Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 908B64B197 | Hacker News Reader

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Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete?

I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project.

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable amount of orders. Now Europeans are reaping the benefits.

Canadian politicians even pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. I mean I'm all for it, my comp being stock-based I'm pocketing the difference.

Is that something the Canadian public... approves of?

[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...

I think a lot of the problems are deeply ingrained in society and culture. In the UK for example, engineering, especially software engineering is just fundamentally a low social status job, and people with high status running companies are fundamentally adverse to paying for it, and that's unlikely to change for a generation or more.

If you try to recommend people pay more to get better engineers and stop them all going to the US so they can build bigger and stronger companies here you just get dead eyes back - they can't comprehend why you'd give an engineer money.

At some point you need to look after yourself and go elsewhere.

Software Engineering was low status in US as well until they started to have a ton of software engineer first companies like Google where engineers hires and bosses around business people instead of the other way around.

Basically if typical engineers have business people anywhere in their management chain it is not an engineering first company. Not a lot of large companies are like that outside USA.

It's all political.

If the government fight hard, then lose, the opposing party will blame them for that and most likely make them win the next election. If they just do a marketing campaign telling they did the best possible, winning the next election is more probable.

And Trudeau has nothing to do with that, conservative or liberal, it will be the same strategy.

In order to make Canada more competitive, I think it should be addressed on the provincial level. We definitely need more startup to change the culture and have a place to keep the best talents. High risk funds, change in laws (so anybody can freely invest), etc.

Speaking only w/ regard to tech salary differences:

How do you compete against the VC-powered economic system in the US? VCs allow startups with often pie-in-the-sky visions and shaky business models to recruit the best of the best from across the world. The recruits know that they may be looking for a new job in a couple of years if the cash dries up. For them, it's OK because there will be another startup flush with cash. For the VCs, as long as 1 out of 10 of those bets go public, the ROI still works out.

This is simply not something that exists at a comparable level outside of the US, outside Silicon Valley even.

I have worked for 15 years in tech (in the US) and hardly ever worked at a "VC-powered" firm. All the companies I worked at were cash flow positive and payed a lot. Bulk of the compensation came from stocks specially for senior levels. So there must be something else going on here rather than just "VC-money".

Bombardier is a badly run company that consistently fails to deliver. Government money kept being poured into them for mediocre results. At a certain point they had to be cut off.

That's an opinion customers of the CSeries don't seem to share, judging by the orders for the plane.

Care to elaborate?

CSeries was on the few exceptions. Their train division flopped and was sold not a long time as I recall.

Bombardier Aviation (planes) and Transport (trains) have been distinct since the 80's. The business jets have been tremendously profitable.

Train is a different market. Rail projects are a political nightmare, as every buyer is a government (municipal, state, national) and wants their rail equipment to be manufactured in their jurisdiction. So they can make a big announcement that the X millions they just paid is actually creating good jobs. Then a few years later the job dries up for a designated site (project completed) so the local government keeps bailing it out else they'll get voted out for getting rid of all these jobs!

Plus, of course, every project is custom hardware. And is long enough that it will span at least two municipal, state or national administrations so expect a feature creep/change of requirements in the middle.

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