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84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

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Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#41

Post by 908B64B197 »

xenihn wrote: post #25
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

It's not just the taxes/rent/COL. I know three Canadian SWEs whose parents could have easily bought them a nice house or condo in any major Canadian city, if they had wanted to stay. One of them explained it to me this way: the quality of employers, coworkers, and the overall software engineering work you'll do in Canada just doesn't compare to the US. Even if pay/finances were exactly the same, going to the US would…

> The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.

From my experience, the only place the last statement hasn't been true is Montreal.

There are a lot of engineers over there that could move but won't ever. That's partly why everyone is setting AI shops over there.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#42

Post by 908B64B197 »

pmdulaney wrote: post #6

Could it be that a lot of these young, bright folks would just rather live in the US, and getting a valuable degree enabled them to do what they've wanted to do for some time?

That's a very likely explanation.

I would be curious to see the number of students with immigrants parents; maybe they tried to go to the US but couldn't due to stricter policies. Now the kid can.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#43

Post by 908B64B197 »

arcticbull wrote: post #32
jchallis wrote: post #16

We welcome our Canadian brothers and sisters with open arms. My cofounder came from Waterloo and together we built a good company with good jobs here in the US.

You should let the border guards know ;) the last time I got a TN my immigration attorney told me "honestly, you're lucky you're white, so you shouldn't have any problems."

Race doesn't have anything to do with it.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#44

Post by imtringued »

pmdulaney wrote: post #6

Could it be that a lot of these young, bright folks would just rather live in the US, and getting a valuable degree enabled them to do what they've wanted to do for some time?

That doesn't explain why the rate is that high. It only explains why those students move to the US and I personally would rather stay in Canada if I were born in Canada.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#45

Post by 908B64B197 »

mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete?

I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project.

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable amount of orders. Now Europeans are reaping the benefits.

Canadian politicians even pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. I mean I'm all for it, my comp being stock-based I'm pocketing the difference.

Is that something the Canadian public... approves of?

[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#46

Post by AzzieElbab »

redis_mlc wrote: post #11
cesarvarela wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But aren’t those things cheaper because there are more taxes? And more taxes mean less salary?

No. There's a US media narrative that taxes and health care are worse in Canada than the US but: 1) You will likely pay more in taxes in California than Canada. 2) It's easier to itemize self-employment tax expenses in Canada, so you can easily pay half the taxes of the US. (I paid 12% of total income the last year I worked in Toronto.) 3) Everybody I know in Canada is happy with health care, and infinitely happier t…

That makes 84% of Waterloo grads idiots for leaving Canada. They will all wise up and come back

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#47

Post by AzzieElbab »

triceratops wrote: post #3

Gotta pay more money to keep the talent. This isn't rocket science. The crazy thing is Canada has so many advantages that should make paying higher salaries easier. University is cheaper, so people don't have as much (or any) student debt. Healthcare is cheaper for companies to provide - since they generally only have to offer supplemental coverage. And so on.

Direct taxation is not the whole story. Prices of anything including Canadian made goods are higher here than in the states. We basically earn in cdn but pay in usd. Healthcare is debatable, availability is actually a problem.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#48

Post by sradman »

xenihn wrote: post #25
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

It's not just the taxes/rent/COL. I know three Canadian SWEs whose parents could have easily bought them a nice house or condo in any major Canadian city, if they had wanted to stay. One of them explained it to me this way: the quality of employers, coworkers, and the overall software engineering work you'll do in Canada just doesn't compare to the US. Even if pay/finances were exactly the same, going to the US would…

> The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.

This sounds like a generalization in need of evidence. Ultimately, the co-op program at UoW has a long history that includes ranking/matching data for co-op employers and students. It would be interesting to see the trends over time. My intuition is that the top ranked students accept jobs from their co-op employers after graduation but that may have changed.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#49

Post by thenoblesunfish »

Why is this notable? Canada and the US are friendly neighbors and quite similar (from the perspective of the privileged types of people getting these jobs) and the US is bigger so you’d expect there to be more jobs there.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#50

Post by chrisseaton »

thenoblesunfish wrote: post #49

Why is this notable? Canada and the US are friendly neighbors and quite similar (from the perspective of the privileged types of people getting these jobs) and the US is bigger so you’d expect there to be more jobs there.

Do you know the concept of 'brain drain'?

Canada is paying (I presume, not an expert in how Canadian universities are funded) to educate these people, but then they immediately take all their wealth creation out of the country.

Nobody's saying they shouldn't be able to do that if they want, but it has long term impacts on the country's wealth, but also its ability to more generally develop, to keep educating itself, and to perform jobs that can't be done by another a company in another country, like some parts of government, defence, healthcare, etc.

It's also just a bad indicator. Why do they need to move? Why can't they get what they want here? If the first thing 84% of your graduates do is get the hell out of your country as fast as they can then you should probably stop and think about what's going wrong that makes them want to do that?

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