How AI changes the future of work with VanHack CEO Ilya Brotzky

When Ilya Brotzky was 25, he got let go from his job in Brazil, moved back in with his parents in Vancouver, and was pretty much broke.

He started going to tech meetups looking for work. At one of them, a guy asked him if he was a software engineer. Ilya said no. The guy said "okay," turned around and walked away.

"I'm just a lowly sales guy."

That conversation showed him how badly Vancouver needed software talent. He also knew a lot of developers in Brazil who wanted to move to Canada. So he put up a landing page in Portuguese, shared it in Facebook groups, and had 100 people sign up within two days. That became VanHack.

Today, Ilya is the founder and CEO of VanHack, which helps engineers from all over the world get hired by tech companies in North America. His team has made 50,000 introductions and helped 2,300 engineers get hired.

We joined him in Vancouver to learn about the future of work, how Canada can win the war for tech talent, and what AI means for the job market.

This is what we learned. If you want to watch or listen to the full version, you can find it on YouTube or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

AI and the job market

The common story right now is that AI is taking jobs. Ilya disagrees, and he has the hiring data to back it up.

"I think the whole AI taking our jobs narrative is completely false. I don't think, I know. I see it in the data."

His explanation starts with interest rates. At the end of 2022, rates went up and the tech industry went through a huge wave of layoffs. Ilya calls what followed a nuclear winter that lasted through 2023 and most of 2024. At the end of 2024, hiring started to pick up again, around the same time companies started adopting AI.

What changed is how companies hire. After COVID, companies hired as many engineers as they could and threw them at problems. Now each engineer can do much more with AI, so the value of adding one more engineer is going up. Ilya calls it smart hiring.

The job itself is also changing. Ilya spent a day working out of a customer's office in the Bay Area, sitting next to an engineer they had hired from Calgary through VanHack. She spent the whole day reviewing code written by AI, testing it and prompting it. Ilya describes the software engineer of today as a "QA software architect."

Someone still needs to know whether the AI is doing a good job. As Ilya puts it, nobody wants buggy code. He points out that jobs have always evolved, and that whole categories of work, like being a YouTuber, didn't exist ten years ago.

Why Canada got harder to move to

Ilya has spent ten years helping engineers move to Canada. He says that over the last few years, both the willingness and the ability of people to move here have declined.

He points to the cost of living and to policy. In his view, skilled and unskilled immigrants got put in the same bucket when the backlash against immigration started.

He walked us through the rules he sees slowing down Canadian companies that want to hire senior engineers from abroad. One is the Labour Market Benefit Plan, which he describes as "almost like a make work project where companies have to do things to benefit the local labor market." Another is a profit test. Ilya says companies are now being asked to show a profit before they can sponsor a senior hire, which works against startups.

"Companies tend to not be profitable on purpose, especially startups, to get investment."

Other countries are competing hard for the same people. Ilya pointed to the Netherlands, Germany and Ireland, and to Finland's program that flies senior engineers in for a week, which he calls "Helsinki as a service."

What Canada should do

We asked Ilya what he would change first. His answer was to remove the Labour Market Benefit Plan and the bank letter requirement, and go back to how things worked before COVID, when processing times were good.

If he could add one thing, it would be a proper digital nomad visa. Set the salary bar high, at $150,000, and give people a three-year work permit with a path to permanent residency. Many engineers who moved here in the last few years are stuck on work permits with no clear path to PR, which is the same problem the US has with H-1B holders.

He sees these visas as incremental growth for the economy.

"If we bring in 10,000 people and making $100,000 salary a year, that's a billion dollars in GDP that's added to our economy just from 10,000 people."

There is also an opening with the US. Ilya argues that American companies don't bring their remote engineers onshore because there is no straightforward path for them to move to the US, and that was true even before the $100,000 fee on H-1B visas. Until that changes, Canada has a huge opportunity to bring that talent here instead. Some of those people may go on to start businesses and hire Canadians.

Building VanHack

VanHack started as an English school for developers. Ilya noticed that the developers he spoke with were strong coders who struggled with spoken English and interview questions like "tell me about yourself." The first payment the company ever received was $45 from someone who wanted his resume corrected.

The business changed at a career fair. Josh from Eastside Games asked Ilya how much it would cost to hire a Unity developer through him. Ilya had no idea, so he came up with a number on the spot: $500. Eastside Games said yes and became VanHack's first customer. When VanHack later made its first hire at a market-rate fee, that one introduction brought in more revenue than a full month of the English school.

We asked what he would tell his 25-year-old self. First, save more money. Second, be careful who you hire.

"In the early days of VanHack, I was like, hey, do you have a pulse? Like you're hired."

He admits it's ironic coming from a recruiting company. His advice now is to hire slowly and fire quickly. "It's a cliche because it's true."

Canada in five years

To close, we asked Ilya for his best case for Canada.

"I think we could be like the Switzerland or Norway of North America."

Canada has a relatively small population, an enormous landmass and incredible natural resources. Ilya keeps coming back to energy. Electricity is the biggest bottleneck for innovation and compute right now, and he asks why Canada can't be the world's leading producer and exporter of energy. Add lower taxes, more housing, and some of the world's best tech talent and AI researchers, and you get Canadian-owned companies serving the world's market.

He isn't sure we'll get there. But he's optimistic that we have the potential.

In the meantime, listen to the full episode on any platform where you get your podcasts.

If you missed the first three episodes of Building The North with Build Canada CEO Lucy Hargreaves, Venn Co-Founder Ahmed Shafik, and Baylis Medical Co-Founder Frank Baylis, you can catch up now on any of our platforms.