Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edblarney | Hacker News Reader

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" Francophone networks are weak. They are very local, and poor"

A) French speaking Quebecers are poor, relative to N. America. Median wages are 'ok' due to lots of 'decent' government jobs, but mean wages for Francophones are very low.

B) Francophone business networks usually don't expand beyond Quebec. There are no elite Universities in Quebec (McGill is pretty good, but not French), and there is zero access to networks from elite schools among Francophones.

C) There are very few wealthy Francophone Quebecers who 'write cheques' for startups.

Ergo - networks are very weak here, it's just a fact.

I've lived in several cities in N.America/Europe, this is by far the weakest of 'known cities'. It's probably better than Orlando. Or Dublin. But worse than any of Boston, Toronto, Vancouver, Frankfurt, etc..

"The "career" of an artist, as you mention, is not something for you to judge the quality or success of. "

I'll judge these people however I want, but it's not a judgement to point out that people who prefer to serve coffee and write 1 short play every 10 years aren't the kinds of people who build high-tech startups. I know these people very well (I live in ground-zero of French Montreal), they prefer to do other things, that's fine, it's not a judgement, just a reality. (FYI Bukowski was prolific - he wrote tons of stuff).

A 'circus' - yes. I can't think of any other place in North America where 'Cirque du Soleil' could be born. And it seems there's a huge plethora of 'artisanal' small-scale things ...

I like Montreal, which is why I live here, and I have no doubt there will be some startups here and there that will win, but it will never be the 'leader' in any classical, industrious lines of business. There will likely never be a full-blown ecosystem here for any industry that doesn't already exist.

The people here do not have any interest in building it.

    There are no elite Universities in Quebec (McGill is
    pretty good, but not French), and there is zero access to
    networks from elite schools among Francophones.

Another blanket statement. What constitutes an "elite" university?

The Francophones in Quebec have traditionally been, as a population, mostly against making "big bucks". One of the reasons was the religion. The other was that the anglophone ruling class were more than happy to (read "actively engaged in") suppress French success in general.

A lot of things changed in the last century. There are a lot of first generation University students in Quebec today, most of them French speaking. Naturally, the wages in general are expected to be lower. But one has to make the distinction about cost of living. It's lower in Quebec than in a lot of other places. This would explain the relative lower number of French Quebecois who "sign checks" - although they do exist.

Do you have any idea how big is the "circus"? There are some interesting documentaries/reporting on YouTube. Worth checking out. Another big company is the Desjardins bank, which was ranked #1 strongest bank in North America last year IIRC.

Success is relative, it depends on your social status and on what your peers define as being successful. Sure you can apply the SV VC definition of successful to mostly anywhere in the world, and you won't be much impressed. That doesn't mean the locals aren't successful. For a example, for a long time in Quebec the definition of being successful was becoming a pharmacist, doctor, dentist or lawyer. That's something that is being felt today still: a lot of potentially great scientists/entrepreneurs just want to become doctors, because doctors are successful.

Arguably this is no different from elsewhere, but combined with the general population lagging behind the rest of N-A with regards to accumulated wealth and level of education, the net effects are bad (IMO). But the gap is lowering, and I know plenty of young people with big ambitions. Time will tell, but I'm an optimist for the future.

You're taking this personally, which I think is clouding your view.

You don't need to lecture me on the history of Quebec, I'm well aware.

Harvard and Stanford are 'elite' schools.

U. Laval is not.

"Do you have any idea how big is the "circus"?" - it's somewhat less than $1 Billion revenue - which is not that huge.

Desjardins? Ha ... I use Desjardins as my main account - it's backwards and the most 'behind' of any major bank in Canada. I can't get a Visa Debit - among other things. Desjardins is '#1' in stability basically - because they are like a franchise and each branch is separate bank - they have extremely low lending leverage. This gives them a high degree of 'stability' (but also underperformance).

Don't be personal about it, I sense from your writing that you already know Montreal is not a 'winning city' and is not really moving in that direction.

Obviously I'm not 'anti Montreal' or I wouldn't chose to live here.

It's a great town, even a great town to build a startup in, but the people here have little interest in building industries, in the classical sense.

I appreciate that I may come across as personally irritated - I am indeed a bit. Quebec bashing does get tiring, and your condescending tone and seemingly facile arguments did annoy me.

I don't understand the logic of people who hold the arguments you bring forth. It's as if because you're not "elite" (whatever that means) now, you will never be.

Yoshua Bengio's dream (if I may) is to make Montreal a global hotspot of AI research. That's all. Now you (and others) can bash it all you want, blame the local population, blame the language, blame the education system - whatever.

To me, the fact that some people are reacting the way you are is actually confirmation that things are doing well - quite contrary to your frankly misguided assumption that I have a defeatist opinion of the city and the province in general.

> The people here do not have any interest in building it.

I have. Where do I start?

You can start by getting the Quebec government to reduce the highest bracket income taxes which are a full 10% greater than the rest of Canada and about 12% greater than NY/California.

Just kidding :)

I would say if you want to help, go and work for a startup, or a growing private company that is not just a services entity who's #1 client is the government.

You speak as if salaries in Montreal would reach the highest tax bracket.

"You speak as if salaries in Montreal would reach the highest tax bracket."

Ha ha - you nailed it.

I believe the 'extra 10%' kicks in at only 85K CDN. Which is not that much. It's like 65K USD. A pittance.

This has to be one hugely odd thing about Montreal - especially with exchange rates, salaries are so low.

You might think that's a good thing, but really, it's not because talent will leave.

On the other hand, if you have something good going, you can get good talent cheap, and perhaps pay them above market rates.

Even though the cost of living is commensurate - it's hard for young people to factor that in. They see $150K salary in the US and glaze over it.

> Even though the cost of living is commensurate - it's hard for young people to factor that in. They see $150K salary in the US and glaze over it.

I don't even earn a third of that, and I've been building native iOS, Android and Windows apps for more than 3 years...

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