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Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

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Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#151

Post by devopsforlyfe »

linkregister wrote: post #73
kareemm wrote: post #8

Think Canadian salaries don't compete with US companies? Guess what happens when supply increases? Most other professionals (doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc) throttle supply through things like certification, but for some reason developers can't / don't want to get their act together to do the same. Even worse, they (we) welcome more supply! The mind boggles. And I say this as a Canadian employer who would certain…

I don't think that the market would care about professionally-certified coders. Accountants need to adhere to local and federal laws for GAAP accounting. Lawyers need to be familiar with local laws where they practice, and courts are gatekeepers to the practice of law. Doctors' specialization is protected by law for safety and liability purposes. Paralegals and specialized software is a market response to the bottlen…

> Doctors' specialization is protected by law for safety and liability purposes.

Yet programmers writing embedded software for medical devices are not regulated for safety and reliability purposes, as far as I know. Why is that?

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#152

Post by angerbot »

avaer wrote: post #60

The reason engineer salaries in Canada are low, especially for startups, isn't that companies are cheap. It's that there is no funding or support network for growing companies -- nothing compared to the valley. In my experience seed funding in Canada doesn't mean "this idea looks like it's on a promising growth trajectory, here's 100K for a bit of equity to see what we can make of it". Instead it means "show us $500K…

> And the companies that do well and grow: they just move to the valley, because they generally can, and they have every reason to.

Slack is a perfect example of this. They still have a small office down the street from me here in Vancouver, but they're based out of SF now. I can totally see why given the access to capital and talent in SF vs Van.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#153

Post by acchow »

goodcanadian wrote: post #132
legolas2412 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, could you share the rough numbers? I'm shocked to hear this. Even In India Google/MSFT pay atleast 25k$ annually to new hires (not including stocks), Purchasing power wise that is around 100k$, right where the US salaries are. US interns get paid around 6-8k a month, let's be generous and say 9k$. Are you saying that as a full time dev you could only earn 3k$ a month? Looks like you could earn more as a garbage…

I am not the person you replied to, but US$3000 is about CA$4000 or CA$48000 per year. For a junior software development position, that does seem to be in the ballpark of what gets offered in Canada.

This sounds too low. Everything has gone up in the past couple years - salaries, cost of housing, cost of groceries, restaurant bills.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#154

Post by geodel »

bogomipz wrote: post #81
BrainInAJar wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Canadian tech worker in SF... Nope. I tripled my salary coming down here even in just nominal terms (ie, before you factor in the exchange rate that eats 25% of your salary.) I hate SF/SiValley. I would love nothing more than to go home, but I'm not about to take a paycut that's measured in multiples of the median Canadian salary.

>"I hate SF/SiValley. I would love nothing more than to go home, but I'm not about to take a paycut that's measured in multiples of the median Canadian salary." This is an honest question - is it worth living somewhere you "hate" for increased pay? Why not take less money and live in place that would make you happy?

> Why not take less money and live in place that would make you happy?

At that point one starts hating low pay and need to move somewhere with high pay if possible.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#155

Post by ojbyrne »

EternalData wrote: post #19

For those people who are talking about salaries in Canada versus salaries in the United States -- I don't have a dog to pick in the fight, but I think cost of living is a really important consideration when you're looking to evaluate compensation differences. Some people have put together prices and it came out that Toronto is about 31% cheaper to live in than SF. ( https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/compariso…

That seems to say beer & wine are cheaper in Canada, which is ludicrously wrong, to the point where I question the methodology.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#156

Post by geodel »

ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #14

Not sure how exactly they are planning on "luring American tech workers" when they are paying much less on average, taxes are higher and real estate prices in large cities where these jobs are typically at are pretty insane compared to most of the US.

They can get lot of tech workers who are third world natives. The workers will be still lot better off in Canada as compared to going back to India/China or some such in case of immigration troubles.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#157

Post by ghaff »

sqeaky wrote: post #126
kmicklas wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, wtf? You're advocating for occupational licensing in tech?

Many have have advocate for such and it is not entirely crazy. I don't agree with it, but it is hardly wtf-worthy. I think it is actually a kind of wtf that there are no certifications for software devs that make life and death things, life auto-pilot or pacemaker software.

There likely are in many cases. I don't know about software specifically but in other engineering professions, professional engineer licenses are often required when you sign off on drawings, etc. for regulatory boards. If you are responsible for a ship design, you absolutely need a PE.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#158

Post by pyre »

acchow wrote: post #153
goodcanadian wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not the person you replied to, but US$3000 is about CA$4000 or CA$48000 per year. For a junior software development position, that does seem to be in the ballpark of what gets offered in Canada.

This sounds too low. Everything has gone up in the past couple years - salaries, cost of housing, cost of groceries, restaurant bills.

People complain about the "squeeze of the middle class" because salaries have remained stagnant while costs have gone up.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#159

Post by peeters »

Pxtl wrote: post #26
ChemicalWarfare wrote: post #14

Not sure how exactly they are planning on "luring American tech workers" when they are paying much less on average, taxes are higher and real estate prices in large cities where these jobs are typically at are pretty insane compared to most of the US.

Toronto and Vancouver are Canada's big insane housing markets. There are smaller tech communities in Ottawa, Waterloo, and Montreal, and those cities have normal housing markets.

Well Kitchener-Waterloo had the highest year-over-year house price increase in Canada in April/May (40% year over year), so I wouldn't call it "normal", but all signs point to the housing market in Ontario cooling if not crashing, so it will never get to the point that Toronto and Vancouver are at.

Re: Canada's Tech Firms Capitalize On Immigration Anxiety

#160

Post by geodel »

calvinbhai wrote: post #117
derefr wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software isn't precisely zero-sum, but it's zero-sum assuming a static supply of companies to work for. Which ends up being the case in Canada, since 1. there isn't much of a culture of entrepreneurship; 2. there are few VCs, and they're pretty much all hyper-conservative, to the point that they may as well be banks.

Influx of immigrants, with zero shackling of immigrants == good chances of successful entrepreneurship. In a few months/years, students from India and China going to US for grad studies will slow down, and most of them chosing Canada over US. In a few years, if US continues its systematic and unfair ways of keeping citizens of India and China from immigrating to US, and Canada continues its policy of courting immigra…

> if US continues its systematic and unfair ways of keeping citizens of India and China from immigrating to US

Canadian policy was always much easier than US for immigration. I wonder then why Indian/Chinese did not go in much larger numbers to Canada as compared to US.

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