11 ms·

New institute aims to make Toronto an ‘intellectual centre’ of AI capability

112 points by sonabinu 10y ago

fnbr 10y ago
The problem that I see (as a Canadian) is salaries. I'm not in Toronto but am in Canada, and I see people with 10 years experience making less than new grads in SV (without even factoring in the USD/CAD differential). Until that aligns, I don't think the brain drain will stop.
- ahelwer 10y ago
  Yep. Even worse with the current USD/CAD exchange rate. I do love the homeland, but taking basically a 50% paycut adds a lot of weight to the US end of the scale. Plus I spend less than $1K USD/month on rent here in Seattle (live with one roommate), so cost of living is pretty much the same - especially with food being more expensive in Canada.
  - blazespin 10y ago
    Yep. The salary difference is astronomical when you take into account the paycut + exchange diff.
  - cing 10y ago
    Seattle might be an exception, but this site suggests COL is ~50% higher in SF than Toronto [1], USD is 33% stronger than CAD. Basically, if Vector Institute can offer 200K CAD, it's no different than 250K USD in SF. Is my math wrong? [1] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index/north-america https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index/north-americ...
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - lewisl9029 10y ago
      The math sounds about right, but the kind of COL calculation you just made assumes people spend all the money they make with no savings/investments. A more realistic model for most high-income earners that accounts for savings/investments would heavily favor higher salary+COL regions. For a simplistic illustration of this using the same numbers, if you spend 100k CAD a year and make 200k CAD, you can save 100k CAD a year. If you spend 150K CAD (50% higher COL) and make 312.5K CAD (equivalent to 250K USD at 1.25 exchange rate), you'd save the equivalent of 162.5K CAD a year.
      - davidgay 10y ago
        You seem to be assuming that the SF and Toronto workers will retire to the same place, so the extra savings of the SF worker will go further. Conversely, if you assume that the SF worker retires to a place with a 50% higher COL than the Toronto worker, the difference disappears. Personally, my backup plan is to retire to Bulgaria based on SF savings ;)
        lewisl9029 10y ago
        If we take into account the time-value of money (which would be natural since we're talking about savings/investments that are subject to inflation and compound interest), higher income + higher COL remains favorable even if the cost of living ratio remains constant upon retirement.
        davidgay 10y ago
        Hmm, no. Each per-year saved amount is compounded by the same multiplier k after N years (assuming the same interest rate), so if you start with 1.5x more, you end up with 1.5x more.
        lewisl9029 10y ago
        You're totally right. I clearly wasn't thinking straight when I made that comment. There is still plenty of inherent value in accumulating wealth at a faster pace though.
- signal 10y ago
  Is that factoring in cost of living? There's an enormous difference between Toronto and SV there.
  - sdflkd 10y ago
    With respect to income/material wealth? Factoring in cost of living Toronto is still a poor place to live compared to any reasonable location in the United States. The currency basically negates any cost of living difference. Toronto is expensive as fuck (as most major cities are now).
    - tensor 10y ago
      Most people here are comparing Toronto to San Fransisco, not any reasonable location. Let's do some numbers. According to glassdoor an average salary for a software engineer in San Fransisco is 110k USD. A single bedroom apartment in SF goes for 3500/mo on average. In Toronto, according to payscale the average software developer job is 65k CAD, though let's also consider 80k because it's not hard to get that at a decent place if you have several years of experience. A single bedroom apartment right in downtown can be had for 1,600/mo CAD. Assuming you are living where you work and not doing something like living in Toronto earning a US salary, your buying power with left over money is likely to be similar. SF, after taxes (21%) gives you 86,900. Taking out rent, you are left with 44,900. Toronto at 65k is taxes about 25%, so you are left with 48,601 and after rent you have 29,401. But, if you get 80k, then you are taxes 26% and after rent get 39,461 left over which starts looking a lot more comparable.
      - sdflkd 10y ago
        Did you forget to convert the currency? 44,900 * 1.3 = 58370. Also, you don't have to live in a single bedroom apartment for $3500/mo. I've had comfortable living conditions at $2000. You're also forgetting that Toronto does not reward being a good developer. Your salary is capped way too early compared to America where you can easily go above 200k+ total compensation. Not to mention networking, getting technology for cheaper (in general), exclusive events, etc. It's not even close to comparable despite recent propaganda to show otherwise. Not unless you're a below-average developer, in which case, it is better to be in Toronto. Source: Born and raised in Toronto. Ran the numbers a bunch of times trying to convince myself to stay. Money won out.
- sonabinu 10y ago
  The tightening of (or perception of tighter) visas in the US may result in more grad students considering Canada as a potential destination than the US. Industry is likely to follow where the talent goes and this could result in wage equilibrium
- tjpoutanen 10y ago
  While that may be true for a software engineer the same does not apply to AI talent. The Vector Institute will offer salaries comparable to top global industrial AI labs. Also the Canadian industry appreciates the value a good data scientist and knows the talent war is global.
  - ahelwer 10y ago
    Source on the salaries?
    - cing 10y ago
      Likely no published source. OP seems to be involved with U of Toronto's business school "incubator" for A.I. start-ups, which has close ties to Vector Institute.
    - tjpoutanen 10y ago
      http://vectorinstitute.ai http://vectorinstitute.ai Scroll down to career opportunities. The research scientist position is advertised as being competitive with industry labs.
  - ryanobjc 10y ago
    I'd love to hear more on this. Also, since no person is an island, any plans to boost pay for supporting staff and engineers? Just so we're clear, top ai pays like $250k USD for entry level with no real cap, but senior staff can easily take home $500-900k
    - FreedomToCreate 10y ago
      I'd also love to hear which employer is paying 250K for an entry level position? This seems like the salary the 1 genius for every 10,000 good graduates would get. And without taking bonus into account, I doubt an engineer is getting paid 900K. You would see that engineer out the door the moment his retirement account was full. No engineer is gonna bust their ass for someone else once they know they are set financially.
- latenightcoding 10y ago
  I agree, I live in Toronto and I have been working exclusively for US based companies because of this. Good Canadian companies offer a maximum of 120k CAD entry salary if you are very experienced, that is 90k USD and taxes are pretty high in Canada. It makes no sense for me to accept work here, thankfully I know a couple of uncommon and old school languages that have kept me employed as a remote developer.
  - huangc10 10y ago
    Interesting... Can you elaborate on said old school languages?
    - latenightcoding 10y ago
      Ok here it goes... Perl. I am on my early 20s, but most of my co-workers are hardcore unix hackers in their 40s or 50s, so the pay is definitely good. And no I'm not working on hacky codebases from the 90s, I mostly work for companies that use "Modern Perl".
      - huangc10 10y ago
        dude awesome! I love Perl. I use to do a lot of scripting in Perl for my old job. Good to know this information. Question, are you guys at Perl 6 or not yet?
        latenightcoding 10y ago
        Not yet!
  - dgudkov 10y ago
    For the full picture it's worth mentioning that weak CAD also means less expenses when converted to USD. Also basic health insurance is already paid with taxes. But it still doesn't compensate the difference.
    - 10y ago
- vivekd 10y ago
  We may be able to get by with lower salaries than America if Americas immigration system continues to lag. It's easier for potential AI brains to immigrate here than the States under the current climate. I do agree that this is only of limited advantage, but it's something. I feel like because of structural and tax issues with our society, American style salaries will never be a thing here. That probably means that we will never be the tech power house that America is, but I think we can compete pretty effectively with Europe in getting the brains who, for whatever reason, choose not to go to America. And hey . . . second best ain't that bad.
  - lebek 10y ago
    What are Canada's "structural and tax issues"?
    - vivekd 10y ago
      our taxes are much higher meaning people and companies have less disposable income - more money is in the public sector rather than the private sector. Structural is the way our society is set up, there are lots of public services so people rely on that more than on personal savings. We don't have as many venture capitalists as America, we don't have the same number of startups, the wealth in our nation is tied up in the hands of a few large corporations rather than spread out among many businesses.
      - soperj 10y ago
        Our taxes aren't that high compared to some states. California's are definitely higher. Toronto's housing market is stupid though. Would be better off in Waterloo, or Ottawa
        deleted 10y ago
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  - theparanoid 10y ago
    You'll still lose native Canadians.
- Archio 10y ago
  Canadian-American here who was eager about the possibility of working in a Greater Toronto Area company. At one startup I was offered the equivalent of $35k USD per year. I currently work at a startup in SF making almost three times that amount.
- branchless 10y ago
  Adjust for rent. Not that this will help Toronto as land prices there are retarded also. Montreal is touted as an AI centre and has cheap land.
- blazespin 10y ago
  Yeah, and it's terrible in Vancouver where RE prices are as bad as SV.
- anthonyc51 10y ago
  +1 I left Toronto for the US in 2015, and my compensation increased by 3-4x (currency conversion taken into account). I have been working for large well-known US companies in both cities.
- javierluraschi 10y ago
  Is not that meaningful to compare salaries without considering cost of living.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  There is some false reasoning here. While Canadian per-capita income is lower once adjusted for currency valuations, Toronto's per-capita income is higher than the Canadian average, and thanks to significant wealth disparity, there's plenty of people in Toronto earning better than Silicon Valley wages. The economy can absolutely support those higher salaries. The fact of the matter is there aren't many jobs of that nature in Toronto right now, but if there were, I don't see reason to think the pay couldn't be competitive.
- andrew749 10y ago
  The difference might be even more extreme than that. I still am in school (University of Waterloo) and am going to an internship which pays ~110k USD, whereas in Canada I could maybe hope for less than half of that. All my peers aim to go to the valley just because of this HUGE pay gap. Edited: Granted every time I've worked in the valley, housing has been exorbitant, but still makes it worth my while. The most I've seen people pay in SF has been ~2k if you don't want to share a room.
  - sGatling1788 10y ago
    You are not factoring in costs that will one day materialize. Believe it or not, one day many people decide they want to have kids. To send them to a decent school in the U.S. costs money. I've seen $10k for K-12. That's 13years of $10k per child. So 3 kids = $390k U.S. That's $U.S. dollars and after taxes. Then there will be a day where you get laid off. The AI/ML industry will suffer a downturn at some point. In the U.S. your severance will be tiny (?2 weeks salary?), whereas in Canada it will be a minimum of something like a month plus 2 weeks per year of service - but often much more than that. So 10 years of service will be provide 24 weeks. Vacations - in the U.S., 2 weeks seems common, but many Canadians enjoy 4-5 weeks of vacation. Then there's the increased crime and violence. Guns in particular. In the U.S., if you want to be as safe as Canada, you need to live in a gat ed community. Those ain't cheap.
    - andrew749 10y ago
      I definitely agree that Canada has a great social safety net and is a better place to live. Those costs you mentioned do add up. I will most likely be working full time in Canada because of those reasons. The vast majority of peers though might not because of the UPFRONT lack of competitiveness from Canadian companies. Correct me if I'm wrong but is it not the purpose of taxes to fund these services. I actually had to pay Canadian income taxes this year in addition to US taxes, even though I had no income in Canada. I totally understand and accept this as it helps maintain everything that is great about where I live. I'm not seeing how valuing an Engineer less solves the issue of funding social services. If anything a higher income for an Engineer would mean that they would be paying more in taxes to also fund those services. Does an Engineer in Canada not provide the same financial benefit for the institution where they work, compared to if they were to work in the US? I feel like there are set income brackets that companies have established that have not been modernized to adapt to the changing marketplace. It just so happens that being a competent Computer Scientist is a valuable skill at this point in history because of the potential upside they can provide for a company and companies are not acknowledging this.
- abandonliberty 10y ago
  You do have to carefully consider cost of living & quality of life. Much of the differential will be lost there. It's very important to do the math to understand the upside of going to SV and equip yourself appropriately for negotiations.
alphonsegaston 10y ago
For those who haven't been, Toronto is a really wonderful city. Safe, great food, and has an awesome art and music scene. Lots of cool cultural events as well. If it wasn't so hard to emigrate as an average America, I'd live there in a heartbeat. They do have a really good working holiday program for people in Asia and some parts of Europe.
- deleted 10y ago
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- rwallace 10y ago
  Out of curiosity, what is the difficulty in migrating from the U.S. to Canada? All we usually hear about is the difficulty in migrating to the U.S.
  - alphonsegaston 10y ago
    Canada only allows something like 300,000 long-term residents to move into the country per year, of which about half those slots are reserved for refugees and family reunification. They're immigrantion process is just as bureaucratic as the US (if not slightly more so), and they are very selective about whom they take (favoring the wealthy, those with advanced higher education, and French/English bilinguals). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to-canada-trump-election-immigration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to-canada...
romuloab42 10y ago
Non Google-AMP link: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-institute-aims-to-be-worldwide-supplier-of-artificial-intelligence-capability.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-inst...
- mzzter 10y ago
  the AMP link really masks the original domain wow, thought the article was written by google for a second :/
  - scosman 10y ago
    Not sure why people are downvoting. This is a legit complaint about AMP. Even the HN homepage is showing this as "google.com", not "thestar.com".
    - itchyjunk 10y ago
      I clicked thinking it was a google announcement and got redirected. Didn't even know what AMP was till i saw this thread and googled it.
  - JacobDotVI 10y ago
    Same thing happened to me - I thought this was an official google announcement. The domain of an AMP link is misleading.
remir 10y ago
Google is also building an AI research lab in Montreal, which is supposedly a talent center for AI. According to this article from Wired: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-snag-scarce-global-talent/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-s..., Google "donated about $13 million CAD to academic research in the country and about half was earmarked for AI research."
FreedomToCreate 10y ago
As someone who lived in Toronto and now lives in SV, this is great news for the region, which is flush with talent and is really doing everything to support researchers and entrepreneurs. However the cost of living(COL) is prohibitive, maybe even more than SV and the ratio of salary to COL is definitely higher than SV.
- truebosko 10y ago
  I don't think I believe this. Source?
  - aheilbut 10y ago
    Housing prices have been rising very rapidly over the last couple of years: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million-dollar-home-contagion-spreads-to-toronto-suburbs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million-d...
    - sanswork 10y ago
      House prices are skyrocketing but condos are still pretty cheap. There just isn't any more space for actual houses in the city so the ones that are there are extra valuable. You can still find tons of 1+1 units in the city for under $2000/month which is the same as it was 3-4 years ago.
      - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
        $2k per month is really high. Even if a tech worker can afford that, it really restricts the city to the rich, which is not good. Every city needs a balance of all classes for there to be stable growth.
        sanswork 10y ago
        $2k per month for a 1+1 in a 'luxury' condo building right in the core of the city isn't high by basically any standard. There are a lot of options in the city still that are a lot cheaper. I see a lot of people complaining about high prices in the most prime of areas. So what do you think would be a good solution to the problem? Everyone wants to live in area X but obviously they can't all fit there. How do you let them all live there and keep it affordable?
deleted 10y ago
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Apocryphon 10y ago
I thought that Montréal was already the AI centre of Canada.
- perhonen 10y ago
  UMontreal has Bengio, UofT has Hinton. Toronto also has Google Brain, and many UofT phd students and postdocs have ended up there (Sutskever, Karpathy).
- beerbaron23 10y ago
  Correct, Montréal is already way way ahead of Toronto on the AI front. Google and Microsoft already invested heavily into Montréal. M$ donated 7 million to UdeM and McGill as well.
mabbo 10y ago
And yet Google still won't open a local dev office apart from Waterloo (over an hour away).
- dontreact 10y ago
  https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-scientist-google-brain-canada-111-richmond-st-w-toronto-on-canada-2491730056 https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-s...
  - tjpoutanen 10y ago
    It was announced yesterday that Geoff Hinton will lead a google brain lab in Toronto.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - deleted 10y ago
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- anthonyc51 10y ago
  Despite repeated communication from employees that no one wants to live in fucking Waterloo, and a significant portion of the engineers there commute from Toronto anyways.
canistr 10y ago
Toronto's problem (and to an extent the other major cities in Canada) isn't so much about the salary differences with SV so much as the entire tech ecosystem. The money and cost of living would probably affect decisions for people outside of the GTA trying to move here. But because Toronto is the largest city in the country and is the focal point of Southern Ontario, it could do well by simply retaining the talent it outputs. The brain drain from the GTA and Southern Ontario has long been real. But alternatively, many people move from other places to Toronto. What makes it difficult for new grads and industry veterans from keeping shop in Toronto is that the mobility and learning experiences aren't there. There are a limited number of high-tech jobs here and anything else is likely in the medical, law, finance, or even media world. In that sense, I wouldn't even classify tech as a second-class citizen so much as being far down on the totem pole. I partially wonder if the general inferiority complex of Torontonians/Canadians has created this effect. Because the city typically lusts for things from other places (such as SV or NY), it never develops its own reputation and chooses to be itself. Because of that, tech has never developed an identity because all of our tech talent chooses the shiny opportunity granted to them by some company because it's "from Silicon Valley". Just think of what the tech ecosystem would be like if all Torontonians simply stayed here. For instance, I often posit what would have happened had the ML/DL community had stronger partnerships with AMD as opposed to building everything with CUDA/NVIDIA. AMD, afterall, is just up the street from the University of Toronto in Markham. A symbiotic relationship could've been built with Hinton's lab.
- cbsmith 10y ago
  As one of those brains that drained out of Toronto, I would say that "limited number of spaces" is malarky. You can create the space. What I did find was that Toronto's investment community (at least a couple of decades ago) was much more conservative, so it was much harder to create the space in Toronto than it was south of the border.
  - canistr 10y ago
    I think you're overlooking the broader point I'm making by focusing on that one line. The point is that if Toronto had the same tech ecosystem as to say even Seattle or New York for salaries ranging between half to two-thirds of their American counterparts, I'd reasonably certain Canadians would opt to stay here. Yes, the investment community has a broader effect on the startups within the city. But I'm not sure they have as significant of an effect on large tech companies setting up research or dev centres here. And ultimately, having the powerhouses here helps to retain talent probably greater than having hundreds of startups in the $10-50 million revenue range.
JohnJamesRambo 10y ago
Institute...AI...Fallout
somberi 10y ago
Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, is the great-great-grandson of George Boole, whose Boolean algebra is a keystone of digital computing—has sometimes been called the father of deep learning; it’s a topic he’s worked on since the mid-nineteen-seventies, and many of his students have become principal architects of the field today. From: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md

112 points by sonabinu 10y ago

fnbr 10y ago

The problem that I see (as a Canadian) is salaries. I'm not in Toronto but am in Canada, and I see people with 10 years experience making less than new grads in SV (without even factoring in the USD/CAD differential). Until that aligns, I don't think the brain drain will stop.

ahelwer 10y ago
Yep. Even worse with the current USD/CAD exchange rate. I do love the homeland, but taking basically a 50% paycut adds a lot of weight to the US end of the scale. Plus I spend less than $1K USD/month on rent here in Seattle (live with one roommate), so cost of living is pretty much the same - especially with food being more expensive in Canada.
- blazespin 10y ago
  Yep. The salary difference is astronomical when you take into account the paycut + exchange diff.
- cing 10y ago
  Seattle might be an exception, but this site suggests COL is ~50% higher in SF than Toronto [1], USD is 33% stronger than CAD. Basically, if Vector Institute can offer 200K CAD, it's no different than 250K USD in SF. Is my math wrong? [1] https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index/north-america https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index/north-americ...
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - lewisl9029 10y ago
    The math sounds about right, but the kind of COL calculation you just made assumes people spend all the money they make with no savings/investments. A more realistic model for most high-income earners that accounts for savings/investments would heavily favor higher salary+COL regions. For a simplistic illustration of this using the same numbers, if you spend 100k CAD a year and make 200k CAD, you can save 100k CAD a year. If you spend 150K CAD (50% higher COL) and make 312.5K CAD (equivalent to 250K USD at 1.25 exchange rate), you'd save the equivalent of 162.5K CAD a year.
    - davidgay 10y ago
      You seem to be assuming that the SF and Toronto workers will retire to the same place, so the extra savings of the SF worker will go further. Conversely, if you assume that the SF worker retires to a place with a 50% higher COL than the Toronto worker, the difference disappears. Personally, my backup plan is to retire to Bulgaria based on SF savings ;)
      - lewisl9029 10y ago
        If we take into account the time-value of money (which would be natural since we're talking about savings/investments that are subject to inflation and compound interest), higher income + higher COL remains favorable even if the cost of living ratio remains constant upon retirement.
        davidgay 10y ago
        Hmm, no. Each per-year saved amount is compounded by the same multiplier k after N years (assuming the same interest rate), so if you start with 1.5x more, you end up with 1.5x more.
        lewisl9029 10y ago
        You're totally right. I clearly wasn't thinking straight when I made that comment. There is still plenty of inherent value in accumulating wealth at a faster pace though.
signal 10y ago
Is that factoring in cost of living? There's an enormous difference between Toronto and SV there.
- sdflkd 10y ago
  With respect to income/material wealth? Factoring in cost of living Toronto is still a poor place to live compared to any reasonable location in the United States. The currency basically negates any cost of living difference. Toronto is expensive as fuck (as most major cities are now).
  - tensor 10y ago
    Most people here are comparing Toronto to San Fransisco, not any reasonable location. Let's do some numbers. According to glassdoor an average salary for a software engineer in San Fransisco is 110k USD. A single bedroom apartment in SF goes for 3500/mo on average. In Toronto, according to payscale the average software developer job is 65k CAD, though let's also consider 80k because it's not hard to get that at a decent place if you have several years of experience. A single bedroom apartment right in downtown can be had for 1,600/mo CAD. Assuming you are living where you work and not doing something like living in Toronto earning a US salary, your buying power with left over money is likely to be similar. SF, after taxes (21%) gives you 86,900. Taking out rent, you are left with 44,900. Toronto at 65k is taxes about 25%, so you are left with 48,601 and after rent you have 29,401. But, if you get 80k, then you are taxes 26% and after rent get 39,461 left over which starts looking a lot more comparable.
    - sdflkd 10y ago
      Did you forget to convert the currency? 44,900 * 1.3 = 58370. Also, you don't have to live in a single bedroom apartment for $3500/mo. I've had comfortable living conditions at $2000. You're also forgetting that Toronto does not reward being a good developer. Your salary is capped way too early compared to America where you can easily go above 200k+ total compensation. Not to mention networking, getting technology for cheaper (in general), exclusive events, etc. It's not even close to comparable despite recent propaganda to show otherwise. Not unless you're a below-average developer, in which case, it is better to be in Toronto. Source: Born and raised in Toronto. Ran the numbers a bunch of times trying to convince myself to stay. Money won out.
sonabinu 10y ago
The tightening of (or perception of tighter) visas in the US may result in more grad students considering Canada as a potential destination than the US. Industry is likely to follow where the talent goes and this could result in wage equilibrium
tjpoutanen 10y ago
While that may be true for a software engineer the same does not apply to AI talent. The Vector Institute will offer salaries comparable to top global industrial AI labs. Also the Canadian industry appreciates the value a good data scientist and knows the talent war is global.
- ahelwer 10y ago
  Source on the salaries?
  - cing 10y ago
    Likely no published source. OP seems to be involved with U of Toronto's business school "incubator" for A.I. start-ups, which has close ties to Vector Institute.
  - tjpoutanen 10y ago
    http://vectorinstitute.ai http://vectorinstitute.ai Scroll down to career opportunities. The research scientist position is advertised as being competitive with industry labs.
- ryanobjc 10y ago
  I'd love to hear more on this. Also, since no person is an island, any plans to boost pay for supporting staff and engineers? Just so we're clear, top ai pays like $250k USD for entry level with no real cap, but senior staff can easily take home $500-900k
  - FreedomToCreate 10y ago
    I'd also love to hear which employer is paying 250K for an entry level position? This seems like the salary the 1 genius for every 10,000 good graduates would get. And without taking bonus into account, I doubt an engineer is getting paid 900K. You would see that engineer out the door the moment his retirement account was full. No engineer is gonna bust their ass for someone else once they know they are set financially.
latenightcoding 10y ago
I agree, I live in Toronto and I have been working exclusively for US based companies because of this. Good Canadian companies offer a maximum of 120k CAD entry salary if you are very experienced, that is 90k USD and taxes are pretty high in Canada. It makes no sense for me to accept work here, thankfully I know a couple of uncommon and old school languages that have kept me employed as a remote developer.
- huangc10 10y ago
  Interesting... Can you elaborate on said old school languages?
  - latenightcoding 10y ago
    Ok here it goes... Perl. I am on my early 20s, but most of my co-workers are hardcore unix hackers in their 40s or 50s, so the pay is definitely good. And no I'm not working on hacky codebases from the 90s, I mostly work for companies that use "Modern Perl".
    - huangc10 10y ago
      dude awesome! I love Perl. I use to do a lot of scripting in Perl for my old job. Good to know this information. Question, are you guys at Perl 6 or not yet?
      - latenightcoding 10y ago
        Not yet!
- dgudkov 10y ago
  For the full picture it's worth mentioning that weak CAD also means less expenses when converted to USD. Also basic health insurance is already paid with taxes. But it still doesn't compensate the difference.
  - 10y ago
vivekd 10y ago
We may be able to get by with lower salaries than America if Americas immigration system continues to lag. It's easier for potential AI brains to immigrate here than the States under the current climate. I do agree that this is only of limited advantage, but it's something. I feel like because of structural and tax issues with our society, American style salaries will never be a thing here. That probably means that we will never be the tech power house that America is, but I think we can compete pretty effectively with Europe in getting the brains who, for whatever reason, choose not to go to America. And hey . . . second best ain't that bad.
- lebek 10y ago
  What are Canada's "structural and tax issues"?
  - vivekd 10y ago
    our taxes are much higher meaning people and companies have less disposable income - more money is in the public sector rather than the private sector. Structural is the way our society is set up, there are lots of public services so people rely on that more than on personal savings. We don't have as many venture capitalists as America, we don't have the same number of startups, the wealth in our nation is tied up in the hands of a few large corporations rather than spread out among many businesses.
    - soperj 10y ago
      Our taxes aren't that high compared to some states. California's are definitely higher. Toronto's housing market is stupid though. Would be better off in Waterloo, or Ottawa
      - deleted 10y ago
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- theparanoid 10y ago
  You'll still lose native Canadians.
Archio 10y ago
Canadian-American here who was eager about the possibility of working in a Greater Toronto Area company. At one startup I was offered the equivalent of $35k USD per year. I currently work at a startup in SF making almost three times that amount.
branchless 10y ago
Adjust for rent. Not that this will help Toronto as land prices there are retarded also. Montreal is touted as an AI centre and has cheap land.
blazespin 10y ago
Yeah, and it's terrible in Vancouver where RE prices are as bad as SV.
anthonyc51 10y ago
+1 I left Toronto for the US in 2015, and my compensation increased by 3-4x (currency conversion taken into account). I have been working for large well-known US companies in both cities.
javierluraschi 10y ago
Is not that meaningful to compare salaries without considering cost of living.
cbsmith 10y ago
There is some false reasoning here. While Canadian per-capita income is lower once adjusted for currency valuations, Toronto's per-capita income is higher than the Canadian average, and thanks to significant wealth disparity, there's plenty of people in Toronto earning better than Silicon Valley wages. The economy can absolutely support those higher salaries. The fact of the matter is there aren't many jobs of that nature in Toronto right now, but if there were, I don't see reason to think the pay couldn't be competitive.
andrew749 10y ago
The difference might be even more extreme than that. I still am in school (University of Waterloo) and am going to an internship which pays ~110k USD, whereas in Canada I could maybe hope for less than half of that. All my peers aim to go to the valley just because of this HUGE pay gap. Edited: Granted every time I've worked in the valley, housing has been exorbitant, but still makes it worth my while. The most I've seen people pay in SF has been ~2k if you don't want to share a room.
- sGatling1788 10y ago
  You are not factoring in costs that will one day materialize. Believe it or not, one day many people decide they want to have kids. To send them to a decent school in the U.S. costs money. I've seen $10k for K-12. That's 13years of $10k per child. So 3 kids = $390k U.S. That's $U.S. dollars and after taxes. Then there will be a day where you get laid off. The AI/ML industry will suffer a downturn at some point. In the U.S. your severance will be tiny (?2 weeks salary?), whereas in Canada it will be a minimum of something like a month plus 2 weeks per year of service - but often much more than that. So 10 years of service will be provide 24 weeks. Vacations - in the U.S., 2 weeks seems common, but many Canadians enjoy 4-5 weeks of vacation. Then there's the increased crime and violence. Guns in particular. In the U.S., if you want to be as safe as Canada, you need to live in a gat ed community. Those ain't cheap.
  - andrew749 10y ago
    I definitely agree that Canada has a great social safety net and is a better place to live. Those costs you mentioned do add up. I will most likely be working full time in Canada because of those reasons. The vast majority of peers though might not because of the UPFRONT lack of competitiveness from Canadian companies. Correct me if I'm wrong but is it not the purpose of taxes to fund these services. I actually had to pay Canadian income taxes this year in addition to US taxes, even though I had no income in Canada. I totally understand and accept this as it helps maintain everything that is great about where I live. I'm not seeing how valuing an Engineer less solves the issue of funding social services. If anything a higher income for an Engineer would mean that they would be paying more in taxes to also fund those services. Does an Engineer in Canada not provide the same financial benefit for the institution where they work, compared to if they were to work in the US? I feel like there are set income brackets that companies have established that have not been modernized to adapt to the changing marketplace. It just so happens that being a competent Computer Scientist is a valuable skill at this point in history because of the potential upside they can provide for a company and companies are not acknowledging this.
abandonliberty 10y ago
You do have to carefully consider cost of living & quality of life. Much of the differential will be lost there. It's very important to do the math to understand the upside of going to SV and equip yourself appropriately for negotiations.

alphonsegaston 10y ago

For those who haven't been, Toronto is a really wonderful city. Safe, great food, and has an awesome art and music scene. Lots of cool cultural events as well. If it wasn't so hard to emigrate as an average America, I'd live there in a heartbeat. They do have a really good working holiday program for people in Asia and some parts of Europe.

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rwallace 10y ago
Out of curiosity, what is the difficulty in migrating from the U.S. to Canada? All we usually hear about is the difficulty in migrating to the U.S.
- alphonsegaston 10y ago
  Canada only allows something like 300,000 long-term residents to move into the country per year, of which about half those slots are reserved for refugees and family reunification. They're immigrantion process is just as bureaucratic as the US (if not slightly more so), and they are very selective about whom they take (favoring the wealthy, those with advanced higher education, and French/English bilinguals). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to-canada-trump-election-immigration https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/nov/09/move-to-canada...

romuloab42 10y ago

Non Google-AMP link: https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-institute-aims-to-be-worldwide-supplier-of-artificial-intelligence-capability.html https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2017/03/28/new-toronto-inst...

mzzter 10y ago
the AMP link really masks the original domain wow, thought the article was written by google for a second :/
- scosman 10y ago
  Not sure why people are downvoting. This is a legit complaint about AMP. Even the HN homepage is showing this as "google.com", not "thestar.com".
  - itchyjunk 10y ago
    I clicked thinking it was a google announcement and got redirected. Didn't even know what AMP was till i saw this thread and googled it.
- JacobDotVI 10y ago
  Same thing happened to me - I thought this was an official google announcement. The domain of an AMP link is misleading.

remir 10y ago

Google is also building an AI research lab in Montreal, which is supposedly a talent center for AI. According to this article from Wired: https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-snag-scarce-global-talent/ https://www.wired.com/2016/11/google-opens-montreal-ai-lab-s..., Google "donated about $13 million CAD to academic research in the country and about half was earmarked for AI research."

FreedomToCreate 10y ago

As someone who lived in Toronto and now lives in SV, this is great news for the region, which is flush with talent and is really doing everything to support researchers and entrepreneurs. However the cost of living(COL) is prohibitive, maybe even more than SV and the ratio of salary to COL is definitely higher than SV.

truebosko 10y ago
I don't think I believe this. Source?
- aheilbut 10y ago
  Housing prices have been rising very rapidly over the last couple of years: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million-dollar-home-contagion-spreads-to-toronto-suburbs https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-03/million-d...
  - sanswork 10y ago
    House prices are skyrocketing but condos are still pretty cheap. There just isn't any more space for actual houses in the city so the ones that are there are extra valuable. You can still find tons of 1+1 units in the city for under $2000/month which is the same as it was 3-4 years ago.
    - TheAdamAndChe 10y ago
      $2k per month is really high. Even if a tech worker can afford that, it really restricts the city to the rich, which is not good. Every city needs a balance of all classes for there to be stable growth.
      - sanswork 10y ago
        $2k per month for a 1+1 in a 'luxury' condo building right in the core of the city isn't high by basically any standard. There are a lot of options in the city still that are a lot cheaper. I see a lot of people complaining about high prices in the most prime of areas. So what do you think would be a good solution to the problem? Everyone wants to live in area X but obviously they can't all fit there. How do you let them all live there and keep it affordable?

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Apocryphon 10y ago

I thought that Montréal was already the AI centre of Canada.

perhonen 10y ago
UMontreal has Bengio, UofT has Hinton. Toronto also has Google Brain, and many UofT phd students and postdocs have ended up there (Sutskever, Karpathy).
beerbaron23 10y ago
Correct, Montréal is already way way ahead of Toronto on the AI front. Google and Microsoft already invested heavily into Montréal. M$ donated 7 million to UdeM and McGill as well.

mabbo 10y ago

And yet Google still won't open a local dev office apart from Waterloo (over an hour away).

dontreact 10y ago
https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-scientist-google-brain-canada-111-richmond-st-w-toronto-on-canada-2491730056 https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-s...
- tjpoutanen 10y ago
  It was announced yesterday that Geoff Hinton will lead a google brain lab in Toronto.
- deleted 10y ago
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- deleted 10y ago
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anthonyc51 10y ago
Despite repeated communication from employees that no one wants to live in fucking Waterloo, and a significant portion of the engineers there commute from Toronto anyways.

canistr 10y ago

Toronto's problem (and to an extent the other major cities in Canada) isn't so much about the salary differences with SV so much as the entire tech ecosystem. The money and cost of living would probably affect decisions for people outside of the GTA trying to move here. But because Toronto is the largest city in the country and is the focal point of Southern Ontario, it could do well by simply retaining the talent it outputs. The brain drain from the GTA and Southern Ontario has long been real. But alternatively, many people move from other places to Toronto. What makes it difficult for new grads and industry veterans from keeping shop in Toronto is that the mobility and learning experiences aren't there. There are a limited number of high-tech jobs here and anything else is likely in the medical, law, finance, or even media world. In that sense, I wouldn't even classify tech as a second-class citizen so much as being far down on the totem pole. I partially wonder if the general inferiority complex of Torontonians/Canadians has created this effect. Because the city typically lusts for things from other places (such as SV or NY), it never develops its own reputation and chooses to be itself. Because of that, tech has never developed an identity because all of our tech talent chooses the shiny opportunity granted to them by some company because it's "from Silicon Valley". Just think of what the tech ecosystem would be like if all Torontonians simply stayed here. For instance, I often posit what would have happened had the ML/DL community had stronger partnerships with AMD as opposed to building everything with CUDA/NVIDIA. AMD, afterall, is just up the street from the University of Toronto in Markham. A symbiotic relationship could've been built with Hinton's lab.

cbsmith 10y ago
As one of those brains that drained out of Toronto, I would say that "limited number of spaces" is malarky. You can create the space. What I did find was that Toronto's investment community (at least a couple of decades ago) was much more conservative, so it was much harder to create the space in Toronto than it was south of the border.
- canistr 10y ago
  I think you're overlooking the broader point I'm making by focusing on that one line. The point is that if Toronto had the same tech ecosystem as to say even Seattle or New York for salaries ranging between half to two-thirds of their American counterparts, I'd reasonably certain Canadians would opt to stay here. Yes, the investment community has a broader effect on the startups within the city. But I'm not sure they have as significant of an effect on large tech companies setting up research or dev centres here. And ultimately, having the powerhouses here helps to retain talent probably greater than having hundreds of startups in the $10-50 million revenue range.

JohnJamesRambo 10y ago

Institute...AI...Fallout

somberi 10y ago

Geoffrey Hinton, a computer scientist at the University of Toronto, is the great-great-grandson of George Boole, whose Boolean algebra is a keystone of digital computing—has sometimes been called the father of deep learning; it’s a topic he’s worked on since the mid-nineteen-seventies, and many of his students have become principal architects of the field today. From: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/04/03/ai-versus-md