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How do we retain talent in KW?
#46
(03-04-2019, 12:15 PM)robdrimmie Wrote:
(03-04-2019, 10:50 AM)panamaniac Wrote: One imagines it could change quickly if the local market began offering competitive wages ...

The wage difference is used to promote the Region to corporations considering setting up offices here as well. It's explicitly the model for Terminal for example, and every service-focused company I've worked at uses both the lower cost of living (which is a lower cost of labour for them) and the value of the Canadian dollar as competitive aspects. We do more with fewer dollars is presented as a point of pride.

This piece written by Stephen Lake (co-founder of North and given recent events maybe less effective an appeal to authority than normal, also just in general likely incentivized to save money with lower salaries) in 2016 argues that the cost of living here makes the salaries more effective than elsewhere: https://medium.com/@srlake/debunking-the...828cbf6698.

I'm not arguing in favour of any this position necessarily, nor against it. From a personal experience standpoint, my salary is competitive based on my understanding of the local market, which is not super broad. It's higher than people I grew up with who have similar levels of post-secondary education and while I like to think I'm quite good at what I do, a lot of the basis for that difference is the industry not me.

I strongly dislike that Stephen Lake piece. I don't think it's arguing in good faith. He compares city prices to non-city prices. You can't really compare Toronto to Mississauga to Waterloo to San Francisco and say that these are all the same.

I also know the number of Waterloo Software Engineering students who come from the local region. It is about 10%. I think it's a different 10% from the 10% who stay in the region. Most students come from the Greater Toronto Area. Undergraduate Engineering at Waterloo is mostly Canadians (and permanent residents); international students account for about 15%. Math is much more international.

My opinion is that there's a global market for talent, and CEOs who complain about not being able to get talent should find ways to pay more.
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#47
(03-04-2019, 11:18 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: 70% leaving the country is significant, and some of those folks are definitely Canadians, but without knowing the intake values, the outflow ones are not as meaningful as they may seem. It would also be worth comparing the numbers at Laurier (especially for Business programs) and Conestoga. I'd suspect Laurier also sees a lot of folks leave the area, but Conestoga grads seem more likely to stay local.

Note that the two-thirds figure quoted (from a survey or from comprehensive poll of all grads?) is only for the software engineering program grads, fewer than 150 students per year. Very difficult program to get accepted into, so the grads tend to be at the top of many US companies' lists for recruiting. (Mechatronics may be a similar situation.)

Larger programs like computer science, with 800+ students, will likely have significantly larger numbers staying in Canada.
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#48
(03-04-2019, 10:50 AM)panamaniac Wrote: One imagines it could change quickly if the local market began offering competitive wages ...

Honestly, they are already competitive enough to attract a sufficient number of candidates. If the companies are unable to attract enough talent, the salaries they offer will naturally start to rise.

There is no "local market" as such, no one dictates how much any given employer should be paying.
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#49
So is the retention of talent in KW not much of an issue then? I just seemed to think it was with so many graduates leaving.
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#50
(03-04-2019, 09:39 PM)Spokes Wrote: So is the retention of talent in KW not much of an issue then?  I just seemed to think it was with so many graduates leaving.

Most of the graduates are not from this area, so we shouldn't really assume that they will stay here, either. 

Finding and keeping qualified people is a challenge for local companies, of course. But it's also a challenge for most of the companies elsewhere, including silicon valley. Just the details will be different.
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#51
(03-04-2019, 06:16 PM)tomh009 Wrote: There is no "local market" as such, no one dictates how much any given employer should be paying.

Sure there is. Communitech historically (it is reasonable to assume they still do but I don't have specific knowledge more recent than 2016) manage lists of roles and salaries. Local employers provide their data in exchange for getting access to the aggregate. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and other job-related corporations also provide this sort of information. There is 100% a market, it costs money (or data) to access, and employees don't have visibility into it.
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#52
(03-05-2019, 10:03 AM)robdrimmie Wrote:
(03-04-2019, 06:16 PM)tomh009 Wrote: There is no "local market" as such, no one dictates how much any given employer should be paying.

Sure there is. Communitech historically (it is reasonable to assume they still do but I don't have specific knowledge more recent than 2016) manage lists of roles and salaries. Local employers provide their data in exchange for getting access to the aggregate. LinkedIn, Glassdoor, Indeed and other job-related corporations also provide this sort of information. There is 100% a market, it costs money (or data) to access, and employees don't have visibility into it.

That gives you aggregate salary data, yes. We do use Communitech info if we're hiring for a type of position where we have no experience. But if we're hiring for positions similar to what we have done before, we don't even check the Communitech data -- we make our own decisions about how much we want to pay and what level of people we want to hire. And I do expect most other companies do the same.
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#53
(03-05-2019, 10:26 AM)tomh009 Wrote: That gives you aggregate salary data, yes. We do use Communitech info if we're hiring for a type of position where we have no experience. But if we're hiring for positions similar to what we have done before, we don't even check the Communitech data -- we make our own decisions about how much we want to pay and what level of people we want to hire. And I do expect most other companies do the same.

All I'm disagreeing with is your assertion that there is no market. Of course there is. Prices are not published, there's no central source where you can go and acquire employees like I can acquire bananas, but there is a supply of talent and demand for it. If I say "I want to hire a developer with five years of node js experience" and you have a feel for what that person's salary should be, we're talking about a market.

Many companies compare against the known salary information of other employers. I can't say if the majority do or don't, I can only provide anecdotal data, as someone involved in the process of preparing that data for consumption and as a hiring manager who has been provided competitive information as part of the hiring process in three fairly different organizations (a not-for-profit, a small development agency and a large multi-national corporation).

For the record, I don't think it's problematic that you don't, and it seems probable that you're compensating folks just fine. Because there's a market that you have some knowledge of. It's the people who want to offer a fresh Waterloo CS grad $30k because that's roughly what they pay their entry-level manual labour who are clueless of the market.
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#54
(03-05-2019, 10:43 AM)robdrimmie Wrote:
(03-05-2019, 10:26 AM)tomh009 Wrote: That gives you aggregate salary data, yes. We do use Communitech info if we're hiring for a type of position where we have no experience. But if we're hiring for positions similar to what we have done before, we don't even check the Communitech data -- we make our own decisions about how much we want to pay and what level of people we want to hire. And I do expect most other companies do the same.

All I'm disagreeing with is your assertion that there is no market. Of course there is. Prices are not published, there's no central source where you can go and acquire employees like I can acquire bananas, but there is a supply of talent and demand for it. If I say "I want to hire a developer with five years of node js experience" and you have a feel for what that person's salary should be, we're talking about a market.

Re-reading my original post, I see that I stated my assertion rather poorly.

The original quote I was responding to was "One imagines it could change quickly if the local market began offering competitive wages."

And my point was that "the market" doesn't offer wages, individual employers do, and each one of them decides how competitive they want to be. So, yes, there is a market, as you say. But the decisions are made by individual companies. Of course, if many companies feel they can hire at low salaries, that will also bring down the market averages.
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#55
(03-05-2019, 01:00 PM)tomh009 Wrote: And my point was that "the market" doesn't offer wages, individual employers do, and each one of them decides how competitive they want to be. So, yes, there is a market, as you say. But the decisions are made by individual companies. Of course, if many companies feel they can hire at low salaries, that will also bring down the market averages.

Thank you for elaborating, I understand better now and in broad strokes I agree. I'm not entirely up on my economic theory, but my understanding of Smith's notion of the invisible hand is that individual actors themselves don't entirely consciously make these sorts of decisions. So it's true that the corporations make those sorts of decisions but it's not without external influence. I'm reasonably sure I'm pushing the conversation long past the point of utility though, and certainly well outside my competence.
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#56
Big article from Communitech about technical talent retention.

https://news.communitech.ca/the-talent-w...grads-say/
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#57
(03-28-2019, 11:09 AM)robdrimmie Wrote: Big article from Communitech about technical talent retention.

https://news.communitech.ca/the-talent-w...grads-say/

I was at the CivicTechWR meetup last night to hear about their hire working through Talent Beyond borders. One of the differences mentioned comparing the Talent Beyond Borders process to normal hiring is that it took well over a year to complete, which is outside the norm for a lot of local companies. Interesting to read in the above article that the US companies are hiring our grads on that year+ timeframe.

My takeaway from the article is that local companies want the best talent but are still reluctant to actually compete on the level of the dominant international players. Also people worried about having to pay their existing employees more if they pay a new hire more or if their local competitors start paying more.

Another thing not mentioned in the article, but that I hear from friends in Silicon Valley, is career mobility. There is so much density of companies there that if your start-up goes bust or you don't like your job it can be super easy to find another job. It can be a problem for the companies themselves who would prefer more loyal employees, but think of North cutting 150-200 people and how quickly that would be absorbed down south vs. locally.
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#58
(03-28-2019, 02:01 PM)tvot Wrote: Another thing not mentioned in the article, but that I hear from friends in Silicon Valley, is career mobility. There is so much density of companies there that if your start-up goes bust or you don't like your job it can be super easy to find another job. It can be a problem for the companies themselves who would prefer more loyal employees, but think of North cutting 150-200 people and how quickly that would be absorbed down south vs. locally.

Think back to the BlackBerry cutbacks, and how fast those people were absorbed by the local companies. Today, 200 people finding tech jobs in Waterloo Region is a total non-issue.

Do you think it's difficult to find a tech job in the region today?
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#59
(03-28-2019, 09:06 PM)tomh009 Wrote:
(03-28-2019, 02:01 PM)tvot Wrote: Another thing not mentioned in the article, but that I hear from friends in Silicon Valley, is career mobility. There is so much density of companies there that if your start-up goes bust or you don't like your job it can be super easy to find another job. It can be a problem for the companies themselves who would prefer more loyal employees, but think of North cutting 150-200 people and how quickly that would be absorbed down south vs. locally.

Think back to the BlackBerry cutbacks, and how fast those people were absorbed by the local companies. Today, 200 people finding tech jobs in Waterloo Region is a total non-issue.

Do you think it's difficult to find a tech job in the region today?

It can be, yes.  

I was at BlackBerry for 12 years and know plenty of people who moved to California, England, Washington, Toronto, etc.. I know hardware people that retrained in firmware at Conestoga College and still took a while after graduating to find work. When I started looking for work after BlackBerry there were plenty of people at the Communitech JobSeekers meetups who had been searching for a while.

There are some less-educated people I knew who managed to go from "unskilled" factory work to more demanding roles within BlackBerry but have found it hard or impossible to find quality work.

Following the local tech jobs, the vast majority are software, the number of hardware positions is very small, especially when the niche fields don't line up. Plus there are some companies locally that take many months to hire. Posting a job then putting it on hold below another position or cancelling it all together.

Another thing from the CivicTech meetup the other night is that someone mentioned that there are often over 2000 software/coding positions open in the region, but people there in hiring positions mention not finding any good candidates in their applicants.

In some cases, it's miss-match of skills vs. the current market, others are missing that *one* piece of experience that they could be brought up to speed on if given a chance. But in some cases, maybe it's that people hiring are looking for super-stars and there are a lot of plain/solid people that need jobs too.

We have a lot of small tech players locally, but could do with a few more larger employers if we really want a healthier market. Sure, there's a lack of stability in most jobs, but I know a few people from the 2015 cuts at BlackBerry who were cut by 1-2 other start-ups folding before being cut by North; that's a lot of stress in less than 4 years.
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#60
Yes, sorry, I was referring to software tech. Finding hardware jobs may indeed be much more challenging -- and unskilled is even harder.

Start-ups can be exciting but if you are looking for stability they may not be the best choice. One always has to balance different aspects of different potential employers when looking for work.
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