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Vancouver's talent are like raw resources
I had a brief clip air on Global TV BC this evening, commenting on the news that Facebook is opening a temporary office in Vancouver. Here’s a link to the written article. Thanks to Greg for tracking down the Global TV News Hour clip (starts at 15:20).
I do think that the difficulty in getting a US Visa is a contributing factor to make Canada / Vancouver an attractive place to put an office. It was back in July 2007 that the Microsoft opening an office news broke. Looking back, the Microsoft office out in Richmond was basically a non-impact on the local community. So, where Facebook puts its office and how much it interacts with the local community will be the determining factor on the potential impact of having them here.
I’d like to talk about local Vancouver talent. My general feeling is that the developer and designer talent that Vancouver does have are treated like raw resources. Like our logs and other natural resources, we do very little “secondary processing”, and the best are shipped off elsewhere.
Igor Faletski, CEO & Co-founder of Mobify, did a great write up right after the news broke: What the new Facebook office means for the Vancouver tech scene
I agree with his summary, that this is a good thing - Facebook will bring talent from around the world to Vancouver (and some will stay), and that another strong link between here and the Valley is a good thing for the community.
The main downside is the hiring pressure. Mobify is a growing company, and in his last blog post covering what startups should focus on, Igor said “Companies - and people - that don’t master hiring can’t scale, so spend at least a quarter of your time on it.”
My observation on “talent in Vancouver” has always been three fold:
- There are few companies for top / senior talent to work at in Vancouver. This is changing (HootSuite, Mobify – and as of recently, Salesforce and Amazon)
- People are underpaid here compared to the rest of Canada, and really underpaid compared to anywhere in the US. More local competition will raise the bar here.
- We have lots of great juniors who come from our local universities and other institutions. Many get better paying jobs elsewhere (#2), or leave once they’re intermediate since there is limited room for career growth (see #1).
Also, with generally smaller companies and/or “branch office” locations (and so nowhere for people in the following disciplines to gain experience), Vancouver is in dire need of soft skills in marketing, business development, sales, product management, recruiting, etc. etc. etc.
Since these are the critical factors in scaling a company past a couple of co-founders, this is likely an even bigger issue than “I can’t find a Ruby programmer to hire”.
Also related to being underpaid, this has had an interesting side effect - since salaries are low/career opportunities are few, doing a startup feels less risky. However, since we also have very limited angel capital, the best startup teams again head south where there is more angel capital at higher valuations.
Is there lots of “great” talent in Vancouver already? I’d say that there are many talented juniors, but in general it’s hard to find people who are more senior / have lots of relevant experience. However, because of the generally low pay, hiring people away from existing companies (that likely also have less interesting career paths available) is going to be easy for new entrants like Facebook, Salesforce, and Amazon.
Comments on Twitter (see full collected responses on Storify) underline this:
Dan Udey: “after I was hired, I watched the founders interview for six months without hiring”
Dan works at A Thinking Ape (aka ATA), which is a company that relocated to Vancouver from Silicon Valley. ATA has done a great job of running new grad focused job fairs across Canada. And that’s the point (again): hiring great people is hard, and we need to a) invest in getting good at it and b) great people are everywhere, and we have to go looking for them.
We need to invest in our talent to keep them here with both competitive salaries and great career opportunities. Or they will leave. Just like the raw logs that we export.
Always available Personal Algorithms + Personal Data = Programs that matter
Always available Personal Data + Personal Algorithms = Programs that matter. Inspired by David Ascher's Personal computing in a decentralized world: a hopeful direction. What if you could keep all of your personal data and personal algorithms in two places so that you always had a backup?
- In your home on something cheap and cheerful like a Raspberry Pi AND
- With you at all times in your pocket or on your wrist with a portable use anywhere computer like the StormFly.
What if programming wasn't so hard that you had to learn something so rigid like Pascal (the language of Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs) or C++ or even JavaScript but something approachable and more flexible (e.g. IFTTT, scratch, heck even a more accessible version of R). I predict that would allow people to use their personal data in all sorts of "helpful in real life" ways we can't even imagine!
And I don't see why this won't be possible in less than 10 years if not sooner.
tags:Email will inevitably fail so if you foolishly depend on it, learn to back it up and restore it
If you insist on using email as a file management system, archive system, CRM, database, contact system, knowledge management system , etc then learn how to backup your email and practise restoring your email because it will inevitably fail no matter how reliable your email server and client are. If you don't have time, then pay somebody or do the right thing and move stuff out of email to CRM, blogs, wikis, to-do systems, etc!
tags:Growly Notes - like OneNote but for Mac
Also see the Lifehacker review.
The Old Reader is where I am sharing RSS items; also on tumblr via IFTTT
For the 3 people who care :-)
- Instead of Google Reader I am using The Old Reader; except for having no business model that I can detect :-) (where do I pay?!?) But it has the all "Old Pre Google+" Google Reader features such as sharing items. If you are a "The Old Reader" user you can follow me directly like in the good 'ole Google Reader days: http://theoldreader.com/profile/roland
- If you prefer to follow my shares on Google Reader you can do it here: http://rolandgoodbits.tumblr.com/
Email is not an archival system, file system, knowledge management system or a to-do system
Email is not an archival system, file system, knowledge management system or a to-do system. If you think it's anything but a dumb temporary message store, you are "doing it wrong" :-) as the kids say. Email is where knowledge goes to die as I blogged about (AFAIK Bill French coined this phrase back in 2003)
Anything valuable in email should be gardened immediately into a blog, wiki, etc. Don't expect to keep every email and don't try; it's futile and not worthy of your attention. Instead mine the knowledge in your email and keep that!
tags:Stop whingeing about how you used to take great photos w/your DSLR but are now mired in a morass of bad cameraphone photos - get a cheap point & shoot and an Eye-Fi card & you will have great photos again w/out the DSLR weight
There are countless geeky, nerdy, folks in late 2012 "whingeing" :-) about
- how they used to take great DSLR photos but it was too heavy & inconvenient to post photos,
- so they switched to a cameraphone
- but are tired of its bad photos.
Simple solution:
- buy a $150 dollar point and shoot like the Canon Powershot A2400 which you can get for $70 (or a $200 Olympus E-PL1 or EPM-1 with the Olympus bodycap lens for $59 if you want something even more awesome for $260 instead of $150 or less),
- a $99 Eye-Fi card.
- Carry the camera in your pocket at all times.
- Post photos from the Eye-Fi via your cameraphone's WIFI access point
This makes it convenient and quick like your cameraphone but gives you much better image quality that doesn't require filters of doom to make the photos "interesting"!
tags:Nikon V1 might as well be free at $299 w/lens aka redonkulous price cuts mean desperate camera makers! One or more of Sony, Olympus, Ricoh, Pentax, or Samsung will exit the camera business in the next ten years
Nikon V1 with kit zoom for $299 might as well be free (excellent deal for a mirrorless camera w/EVF, great auto-focus; only problem is the lens line up is not yet anywhere near complete). Points out how desperate the camera manufacturers are and how much camera oversupply there is.
I really think that one or more of Sony, Olympus, Ricoh, Pentax, or Samsung will exit the camera business in the next ten years (my prediction would be Olympus even though I love their cameras and Ricoh and perhaps Sony).
Two reasons:
- Too many me too cameras that aren't social cameras, and
- competition from cameraphones which is the only camera that most people will ever buy and use in the near future and cameraphones won't be made by "traditional camera makers"
Pine cones open up when you bring them inside
A day or two after you bring them in, you'll see that they gradually splay open. Evidently they are doing this to expose the seeds inside.
