241–250 of 304 posts
Building a specialization is far more complex. It might seem unrelated but I think the SF's historical openness for all sort of "weird" people have played a big role in its emergence as Tech capital. It would take years for nay city to beat it.
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> Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.
Outside of silicon valley and New York salaries in the US are not actually that great. According to glassdoor the average junior developer is actually only 60k when you consider the whole country. Junior software engineer on payscale is median 55k. Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. Salaries in Toront…
The AngelList salaries data confirms this at least when it comes to the startup job sector: https://angel.co/salaries
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> Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.
Outside of silicon valley and New York salaries in the US are not actually that great. According to glassdoor the average junior developer is actually only 60k when you consider the whole country. Junior software engineer on payscale is median 55k. Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. Salaries in Toront…
This is a pretty important point...
Currently it looks like a ~100k salary in San Fransisco is required to maintain the same standard of living that 55k gets you in Atlanta, Dallas, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and essentially every other big city I've looked at. So about 1.8x higher is required.
For Toronto it's about 1.9x.
"Toronto is already home to a number of successful venture-backed businesses, such as Shopify, KIK, ..." Fact check time. Shopify's headquarters is in Ottawa. Kik is in Waterloo.
While we're at it, a bunch of YC companies are headquartered or have an office there like Appcanary, Upverter, PagerDuty. Big tech companies have offices there too, like Mozilla and Google (mostly sales in Toronto for now, eng in Waterloo). Lots of small bootstrapped tech startups, consultancies, and agencies, too—like the famous Teehan+Lax agency that got bought by Facebook. This is just from the top of my head, I'd…
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Have you lived in Toronto? Houses in the city average over 1M CAD and there are tons of vagrants on the street.
I currently live in Toronto, but I didn't buy a house. My monthly expenses would be nearly 30% higher for a morgage and condo fees for the place I'm renting now. I rather invest that in a business. As for people living on the street. According to wikipedia the estimated homeless population in San Fransisco is between 7000 and 10000. The estimated number in Toronto is 5,253 (source: Toronto.ca), but since Toronto has…
Compare SF bay area to Toronto would be more fair.
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Waterloo grad here. Seeing pretty much the same thing. Really not difficult to imagine why Canadian tech companies have mostly stopped being competitive on the global stage, considering most of the talent they have access to at these pitiful salaries are essentially left-overs. Unfortunately, I honestly don't see how the situation can improve. It's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Companies act in self-int…
Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. I think sometimes people are trying to cash in on the ideal before it's even been formed. Why is everyone so rushed to be the next SV anyway? Why not be the best Toronto, or whatever city of focus that happens to support entrepreneurship through whatever programs. I feel like being a next SV town is sort of like…
Toronto is already the best Toronto in the world, although it was a close competition last year.
I thought that was supposed to be Austin? Silicone valley of the prairie or something.
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I spent a good deal of time in New York when I was younger -- in Manhattan working for an investment bank in technology. I didn't really explore the other boroughs much, but I did stay in the city for an extended period of time (~6 months in one go). I've also spent a good deal of time in the bay area (San Francisco), so the point where I spent more than half of my time there as opposed to here in Toronto. All of tha…
How did you manage to afford a 3 bedroom house 3km from the financial district in Toronto on an engineer's salary? Did you buy a long time ago? I'm incredibly envious because I can't imagine affording that kind of real estate on a Toronto developer's salary without making some serious retirement savings/lifestyle sacrifices.
When it was time to look (mid 2014), we were pre-approved for an irresponsible amount (very low debt load, don't own a car, etc), took that number and cut a few hundred thousand off, and went looking for somewhere where we could put more than 10% down. When it came time to do the mortgage, which was admittedly handled by a family friend, they arranged to float a top up to 20% to skip CMHC fees (we end up paying the bank a few thousand in interest, but save tens of thousands we would've had to pay in mortgage insurance). All said and done, the mortgage plus other financing costs us about the same as a nice studio apartment in San Francisco. In about 3 years we'll have the extra financing paid off, and our mortgage will cost us less than sharing an apartment in SF.
As far as lifestyle/savings goes, not really. My wife has always been a great saver, plus while her current gig is a bit stodgy it does come with some old fashioned benefits (like a DB pension along with a DC pension on top). We go on frequent trips, enjoy dinner around the city on a regular basis, and other things.
edit: I'd also like to add that you have to be picky, and be picky about the right things. Our place had some cosmetic damage and beat up appliances included (cheap things to fix, relative to the price of a house). We only paid a bit more than $100k extra for a 3 bedroom freehold townhouse (no condo fees, we own the actual land and building) compared to a 2 bedroom stacked townhouse that was literally half the square footage and came with a $400 monthly condo fee in the same neighbourhood. That was a new build, while ours was from 2009, about 5 years old at the time. Several of the other units in the complex have sold since we moved in, at hundreds of thousands over what we paid for our unit just 2 years ago. It feels like the market was discounting some easily fixed issues with appearance at a huge premium over the actual cost of the repairs and new appliances. The listing online was also DREADFUL. It really looked terrible in the online photos compared to an in-person viewing.
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Outside of silicon valley and New York salaries in the US are not actually that great. According to glassdoor the average junior developer is actually only 60k when you consider the whole country. Junior software engineer on payscale is median 55k. Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. Salaries in Toront…
> Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. This is a pretty important point... Currently it looks like a ~100k salary in San Fransisco is required to maintain the same standard of living that 55k gets you in Atlanta, Dallas, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and essentially every other big city I've looked at. So about…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Outside of silicon valley and New York salaries in the US are not actually that great. According to glassdoor the average junior developer is actually only 60k when you consider the whole country. Junior software engineer on payscale is median 55k. Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. Salaries in Toront…
> Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. This is a pretty important point... Currently it looks like a ~100k salary in San Fransisco is required to maintain the same standard of living that 55k gets you in Atlanta, Dallas, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and essentially every other big city I've looked at. So about…