Casually Hardcore devlog

How right is Albert Lai? Very.

February 4th, 2008

The major problem with Canadian business is not the lack of actual production talent: programmers, artists, fill-in scrubs… but the lack of competent management. Albert Lai summarizes the problem in a few paragraphs.

“Despite the technical talent that we have in Toronto, do we have a disproportion amount of tech-innovation and tech-wealth because of (a) economic factors (i.e. lack of capital, tax structure); (b) cultural factors (i.e. lack of ambitions or role models to inspire success); or (c) talent/experiential factors (i.e. lack of serial entrepreneurs, lack of mentors, lack of deep tech-marketing and tech-sales talent).”

(c) is the most important one. I’ve worked for many companies in varying stages of maturity and I’ve personally found US/British management far superior to Canadian ones. The lack of experience and talent at the management level in Canada is appalling. It’s beyond awful. And I’m part of the problem being a first time entrepreneur. Thankfully, I’ve received some mentorship courtesy of Telefilm, but it’s a huge learning process that could have been short-circuited with some hands-on management experience in the game business first.

Funny thing is… the best Canadian companies I’ve worked for have American managers. Still, Lai overrates Waterloo and UofT graduates. Those two Canadian universities are good, but not the same calibre as Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Princeton, CalTech… maybe Berkeley, UCLA, etc.

Entry Filed under: Game Development