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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

#251

Post by amscanne »

rapind wrote: post #131
amscanne wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago. Ugh, this is a pet peeve of mine. The city limits are drawn in such a way that Toronto _technically_ edges out Chicago. Torontonians seem to feel this is a meaningful point of pride. Get real. The metro Toronto…

Huh? Get real? The 10 million "Greater Chicago Area" you're referring to is 10,857 miles. The 6 million Toronto area you're referring to is only 2,751 miles. That's almost 4 times the size but only 1.6 times the population. I think the sizes are in reality pretty close and figuring out which is bigger seems very nuanced depending on where you draw the lines. That being said I'll go along with you and say Chicago is p…

You can include the entire "extended" golden horseshoe area (all the way to K/W and Peterborough) and you've still got only 8.7 million people in 12,185 square miles [1]. By the way, I was already using the golden horseshoe area already (Hamilton, etc.) since I used _seven_ million, not _six_.

There are simply more people in the Chicago area. By a decent margin. There's nothing wrong with that. I think this is a thing for Torontonians because of the perpetual inferiority complex we Canadians [2] have with respect to the U.S. :)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Horseshoe

[2] I am from Toronto, so it's weird to accuse me of being prideful? I'm guessing you think I'm somehow "defending" Chicago? My point is that having more city in your city is nothing to be proud (or ashamed) about.

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

#253

Post by amscanne »

stuxnet79 wrote: post #117
amscanne wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also nitpick - we are the fourth most populous city in North America, and only Mexico City, New York and Los Angeles have a larger population. As of mid last year, Toronto contains more people than Chicago. Ugh, this is a pet peeve of mine. The city limits are drawn in such a way that Toronto _technically_ edges out Chicago. Torontonians seem to feel this is a meaningful point of pride. Get real. The metro Toronto…

Toronto downtown absorbed North York, Etobicoke and Scarborough in the late 90s. It is not until last year that our population edged out Chicago, so whatever the reason for the amalgamation it definitely wasn't because we wanted to beat Chicago out in a pissing contest. However, you want to interpret the data, the truth is that the article writer did not do their homework.

Yes, the author committed another pet peeve of mine: omitting Mexico City from the list of largest cities in North America. Particularly stupid, given that it is the largest!

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

#254

Post by flamedoge »

gabbo wrote: post #212
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 t…

yea.. Toronto is just not competitive at all compared to other "scenes"

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

#255

Post by potatolicious »

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,…

> "I'm not convinced that taking a San Fran gig would necessarily feel like streets paved with gold and scooping up baskets of money"

It won't necessarily, but it may - one important distinction between the US tech hubs like SV or NYC is that while they offer a higher median salary, they top end of the envelope goes way, way higher than it does anywhere in Canada.

There is a class of jobs/positions that straight up do not exist in Canada where large numbers of engineers can make $400-500k, or even more.

An evaluation of whether or not it's worth moving needs to consider where you are in the market. If you're making $70k in Toronto right now and some company in the Bay Area is offering $100k, that's probably a tough deal. On the other hand, if you qualify for someone of the higher-end positions in the Bay Area, you can go from making $90k in Toronto to making $400k in the Valley. That's a pretty slam dunk deal.

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

#256

Post by mhkhung »

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…

Detached house is over 1M in Toronto. But there are plenty of semis and townhouses that are way less (700K?) and condos walkable to downtown for half of that.

Amazon is in a class-A tower right next to the banks and they cannot hire enough.

And ALL the good engineers I know have good jobs in Toronto or Waterloo. But there are plenty of bad ones that wouldn't pass a phone screen.

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

#257

Post by ianpenney »

The deafening silence of polite Canadians up in here. I love it in Toronto. YC:HN has taught me a lot so I hope you allow me to share the reasons why Toronto is a phenomenal city in which to be a Hacker.

I've been a sysadmin for 16 years. My experience, is that Toronto is extremely liberal and militantly tolerant. A bigoted insult upon someone on public transit or in the streets will not go without being criticized by the public. Even if you cast it in french.

We are proud of welcoming and integrating people.

https://nulogy.com/who-we-are/careers/ - Here are my company's core values. I think they're uniquely Canadian, in a way. Empathy is pretty much #1. Our HQ is downtown. I've never been happier and further from burnout as the ops manager at this gig.

Check out our local music scene https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IWZWo6IByM#t=53m44s techno https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPZvNqNFaU8#t=50s hip hop https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uev2J_cBHjQ rock

Lots of people want to live here, evident by rising rents :(.

The OP highlights an up and coming tech sector.

Kitchener-Waterloo (KW)... Yeah... The University of Waterloo has a great funnel system for cooperative intern students in Ontario. They put a lot of effort towards a kind of Mittelstand model. I'm nonplussed. Better self taught hackers are drawn to the urban core after failing out of post secondary.

RIM was a thing, once. Now it's a joke. I heard someone throw shade about RIM's big brother nature the other day.

I've coded puppet & chef for over 200+ startups. Startups are huge here and the culture is very social and enjoyable! Meetups are big! I regularly run into other new hackers in unrelated social settings. It's fun that way.

Uber is big. Dispensaries are big. Nightclubs are great. You can get food of any origin.

Cycling is huge here. Incorporating cycling into your transportation means living downtown is affordable, if you plan.

OH! Speaking of incorporating, in a business sense, it's trivial. You can do it in 30 minutes at city hall.

Toronto, in my experience, has been the most exciting, happy and loving city to call home. I'm truly in love with this city. It's safe, fun and full of opportunity. I love walking down the street and hearing eighteen different languages in one hour. I love seeing any world famous artists who would drop by Canada.

Anybody who's seriously interested in the Toronto scene should drop by http://techmasters.chat/ and talk to us. The tech scene is on fire here! It's so exciting! ...and very welcoming!

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

#258

Post by edwinnathaniel »

lcc wrote: post #80

Not if Toronto keeps hemorrhaging talent. I graduated from the University of Toronto last year and can only name 2 of my classmates who are actually working in Toronto now. The rest are in SF, Seattle, and NYC - including many people who have family in Toronto, like me. All of my friends who were seriously working on a startup have moved it to the Bay Area. Many of us would love to move back to Toronto 'eventually',…

Is the ratio of compensation really 2-3x?

One datapoint: Senior Dev (say Level 1 Senior) base pay is $100k. So are you saying SF will pay this person at least $200k?

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

#259

Post by Apocryphon »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #172
lewisl9029 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.

Even worse than the salary is the attitude at Toronto area startups. Elitist "you-should-feel-so-lucky-you're-at-a-startup-now-work-for-peanuts"... Leaving the Toronto ad-tech startup I was at to work (remote) for a NYC ad-tech startup (well, recent startup and growing) was the best thing that ever happened to me. Got lucky to work for the best founders and senior management I have ever had in my career.

Well, sounds like that got that part of Silicon Valley right.

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

#260

Post by guyzero »

overcast wrote: post #233
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #180

I almost spat my glass of wine out my nose when I read "Delightfully efficient transport" The GTA has some of the worst sprawl and traffic problems in North America, and its transit system has been neglected since the 80s and the politicians are only starting to get their heads out of their asses on this in the last few years.

Seriously, the 401 is horrific. I've spent a great deal of time in all of the major Canadian cities(offices), and the traffic situation is the same. I don't know what the deal is with Canada, but they REALLY need to clean up their transit.

The Bay Area has no place to criticize anyplace else for bad transit infrastructure. Toronto's infrastructure has issues, but it beats most US cities.
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