131–140 of 715 posts
We backfill with people from elsewhere who can't get US visas.
and another study that demonstrates the silliness of lumping all of STEM together. overall, 1 in 4. In CS, 6 in 10.
Roughly doubling pay would help. Even then if I really want to work on cool stuff I'm probably heading south.
If Canadian companies were willing to offer a competitive salary, maybe Canadian grads would stay. It doesn't even have to be 1:1 with the US, even 75% would be nice. As it is, there is little incentive to stay here. I know a new grad who was faced with the choice of staying in Canada to earn $40-50k CAD per year starting, or heading to the US where he had a job offer with one of the big five for $120k USD plus signi…
> staying in Canada to earn $40-50k CAD per year starting Amazon Toronto starts new grads at like $80-100k last I heard. It's not as good as you can get in Silicon Valley, but rent in Toronto (while still high) is much lower than in the Valley.
The same situation exists across the US. For example I can get a mortgage on a nice place in the Midwest that is half my current rent in SV. That amounts to about $24k/year. However I'd have take a pay cut of about $40k gross (or more) for a job with identical responsibilities and to live in a region with far fewer opportunities. It's a net loss.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think something even stronger would be true if you asked about non-CA US states. Why would Canada, at 1/10th the US population, have more of an independent tech locus than does Texas (which has a population comparable to Canada)? Is this just a difference of nations re-distributing wealth internally but not between nations?
Canada's diversifying its job investment portfolio around jobs in high-tech and pulling that funding out of natural resources. You're starting to see that across the country. Calgary's starting to become a mini tech center for example.
I am effectively priced out of the local dev market at this point.
Canada is in a really tough spot here. I've always admired Canadian culture/values, and in the abstract, would love to live in Canada one day. However, as a Software developer, the compensation and opportunities that one can find in SF/Seattle/NYC dwarf anything in Canada. Until this changes, Canada is always going to lose its brightest engineers, which will in turn worsen the problem even further. Some solutions I c…
The problem of trying to get Canadian tech up to par with the US is much deeper than pulling some tax/incentive levers, I think. There are some really deep cultural issues that I don't think can be solved for a few generations.
Question - now that Amazon is bringing "3000 jobs" to Vancouver, are they going to be paying wages consistent with their US employees, or with (or just above) the local market rate?
I came to Canada as software professional from the middle east. At one point, Canada had a glimmer of hope in attracting tech talent. However, on the ground, tech professionals are 'forced' to start up their consulting companies, get hunted down by taxes, threatened daily with outsourcing initiatives (extremely low caliber), and have no prospect of career advancement. Either this or accept a meager pay.
Why wouldn't they look elsewhere?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, the Canadian employees are moving south. They clearly aren't accepting it.
I meant employees of Canadian companies, who by definition are. (I edited it to say "their employees" instead of "Canadian employees". Hopefully that will help.)
TFA is about Canadian employees leaving for the US for better wages, as the other commenter pointed out.
US salaries are much higher, the tech industry is booming in the states, and it's very simple to apply for a visa or start a consulting company to work remotely from home. If you're a student graduating out of a Canadian college/university and are looking for ways to advance your career (while making a lot more money on the side), what's not to love about moving or working remote?
Canada can fill jobs with skilled immigrants who can't easily go to Silicon Valley because (need it be spelled out?) that's the name of a place in the USA.
Maybe the market is saturated, but there's something about them being oblivious to what happens outside of Canada (or even their city).