4 ms·
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.
by 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 agoAs 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 agoI 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.
- cbsmith 10y ago> I think you're overlooking the broader point I'm making by focusing on that one line. Sorry if my comment read that way. I was only critiquing the one line, not the entire post. > 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. I think you are getting cause and effect backwards here. In my experience, there were plenty of tech employers in Toronto, just not for the really interesting & challenging stuff. For example, IBM has had a very large presence there for decades, but twenty years ago the coolest software project they had going on up there was the Visual Age IDE's. Alias Systems was a big deal back in the day, but even that ended up being bought up and by Autodesk...
- nasalgoat 10y agoI'd say it's more the timid VCs and investment community at large. Our startup finally gave up on Canadian investors and went to New York for money. Fix that, and startups will flourish.