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Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

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Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#51

Post by rpeden »

ttt111222333 wrote: post #27
neivin wrote: post #24

As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salaries are simply laughable when compared to the bay area. The only reason you would stay in Toronto for a job in tech is if you wanted to stay close to family, or your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse. Or, you just hate money and being at the center of the tech industr…

There are no big companies in Toronto that have tech jobs. Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc. don't have tech jobs in Toronto. Amazon just started adding tech jobs in Toronto in the past maybe year or two and Shopify is the only exception to this rule. If any toronto natives know of some big companies in Toronto with tech jobs please prove me wrong.

I'm not sure if you'd count IBM, but they have their Toronto Software Lab here. It's technically in Markham now, but if it were on the south side of Steeles instead of the north side, it would be in Toronto proper. AMD also still has a large office in Markham in what used to be ATI headquarters.

I've seen a few articles about Apple hiring developers in Toronto, so there's that too.

Maybe Waterloo is a bit too far away to count, but Google has a fairly big engineering office there.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#52

Post by faramarz »

ttt111222333 wrote: post #27
neivin wrote: post #24

As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salaries are simply laughable when compared to the bay area. The only reason you would stay in Toronto for a job in tech is if you wanted to stay close to family, or your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse. Or, you just hate money and being at the center of the tech industr…

There are no big companies in Toronto that have tech jobs. Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc. don't have tech jobs in Toronto. Amazon just started adding tech jobs in Toronto in the past maybe year or two and Shopify is the only exception to this rule. If any toronto natives know of some big companies in Toronto with tech jobs please prove me wrong.

Plenty!

Muse, Google, Facebook, Softchoice, IBM, ALL major banks have a tech arm now, like Scotia Banks Digital Factory, CIBC Live Labs ,etc., and other tech companies, Flip, Wave, Freshbooks, Wattpad (raised major vc money), Ritual (raised 75m this year), TribalScale, Worktango, just to name a few.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#53

Post by lacker »

Something doesn't seem right about these stats. From the article:

The report by CBRE Group says Toronto added 82,100 technology-related jobs between 2012 and 2017 to beat out the San Francisco Bay Area for the spot by about 4,270 jobs.

82,000 jobs over 5 years, ok. Let's look at some other accounts of Bay Area tech jobs, for example https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2017/02/10/tech-job-growth-slow... :

Tech’s annual job growth throttled back to 3.5 percent, or 26,700 new jobs, in 2016. That’s much slower than the 6 percent annual gain of 42,300 jobs in 2015, or the 6.4 percent gain in 2014.

That describes around 110,000 jobs growth in just three years.

These numbers just don't match. The first one is based on a survey by a real estate group, the second one is based on official statistics from the California government. What's the reality here? I can't say, but I do know that you can't trust hypey news articles that don't bother to dig around for the most accurate data sources. My guess is that this survey operated by a real estate group is just bad data.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#54

Post by bdamm »

dkonieczek wrote: post #18

I'm a Toronto native and have been working as a dev for the past two years. COL is extremely high compared to salaries. This is likely the biggest problem for anyone looking to move here. For example, a small 1 bedroom condo downtown will run you at least CA$2k a month. For a larger 1 bedroom or 1+den your easily looking at $2-3k in today's demanding market. Public transit is usually a hit or miss during rush hour. I…

Wow, CDN$2k for a nice 1-bedroom shoebox? That's great! Take a look at San Francisco's equivalents, where you'll pay USD$3k or more for rough equivalence; that's about 2x the price. Things get more extreme when you start talking about home ownership.

Toronto COL might feel expensive now but it can definitely get a lot more expensive.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#55

Post by scosman »

ttt111222333 wrote: post #27
neivin wrote: post #24

As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salaries are simply laughable when compared to the bay area. The only reason you would stay in Toronto for a job in tech is if you wanted to stay close to family, or your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse. Or, you just hate money and being at the center of the tech industr…

There are no big companies in Toronto that have tech jobs. Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc. don't have tech jobs in Toronto. Amazon just started adding tech jobs in Toronto in the past maybe year or two and Shopify is the only exception to this rule. If any toronto natives know of some big companies in Toronto with tech jobs please prove me wrong.

Amazon has an office, scaling up quickly. UberATG (self driving) has an office. Shopify has a huge presence. People say google, but it's really a marketing office with <20 engineers.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#56

Post by robbrit »

DKnoll wrote: post #28
dkonieczek wrote: post #18

I'm a Toronto native and have been working as a dev for the past two years. COL is extremely high compared to salaries. This is likely the biggest problem for anyone looking to move here. For example, a small 1 bedroom condo downtown will run you at least CA$2k a month. For a larger 1 bedroom or 1+den your easily looking at $2-3k in today's demanding market. Public transit is usually a hit or miss during rush hour. I…

You don't need to live downtown. I commute via car from Port Credit where I have an $850/mo bachelor apartment and work at Queen and Bathurst.

You lost me at "commute via car". Toronto has a reputation for some of the worst traffic in North America.

It might be cheaper to live that far away, but the cost in quality of life + hours commuting isn't worth the trade. Instead you can just go to a smaller town like Waterloo or a cheaper city like Montreal or Ottawa.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#57

Post by gabriel34 »

When comparing different locations I find beneficial to look at the local purchasing power. Numeo has a quite accurate comparison of cost of living, salaries and LPP: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

Bottom line is, for the basket of goods and services used in their comparison, LPP at San Francisco is 30% higher than Toronto.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#58

Post by DKnoll »

robbrit wrote: post #56
DKnoll wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to live downtown. I commute via car from Port Credit where I have an $850/mo bachelor apartment and work at Queen and Bathurst.

You lost me at "commute via car". Toronto has a reputation for some of the worst traffic in North America. It might be cheaper to live that far away, but the cost in quality of life + hours commuting isn't worth the trade. Instead you can just go to a smaller town like Waterloo or a cheaper city like Montreal or Ottawa.

Takes me around an hour each way. I prefer it to public transit which takes me 45 minutes. I've lived in the GTA my whole life, I'm used to the traffic. The KW and Ottawa are cheap but they're really boring. If you're starting a family or something they would be great.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#59

Post by 52-6F-62 »

neivin wrote: post #24

As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salaries are simply laughable when compared to the bay area. The only reason you would stay in Toronto for a job in tech is if you wanted to stay close to family, or your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse. Or, you just hate money and being at the center of the tech industr…

Can confirm. Staying in Toronto because prospects are fewer outside of the city. Girlfriend is from the west coast but helps head up a very popular establishment group in town. Family is from ~2 hours outside of the city on Lake Erie.

I've been casually seeking either something more profitable so that I can save, or otherwise a viable remote position so that we can move a little out of the city (or to the coast). (Both profitable and remote would be ideal in this case, but I can take one before the other as either would help get me there).

Hell, I'd probably even move to the right suburb if I could land a substantially compensated job with Honeywell or something for a while.

Judging my present circumstances, you'd probably wager that I do hate money. I used to have a lot more fun here than I do these days.

Re: Toronto adds more tech jobs than Silicon Valley in past 5 years

#60

Post by rescripting »

bdamm wrote: post #54
dkonieczek wrote: post #18

I'm a Toronto native and have been working as a dev for the past two years. COL is extremely high compared to salaries. This is likely the biggest problem for anyone looking to move here. For example, a small 1 bedroom condo downtown will run you at least CA$2k a month. For a larger 1 bedroom or 1+den your easily looking at $2-3k in today's demanding market. Public transit is usually a hit or miss during rush hour. I…

Wow, CDN$2k for a nice 1-bedroom shoebox? That's great! Take a look at San Francisco's equivalents, where you'll pay USD$3k or more for rough equivalence; that's about 2x the price. Things get more extreme when you start talking about home ownership. Toronto COL might feel expensive now but it can definitely get a lot more expensive.

You need to also take in to account average income when looking at COL, which is significantly higher in SF than in TO. If you're spending 2x the price in SF, but making 3x then you come out way ahead.
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