Years ago I bought some really nice brushless motors and was surprised to see they were made in Poland. I had no idea they were manufacturers of things like that.
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.
As A Finn I’d like to see Canada figure out that “oh shit we could be a world superpower with all the smarts and natural resources we have” and start trading culture and goods with Nordic countries. We would rule!
Most of the AI scientists powering the current AI revolution (or apocalypse) are Canadian.
If your banking system is conservative and you don’t have a venture capital backed risk taking infrastructure - it’s systemic issue. It is the same problem with Europe.
Britain, well… I’ll take Scotland, they’re sensible. But rest of you, we can’t just look what you are doing to yourself. Please Britain, get some help.
I was referring to how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy and destroy key British institutions, but Finland has a goverment that does exactly the same, so we do kinda need help as sell. Maybe we should go to some 12-step-program together.
(PS. Finnish suicide rate has fallen through the 2000’s from 1200 per year to about 750)
> how you have selected post-2008 government after another to completely tank the economy
Well we had a choice between 2 governments... Who are basically the same. Even if a radical government is elected in a couple of years, the deep state will essentially stop them from stepping outside the line which has already been chosen for us.
What I'm saying is that we, the British people, do not live in a democracy. So don't blame me :)
There is a saying I've heard: "Silicon Valley is powered by Waterloo Grads"
The problem with Canadian innovation is that our best and brightest tend to complete their education in Canada, then emigrate to the US. The brain drain is a real issue for us.
One of the "positives" of Trump's hostilities towards Canada is that perhaps this would slow the brain drain for the current generation.
I have to admit, I feel the same envy about industry and economic growth.
But there also seem to be many explanations of why Canada continually fails to attract large cap business other than resource extraction. The cost of living / skilled worker wages / tax structure / high levels of regulation means that if you have large cap, you could just build your factory somewhere else and make more money.
We've got golden handcuffs in many ways.
Still, that 'envy' or ambition is what keeps me coming back to HN, I think it is still possible to start something successful and innovative in this country.
Absolutely. For a lot of my career I worked from west coast Canada for US companies in California. After a few years of earning $80k CAD and working as hard as anyone I'd meet at conferences in the USA, I realized I was being an idiot. It was transformative. I only know a couple people personally in software here who work for Canadian companies apart from where I work.
I earned ~2–3x more than I do now working for a Canadian company, doing the best work of my career. I'm so unimportant here, they would readily discard me and laugh if I asked for a raise. This is Canada. But, I like this place, the people, and the work. I think it's important work. I'm at a stage where I prefer that over cash.
I don't think many of my peers feel the same. There's a sense that there's no point in working for Canadian companies if you don't have to. On balance they perform worse, pay less, have less interesting opportunities, and work you as hard as any American counterpart would.
Some anecdata: in the area I'm from in the northeastern US which has a large number of manufacturing/tool & die companies of all sizes, and with a large Polish diaspora, 80% of the most skilled machinists are Polish (or 2nd or 3rd gen descendants), at least that was the case when I was working with these business between 20-30 years ago. Many of the best engineers at these business are Polish as well.
You're describing something that some Canadians did (and very few still do), but this is not reflective of the vast majority of us. For most Canadians, especially as our economy declines, our extremely expensive homes are more like death sentences for our financial futures. We're not going to profit off of these things—ever—unless decades-long trends rapidly begin to reverse rather than accelerate.
The point is that capital holders decided doing risky things isn't worth it, so they invested in unproductive low-risk assets, then the government juiced the immigration rate, said assets rose, capital holders are making off like bandits leaving Canadians behind in a stagnant economy holding the proverbial bag...
Fact is, only ~25% of Canadians are net tax payers. The rest work for a government, are unemployed, disabled, retired, or receive more funding from the government than they put in. So yeah, it's the boomers, the government workers, unemployed, disabled, etc...
The status quo is what Canadians want. It's why anyone with ambition (ie. wants to work and/or be an entrepreneur) leaves.
It's been a while and I can't recall the other big one. I know some engineers from one of them went on to work for Clone Robotics, which seems to be doing interesting stuff with other types of actuators.
Rockwell Automation has a facility in Katowice, Silesia which was/is a major centre of coal mining and locomotive manufacturing since the 1800s when it was part of Prussia, and continuing through the Polish Republic, WW2 era and beyond.
I interviewed there in 2012. Great people and culture, but salary was shite. Kinda regret, though, from all companies I interviewed, they suit my area of interest and experience the most.
Not op, but I bought quite some noo.ma home furniture half a year ago. Not sure if they manufacture it all in Poland, but the design is refreshing, at least.
Not arguing for this one way or another, but as countries become more economically developed, they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain (wish I could find the research article with all the data - I remember reading it as part of a post arguing that Trump's attempts to "bring back manufacturing jobs to the US" was doomed to fail)
So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs (i.e. people make less money because the economy is less developed), not because Canada doesn't know how to make them.
Again, I'm not saying this is a good or bad thing, and I think we've certainly started to see problems as the manufacturing know-how of advanced countries deteriorates as they outsource much of their manufacturing to lower cost locales. But having an economy with a lower percentage of economic activity from manufacturing isn't some sort of failure, as it just means that economy has moved into more profitable activities.
> So, the reason you can buy motors and robotics components from Poland and not Canada is because Poland has lower costs
I hear you, and I partially agree. What I worry is that this made more sense ten or twenty years ago, though.
Living in Canada for 40 years, I'm no longer confident that we can continue using economic levers to allow ourselves to output less and buy more from poorer countries. We're stagnating, and the numbers are clear and directional.
We are not a very productive country compared to a younger version of ourselves, and our productivity only falls. Our most recent GDP increases belie population increases that outstripped wealth creation, leading to decreases in GDP per capita. We're growing and yet doing less.
At this rate we will need to be more resourceful, and our relative wages will continue to fall. We should be prepared and capable in all manners of wealth creation, industrial and otherwise.
Our government has stated it will do things like focus on tax competitiveness, internal trade barriers, and AI investment. To me this is depressing as hell. It's nowhere near the fighting spirit we need to make real progress. And frankly, what is AI investment? What the hell is Canada going to do with AI? We have some decent schools and interesting companies, but our government has no business speaking about the matter as an economic opportunity. We may lead the G7 in terms of research outputs here, but our spending plans on AI-related infrastructure and policy are a rounding error on singular US tech firms' balance sheets. We need to be serious. The gap between rhetoric and realistic outcomes is so absurd as to seem irresponsible.
Canadians are getting poorer quickly and at this rate we will eventually have those lower costs, but no trajectory leading us to developing better industrial and high tech manufacturing. We should have been finding ways to leverage our higher cost labour force for advanced manufacturing 20–30 years ago. Now we will have to leverage our middle-cost labour for barely-competitive products in industries with far more competition.
So I agree completely 15–25 years ago, but today I believe Canada's not doing so well, those costs will collapse, and we're going to wish we got ahead of this.
Internal trade barriers are a real problem, Canada is a country with a small population and vast resource wealth, so its odd that there are barriers between provinces.
FWIW, my cousin lives in Canada and feels similarly to you. He structured his business deliberately around maximizing his exposure to the U.S. economy and minimizing his exposure to the Canadian economy. He tries to work for American clients, getting paid in American dollars.
> they invariably move off of manufacturing and more into services because it's a higher value part of the economic food chain
What part of the economic food chain are government employees?
> Most Canadian employment growth is now reliant on the public sector. Public sector employment climbed 0.9% (+41k jobs) to 4.45 million in July. Annual growth shows 4.8% (+205k) jobs added, a rate 8x greater than private sector growth. Canada’s now so dependent on public sector growth that government workers represent 1 in 4 employed workers.[1]
I think there's an even more salient issue. Manufacturing is the backbone of any economy. When you outsource it, you end up creating a dependency on a nation that is ostensibly less developed. I say ostensibly because what does "less developed" even mean when the other country can not only do fine without you, but now also has the power to destroy your economy if they wanted to?
Later I bought even nicer motors, meant to provide exceptional control and feedback for tactile/haptic behaviours, and they were from Poland too.
Then I got to work on a robotic arm which contained a bunch of components from Poland. At this point it was clear to me that it wasn’t coincidence.
Finally, I built a drone with my kids and again, the motors are Polish. And they’re excellent.
They went from being a place I would only expect to encounter cultural food items from to a place that entered a high tech supply chain which seems to produce high enough quality components that I see them without seeking them out.
As a Canadian it made me very envious. We should be able to do this. I’ve seen a handful of Canadian motors in my life, and they were all blower motors a long time ago. Our ability to build cutting edge technology seems to be so limited as to be virtually irrelevant in most cases.