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Tech industry news and issues related to Victoria


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#61 sdwright.vic

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Posted 06 May 2018 - 06:55 AM

All new development and most maintenance is done by contractors who bill out at $100 an hour minimum. Depends on their employment arrangement how much of that they keep.


At 37.5 hours a week paid 26 time in a year that's only $97,500 minus what the subcontractor organization will take as the cut.
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#62 tjv

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Posted 06 May 2018 - 08:11 AM

its actually 195k, you made a math booboo


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#63 AllseeingEye

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Posted 11 May 2018 - 08:34 PM

Depends where you are looking. I know of lots of local startups that are paying developers far less than that. You need to have a sexy product and convince people that you are changing the world.

 

In Government developers are often working on complex. boring systems that use 20+ year old tech. You have to pay people lots of money to want to waste their brains on that! Those are the jobs that having them on your resume actually detracts from your value. 

When I left the LTSA as the technical services director in 2011 the BCG was in the process of finalizing and selecting the winning bid to move away from the primary mainframe then prevalent in their IT environment. The better part of a decade later and I come back now working for a major service provider in partnership with the MoH among other government entities, and discover the "mainframe migration" still continues in 2018. Many, many ministry applications continue to reside on the mainframe even now.

 

As for older systems CICS - first developed 50 years ago - continues to be a staple middle-ware not only for the BC government but also major financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies throughout North America. In my current role I utilize it virtually every day.

 

From 2008-11 I can still recall signing off on some giganormous invoices for developer resources we contracted to at LTSA, who primarily sub-contracted through Fujitsu, and who were experts on CICS and DB2, which was/is another government back end staple (IBM database) system dating from the early 1980's.

 

Those resources commanded massive consulting dollars simply because they were hard to come by and were critical not only to maintain the existing production environment but moreover to assist our org in porting Land Titles away from those old legacy applications. At one point I tasked Fujitsu with providing us with 1-2 additional CICS SME's and it took them nearly six months to come up with a single satisfactory, qualified resource - who they had to transfer here from Montreal. 

 

To this day many ministries and related BCG agencies still do not utilize VoIP telephony mainly due to financial and budget constraints involved in rolling out that technology. When I arrived at LTSA in 2008 they were using 25++ year old Bell Northern PBX-based desktop/ office phones. When I called in the TELUS guys to see how I could produce reports for my boss off the phone switch, the two young dudes who showed up had not a clue how to configure that ancient switching technology to accommodate my request. They literally shrugged and walked away totally mystified and glassy-eyed, lol.....



#64 lanforod

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Posted 12 May 2018 - 12:16 PM

Of course by the time they get all those mainframe apps migrated to client server on prem stuff it’ll be time to start all over again and move to cloud based Saas.

#65 spanky123

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Posted 14 May 2018 - 07:48 AM

Not really worried, I can land another job very quickly. I truly don't even care if I get laid off. I'd probably take some time off.

 

Fair enough. Glad to hear that you are in that position.

 

There are a few startups that are doing and paying well but they don't remain startups forever. Most fail and those that get acquired don't tend to do much better. In fact, I can't think of any company that has been acquired over the past decade that has grown or expanded significantly in Victoria. 



#66 PraiseKek

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Posted 14 May 2018 - 05:15 PM

I can. I mean look at Beanstream or Abe Books for example. 



#67 AllseeingEye

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Posted 14 May 2018 - 05:31 PM

I can. I mean look at Beanstream or Abe Books for example. 

AbeBooks? Most people won't touch them with a 50 foot pole; they had a dev manager position paying upwards of $175K that sat unfilled for over a year. As an Amazon subsidiary I would be extremely leery of them. If the Canuck Buck starts rising relative to the US greenback, as it did in the mid-00's and cutting into their margins, Amazon has clearly shown they aren't shy about laying people off. At least 3 senior managers I know of have bailed in the last 18 months.



#68 grantpalin

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Posted 14 May 2018 - 07:57 PM

Beanstream is a good example. They were acquired multiple times, yet remained as a separate company. The company went through multiple growth spurts. Though it was folded into Bambora after that acquisition. Source: I worked there during the acquisition and merge process. Have no idea what will happen, if anything, following Ingenico acquiring Bambora.


Edited by grantpalin, 14 May 2018 - 07:57 PM.


#69 spanky123

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 07:40 PM

Another very unfortunate story. Ms. Holmes was a role model for so many young women in technology. The youngest self made female billionaire who was on a path to change the course of diagnostic medicine.

 

https://www.wired.co...silicon-valley/



#70 LJ

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 07:43 PM

^Well actually she was on a path to make herself rich, she did nothing to change the course of diagnostic medicine.


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#71 AllseeingEye

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Posted 15 June 2018 - 08:24 PM

^Well actually she was on a path to make herself rich, she did nothing to change the course of diagnostic medicine.

Yup...she was/is a scheming, conniving, lying fraud - nothing more and should consider herself damn fortunate if she get's off with only 20 years behind bars: Holmes deserves much, much worse. How the hell she can look herself in a mirror and retain her status as board chair to boot is mind boggling.



#72 G-Man

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 07:27 AM

Seems like good news.
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#73 Mike K.

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 07:36 AM

“A major Brazilian tech company is expanding its presence in North America. Instead of Vancouver, they have chosen to set up shop in Greater Victoria. And as Luisa Alvarez tells us the move has the potential to bring hundreds of long-term jobs to the region.”

Nowhere in that article does it mention what the company actually does. Sounds more like it’ll be a small office hoping to compete for government contracts.

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#74 spanky123

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 07:50 AM

“A major Brazilian tech company is expanding its presence in North America. Instead of Vancouver, they have chosen to set up shop in Greater Victoria. And as Luisa Alvarez tells us the move has the potential to bring hundreds of long-term jobs to the region.”

Nowhere in that article does it mention what the company actually does. Sounds more like it’ll be a small office hoping to compete for government contracts.

 

Daitan is the nearshore software development leader that solves this software product development dilemma.

 

They do software development in Brazil as an alternative to Indian and other farshore options. My guess is that they will try to compete with Canadian firms such as CGI and IBM for development jobs with the government. Whether they plan to try and do development here or just use Victoria as a Canadian sales office isn't discussed. 


Edited by spanky123, 02 November 2018 - 07:50 AM.


#75 lanforod

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 07:55 AM

Even if the development isn't done here, it could still translate to jobs here; it just depends how much work they pick up.



#76 spanky123

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 08:00 AM

Even if the development isn't done here, it could still translate to jobs here; it just depends how much work they pick up.

 

It could mean some sales, project management and client services jobs for sure. How many companies though have opened up shop in Victoria promising jobs and investment and then never had anything materialize? Most of the tech companies here would take months to find and hire even a handful of talented people. Do I think that a company which operates on a low cost development strategy can hire and retain "hundreds"? Nope.

 

The South Island Prosperity Project has been around for a couple of years now and spend lots of money on economic development. Other than having been short listed for a smart cities award, the criticism is that they haven't really done much for the investment that they have received. I think that they are motivated to promote any story as being good news for the region (and their mandate).


Edited by spanky123, 02 November 2018 - 08:03 AM.


#77 AllseeingEye

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 08:02 AM

Daitan is the nearshore software development leader that solves this software product development dilemma.

 

They do software development in Brazil as an alternative to Indian and other farshore options. My guess is that they will try to compete with Canadian firms such as CGI and IBM for development jobs with the government. Whether they plan to try and do development here or just use Victoria as a Canadian sales office isn't discussed. 

Good luck to them its an already overcrowded space with CGI, ISM/IBM, Sierra Systems. Fujitsu, MYRA and even our own Deltaware (wholly owned subsidiary of MAXIMUS) which works in conjunction with CGI for one of the biggest government entities there is, namely the MoH.



#78 G-Man

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 08:08 AM

The article indicates that they are planning to do AI development here based on the program at UVic. You guys are all so negative rather than seeing this as a new opportunity for the city that will create competition for developers and raise their salaries and also hopefully encourage more people to move here. 


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#79 spanky123

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 08:17 AM

The article indicates that they are planning to do AI development here based on the program at UVic. You guys are all so negative rather than seeing this as a new opportunity for the city that will create competition for developers and raise their salaries and also hopefully encourage more people to move here. 

 

The CEO is parroting the same things that Microsoft, Gamehouse, Zynga, etc all said when they promised to expand businesses here and hire lots of people. If they had done their research instead of listening to the lobbyists they would have learned that in the big picture our 3 universities and colleges don't graduate that many computer science grads and that most of them leave the region. There are not pools of talented folks sitting around looking for work. If their model is to do discounted software development then they certainly are not going to be paying wages superior to the people already doing that work locally.



#80 Mike K.

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Posted 02 November 2018 - 09:31 AM

Yeah, it’s been said/done/tried countless times.

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