Know any Canadians working in Silicon Valley? | Hacker News Reader

Know any Canadians working in Silicon Valley?

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17 pointskitsguy14 comments

This is kind of an odd event. Canadians aren't particularly concerned with national identity, and tend to look down on patriotic grandstanding. But it is organized by Canadians, so maybe you feel differently when you're living abroad. (Though my feeling is that America barely counts as "abroad.")

"Canadians aren't particularly concerned with national identity, and tend to look down on patriotic grandstanding."

True... unless they are Québécois :)

I disagree. Nearly every Canadian traveler I met wandering around the world has a Canadian flag on their bag.

I saw a lot of back-packers through Europe with a Canadian flag on their bag. Many of them told me that it was to not be confused with Americans, to get a slightly better treatment abroad. Some of them were even actually Americans sporting the Canadian flag because of past bad experiences.

When I lived in the valley there were a bazillion Canadians there. Someone told me at one point that the bay area can be thought of as the 5th largest Canadian city. I'm from Nova Scotia myself, but now in MA.

I lived in Canada for a year working for my acquiring company and I love beer + clamato. do I count?

I'd love to work in the valley (currently in Toronto) but not graduating from a well established school has dissuaded me from trying (plus most startups inability to have employees go through a long immigration process).

Read up on the "TN1" visa to see if you can make that work. It's supposed to be easier for Canadians than most others to work in USA due to NAFTA.

My friend Mark Christian works for PBWiki. I know he's a bona-fide Canadian because he pronounces it 'aboot.' He's pretty enterprising.

We're from Canada - we're not from Minnesota. I honestly have never gotten how Americans interpret our "about"'s as aboot's ;)

It sounds more like "aboat" to me.

I thought the same until I was doing my time in silicon valley. I got made fun of pretty mercilessly at lunch meetings when I said "about". I figure Americans tend to say "Abowt".

The only the that bothered me was that the British guy got a pass for pronouncing "Java" with an "R".

Ditto here. I'm from Nova Scotia originally and spent the last few years in southern Ontario (Toronto and Waterloo). I never noticed my accent, though, until I lived in California.

I've never really gotten the "aboot" thing (although there were two folks from Minnesota at the company for a while, and they sort of did it). I get ragged on for saying "sawry" instead of "sorry", however.

PS: we're PBworks now, not PBwiki, chirag. :)

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