end up being really positive for Canadian tech scenes. If he actually ends up going to war over things like NAFTA (which provide an easy visa for Canadians to work for American tech companies) and the H1-B visa (which, while obviously has flaws, still provides a lot of talent to major tech companies) there may be a lot of companies expanding their non-us locations in order to fill talent.

On top of the visa issues I mentioned what we were offering Canadian interns to come work for us in the States and it was almost 3x what the local companies were paying. Add to that, Canada offers some really good R&D credits that allow a lot of companies to get a significant portion of their programmers salary back.

Are you are saying that less people movement will cause more company branching, which ultimately creates larger companies with more people? That's an interesting perspective. I don't know enough about how all that works to know if the companies wanted to expand here will face stone walls.

Will Trudeau (sp?) also renegotiate NAFTA?

I've been talking to a company out of Alberta, Canada. They are looking for remote Clojure developers and seem to have deep pockets. I don't think anything will come of this, but it's interesting to wonder how things like that can be affected.

I haven't really thought about how the company structure will change. It was more a discussion of the US losing top tech jobs as companies can't fill positions in the USA and so end up shipping those jobs to Canada+Overseas.

We've already opened one office in Europe mostly because we couldn't get the visas we needed to keep those jobs in the US. That's money from mostly US customers going to foreign workers, paying foreign taxes, and buying foreign goods.

As for NAFTA, I have no idea what Trudeau will do. At this point he's said he's willing to talk (because what else do you say to your soon-to-be-crazy-ass larger trading partner?) but the reality is there are a lot of benefits for the US already. And I doubt there's popular support for Trudeau to give up much in any sort of renegotiated deal. People are probably quite willing to cut off our nose to spite our face in this case.

I have a friend in China who works in manufacturing and export. She says that Trump or Clinton wouldn't make a huge difference either way, but although Trump talks a tougher game, he would actually be better for international trade than Clinton.

In her view, each politician is going to care about what is most profitable for the country. No one rules alone.

Not wanting to pollute this thread with politics, just pointing out that it is interesting that people from opposite sides of the earth looking at the current situation came to the same conclusion.

Just to be clear, I think my point is the exact opposite of the bolded. I'm talking about changes that would hurt the tech industry in the US (but to the benefit of other countries).

This seems like wishful thinking - it may be that companies replace Canadian and other non-us talent on visas with non-us locations, but those non-us locations don't have to be in Canada. I could be wrong but Canada is in a weird zone in that case because it's both foreign, which adds significant overhead, and as expensive as lower COL locations in the US. I'd think countries with much lower COL and US cities with low COL benefit more from this change.

Also, a substantial portion of the demand is likely to be absorbed by outsourcing firms and dev shops, who would take a big cut in the middle and on average offer worse work environments. Those companies also disproportionately hire in countries with lower COL.

The main tech thought I had about Trump presidency (and what it implies about the rise of nationalism, protectionism and authoritarianism), other than a generalized sense of despair and wtf, is that in the long term, all large economies may add enough barriers to make it difficult for Google, Facebook and other services to dominate in their local market and rules will be rigged to favor their local clones. This seems to make too much sense politically not to happen - more jobs for locals and more control and $$$ for politicians. Instead of politics changing to accommodate the internet and the connection it enables, it seems that the internet will bend to accommodate the reality of national politics. All anyone has to do is just to emulate China and Russia.

It's certainly possible its 'wishful' thinking. But its already happening - so the question is really more of magnitude.

Canada has some big advantages - mainly no language, cultural, or timezone barriers. It's also much easier for middle management to oversea people in multilple offices when they are only an hour or two flight away.

I don't think the overhead of being foreign is actually that significant. Most companies fall into either: big enough that they've already paid it (as in they have Canadian operations) or small enough that they can just use an outsourced HR firm that deals with 95% of the problems.

US Cities* / Outsourcing shops don't solve the problem I'm talking about. Which is the companies that need to go outside the US for high-level talent but can't get the visas.

This is an interesting point. It could almost follow the pattern of general trade. Countries moving along the spectrum between open/closed depending on the mood of the people / party in power. And more individual / group agreements between countries/regions about how information moves about.

I don't think its particularly likely, but then again, I don't think you can call any prediction of what happens likely.


Edit: * Adding to this, I would guess the people from these areas that can fill the tech jobs I'm talking about are mostly already doing that. Lots of companies are ok with remote workers (especially in the US) and the incredibly high wages being offered have to be drawing a decent amount of the talent to the high tech centers.

I'm curious what types of roles this high-level talent is filling that you can't find in the US.

Tbh, whenever I read that I automatically assume you just aren't willing to pay US salaries to the qualified people here.

I've worked for American companies for over 10 years now and aside from about a total of 9 months we've been actively hiring anybody and everybody that we can get our hands on that passes our interview process.

Rough pay range is 100k to 200k for engineers that do regular coding (so including team leads/manager but not including 'director' level employees). Plus options and standard tech company benefits.

Not being able to fill this level of talent w/o relying on TN/H1-B visas is absolutely not rare. You can take a look at any of the online H1-B databases, and see top companies with 6 figure salaries looking for thousands of people. I'm obviously not counting the consulting factories.

I guess it also depends on what we define as a good outcome. The relationship between tech employers and developers can be adversarial so what's good for one can be bad for the other. If US-based Canadian developers on visa have to go back and their best options are Canadian offices of US tech companies, are you counting that as a good thing or a bad thing? It's bad for the developers but it's potentially good for Canadian tech companies that need to hire. Unless the funding situation improves dramatically, I don't think it does all that much good for the tech scene either.

This is also true of other US cities. Loss of local (to NY/SF/SV/etc) Canadian talent isn't going to be 100% offset by Canadian talent in Canada because once you're willing to forego colocation, there are many more options.

But a company that otherwise is 100% colocated in SV isn't going to hire an outsourced HR firm that specializes in Canadian outsourcing because they lost, say, 2 Canadian developers. It's possible they poach two developers from other firms and those other firms that lost talent to companies that needed to replace their Canadian (and whatever other) colocated developers end up outsourcing to Russia. It's good to think through scenarios and also consider in terms of aggregate supply and demand. Like doesn't always get replaced by like.

Nobody needs to go outside the US for high-level talent - it's just standard business, how do you pay less to get more. It makes more sense for a company in NY to hire a Canadian willing to come to New York over an American who's as talented that wants to stay in Cleveland because of the benefits of colocation. But it's possible that they will choose another US city over a Canadian city if they needed to open another office.

Having a bigger pool makes everything easier just purely from a liquidity perspective.

Its not just Canadian developers. It's also non-Canadian workers that can get a work visa here that can't get one for the US. Of course, this is offset by the Canadian developers that leave the US to go to a non-Canadian location too.

I don't follow why its bad for developers. Do you mean its bad because they have to leave the US? I'd agree with that. But my point was about the benefits to the Canadian (or more accurately non-American) tech scene(s).

Funding, to some degree, follows the talent and opportunities. At one point we had a VC offer us 20% more money if we located ourselves in Boston instead of NYC because talent was easier to find in Boston. But that's not really what I'm talking about anyway. I'm talking more about the situation where company X has money for a person to do job Z. If that person can't be filled by someone in the US and instead filled elsewhere that money is still paid.


True. But the point isn't about being 100% at all. Some non-trivial percentage of people that use to work in the US but now work in Canada is beneficial to Canada and the Canadian tech scene.


I'm not sure if you misunderstood what I meant. Many startups (and medium sized companies) already outsource their HR/Payroll functions. Most of the companies that are doing this work handle Canadian employees for almost no extra cost. In my current example the only extra overhead to my company of being Canadian is that they have to update my salary every 3 months because the software requires them to enter it in Canadian dollars but its set in US dollars.

Of course it doesn't. But it doesn't need to be 100%.


Again, obviously true. But it would be silly to think 100% of that demand (in the scenario we're talking about) is going to be met by small US cities. For the reasons I mentioned earlier.

What is the plan for H1-B visas ?

I think like most of Trump's plans its somewhere between do nothing or kill it off completely.

My guess is it just doesn't get expanded or fixed.

A president isn't a dictator (some may argue he isn't really a ruler either), and the H!-B policies are controlled by congress. Our entire system is built around checks and balances, which attempts to strip overreaching power from each branch of government.

At the end of the day, there is a ton of power play in politics and no one wants to totally piss off their constituents or the businesses that are the life blood of the country.

daveT, that's a pretty simplistic view of the issue (and for that matter your Government).

But that we can save for a politics thread. I was more interested in the effects of a possible change itt.

That's pretty gross. I always thought that all the articles stating a massive shortage of developers were pretty exaggerated. I guess that's not the case.

I've said this before but a couple jobs ago I sat through about 20 interviews to hire a senior java web services developer. The hiring manager's criteria was basically "ask fizzbuzz and ask if he/she can explain what REST is and how its implemented". Thats it, do this, you get a $100k job in a major city in the midwest.

As I said, I sat in about 20 interviews until we could find someone who did that.

yeah but what decent dev would want to write java web apps in the midwest

Reading through some official tutorials on the google maps api, this comment made me smile:

It really depends on what the hiring bar is. If the hiring bar is you have to be as good as Linus Torvalds of course there will always be open positions. Doesn't mean there is a skill shortage.

Let's assume this is true (with only a little bit of hyperbole)*.

Some non-trivial percentage of these high-bar positions are currently being filled with non-American workers. Something to the tune of at least tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of people.

Do you think stopping some portion of these people from working in the US would be a net benefit or loss to the rest of the world?

* And of course its kind of a silly statement because its all relative. If you had no standards you could fill all your positions with minimum wage. If you had top-10 in the world standards you'd be paying millions of dollars and likely have a huge shortage of talent.

How big is the Canadian tech scene? With the entire population being smaller than the population of California, it doesn't seem like that would be the obvious choice.

However, if it's easy for current H1-B workers to work in Canada, I could see that happening (which might be the original point?) but not so much for the Canadian workforce.

I feel like the obvious solution would be to hire more remote employees.

Launched a side project this weekend and its seeing some play. It is incredibly intimidating and honoring to have real people using a product you made from scratch. Such a strange feeling.

Stopping people from working in the US would be a net loss to the world.


Agreed, everything is relative. My point is in software the difference between a great candidate and an ok one is a lot larger than many other professions. This causes companies to constantly be looking for great candidates. So there are always going to be "open" positions for great candidates. This does not mean there is a skills shortage or unfilled jobs.

Probably, but I bet it would still be a net gain for the non-US world. I doubt there's any way to know for sure. It's definitely a net gain for the areas of the world where that talent would settle in disproportionate numbers.

We're not just talking about "open" positions for great candidates. We're talking about companies that want to grow and not being able to find the candidates they want to let that happen. That's obviously not enough to indicate if there's a skill shortage or not.

When you add in things like salaries being offered, salary growth, salary comparison to 'equivalent' professions, the number of foreign workers already being hired, etc. etc. it paints a pretty clear picture.

But let me turn this around. If you don't believe the US has a skill shortage, what are the missing signs that you'd need to see to indicate to you that there was one. As in, what would it take for you to believe there was a skills shortage?