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Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

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Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#111

Post by deepGem »

kaaie wrote: post #18
blazespin wrote: post #13

The best thing that could ever happen to Canada would get rid of that god awful TN-Visa. TN - Talent Nuke. Completely sucks us dry of people moving to the US.

Alternatively, if wages were competitive in Canada (even considering cost of living and health care) there would be no reason to move. Personally, I'd much rather be in Canada to be near my family but I'd be making 1/2 the wage and have less talent to learn and grow from.

I still don't understand the pay rhetoric in Canada. I live in Bangalore, and I make more or less the same pay as in Toronto for nearly 1/5th the cost of living.

Why are salaries so low in Canada ? Now at least owing to the US immigration fiasco, more labour should move in and salaries should technically rise - but I don't see that happening. Not sure why.

Competitive salaries on par with California or even NYC will have a dramatic impact on the influx of immigrants.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#112

Post by econcon »

torgian wrote: post #102

It seems to me they’re doing it partially because it’s cheaper in Canada ( compared to the US dollar ) as far as salaries, etc go. Pretty soon, rent is going to be too high for someone making 100k Canadian ( if it isn’t already )

Or they've failed to influence government elsewhere.

It seems Google will try to influence city government soon or it might already be doing.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#113

Post by mabbo »

bitL wrote: post #38

Microsoft and Amazon used to park people that didn't get H1B in Vancouver. Wasn't that the same as what Google is doing now?

Amazon has over 3500 development staff in Canada, between Vancouver and Toronto. Some major orgs and AWS features are based in these offices.

There may be a few people here for visa reasons (I know one or two), but that's now a very small portion.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#114

Post by arboghast »

loufe wrote: post #110
torgian wrote: post #102

It seems to me they’re doing it partially because it’s cheaper in Canada ( compared to the US dollar ) as far as salaries, etc go. Pretty soon, rent is going to be too high for someone making 100k Canadian ( if it isn’t already )

The dollar is likely a factor, as you mention. But from their list of cities only Toronto has a crisis of home affordability. Montreal is still within sane levels and Waterloo is not too much worse.

From Toronto but live in Montreal.

Rents in Montreal are going up but still no where near Toronto level. Cost of living is lower too on many levels. Of course it depends on the area but generally it's reasonable.

You can live pretty comfortably on a 75k salary and lots of people in the tech sector make more than this, infosec paying even 6 figures in some places.

I recently turned down an offer from Google for a job in Sunnyvale because even though I might have been paid twice as much, I knew the cost of living was much higher and quality of life probably not as good.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#115

Post by balfirevic »

ta416425 wrote: post #97
ialyos wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn't true. Downtown Toronto has multiple Google engineers. I know one in brain and one in cloud. One has been in TO for ~2.5 years, the other for 1 year. As far as I know the only way to get into the office is by special permission. One of them only got their role because they said they were quitting due to the waterloo commute. Fwiw I'm a Canadian that just signed a Google offer to work out of downtown SF beca…

The number of engineers at Google Toronto is so small that they're the exception that proves the rule, though. For all intents and purposes beyond some very special cases (and the Hinton stuff) you can treat the site as having no engineering.

> The number of engineers at Google Toronto is so small that they're the exception that proves the rule, though.

Exceptions don't prove the rule.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#116

Post by cmrdporcupine »

skybrian wrote: post #62
gyulai wrote: post #53

...we've been having these kinds of headlines from local media outlets pretty much everywhere where FAANG have created/expanded presences. -- But it seems to me that these companies are extremely centralized and only decentralize to the extent that it is unavoidable (e.g. distributed data centers for reasons of latency) or that it captures special opportunities (e.g. Apple expanding in Munich right now, but doing onl…

Google has large engineering offices in major cities all over the world. Seattle, New York, Dublin, London, Zurich, Tokyo... There are advantages to being at headquarters but it's not practical to move everyone to the SF Bay Area.

Here the engineering office is in Waterloo while Toronto is sales/marketing/administrative. Toronto certainly counts as a major city (3rd or 4th largest in North America depending on how you count).

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#117

Post by cmrdporcupine »

jariel wrote: post #107

As a Candian, it seems to me so very pathetically and predictably Canadian to literally herald the surrender of your own industries to foreign takeover. Canada is (often) to tech what Mexico is to cars. Mexican 'assembly' of cars is fine and good, but they don't exactly move up the value chain from there. Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2/3 the wages, unfortunately, this doesn't map to…

"Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2/3 the wages,"

Actually Canada products a lot of decent tech people, most of which go south the US. The ones that stay, or the ones that immigrate here, mostly work for 2/3rd (or less) of the wages.

But yes, Canadian economy is mostly "rip and ship"; and that seems to apply to talent education as well.

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#118

Post by balfirevic »

jariel wrote: post #109
fredophile wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved to the US from Canada on a TN. I would've liked to stay where I was but the local job market wasn't great at the time. At the time I viewed it as temporary. Now I have no plans to go back. I'm making twice the base salary and I'm in an area with a significantly lower cost of living. The TN wasn't responsible for my leaving and it isn't the reason I'm staying away.

You actually just proved the opposite: your TN was the thing that got you a job paying 2x as much, gave you your foot in the door and exposure, and some time to establish longer-term plans. Without the TN it's likely you may not have been hired because it's not worth the effort for most companies: T1 is easy, then once you're in they can process it more. FYI this is not an argument for or against TN.

You might not have meant it like that, but to me it sounds like a great argument in favor of TN (I'm from neither Canada nor US, for what it's worth).

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#119

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ialyos wrote: post #81
prlambert wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a UofT grad, so spent 4 years in Toronto. That's where her snow feelings come from – she still tells stories of marching to class in -20C and snow. It may not be Calgary, but it's not California either. Maybe we're wimps, but such is the situation we find ourselves in! Maybe we'll be back some day. Toronto is the most likely. On topic for the parent – we're both Googlers but right now Google has no tech em…

That isn't true. Downtown Toronto has multiple Google engineers. I know one in brain and one in cloud. One has been in TO for ~2.5 years, the other for 1 year. As far as I know the only way to get into the office is by special permission. One of them only got their role because they said they were quitting due to the waterloo commute. Fwiw I'm a Canadian that just signed a Google offer to work out of downtown SF beca…

It absolutely is true in actual practice; unless you're some unicorn ML researcher all our engineering talent is in Waterloo (or Montreal). If it was possible to work in Toronto I wouldn't have had to have sold my house and moved my family years back.

We do have a rather comfortable bus which runs from Toronto, if you don't mind the 2 hour (each way) commute.

(The company I worked for was bought by Google back in 2011. We had people in NY and Toronto; all our Toronto people were told we had to move to Waterloo and that was that. Most of us have stayed @ Google but for some the practice of having to rip up their entire lives in Toronto to move wasn't ideal and they left.)

Re: Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

#120

Post by cmrdporcupine »

deepGem wrote: post #111
kaaie wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, if wages were competitive in Canada (even considering cost of living and health care) there would be no reason to move. Personally, I'd much rather be in Canada to be near my family but I'd be making 1/2 the wage and have less talent to learn and grow from.

I still don't understand the pay rhetoric in Canada. I live in Bangalore, and I make more or less the same pay as in Toronto for nearly 1/5th the cost of living. Why are salaries so low in Canada ? Now at least owing to the US immigration fiasco, more labour should move in and salaries should technically rise - but I don't see that happening. Not sure why. Competitive salaries on par with California or even NYC will…

Unfortunately top talent that wants a higher salary over all else emigrates to the US. Those of us that remain are in a lower bargaining position. And there's a steady stream of immigrants.

Also the quality of the work here is mostly miserable. There's not a lot of interesting stuff.

Things are better if you can find something outside of Toronto where the cost of living is ridiculous. One advantage of the Google Waterloo office...

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