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Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

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Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#41

Post by ummonk »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #37
thinkingkong wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a Canada wide problem. Rather, Id even say its a !valley problem. Canadian businesses keep making this weird assumption that theres some kind of market capture but it’s really only true for people who have to stay in the city or country for some reason. The addressable hirable market is the people who chose / have to stay and havent realized being employed by a US business is as easy as switching github organ…

I do think it reflects more of a "not US" than a "not Silicon Valley/Seattle" problem these days. Anecdotally, I've discovered that most sufficiently large companies in the US now recognize and will credibly attempt to compete with the stratospheric Silicon Valley wages for the upper echelons of tech talent no matter where the company is located. For example, I've seen many cases of the Fortune 500, most of which are…

Wow, that's good to hear. As someone who would like the option of settling down outside the Bay Area down the road, but wouldn't want to miss out on the opportunities available at top companies in the Bay Area, I'm curious how much and what kind of experience they're looking for in making these offers.

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#42

Post by jandrewrogers »

tlear wrote: post #14
devoply wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Canada, salaries for tech seem to normally max out around 100k for developers (with exceptions for working for big US/multinational companies like Amazon, MSFT, etc.). Even 80k is pretty common for senior developers... In Canadian dollars. So around 80k USD is max a Canadian developer can expect to make other than a few unusual cases thrown in there which might go as high as 130k CAD so around 100k USD is a stella…

100k? maybe 5-6 years ago, it is not the case anymore at all. I dont what the max is but 140-150 is no that unusual(for senior people obviously)

That may be because that is about US$100k at the current exchange rates. A cynic would say that the comp has only gone up because the exchange rate has, since tech tends to be denominated in USD.

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#43

Post by ninjakeyboard »

Liru wrote: post #33
ninjakeyboard wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The wages in toronto have skyrocketed in the last couple years. I'm looking for functional programming people if you're interested I can pay at least $120k/year and offer considerable equity to work on realtime systems. We're profitable and not funded. We have a couple seats to fill and I'm having a hard time because people in Scala circles are expecting $150k/year in Toronto. Many of my peers are making $150k no pro…

Where are all the Elixir jobs at in Toronto? I can't seem to find any.

There are elixir meetups held by pagerduty. PagerDuty is moving primarily to elixir and have a large engineering presence in Toronto. Their interview is a bit tough. I know several good devs who didn't make it through the process. It's usually something like two-sum problem (two lists, does a number from one list sum to equal 0 from the other list?) in a 40 minute live coding exercise over the phone. You can shoot me an email if you want to chat - alayablue -- at -- hotmail.com and I'll reply from my work email address. Let me know if you do send an email - I don't use that account. It's always worth having a chat so please do reach out.

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#44

Post by abrichr »

paulie_a wrote: post #15
canada_dry wrote: post #6

As a Canadian tech guy who travels to Silicon Valley and Seattle fairly frequently the impression that most US techies have is that Toronto is an awesome place to live, but it is not (yet) a magnet for top talent. There are many amazing startups at any given moment in Toronto... but many of the folks involved have their sights set on FANG.

I am not familiar with Toronto personally but it would have one huge benefit over silicon valley...you don't have to live in silicon valley. Edit: I'd prefer Siberia over sv, there is a reason talented people are getting the hell out of there and many major companies are building huge offices elsewhere.

What is the reason?

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#45

Post by abrichr »

acchow wrote: post #16
Apocryphon wrote: post #2

Is this truly significant, or is it spin to sell a city? Not to be harsh, but I've read the accounts of Canadian expats on the comparatively low wages back home. Not SF low, but low even compared to other cities in the U.S.

Toronto has the best spin department in the world. I never stop seeing listicles with Toronto in the top 3, reading about how great it is a place to live and work, and how it's become a leader in innovation/tech/art/music/film/finance. The endless fluff pieces are a bit tiresome.

Maybe it’s actully a really good place to live?

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#47

Post by matt-snider »

abrichr wrote: post #44
paulie_a wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not familiar with Toronto personally but it would have one huge benefit over silicon valley...you don't have to live in silicon valley. Edit: I'd prefer Siberia over sv, there is a reason talented people are getting the hell out of there and many major companies are building huge offices elsewhere.

What is the reason?

Yah I'd be interested to know this as well

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#48

Post by dang »

kevintb wrote: post #24
kirbypineapple wrote: post #13

The wages in Toronto are laughable. In the praries it's possible to make maybe 10 to 20k less than Toronto salaries but the houses are half the price.

[flagged]

That's not nice. Please don't do regional dissing here.

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#49

Post by thesimon »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #37
thinkingkong wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a Canada wide problem. Rather, Id even say its a !valley problem. Canadian businesses keep making this weird assumption that theres some kind of market capture but it’s really only true for people who have to stay in the city or country for some reason. The addressable hirable market is the people who chose / have to stay and havent realized being employed by a US business is as easy as switching github organ…

I do think it reflects more of a "not US" than a "not Silicon Valley/Seattle" problem these days. Anecdotally, I've discovered that most sufficiently large companies in the US now recognize and will credibly attempt to compete with the stratospheric Silicon Valley wages for the upper echelons of tech talent no matter where the company is located. For example, I've seen many cases of the Fortune 500, most of which are…

>I do think it reflects more of a "not US" than a "not Silicon Valley/Seattle" problem these days.

Yeah, I agree, I've seen similar high offers in other US regions as well.

And as the US visa policies are becoming more strict, european companies won't have to compete against people leaving for the US, so the Salary/CoL ratio will stay bad over here.

Re: Developments in tech in Toronto over the past seven years

#50

Post by adriand »

kirbypineapple wrote: post #13

The wages in Toronto are laughable. In the praries it's possible to make maybe 10 to 20k less than Toronto salaries but the houses are half the price.

These conversations, which appear every time a post appears on HN that talks about what a great place Toronto is (along with many other places in Canada), make me sad.

There is so much more to life than money.

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