Published by The Vancouver Courier, August 2001

rain Gain

While industry leaders and politicians wring their hands about the brain drain, high-tech workers like American Diane Mueller-Klingspor are heading north to Vancouver the for the jobs and lifestyle.

It's a balmy Friday night and the 18th-floor penthouse on Barclay is filling up with people in sporty khaki shorts and T-shirts. In their 30s or younger, they're programmers working in the Vancouver software industry. Like the host, 39-year-old Diane Mueller-Klingspor, an ace software developer from Massachusetts, most are Americans. Mueller-Klingspor says she "fell in love with Vancouver"-the outdoorsy lifestyle suits her. She plays golf, skis and rides her bike to work in Yaletown. "And the mountains are a lot higher than in Massachusetts," she jokes. She's decided to stay, though the pace is slower, the taxes higher and the salaries generally lower. There are a host of reasons, not least of which is a mild climate, interesting local opportunities and scenery. Which from this height is spectacular: the balcony offers a sweeping view of water and mountains in the distance. Just inside the open glass doors, an easel displays a work in progress by Mueller-Klingspor. Art is a serious hobby; like many software developers, she has a creative streak. In the background, her pugs, Pompidou and Kaiser, romp with the guests and grapple under the couch. Food, wine and conversation flow freely, punctuated by frequent laughter. It's a rare evening of relaxation away from the pressure cooker of Vancouver's software industry.

Industry leaders, politicians and the media worry that BC is losing too many of those highly skilled workers to the U.S.-in a well-publicised speech earlier this year, premier Gordon Campbell cited his New York-based son as an example. Concerns about the "brain drain" were reinforced by a Stats Can survey of information technology occupations in the spring of 2000 that showed vacancy rates in the computer industry exceeding 20 per cent, with 35per cent of those vacancies unfilled for four months or longer. The problem is exacerbated by quit rates of 14 per cent, considered high for workers at that level of training. But the reality of the so-called brain drain is more complicated: while some high-tech workers, such as Campbell's son, head to centres like New York for unique opportunities, others, like Mueller Klingspor, are flocking north to Vancouver for a complex range of reasons.

In fact, when the Laurier Institution, an 11-year-old Vancouver-based think tank, did a web-based survey of 29 companies belonging to the BC Technology Industries Association,(BCTIA), it showed that in 1998, more software workers came to BC than left. The survey, released in November 1999, was sponsored largely by the BC Science Council to look at migration trends in the high-tech industry. It found that of 312 software workers who joined various firms in BC, 54 were from elsewhere in Canada, and 22 were from other countries, including the U.S. In that same year, of 53 workers who left their jobs, only five left for other companies in Canada and 13 for other countries, including the U.S. However, the report also shows that BC gets only 17 per cent of the high-tech immigrants to Canada -compared with 55 per cent for Ontario -and up to 44 per cent of technical and other highly skilled workers leave the province after graduation.

Rosalynne Kunin, executive director of the Laurier Institution, says the figures are incomplete because there is no hard data on who leaves the country for good. "It's a free country, and we don't keep statistics on everyone who crosses the border," says Kunin, noting the biggest losses are among the best educated.

Stuart MacKay, a senior analyst with KPMP for 20 years and one of the authors of a competitiveness analysis for high-tech companies, says that's only normal -"The young turks will go where the action is." But he adds the picture is more complicated than it's often presented. "I've sat in a number of meetings where somebody goes on for 10 minutes about how they lost their best people to the U.S., and then the person next to me whispers in my ear that they've never lost anybody -it's all about how you treat people, and not really about money and tax issues."

Those who do move to high-tech enclaves like Silicon Valley often find their income on paper doesn't buy the lifestyle they had envisioned, he says. "You could be making $100,000 US per year and living in a lousy one-bedroom."

MacKay recently spun off his own consulting firm, called MMK Consulting, from KPMG with a partner from Australia who lives here because of the lifestyle. "Vancouver has a lot to offer people who could life anywhere, and money is just one factor in making those choices." He points to a Stats Canada graph showing inflow and outflow of knowledge workers in Canada between 1986 to 1995, part of a report prepared for the provincial Information, Science and Technology Agency in January 2000.

Called 'Analysis of Competitiveness Issues for High Technology Firms,' the report looks at the costs of running those businesses here and compares them to American cities such as Portland, Minneapolis and San Jose, concluding that Vancouver's software industry is competitive because the costs here are generally lower than in the U.S. In the graph, the outflow line is practically level and the inflow line is on a steep rise, demonstrating that while inflows of high-tech workers have increased dramatically, outflows have not. MacKay says interpreting such statistics can be frustrating. "We looked at that and couldn't agree on what to say about it, so we decided to say nothing."

In spite of the worries, there's no doubt Vancouver is considered something of a hotbed of software developers because it's within a day's travel of Silicon Valley, Redmond and Seattle, and in the same time zone. Although the Laurier Institution report cites after-tax incomes and more opportunities as the main reasons why people leave, for many who come here, Vancouver's charms more than make up for its tax inadequacies.

Take 30-year-old Shane Caraveo, originally from Kansas City and a buddy of Mueller-Klingspor's. He's working for Active State, a Vancouver software company of about 60 employees, including 30 programmers, half of whom are from out of the country. Caraveo says he heard about the job at ActiveState through a friend who suggested he consider it because it meant reconnecting with people working on a programming language Caraveo helped develop. Caraveo prefers working here because of the "neat people" at ActiveState and "cool projects" the company is working on. "I get to work on new stuff, upcoming technologies based on open source web-scripting languages like PHPv and XML. The industry here is relatively small, but they do interesting stuff and before coming here, I had no idea. That's the problem-people just don't know what's going on here." He came the Vancouver to interview for the job, and liked the city. "It's big enough to be interesting, yet not big and dirty, like Miami. It's a lot like New York, with all the different neighbourhoods. But without the pollution and congestion." Caraveo doesn't see a lot of differences between Canadians and Americans-the taxes are higher, but so are his wages. He also likes the lack of racism here; half-Mexican, he had to endure racial and religious prejudice during his high school years. "I went to school in this small town where everybody was Mormon, and I was always the token Mexican," he says.

Caraveo has only been here since January, and Mueller-Klingspor has had five years to carve out a niche, but in many ways the two are typical of high-tech migrants. They're both keeping their American citizenship, but their emotional ties are with family and work. For this new breed of migrant, home is high technology, where political borders are increasingly irrelevant. Mueller says projects often involve working on-line with professionals in other countries, so who's to say if the end product can be labelled a particular nationality.

Take XML, ONE OF the leading free software system that will allow the next generation of web services to be built. Practically all other high-tech companies, including Microsoft, Maketechnologies and ActiveState, are in the process of adopting it as the new standard in the industry. One of the leading architects is Canadian-born Tim Bray, who is so well known, many people think he's American. Still, nobody thinks XML is "Canadian" software. Bray, who was born in Edmonton, grew up in Beirut but returned to Canada to study. Even his family life is international-his wife, Lauren Wood, a prominent figure in the local software industry who hails from New Zealand, is chair of the next international XML conference in December. Wood isn't a programmer; she's a nuclear physicist who's studied in Australia and Germany. She came here because she married Bray, and considers herself lucky to have a paying job. "There are no jobs in my field," she says. Currently director of product technology for Softquad, a Toronto based company that keeps a research office here, she has dual citizenship, and looks forward to raising their son here. Wood says living here has many advantages, although she wishes Canadians weren't so dominated by the US. "Australians have an advantage over Canadians in that they aren't so close to and easily overwhelmed by the U.S culture."

Bray says the couple's decision to live in Vancouver rather than the U.S. has little to do with national identity, summing it up this way: "We don't live in Silicon Valley because SC is an unpleasant place to live." Not to mention obscenely expensive, making even Vancouver's real estate prices look good.

Mueller-Klingspor is helping her partner, Laurence Kolf, a professional caterer from Paris, set up a table with food and booze at the new location Maketechnologies is taking over. Tonight is the first time the entire company of 28 people is having a look at the new space. En masse, they troop down the street to a 6,000-square-foot space that used to be inhabited by Stratford Internet Technologies before it became one of the dot.bombs. It's all massive wood columns supporting 16-foot ceilings, brick walls and glassed in meeting rooms. A young woman sweeps through the empty space, waving what looks like a smouldering torch. "It's for purification, to get rid of all the bad karma," she explains with a grin. The founder and CEO, Christian Cotichini, 30, thinks it can't hurt.

Maketechnologies is a two-year old start-up billing itself as a consulting engineering company that helps businesses deploy Web-based products based on Open Standards software, like XML, Linux and others. Like all high-tech companies the company has some problems with recruiting, and being a start-up doesn't help. "We can't pay the big salaries, and since the meltdown, some people are looking for an unreasonable level of security. We offer joint ownership via stock options," says Cotichini, who only recruits locally. Besides Canadians from all over, seven other nationalities are represented on the payroll. Another American at Maketechnologies is Oran Wiens, the quality assurance manager. He used to work in Seattle, but met and married a Vancouver woman and moved here. He commutes daily to his home in Surrey, but in spite of the long days and high taxes, feels his quality of life is better because he feels safer here. "I like the small town flavour of Vancouver. "

Mueller-Klingspor's move to Vancouver started with a chance visit in 1996 on the way home from an extended holiday in India, where she'd been regrouping after burning out from a job in Massachusetts. She fell in love with the place and, feeling in need of a change, started applying for jobs. ACL Services, a company specialising in high level auditing software, immediately snapped her up. "They were great, got me landed immigrant status and made me feel part of a family, "she says. She worked at ACL for four years, first as a director of research, then as VP for a new product. She says that those years were 'awesome' because she got to work with the founder of the company, professor Hart Will, whom she describes as 'brilliant'. "It was working with him and the fact that the company was willing to take risks that kept me here initially," she says.

She briefly moved on to another company before landing at Maketechnologies earlier this year. As VP for professional services, Mueller-Klingspor is responsible for the consulting and development side of the house. Primarily, she works with customers and coaches her team in solving problems as they arise. She usually starts work at a quarter to eight and doesn't come up for air until 6 or 7 p.m. Today begins with a 45-minute conference call involving Cotichini "on holiday" in Tofino, Maketech's CTO David Green and a client. The rest of the morning is taken up with meetings about human resources needs and settling a philosophical dispute between the quality assurance people and developers, who are demanding more documentation. It's solved by using one of their own technologies; a self-documentation process that automatically provides the needed information at the touch of a button. In between, she's co-ordinating the move to the new building, talking to me and answering her instant messaging e-mails. "I've always been a multi-tasker," she says. Today, she won't get home until 8 p.m., because there's a party at Starbucks just down the road. "I mainline coffee, and they consider me family," she quips.

Although she no longer works "all the time," as she did in her 20s, she still manages to pull off an average 60-plus hours a week. She likes working at a management level and, in spite of the enormous workloads, she describes working in Vancouver as laid-back compared to the intensity of the Massachusetts high-tech industry,. "I know I'm gonna get into trouble for saying this, but people here typically go home at 6 o'clock, and I don't. I know I'm a workaholic, but here I kind of stick out, where back home I would just be one of hundreds slaving away." She quickly adds that the slower pace is a good thing, and one of the reasons she likes working here -eventually, she hopes to earn her MFA from Emily Carr and write a book. "I have learned to balance work and life, and I'm looking forward to actually looking after my health when I'm in my 40s."

As for the health of the high tech industry itself, it is currently the fastest growing industry in BC, and the only one that is constantly looking for new talent. That's good news for a shrinking employment market, and a heads up for young people wondering what to do about their future. There's room to grow, and for those with an appetite for working long hours with people from all over the world in an adrenaline driven industry, there are plenty of opportunities right here in beautiful Vancouver.

©2001 Monika UllmannTopHomeContact ProWord