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Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

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Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#71

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #63
bin_bash wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is right. Big Tech is mostly focused on Canada and EU because they can hire people from (chiefly) China and India without H1-Bs. According to a director I spoke with it’s because they can’t find enough qualified engineers, not to save money. Seems we should just be opening more offices in Hyderabad, I don’t know why that isn’t done more. Political security maybe?

Because it’s even harder to hire good tech workers in india now? Europe and Canada have far more talent at far cheaper price right now.

>Europe and Canada have far more talent at far cheaper price right now.

Depends, it's not just about the employees salaries. Some EU countries have pretty high taxes and high worker's rights so big tech actively avoids them.

So in the grand scheme, Indian offices might yeld better return on their investment.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#72

Post by stingraycharles »

bin_bash wrote: post #59
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>you open an office in Canada because it’s cheaper. Or, to hire international tech workers who you can't bring to your US office for visa reasons.

Yes, this is right. Big Tech is mostly focused on Canada and EU because they can hire people from (chiefly) China and India without H1-Bs. According to a director I spoke with it’s because they can’t find enough qualified engineers, not to save money. Seems we should just be opening more offices in Hyderabad, I don’t know why that isn’t done more. Political security maybe?

Of course, if you offer more money, you’ll get a larger pool of candidates.

I agree that there is scarcity on the market, but unless a company is really paying top salaries for their devs, they really cannot say that it’s not money.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#73

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

fnord123 wrote: post #70
maccard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are still lower than most places in the US.

I dont have enough karma to reply to my sibling comment: > Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy. EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.

The EU is not a single united market like the US is.

Sure, you can bunch the countries together and get high GDP number but that's not an Apples to apples comparison with the US as every EU country has it's own completely different languages, economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and tax system, and local issues plus high levels off autonomy from the EU.

The EU is not the United States of Europe therefore cannot compete with the US toe to toe as it's not 300 million people speaking the same language and having the same culture and laws, but 300 million people spread across 27 countries, speaking 24 official languages, with little overlap in laws and culture from end to end, that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe and there's no EU military.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#74

Post by cryptoz »

tdudzik wrote: post #66
cryptoz wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What Canada doesn’t have is a strong venture capital pool, a culture of risk taking I tried to raise a ~$300k seed round in Toronto in 2014. Most Canadian investors we met with wanted to see us have something like $10k/month in recurring revenue before considering an investment. We spent a week in SF and left with a $250k offer at a $4M valuation, when we were pre-revenue! (We declined, and eventually our business…

So after all they were right and didn't lose ~$300k?

I dunno about that. Most of the team was "very Canadian" and didn't want to move to California - the main reason we rejected the SF deal (I was the only one who accepted in full the acquihire, the team did not move in the end). $300k, staying in Canada, would have gone a long way to providing a stronger team cohesion at the time. Maybe we would have succeeded.

Also, we were near completing a $10k/month enterprise deal but didn't have the runway to finish those sales in time. Additionally, we had Government of Canada contracts at $3k/month in the pipeline, which we did eventually complete. Our software was running on millions of phones, we had enterprise pipeline deals, signed government contracts (hard to come by I hear!) and a darn good team.

Hard to say how it would have played out, but, what's clear to me is that it wasn't clear that the $300k would have been lost.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#75

Post by ramraj07 »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #71
ramraj07 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it’s even harder to hire good tech workers in india now? Europe and Canada have far more talent at far cheaper price right now.

>Europe and Canada have far more talent at far cheaper price right now. Depends, it's not just about the employees salaries. Some EU countries have pretty high taxes and high worker's rights so big tech actively avoids them. So in the grand scheme, Indian offices might yeld better return on their investment.

Not sure if you know what the ground realities in India are. Absolute unadjusted tech salaries are higher than in Canada or EU. And retention is really hard. EU workers have more rights so to speak but not clear to me how either of us can tell that’s still a dealbreaker.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#76

Post by zaptheimpaler »

bin_bash wrote: post #56
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #54

I hope we get more offices opening up in Vancouver soon as well. Toronto has more momentum as the tech centre but Vancouver has better weather and is a beautiful place to live.

How do homeless issues compare? I know when I was a kid there was a big problem in Vancouver, I imagine it’s only gotten worse.

There are homeless people in both Vancouver and Toronto (and every major city in the world, as far as I know). They are people who ended up in very bad situations, not issues. Most of the time they don’t bother anyone, sometimes they are noisy or pester me for money. It doesn’t bother me.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#77

Post by smcin »

LadyCailin wrote: post #38
Schopenhauer01 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it just support? Do they do dev?

Actual engineering work https://news.microsoft.com/en-xm/features/furthering-our-inv...

"two initial sites in Nairobi, Kenya and Lagos, Nigeria... intend to recruit 100 full-time engineers by the end of the year [2022] – expanding to 500 across the two sites by 2023"

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#78

Post by tpush »

fnord123 wrote: post #70
maccard wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And are still lower than most places in the US.

I dont have enough karma to reply to my sibling comment: > Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy. EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.

?? No it's not. The US's GDP is higher than the EU's and per-capita massively so.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#79

Post by maccard »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #73
fnord123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have enough karma to reply to my sibling comment: > Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy. EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.

The EU is not a single united market like the US is. Sure, you can bunch the countries together and get high GDP number but that's not an Apples to apples comparison with the US as every EU country has it's own completely different languages, economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and tax system, and local issues plus high levels off autonomy from the EU. The EU is not the United States of Eur…

> The EU is not a single united market like the US is

The US is not a single united market. Each state has it's own economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and taxes, and local issues.

> that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe.

this is just false. There are plenty of succesful european software giants , and there are numerous "unicorns" too; Spotify being the textbook example. There's an absolutely booming video games industry, Fintech and crypto (not my thing but can't argue there's no money in it) have very very solid bases across the EU too.

There's no single reason as to why the US has a stronger software market than the EU, but I would put money on it being "it's where the money already is".

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#80

Post by fnord123 »

tpush wrote: post #78
fnord123 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont have enough karma to reply to my sibling comment: > Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy. EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.

?? No it's not. The US's GDP is higher than the EU's and per-capita massively so.

EU ~16t, US ~15t
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