3 ms·

There are some good devs there too - maybe that is what made it an attractive choice for companies like Facebook before.

by Bahamut 10y ago

brilliantcode 10y ago
Facebook did it to get around visa issue to attract non-Canadians from Europe and abroad. Microsoft does it too. I work in the same building as Microsoft in downtown Vangcouver and I always hear a lot of foreign languages being spoken on the way up-Russian, Mandarin etc. I don't think they've been in an English speaking country for very long which makes me suspect they are doing the same thing as Facebook.
ctrl_freak 10y ago
As brilliantcode mentioned, Facebook, Microsoft et al are using Vancouver as a visa staging ground for people outside of North America. Most Canadian software engineers can work in the US on the TN (which doesn't have a cap like the H-1B) so they don't have visa issues. They bring them over to Vancouver, basically training them there, and once they've worked there for a year, they're eligible to use the L-1 visa, because it's considered an intra-company transfer, so they can move them into the US. The Vancouver offices are not an investment in the Canadian tech industry; they're just taking advantage of our more lenient immigration laws and the convenience of the city being geographically close to San Francisco. Waterloo and Toronto seem to be taken much more seriously as remote engineering offices for American companies (possibly because of the universities and amount of tech talent in the region). It's kind of a shame though. Vancouver is a beautiful city, conveniently located, and there's no good reason why it couldn't be Silicon Valley of the north. If they could just figure out how to make it more economical to live there for software engineers (i.e. cheaper housing and higher salaries), it could quickly become a booming tech hub.

3 ms·

There are some good devs there too - maybe that is what made it an attractive choice for companies like Facebook before.

by Bahamut 10y ago

There are some good devs there too - maybe that is what made it an attractive choice for companies like Facebook before.

brilliantcode 10y ago
Facebook did it to get around visa issue to attract non-Canadians from Europe and abroad. Microsoft does it too. I work in the same building as Microsoft in downtown Vangcouver and I always hear a lot of foreign languages being spoken on the way up-Russian, Mandarin etc. I don't think they've been in an English speaking country for very long which makes me suspect they are doing the same thing as Facebook.
ctrl_freak 10y ago
As brilliantcode mentioned, Facebook, Microsoft et al are using Vancouver as a visa staging ground for people outside of North America. Most Canadian software engineers can work in the US on the TN (which doesn't have a cap like the H-1B) so they don't have visa issues. They bring them over to Vancouver, basically training them there, and once they've worked there for a year, they're eligible to use the L-1 visa, because it's considered an intra-company transfer, so they can move them into the US. The Vancouver offices are not an investment in the Canadian tech industry; they're just taking advantage of our more lenient immigration laws and the convenience of the city being geographically close to San Francisco. Waterloo and Toronto seem to be taken much more seriously as remote engineering offices for American companies (possibly because of the universities and amount of tech talent in the region). It's kind of a shame though. Vancouver is a beautiful city, conveniently located, and there's no good reason why it couldn't be Silicon Valley of the north. If they could just figure out how to make it more economical to live there for software engineers (i.e. cheaper housing and higher salaries), it could quickly become a booming tech hub.