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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

#121

Post by s73v3r_ »

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're right, no one has to. But why would I want to take a job somewhere that pays less, and has me live out in the middle of nowhere if I don't want to live out in the middle of nowhere?

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

#122

Post by s73v3r_ »

nailer wrote: post #114
klipt wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Trump's travel ban rolled out and people with green cards were being blocked at the border, I was terrified. Thank goodness the courts struck down that version. My wife and I aren't from any of the blocked countries, but who knows how the list could have grown at Trump's whim and current "enemy of the week".

Sure but Canada isn't on that list. How has being a migrant to the US changed for most people recently?

Well, if you look the wrong way, you have a risk of having your children ripped away from you.

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

#123

Post by nailer »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #122
nailer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but Canada isn't on that list. How has being a migrant to the US changed for most people recently?

Well, if you look the wrong way, you have a risk of having your children ripped away from you.

That's been happening for a while and only affects illegal immigration though.

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

#124

Post by DKnoll »

s73v3r_ wrote: post #121
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're right, no one has to. But why would I want to take a job somewhere that pays less, and has me live out in the middle of nowhere if I don't want to live out in the middle of nowhere?

I totally agree, which is why I live and work in the GTA. Am I missing something?

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

#125

Post by RandallBrown »

dyarosla wrote: post #106
RandallBrown wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Toronto is 75k CAD (57k USD) ( https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/toronto-software-engineer... ) San Francisco is 124k USD ( https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/san-francisco-software-en... ) So, it's not triple, but it's more than double. Also, if you're going from a junior/midlevel role in CA to a senior position in the US, you could pretty easily triple your salary.

I think you replied to the wrong parent

No, it was the right one, I just misread the original post and thought 350k was referring to tripling their salary.

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

#126

Post by DKnoll »

parthdesai wrote: post #99
apercu wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could easily take a GO train from Port Credit to downtown. Very easily. We did it from Clarkson (the next stop West).

So you pay at the least around $300 a month to commute via GO train and then you need a car which is at the least another $500 when you factor in gas + insurance + lease. That's another $800 to your monthly expense and add commuting time to that.

I bought my car outright, and I would have got that and my insurance whether I need it for work or not. For me the GO train + TTC is approx $13 a day. Driving is $18, which includes parking and gas. Why would I pay for the GO and driving daily (500 + 300)? That doesn't make any sense lol. Even if I included the cost of my car, insurance, gas, parking and (to make it fun) my cable bill, I still pay less than the base cost of an entry level apartment downtown. I don't consider my time driving wasted, it's leisure time.

EDIT: On second reading you may be talking about driving to the GO station, in which case I agree... although I can easily walk to the GO station in <5 minutes myself. Your parent comment might also live a short walk or bus ride away from the Clarkson GO station

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

#127

Post by DKnoll »

captain_perl wrote: post #117
DKnoll wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't saying it's the same, I'm saying there are other options. For the record I don't live in a basement, I live street level in a real apt (not a sublet) in the hottest neighbourhood in Mississauga. I'm a half block from Lakeshore and 3 from the GO station. You can find similar apts in Etobicoke, which is also in Toronto.

> hottest neighbourhood in Mississauga Mississauga ... lol. What's funny is I remember when the downtown waterfront condos were $50,000 each and nobody wanted to buy - long walk to downtown and freezing cold in winter. How things change.

Mississauga has a larger population than Vancouver, it's not some backwater suburb of Toronto. Have you ever been to Port Credit? Come around and I'll buy you a drink. You'll eat your words lol.

I hope for your sake you bought one of those 50k condos. I'm 25 so I missed the boat on cheap real estate.

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

#128

Post by r0fl »

dkonieczek wrote: post #92
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.

No one is taking account the demographic that are likely to move to Toronto. If you have a partner or significant other, it's not worth relocating to Toronto. Tech job's salaries are already considered extremely high here, but the majority of other jobs don't come close outside a few industries such as medical. Not to mention, non-tech industries are not booming like the tech industry, so even finding a decent job is…

Not sure why you aren’t upvoted more

People just don’t understand how valuable time is. Commuting 2hrs each way daily x 5 days is 40 hours a month you will never get back.

Also I find that people with long commute times rarely admit how bad it is in the winter. I work from home 70% of my days and when I commute it’s 30 minutes by car each way. On a bad winter day it’s 3x that! Taking an Uber home to port credit after a night of drinking on a winter day would take 3 hours!

I recently spoke to a man who lives in the east end and commutes by car everyday to Cambridge! He said it’s 3 hours each way in the winter, blew my mind! (His wife worked in the east end)

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

#129

Post by Bartweiss »

Tsarbomb wrote: post #115
Bartweiss wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These stats are bad, but it's much worse than just sloppy data gathering in the survey. See the discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17610221 You can get numbers much like HuffPo's if you compare urban San Francisco (population 800,000) to Toronto (population 3,000,000). Which is grossly misleading to begin with, but they then listed it as "Silicon Valley" in the headline and the "San Francisco Bay A…

That discussion doesn't mention that when people commonly refer to Toronto from abroad they refer to the GTA which is a population 6,300,000 or the broader Golden Horseshoe urban area which can include the other tech hub (Waterloo) which brings the number to over 9,200,000. This just makes it all the more confusing.

Interesting, thanks. Not knowing Toronto, I didn't know if it described a standard metro area like some cities do. So now we've got three regions on each side, and no sign which of the 9 possible comparisons is being employed?

What a mess.

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

#130

Post by analyst74 »

neivin wrote: post #41
analyst74 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from Toronto to SF last year, I think the CoL-adjusted salary is pretty close, or actually better in Toronto. This is comparing good mid-sized company in both cities. One misconception I think, is that many people moved to SV for big-N companies and comparing that with average Toronto salaries.

> I think the CoL-adjusted salary is pretty close, or actually better in Toronto. This is a common misconception, and is promoted by a lot of tech companies in Toronto. It actually frustrates me whenever someone says that the compensation in the bay vs Toronto is the same after adjusting for CoL. It's really not. You will end up with more absolute savings by working in the bay area, than you will in Toronto in a simi…

To put things in concrete terms, for a single person living 1br downtown high-rise with one car. Cost of living difference is about 30k higher in SF. At 100-200k range salaries, it's around 50k pre-tax income. (Figures not accounting for exchange rate)

Salary difference between medium no name companies in the two cities are about that much.

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