Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 96 posts

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#51

Post by chrisseaton »

908B64B197 wrote: post #45
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete? I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for…

I think a lot of the problems are deeply ingrained in society and culture. In the UK for example, engineering, especially software engineering is just fundamentally a low social status job, and people with high status running companies are fundamentally adverse to paying for it, and that's unlikely to change for a generation or more.

If you try to recommend people pay more to get better engineers and stop them all going to the US so they can build bigger and stronger companies here you just get dead eyes back - they can't comprehend why you'd give an engineer money.

At some point you need to look after yourself and go elsewhere.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#52

Post by abdullahkhalids »

mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

How many of the CS students are non-Canadians who came for their undergrad and now moving to wherever they get the best job, or perhaps even move to California for weather?

Edit: I found the answer in the attached document [1]. About half the class immigrated to Canada. The stats for non-immigrant Canadian might be more interesting.

[1] https://uw-se-2020-class-profile.github.io/profile.pdf

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#53

Post by francisl »

908B64B197 wrote: post #45
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete? I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for…

It's all political.

If the government fight hard, then lose, the opposing party will blame them for that and most likely make them win the next election. If they just do a marketing campaign telling they did the best possible, winning the next election is more probable.

And Trudeau has nothing to do with that, conservative or liberal, it will be the same strategy.

In order to make Canada more competitive, I think it should be addressed on the provincial level. We definitely need more startup to change the culture and have a place to keep the best talents. High risk funds, change in laws (so anybody can freely invest), etc.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#54

Post by njanirudh »

AzzieElbab wrote: post #46
redis_mlc wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There's a US media narrative that taxes and health care are worse in Canada than the US but: 1) You will likely pay more in taxes in California than Canada. 2) It's easier to itemize self-employment tax expenses in Canada, so you can easily pay half the taxes of the US. (I paid 12% of total income the last year I worked in Toronto.) 3) Everybody I know in Canada is happy with health care, and infinitely happier t…

That makes 84% of Waterloo grads idiots for leaving Canada. They will all wise up and come back

The same idiots who will leverage their knowldge to earn 3x the salary of Canada and EU while working on cutting edge SWE?

I am sure they will regret buying huge mansions and retire early in their home towns.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#55

Post by johbjo »

dcolkitt wrote: post #7
triceratops wrote: post #3

Gotta pay more money to keep the talent. This isn't rocket science. The crazy thing is Canada has so many advantages that should make paying higher salaries easier. University is cheaper, so people don't have as much (or any) student debt. Healthcare is cheaper for companies to provide - since they generally only have to offer supplemental coverage. And so on.

American firms tend to have much higher quality corporate management than their Canadian counterparts.[1] To be profitable at FAAMG salaries requires leveraging your engineers to achieve very high levels of productivity and execution. That's generally not possible without management that consistently adheres to best practices. [1] https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.24.1.203

Since marginal cost is essentially zero in software, productivity as measured in revenue per head is not really relevant.

The business climate might just be better in the US.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#57

Post by MattGaiser »

908B64B197 wrote: post #45
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete? I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for…

Bombardier is a badly run company that consistently fails to deliver. Government money kept being poured into them for mediocre results. At a certain point they had to be cut off.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#58

Post by nasalgoat »

xenihn wrote: post #25
mlex wrote: post #4

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

It's not just the taxes/rent/COL. I know three Canadian SWEs whose parents could have easily bought them a nice house or condo in any major Canadian city, if they had wanted to stay. One of them explained it to me this way: the quality of employers, coworkers, and the overall software engineering work you'll do in Canada just doesn't compare to the US. Even if pay/finances were exactly the same, going to the US would…

I "stayed behind" because I didn't qualify for an H1B visa due to being self-taught, but now 25 years later I'm glad I stayed here with my free healthcare and high standard of living. Yes, lots of talented people leave but lots stay as well, for reasons beyond the mighty dollar.

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#59

Post by 908B64B197 »

MattGaiser wrote: post #57
908B64B197 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete? I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for…

Bombardier is a badly run company that consistently fails to deliver. Government money kept being poured into them for mediocre results. At a certain point they had to be cut off.

That's an opinion customers of the CSeries don't seem to share, judging by the orders for the plane.

Care to elaborate?

Re: 84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation

#60

Post by RGamma »

arcticbull wrote: post #30
afinlayson wrote: post #20

I've been in the USA for 12 years because of the pay difference, and job perks. I'd move back, but I'm married and have a family now. The biggest stress down here is the healthcare and the immigration status, if you are at a stable enough company these aren't an issue, I'm lucky I only had 1 startup fail and cause me months of stress as I tried to fix those issues.

I've been in the US for 10 years because of the pay difference. Perks I'm over. I really don't care, I can buy my own perks with the pay. I've saved up enough to buy quite the lifestyle back in Canada, and I plan to move back before I start a family. I'm just a few months from getting my green card, and I'm genuinely over it. I can't imagine raising kids in the US. The healthcare, oof. Even having kids, maternal mort…

Sounds dystopic. The emergency service isn't called "Trauma Team" [1] perchance?

My impression is you deal with that via generous amounts of apathy and snuggly retreating into your technology/wealth bubble as you can see on HN.

[1] https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Trauma_Team_International

Post reply on HN