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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

#71
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada is not exactly perfect either.

It is much much easier to immigrate to Canada than to USA.

Spits drink

Are you serious? Canada has a point-based system that requires you have some actual real skills and an education. I wish we had an immigration system like that in the US. Here, you can just sneak across the border or claim asylum citing vague claims of "persecution" and you'll have an entire political party fighting on your behalf to keep you in the country at all costs.

If it were truly that easy to immigrate to Canada people would have actually made good on their "if Trump wins I'm moving to Canada" threats.

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

#72
post #54

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.

The weather in Toronto is god awful compared to San Francisco. Honestly, it's bad compared to almost any US city. I get why Vancouver is so expensive, but never understood Toronto's prices.

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

#73
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.

and... AMD, IBM, Mozilla, Ubisoft, Rockstar, Freshbooks, Influitive, Wattpad, Klick, Idée, SAP, Cisco, banks, telcos, lot of fintech and healthtech

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

#74
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…

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/data-reveals-american-dream-al...

I hate when economic mobility is measured that way (bottom quintile to top quintile movement). It completely ignore the absolute amount of money earned.

Let's say you're in Canada and you move from the bottom quintile to the top. Top quintile starts at $100K, and you're making $110K. Great!

Those poor American's who don't make it to the top quintile ($150K) and only the 4th quintile are making $125K.

Which one would you prefer? Does the US actually have lower income mobility? Relatively speaking, yes. Not in absolute terms though.

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

#76
post #66

Also Toronto native; was making just under 100k ~ 3 years ago in SysEng/devops role. Now working in NYC in similar role at ~ 185k (Cdn). Even with CoL (housing) of NYC, my savings is much higher. Personally I much prefer to live in Toronto but the salary is just too low.

Agreed. I moved from Montreal to SF a few years back and although my rent tripled, so did my income. The net result is much more savings than I would have gotten if I had stayed in Canada. If you're a saver/investor then it makes much more sense to move to the US for a little while, save up a decent sized nest egg, then move back.

One wonders how difficult is it to work remotely for a US firm while in Canada.

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

#77
post #54

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.

Except in SF, your take-home is ~4-6k/mo higher.

I don't care how much rent costs, what I care about is the delta between income and expenses.

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

#78
Would propose that a better relative measure of salaries is not against cost of living, but the delta between what it costs per year to hire a contractor vs. hire employee for the same role. This would show whether firms are in fact paying more for employees against the contracting cost, which is the real clearing price for the value of the work in the market - unclouded by promises of "stability."

Do we have anecdotes about the delta is between how much it costs to hire a contractor vs. employee for same role in the Bay Area vs. Toronto.

In Toronto, anecdotally, per year a contractor costs between %175 and %200 of an employee. Contractor firms take their %15-%50 cut depending on contractor desperation.

What's it like in the Bay Area?

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

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Facebook doesn't have an engineering office in Toronto.

You're right!

Replace fb with Autodesk.

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

#80
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is much much easier to immigrate to Canada than to USA.

Spits drink Are you serious? Canada has a point-based system that requires you have some actual real skills and an education. I wish we had an immigration system like that in the US. Here, you can just sneak across the border or claim asylum citing vague claims of "persecution" and you'll have an entire political party fighting on your behalf to keep you in the country at all costs. If it were truly that easy to immi…

> Canada has a point-based system that requires you have some actual real skills and an education.

While based on binary categories rather than point-based system, so does US employment-based immigration. It also often requires a sponsoring employer, as well.

OTOH, Canada, like the US, also has family based immigration—and because it doesn't have per-country limits, it doesn't have decade+ wait times from some high-interest countries in key categories (though it does have smaller multi-year waits in some categories for immigrant visas, but it also has renewable multi-year “visiting family” supervisas which you can apparently take advantage of while an immigrant visa is pending.)

> Here, you can just sneak across the border or claim asylum citing vague claims of "persecution" and you'll have an entire political party fighting on your behalf to keep you in the country at all costs.

Canada not only has asylum (and accepts proportionately more refugees than the US even before Trump), but it doesn't seem to have a major political party scapegoating them and illegal immigrants to justify policies cutting back on legal immigration.

> If it were truly that easy to immigrate to Canada people would have actually made good on their "if Trump wins I'm moving to Canada" threats.

No, they wouldn't; difficulty of immigration isn't the reason people who make that kind of hyperbolic threat every election almost never follow through.

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