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Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

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Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#211

Post by pyre »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #187
kmanraj wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF Bay Area isn't that much different from GTA. High housing costs, high cost of living, long commutes. Although the big difference is that the high salary somewhat makes up for it (although whether or not the salary is actually high enough is debatable).

Yep the salaries in the Bay Area are from what I have seen about double what one would get in the GTA. The housing prices are insane, but a nice three bedroom in Toronto that is transit accessible to the downtown is just shy of a million $ now, or over it. And the salaries are far lower. So yeah, a lot of talent will just go south. Or get lucky like me and go work for Google in Waterloo. The actual Toronto employment…

> a nice three bedroom in Toronto that is transit accessible to the downtown is just shy of a million $ now

I own a house that is on two bus routes, and it takes me 45 ~ 50 minutes to get downtown (specifically work which is right downtown), and it's not even close to that price.

[That said, I looked into moving to another neighbourhood with worse transit access that was not that far away, and the real estate agent was selling it with a "crap" house for ~$800K with the idea that you would spend money on top of that to tear the existing house down and rebuild another one on top of it.]

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#212

Post by gabbo »

mabbo wrote: post #89

Odd they didn't mention Amazon Toronto or IBM. Amazon has 300+ SDEs here (myself included), room for 800 developers in the new office that just opened. Not sure how big IBM is, but I've heard it's fairly big operation here. It's not that Amazon is a startup itself (what, 100k+ employees worldwide doesn't count?) but that when you have a big company like that you often see people leave to make startups. Young guys spe…

How is the pay at Amazon Toronto and what are the projects like?

I work in tech (not Amazon) and live in Seattle, and given the reputation I don't think I'd really want to work for them in this city given the other options we have here.

But if they paid top-notch salary and had great work, I'd seriously consider it as an option when moving back to Toronto. The employment options seem quite limited and I have a hard time justifying a move home if I end up working on less interesting technology and make less than half of what I do here. I'm afraid of my only options moving home being a massive pay cut, boring work, a terrible commute, and being priced out of real estate anywhere appealing in the city. :(

RE: IBM, if I recall most/all of their engineering is in Markham, they don't treat their employees particularly well, and the pay is so-so (though maybe market rates given Toronto).

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#213

Post by jgh »

AlexC04 wrote: post #59
MichaelRenor wrote: post #43

Ultimately if Toronto wants to be the best they will pay the best (adjusted for cost of living). They're best bet is that the bay cost of living becomes so unbearable that they can be competitive in take-home dollars. As it is, the money for developers is in the bay by a huge margin.

Yeah, the pay here in Toronto is much lower, even when you account for cost of living vs. San Fran. One consideration that offsets that is medical insurance. If your health care is not fully covered by your employer. I ran some numbers once and the "rent difference" was roughly $3k (typical 1 - 2 bedroom apartment at $4k vs. The roughly $1k I spend) and the platinum medical looking like roughly $500/mo Add in a car,…

wait wait wait -- you're able to find a decent apartment for $1k in Toronto? I was there and lived in a shithole for $1200 and that was 6 years ago.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#214

Post by pyre »

jchiu1106 wrote: post #203
treve wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of surprised that this seems to be the sentiment. I rather live in a place where I make less, but the wealth is better distributed. To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. If Toronto is to be the next Bay Area, and I have to walk over the homeless to get to work, I'm out of here.

Have you lived in Toronto? Houses in the city average over 1M CAD and there are tons of vagrants on the street.

I've lived in Toronto and Portland (Oregon). Portland had more vagrants than I've experienced in Toronto. I'm sure the absolute number is probably higher, but the distribution doesn't seem the same. From what I hear, SF also has a large problem with vagrants / homeless. I'm not sure that "move to SF" is the solution to the "I don't want to be around these vagrants" problem.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#215

Post by gabbo »

chawco wrote: post #97
vigilant wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do love Canada, but New York City has nearly all of those same positives which you list (other than universal health care), to an even greater extent. And you can get bay-area level salaries there (as opposed to Toronto, where your salary is half what it would be in the bay area)

I spent a good deal of time in New York when I was younger -- in Manhattan working for an investment bank in technology. I didn't really explore the other boroughs much, but I did stay in the city for an extended period of time (~6 months in one go). I've also spent a good deal of time in the bay area (San Francisco), so the point where I spent more than half of my time there as opposed to here in Toronto. All of tha…

How did you manage to afford a 3 bedroom house 3km from the financial district in Toronto on an engineer's salary? Did you buy a long time ago?

I'm incredibly envious because I can't imagine affording that kind of real estate on a Toronto developer's salary without making some serious retirement savings/lifestyle sacrifices.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#217

Post by sib »

RBO2 wrote: post #98
minwcnt5 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

REALLY strange choice of data point for Toronto -- it uses a much smaller land area than for the US cities. Greater Toronto Area - 7,124 km^2 Chicago Metro Area - 28,120 km^2 Houston Metro Area - 26,061 km^2 Dallas-Fort Worth - 24,059 km^2 Washington Metro - 14,412 km^2 Philadelphia Metro - 13,256 km^2 A much more apples-to-apples comparison would be the Golden Horseshoe (7.005 million / 10,097 km^2), or Greater Gold…

These area are huge. Switzerland is 41,285 km^2, Belgium is 30,528 km^2, The Netherlands is 41,543 km^2.

Try the Los Angeles metro area - 87,490 km^2 (and 18.7m people)...

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#218

Post by treve »

jchiu1106 wrote: post #203
treve wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kind of surprised that this seems to be the sentiment. I rather live in a place where I make less, but the wealth is better distributed. To me a high standard of living is not just a good salary, but also good living conditions of those around me. If Toronto is to be the next Bay Area, and I have to walk over the homeless to get to work, I'm out of here.

Have you lived in Toronto? Houses in the city average over 1M CAD and there are tons of vagrants on the street.

I currently live in Toronto, but I didn't buy a house. My monthly expenses would be nearly 30% higher for a morgage and condo fees for the place I'm renting now. I rather invest that in a business.

As for people living on the street. According to wikipedia the estimated homeless population in San Fransisco is between 7000 and 10000. The estimated number in Toronto is 5,253 (source: Toronto.ca), but since Toronto has 3.5 times the population, this means that the homeless population is at least 5 times bigger.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#219

Post by sib »

James001 wrote: post #150
potatolicious wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I'm in NYC, having lived also in Toronto and SF before. No way I'd choose Toronto over NYC - larger tech scene (both BigCo and startups), diverse economy, working transit, huge cultural hub (many times greater than Toronto), and tremendous food scene (again, many times greater than TO). Having recently taken a poke around the Toronto tech market, "half" salary in Toronto is being generous. Where I'm at right no…

I doubt New York has a better food scene than Toronto

I don't have the data to measure this definitively across all price points, but as for the high end, New York City has 76 Michelin Star restaurants for 2016, while Toronto has 5.

Re: Toronto is poised to become a producer of tech startups

#220

Post by treve »

pyre wrote: post #214
jchiu1106 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you lived in Toronto? Houses in the city average over 1M CAD and there are tons of vagrants on the street.

I've lived in Toronto and Portland (Oregon). Portland had more vagrants than I've experienced in Toronto. I'm sure the absolute number is probably higher, but the distribution doesn't seem the same. From what I hear, SF also has a large problem with vagrants / homeless. I'm not sure that "move to SF" is the solution to the "I don't want to be around these vagrants" problem.

Just making sure, my point was not "I don't want to be around these people". My point was that I don't want to partake in a system which such a big income-gap.

In the Netherlands (where I come from) the average saleries for programmers are even lower, but in return you get a pretty great social system and a much saner work/life balance.

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