Recenty Research in Motion has announced they are coming to Nova Scotia, with 1200 tech support jobs. This is great news for the high tech industry here in Nova Scotia.
I notice RIM has posted some Halifax jobs on Workopolis. I subscribe to Monster and Workopolis alerts, even though I'm not looking to switch jobs. I just like to know what's going on. People in tech seem to be pretty gossipy about what companies are doing well or poorly, and what the hot skills are. If you just listen to the chatter around your cubicle you can pick up a lot.
The tech scene in Halifax has been very weak the last few years. The period of 2001-2003 was very tough, with hardly any jobs posted. I think there were more New Brunswick tech jobs posted in the Saturday Chronicle Herald than Halifax jobs. A lot of people who had jobs in high tech had to move on to other industries. A lot of new grads weren't able to break into tech during this time and had to find work elsewhere. I was fortunate myself to be able to stay employed the whole time.
Things stabilized through 2004-2005. Hopefully it will continue to improve through 2006 and beyond. It's strange why it was so tough in high tech in Halifax the last few years. Like everywhere, we grew in the late 90s. However we didn't have a huge Internet startup scene so the bust itself didn't really cause any spectacular job losses.
It's interesting that RIM will be locating in Burnside park. In the early 2000s there was a move to establish Bayers Lake park as a tech "cluster". Although xwave and Core Networks moved there, few others did and the cluster didn't get off the ground. The RIM decision pretty much kills any hopes for a cluster in Bayers Lake.
There is a huge cluster of furniture stores in Bayers Lake though. I understand a top big ticket item salesman can pull down very good compensation. That's not quite the cluster the city planners hoped for, but still a good living for a fair number of people.
The thing about the other clusters in Canada like Waterloo, Ottawa and Vancouver is they have a strong hardware presence as well as a big software scene. For whatever reason you need a big hardware presence to have a tech cluster in Canada. Software alone just won't do it.
