Canada forgot to plan for its future by leaning on oil and the loonie

It seems like the effect of the low dollar is already helping the tech sectors. Companies like Shopify make their money in USD while salaries are a bargain. American companies like Amazon are expanding their offices in Toronto and Vancouver. The brain drain is real though. I feel like there's a problem when police officers make more than most software engineers.

Agreed on the brain drain. Toronto is a major (and expensive) world city. From talking with friends, 100K (Canadian, that's 70K US) is the ceiling for intermediate to senior developers. Junior devs make a lot less ... 50-60K (that's 35 to 42K US)!

That said, free healthcare counts for a lot. Also, as a dev in a Canadian tech company, you are probably not going to see as much stress and volatility as your average Silicon Valley company.

The high property prices are messing up lives of young people who don't have rich parents. In my friend circle, I can see it as a key source of strife among married couples. Buying a house ties you to a city .. even if you get a better offer some place else. I don't think real-estate is being recognized as the beast it is. The last Bank of Canada rate decrease seemed only about oil prices and oblivious to the flames in YVR and YYZ housing.

Sigh ... what a mess :(

We had a gov't for 10 years full of "Calgary-school" (Canada's right-wing ultra free market economic ideologues coming out of the University of Calgary econ/poli-sci program). They were overwhelmingly driven by an oil and gas agenda. From the gov't down to mutual fund investors, everyone was treating our economy like a one-trick pony, all oil and gas.

If you listened to people talk, Alberta's oil sector was supporting the whole economy. Snarky message board comments from people from out west (where I'm from originally, BTW) making comments about Ontario being a "have-not" province being propped up by the superior entrepreneurial hard-working western oil sector.

Meanwhile through all of this as a % of GDP, exports in manufacturing were _still_ triple those of oil and gas. Ontario's beleaguered auto-sector was still the primary export in the country. Followed by agriculture and other sectors.

I said it at the time, and now it is obvious. They were lying through ideological teeth, and telling a story to the country about resource driven prosperity which was factually incorrect. And it has led to our country as a whole inheriting many of the problems Alberta as a province has been plagued with for decades: highly cyclical, with a political culture verging on corrupt, and environmentally dirty dirty dirty.

And I'm afraid the new gov't is only half-heartedly interested in remedying any of this.

Ontario and Quebec could be the "Germany of North America"; the deliberate assassination of our manufacturing and engineering sectors by everyone from federal gov't officials to fund managers has been disgusting. We have a heavy infrastructure debt, are saddled by decades of ideologically-driven mismanagement, and an ineptitude at actually getting anything done.

Having worked in Toronto's tech scene for almost two decades I just have a big 'meh' response to it.

I now work at Google in Kitchener, and commute from a hobby farm near Hamilton. Quality of life is outstanding. I dread ever having to work in Toronto proper again.

The startup scene in Toronto is a clique. The quality of management talent is sad. After working as employee #4 in a Toronto startup, I jumped ship to work for a late stage startup HQ'd in NYC and the contrast in their management skills and treatment of employees was night and day. Working at a 'hip' company in Toronto they expect you to feel blessed and to take intense sacrifice on their behalf just because you have the privilege of working for something that isn't a bank or insurance company. Meanwhile compensation lags significantly behind what you'd get elsewhere in NA.

And then the rest of the non-startup scene in Toronto is primarily large financial companies, and the work is soul crushingly boring.

I've been saying this to my circle of friends and family for years. The stark contrast between Toronto and Silicon Valley is mind-numbing. And the short-sightedness of our politicians and society is infuriating. I cannot understand why people think it's ok to rely on banks, resource companies, and manufacturing to hold up our economy. We need to invest in growth sectors. It may not create a ton of jobs immediately, but the potential payoff could save us. If you're not growing, you're dying.

I'm reaching the point where I need to hire developers soon. I'm worried about what kind of talent I'll be able to find, simply because most people worth their salt are already employed, or work in the Bay.

Remote is an option of course, but it adds a lot of complexity that most early-stage startups can't manage well.

I'm seriously considering going back to SV.