151–160 of 266 posts
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.
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I don't think keeping people in your country by making it harder to leave is a good strategy.
IMHO when education is subsidized by public funds (which it is here), those funds should have to be repaid if you're leaving the country within a certain number of years or before you've paid some amount in income tax. That would improve the talent situation here.
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.
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> Seattle, NYC, Zurich, and London are all big offices that are at least comparable to Mountain View No they aren't, Mountain View much bigger than all of those combined.
Not sure why you're being downvoted. I've been to the seattle office. Its a few buildings. The mtn view office is dozens
Altogether Google employs 4500 in the Seattle area, and that number will increase substantially when south lake union comes online. And of course, Google will just be a small presence compared to the other craziness in South Lake Union (Amazon being the biggest, but also Apple and Facebook having large presences).
Now, 4500 in Seattle, 4000 in Zurich, 3,500 in London, 7,000 in NYC...that easily approaches the 23,000 in Mountain View.
The cheap labour pool as a consequence of the weak Canadian dollar certainly helps, alongside having identical time zones and nearly identical culture to the United States. Lots of Canadian consultancies butter their bread with USD.
>> nearly identical culture to the United States. Lol. Maybe a similar culture to some parts of California or Washington, and that is a stretch, but Vancouver is very very different than "the United States". Live in both for a while and all the little difference (the guns, health care, government, police, civil-military relations, the environment, land use, education etc) add up to markedly different approaches to li…
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For way too long Canada has had this weird artificial market capture problem. The easier it is for us to break down those fake barriers, the better it is for everyone. Salaries are about to go up way more for the average employee. Simultaneously, any companies that were making money on labor price arbitrage are about to have a real tough time; Good riddance.
If you get into a senior role at one of the big tech firms, pay matches the valley. For lesser roles, Canada is cheaper, but the gap is closing rapidly as talent runs dry.
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The US is the NBA, the stars definitely do go there. A pretty good life strategy is to work in the states from 30-45 while you're young and healthy, then come back to Canada for peace and safety to raise your family. I've seen a few people do that. I'm not sure it ends up being that bad for Canada. On the one hand they lose stars during their productive years, on the other hand they come back during their spending ye…
Most of these people don't create jobs when they move back. So yes, it is bad for Canada.
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It's rather rare, from what I can tell. Esp. in the context of immigration, h1bdata can be useful. Google llc has precisely 1 software engineer certified at a salary above 300k. 250k, more achievable, with very senior status. What really happens though is RSU appreciation. GOOG has more than doubled in the past 4 years. You are awarded X dollars of stock on hire and every annual review period, but that is converted i…
Just to be clear, that salary is prevailing wage which is usually lower than the actual salary you're getting (does not include RSUs or stock on top of that). In my case the difference was about 30 to 40% lower.
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…
There is a lack of investment capital available to companies based in Canada. Programs like IRAP and SR&ED don't help in any meaningful way.
Canada is a great country, but we've been underperforming for a while now and we should be a lot more concerned about that.