This has changed quite a bit. There are a strangely large number of companies (both startups and a-bit-older-than-startups) doing various large data analytics type things. Also plenty of adtech related startups.
I quite enjoyed Simon Morden's Metrozone trilogy - which has a lot of similarities to Snow Crash and Daemon (main character is essentially a hacker, run-amok AI, cyberpunkish dystopian future...)
Actually, that's another good point. There are a lot of people working remotely here, as it's relatively quick to get to both Seattle and Vancouver (under an hour by float plane, and float planes don't have bullshit security lines). You can even give a little bit of a discount vs NYC or SV wages and come out ahead of what you'd do locally. I did that for a while, and I have a couple of friends doing it now for whom it's working out well. Once again, it's a matter of waiting for the good opportunities - unlike bigger hubs, there isn't the same sophistication in knowing who and how to hire in employers, nor the same raw demand for talent that lets someone walk out the door and be hired before they hit the street.
I'd definitely be interested in some sort of meetup, if such a thing were going to happen...
Also, don't get me started on local angels (both Victoria and Vancouver)... :-(
Oh god how I love the float planes. As a pilot I love watching them (and the smell of Jet-A at mocha house). As a passenger I love the relaxed experience. It is honestly, Victoria t at its best.
You've hit the crux of it - sophistication. Or rather, having enough skill to recognize ones flaws and correct for them. This is something Victoria as a whole does not have.
We don't have enough skilled players in order to sustain an ecosystem at the level needed to attract and retain that top level talent.
Try looking for a senior python developer. That'll be tough. Now try looking for someone with machine learning, compiler design, mathematics or other hard but very useful skill. You just won't find them.
So the companies in Victoria are stuck working on shallower problems. Usually with many competitors and without an ability to build a moat. Which means the people skilled in those hard skills move away to find employment, or do remote work.
The retirement community aspect has shifted somewhat; downtown is now younger and a bit more vibrant with all the condos that have gone up (and continue to be built). $300k will get you a tiny condo - $500k will get you something you actually like. Houses within walking distance of downtown (north park, which isn't the best neighborhood, but isn't the worst either) go for around $600k. Most young families are buying in Langford or further out where money goes further than that.
Victoria is definitely doing more tech-wise that Campbell River or Courtenay, in that there are more tech companies, more startups, and more tech jobs. As with anywhere outside of a major hub, you're going to have to do a lot of leg work to find those jobs - and to find ones that pay well.
While it's true that salaries are by default depressed, anyone who's a pretty good hustler should be able to at least get within 5% of Vancouver. The real problem is that you're competing with all the kids who get out of UVic, don't want to leave the island, and are willing to work for peanuts.
On the other hand, if you're a high level/senior marketing, sales, or developer, there are opportunities at more reasonable pay levels - assuming you can find a position (it is after all, a relatively small community, and senior spots don't crop up all that often). One of the primary annoyances is that http://www.viatec.ca/ (the local tech community group) is kinda worthless for finding work - or for that matter, for finding talent when you're hiring. My experience is that hiring tends to be by word of mouth or via recruiter. Two of my last three Victoria jobs have been through recruiters, one was through word of mouth, all were reasonably well paid (at least as well as I did in Vancouver).
There are strangely a fair number of startups, mostly in the mobile advertising and sem/seo space - and all the regular caveats about working for startups and startup wages apply as they do anywhere else.
Since I'm a developer, I mostly keep an eye on who's hiring in that space. Amongst non-startups, you might try perforce (I know they were looking for a front end guy, they might not be any more), neverblue (definitely looking to hire a couple of intermediate devs, probably a front end person too if the right one came along), and abe books.
No, the problem is that people think a kid fresh out of uvic and someone 15 years in are interchangeable. That inability to differentiate is endemic to the area. Dunning-Kruger effect in the large. (There are always, of course, exceptions)
Junior people can do things. senior people know what needs to be done (and can do it).
Agreed that Viatec is a negative. When you put HP's computer repair service as a #2 tech company in a city it's a very bad statement. Particularly if it's multiple years running.
Funny thing, you'd think Victoria would have lots of health IT startups...
I agree, there's definitely a problem with salary, and I don't dispute your characterization of it. However, my observation is that you need to be able to wait for the well paid senior positions to come available. If you need the work, you're in the unfortunate position of having to look in the places that can't tell the difference between fresh grads and senior devs. It gets better if you mostly get work via word of mouth or recruiters. There are a few developers that have ended up following me when I've moved jobs because they know I only work for places that pay and have interesting work. Likewise, I recommend them, because I've worked with them before, and I know they're good senior developers who are worth the money.
I've been making noises about organizing some other developer focused thing to make up for how crap viatec is... need to find sufficiently round tuits first.
As for health startups, it has at least one that I know about (and I'm not talking about genologics).
> As for health startups, it has at least one that I know about (and I'm not talking about genologics).
I was thinking more 3D printed walkers, canes and replacement hips...
I think the best thing for Victoria to do is be humble (Means shutting up viatec's constant spouting). Make a deliberate effort to learn as a community at the management, business and technical level. To grow the infrastructure and gain sophistication at all of those levels. Not a flashy apps will save the world sort of thing, but it'd lead to a confident viable niche.
As for the local angels, they're part of the problem. Not the solution. You don't know the half of it. I've never taken funding of any sort though, so I don't know the real depths of the issue. From my interactions I can just imagine how deep they are.
Hah! and I was joking too. Given Victoria's demographics.
That's awesome. Good luck. The whole maker/3d printing stuff will be coming of age over the next decade. Lots of people will make themselves nice niche markets there.
I live and work in Victoria, and have for the past 5 years. I currently work for a company that is hiring, and know of several others that are as well. Booming is, of course, relative, and probably refers to the difficulty everyone has finding talented devs (and wages are starting to rise due to that), rather than a direct comparison to the number of companies or size of the market. It's definitely not comparable to Seattle, or even Vancouver (and certainly not SV).
Wages aren't exactly the greatest, expenses aren't exactly the lowest - and there's a real lack of depth in both talent and places to work. On the other hand, there are plenty of people doing start ups because they don't want to leave - you just have to know where to look.
I wonder how easy it would be to hook this up to dns tunneling software such as http://code.kryo.se/iodine/ in such a way that after the the initial ssh auth step, you would have a useful terminal that would be accessible even behind captive portals and the like?
I've used mosh over iodine, by simply having the iodine-server forward all of my packets via IPv4 NAT. I then set my client gateway to use dns0 instead of eth0. Works great!
