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Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

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Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#101

Post by avl999 »

bregma wrote: post #95
thawaya3113 wrote: post #21

Expect a lot of Indian and Chinese developers to move here from the U.S. as the prospect of having any stability in the US basically disappears. We’ve had about 4 developers move to Canada already. I wouldn’t be surprised if retaining these developers is one of Microsoft’s intended goals of this “HQ”.

It's no easier for an American to immigrate to Canada than for someone from (almost) any other country. It's particularly hard for a non-American to immigrate to Canada from America. It's important to be careful about how much of your own propaganda you believe.

Not true... it is much easier for an American to move to Canada (and vice verse) due to the TN Visa. Essentially no process or redtape, all you need is an job offer in one of the qualifying professions (Software Engineering is one of them) and an American can literally present that to immigration 2 hours before their flight at the airport and get a visa stamped on their passport.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#102

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

ramraj07 wrote: post #75
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I know and I wasn't contradicting you. I was saying that despite EU salaries being lower than Indian ones for the FAANGS, they might still prefer to expand in India and not the EU due to the EU's higher taxes, higher privacy and higher workers' rights.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#103

Post by mejutoco »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #52
substation13 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say UK!

I doubt it, London tech wages, especially in the City, beat everything else in the EU.

In my experience London tech wages are not specially high unless they are linked to finance. IMHO Switzerland salaries are the highest in EU (although cost of living there is very high).

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#104

Post by refurb »

winter_blue wrote: post #94
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

Are they going to pay enough for their developers to actually live near this Bay St office? Canadian developer salaries are abysmally low.

[redacted] (Sorry, I don’t want to grumble.)

That sounds about right.

If you look at the net immigration flow between Canada and the US, the trend is pretty clear.

US immigrants of Canadian origin (2019): 11,900 [1]

Canadian immigrants of US origin (2019): 10,800 [2]

Of course, with 8.7x the population of Canada, you'd expect the net neutral number to 1:8.7 (Canada to US), but it's actually 1:1. So ~9x more Canadians per capita immigrate to the US than reverse.

[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigr... [2] https://www.cicnews.com/2020/02/a-quarter-of-canadas-immigra...

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#105

Post by throw0101a »

__turbobrew__ wrote: post #15
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #6

Are they going to pay enough for their developers to actually live near this Bay St office? Canadian developer salaries are abysmally low.

Yea I’m surprised how little Microsoft pays in Vancouver according to levels.fyi. If an American company paid 80% of American salary to Canadians they would have their pick of Canada’s top talent. This slowly appears to be happening with Meta jobs in Canada. Canada has the same time zones, a similar culture, is geographically close, the same language, and excellent computer science/engineering programs. What Canada d…

> Canada has […] the same language

Just don't open an office in the province of Quebec:

* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/protest-montreal-bil...

* https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/breaking-down-th...

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#106

Post by mdm12 »

bin_bash wrote: post #82
stingraycharles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I made about 650k last year and I'm not even staff-level. I don't think paying 750k is going to attract anyone new.

At that point, you would think there would be some introspection with respect to the hiring process and the possibility of an alarming number of false negatives occurring due to absurd leetcode gauntlets. But, naaah...

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#107

Post by esjeon »

frontman1988 wrote: post #34
drewcoo wrote: post #28

'Bout f'n time! They've been dining on Waterloo grads for just about ever now. Waterloo is possibly the best CS school in the world, but we keep ignoring it. (Or talking about Hamilton or Toronto or whatever and not that obvious gem in the crown.) This, too, is hilariously Canadian.

What's so great about Waterloo? It is nowhere near Standard/Caltech/MIT in competition. The quality of students is also just above mediocre given the smaller talent pool of that exists in Canada.

Full disclosure: I'm from Waterloo.

University of Waterloo is a relatively young university - established in 1959 - so it may look unattractive compared to old big name universities, especially on the usual metrics used for ranking universities.

However, UWaterloo positioned itself into a very peculiar position by offering the most extensive undergraduate co-op program. Co-op students graduates with up to 2 years of field experience, and many of them get offers from the companies they worked for during co-op terms (and among them are Big Tech and other IT giants). This allows Waterloo graduates to get high-end jobs pretty quickly, and, as a result, it's currently one of the most popular universities in SV and Big Tech[1].

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Waterloo#Ranking...

> The quality of students is also just above mediocre given the smaller talent pool of that exists in Canada.

The pool is NOT limited to the population of Canada, because Canadian immigration policy create a lot of synergy here.

Canada has a very lax immigration policy compared to US, so it's very easy for foreign students to settle in Canada after finishing their co-op. IIRC, both the federal gov and provincial gov roll their own immigration programs, so there's practically no shortage of immigration options when you graduate from a Canadian university. Hell, some people even use their shiny new Canadian PR/citizenship to re-immigrate to US, while a lot of foreign students in US get kicked out after graduation. The door is much more wide open in Canada.

So, Waterloo co-op program is a great opportunity for foreign students to get a decent SWE job in North America - one of the most well paying jobs in the world. This makes Waterloo attract talents from abroad.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#108

Post by boringg »

stingraycharles wrote: post #72
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?

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.

Theres a natural cap of talent in a lot of cities, the more you offer only takes from another company instead of bringing more people into the pool. The time to get trained and enter the market isnt instant.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#109

Post by vostok »

bin_bash wrote: post #82
stingraycharles wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I made about 650k last year and I'm not even staff-level. I don't think paying 750k is going to attract anyone new.

It might attract me. I work in a non tech role because, at the time I thought that tech paid less than my chosen industry.

If I had known that I could make $750k in tech then the gap is small enough that the improved work life balance and lower stress might have tipped me to tech.

Re: Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto

#110

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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.

High (income) taxes isn't an issue for "big tech", even with the taxes the compensations they offer in the US are a multiple of what the average software engineer earns. Worker's rights is people telling on themselves, I don't think 40 hours / week and ~25 days off a year is unreasonable. No vacation or long hours just means people will do less at work.

Anyway I know of plenty of people who landed remote jobs at US companies, or US-based companies opening offices within Europe. I mean most US companies operate through Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg anyway because of tax evasion.

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