Everyone in Vancouver has that one friend who works in the video game industry. You know the one: they entered right after (or possibly during) university and have been working like a dog ever since. I had one such friend back at SFU. When I returned from a year abroad, he was working on an internship at Electronic Arts writing the engine for the Reboot game. Although I returned in July, I didn't see him until September on the first day of class. We lived in the same house.
Now imagine that every company is operating at this pace. That's what it's like to work in Silicon Valley.
Something magical happens when you gather a lot of smart, ambitious people in a one place – they work hard, produce neat stuff, and enjoy themselves doing it. This isn't a problem in itself; the problem is when they don't know when to stop working. Despite consistently clocking 80 hours weeks in the office during the day and on email in the evening and on the weekends, I was a lightweight. My manager had apparently evolved beyond the need for sleep, an ability that enabled him to send me emails at 1am, then again at 3am, and then one more time at 6am shortly before coming into the office. My VP could transcend time zones by flying to Europe on Monday and returning to the North America on Wednesday, fueled only by a constant intake of coffee. It goes without saying, this is an unbalanced existence and it doesn't work in the long term – just ask the video game industry.
Fortunately, Canada doesn't have that problem. Unfortunately, we have the exact opposite problem: our productivity growth has flat-lined, and it's our own damned fault for not moving fast enough. Need proof? There is no more obvious a symptom to me in Vancouver's online world than T-Net's bctechnology.net.
Hello, T-Net? 1999 called - it wants its web site back.
I'd like to say I'm trying to start a blog-fight with T-Net, but that would require them to have a blog in the first place. It would, in fact, require them to have significantly altered the site in any way since it launched a decade ago. The site's continued spectacular level of suckage is cringe-worthy. Frames-based jobs board that is infuriatingly annoying to navigate? Check. Blind regurgitation of press releases? Check. Complete inability to optimize the site for search engines? Double check.
By all rights, bctechnology.net should be dead. It should have died long ago, been autopsied to check for foul play, buried by accident, exhumed to correct the error, cremated, and its ashes scattered in secret locations throughout the world to guard against any possible zombie resurrection. You can hardly blame T-Net for continuing to have the audacity to exist - nobody has challenged them.
Canada is not about competition. Ambition is bad. Don't rock the boat. And that's what needs to change. While I would never wish the pace of Silicon Valley on Canada's technology community, we're got to stop phoning it in. You can't resist change, and then bitch about how you don't like how things are going. If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.
Am I trying to provoke you to prove me wrong? Absolutely. So get moving.
T-Net provide information and business services to technology companies, industry suppliers and individuals within the BC technology industry which... [more]
Great post Brendon!
I just wanted to point out that the current Techvibes.com website has had a few detractors over the years as well.
However since we purchased the website one year ago, we've listened to user feedback and made significant tweaks & improvements to the platform (and added this blog).
We're now in the process of completely rebuilding the site from scratch and will be re-launching in the summer.
Stay tuned!
Not that I mean to provoke you, but is this a completely fair assessment of our work ethic here?
Vancouver may not operate at the same pace as the Valley, but neither is it as cutthroat. Am I naive to assume that our "open source business" model of caring and sharing amongst one another here in Vancouver can't be competitive with they of the 100 hour workweek?
Coming from Boston, then starting up in the Valley before moving here - I can tell you, Brendan is smack on. I worked all the time in the Valley but because I loved what I was doing and I wanted it to see it go BIG. Start-up life is a choice. It's about being ALL IN, not giving up and building something people love. It's every bit the rollercoaster people say it is. So, if you want to work the 8 hour days and leave it all behind when you go home, don't join a start-up. Join one b/c you love the ride, love the idea, love the people and love what it can become.
Vancouver does beat to its own drum but I love living and working here. There are a lot of talented people in this city and the tech community is incredibly supportive. We just need to turn the volume up a bit and pick up the pace together. Go Vancouver!!
Sure, my statements are generalizations meant to provoke the discussion. We seem to wait for permission to go and do things, and we tolerate mediocrity more than is prudent. That needs to change.
Would I want Vancouver to be as cutthroat as the valley? Of course not. The hyper-competitive nature that makes the valley a success is also what contributes to its crippling social problems (lack of support for public education, crumbling infrastructure, eroding tax base, skyrocketing debt loads).
But I do want to spur a bit more risk taking, go-getter behavior. We can move closer to Silicon Valley's end of the spectrum without sacrificing our do-gooder values or working 100 hours.
This series is about tough love - I love you Canada, but you really need to hit the gym.
Fully agree with you, Brendon - we need to step up the game in this region and have discussions like this!
I agree that we sorely need more risk tolerance to feed our machine, but perhaps not in the ways you're suggesting.
The perpetuation of the myth that the frenzied pace of the Valley is in any way efficient is interesting. Put it this way, compare average venture returns with those of value investors such as Warren Buffett and you'll find that generally venture returns suck. Another way of looking at it is that almost every one of those 100 hours worked each week produces at best moderate aggregate returns to those writing the cheques. Put another way, almost every one of those hours is wasted effort because it's a scattergun approach that comes from cycles of venture investment dominated by too much available capital, followed by market corrections and very limited availability of capital. (Read some of Marc Andreessen's great stuff on this topic -- particularly the stuff about the thinking that led institutions such as Yale to shift their portfolio focus in favour of non-traditional investments.)
The US venture market supports frenzied, unfocused and in the end largely pointless activity simply because there is more capital available to invest. The fact that most of it would have been better off buying index funds gets lost in the drama and excitement. And at the same time, the lack of glamour to be found in investing on more conservative (for which read "rational") principles means the real story of how entrepreneurial effort works gets ignored.
The start-up I just joined is aiming for very high growth, and I'm a self-confessed workaholic. But ultimately it will be the market's appetite for what we create and our ability to execute on a well thought out plan that determines our success.
40 hours a week is plenty, living in Vancouver it'd be criminal not to leave time to enjoy the mountains and the sea.
I think it's a bit unfair to claim that anaemic Canadian productivity is a reason for us falling behind. To be clear, productivity can be measured in different ways and, sure, a person working 80 hours produces more GDP per capita than if she/he works 40 hours. Then there's the GDP per hours worked measure and others.
So are you saying Canadians don't work as many hours or that they don't work as efficiently?
I would also assume that compensation is based to some degree on contribution. Are SV salaries higher? Is it because of the longer hours worked or is it because of better skill, innovation, and efficiency, or a bit of both?
Specifically with Canada, there has been evidence that Canada's higher per capita spend on capital projects (that do not immediately contribute to GDP) reduce overall productivity growth.
Well said Brendon! I always notice two distinct points of view on this subject depending on who I'm talking to. When I talk to people who've lived and worked abroad (like me), they clearly see the 'lack of productivity/risk taking/competitiveness' that Brendon mentions. However, when I talk to friends who have only lived/worked in Canada they almost always disagree that those are the issues that hinders our growth.
Well, as much as I love my local friends, I have to say that they have blinders on - they don't know what they don't know. Until you've lived and experienced the work ethics in Silicon Valley or Asia or London you just don't realize how competitive people are and how hard they are willing to work to succeed. And until Vancouver gets some of that attitude we'll never become the tech center that we want to be.
There is no collective pulse here.
Change begins at Home? Nope not here wrong home.
At best we are several years behind the rest of the world.
Will IPhones or Android phones be here anytime soon?
How about $50 per month unlimited mobile data?
Try getting reliable broadband in Yaletown or Gastown.
Western Canada's limited internet infrastructure coupled with expensive real estate and high cost of living reduces our ability to compete.
This is our home and our reality and we have to deal with it. We are truly blessed to live here.
Thanks for pushing my hot button, but let's not kid ourselves, change will come only through competition.
@Daniel: Agreed that the frenzied venture capital approach can be unfocused at times (especially with some of the herd mentality you see being exhibited these days). I agree that this isn't the only model to create value. However, with respect, you might note that every one of the stocks that WB invests in would not exist without someone, somewhere, stepping up and taking the initiative to make something happen.
@Jordan, @David, @Jesse: It's interesting to see how quickly people seem to think I'm talking about us needing to work harder. We don't need to work harder. We need to work smarter. Yes, I really did just channel the Dilbert pointy-haired-boss. God help me.
We need to actively pursue creating businesses that capture ongoing value for BC. Businesses that keep making us money, even when we're not working. That's how I think about productivity - getting more done, with less.
@Lance: Your iPhone comment triggers an important point - without risk-taking or competitive behavior, we may not be able to access goods from other countries (or even our own!) that would make our lives easier or better. Why is it that the iPhone is already in Ireland (population ~$4M) but not in Canada? Because our telecommunications industry is woefully uncompetitive. This may not be a problem when we're talking about a phone, but it might be a problem we're talking about a technology required to sustain our quality of life when all the Boomer retire, for example.
Brendon -- thank God you posted this article. To be perfectly honest, I was going to puke if I read another gleaming blog post on Canadian self-gratification and incestuous ass kissing. We're not hard enough on ourselves. Read: not hard on ourselves at all.
Every single blog post or event or meetup is infested with people gleaming about other people's work or saying how revolutionary it is. We've got to wake up quickly before we realize that a lot of it is actually quite amateur compared to stuff being created in tech hotbeds.
Everyone is kissing everyone's ass so we can get a contract or a consulting gig or a speaking engagement. Let's just tone down the volume for a second and evaluate what we've got. A few tech 'luminaries' who get invited to speak at the same conferences again and again ... and whose consulting firms rely on it. Some honest side projects. Consumer internet plays with no real path to exit or revenue. And BS like BC Technology's site that underpins how backwards we've allowed our supposed 'hi-'tech' scene to become.
A healthy eco-system needs optimism, innovation, investment, resources... and yes... the ability to challenge ourselves to do better.
What comforts me is that I know we can do it.
@Brendon: Yes, VC money funds great businesses, but my point was really that it's an extremely inefficient model, particularly when it operates in boom-bust cycles. It's really your point about working smarter that I agree with most, and Vancouver's opportunity is to encourage the risk-taking attitude of Silicon Valley, but align it with more focused and real business models.
The thing that kills me most of all about Vancouver is the "I would quit my job if someone funded me" mentality. In other words, the expectation is we can say to investors "I won't believe in this idea until you do..."
@Brendon,: "We don’t need to work harder. We need to work smarter."
I think it was Scrooge McDuck who said that but I digress. I wasn't clear from your OP what you were saying but thanks for clarifying. I think it's a fair point that there are innovative things BC companies can do to get better and there can be a defeatist attitude that creeps into the workplace that inhibits this type of innovation. And there does seem to be less appetite for risk in BC than in the US but I'll leave that to you to discuss in a future post...
There have been success stories in BC of groups of very smart people working their butts off and produce great innovative companies. What seems to happen in BC is, once the company reaches a certain size, it is acquired or expands and the head office moves away from BC. It's worth asking why.
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