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Toronto is the finance & arguably tech centre of Canada. Great universities & access to VC cash, lots of startups. It also shouldn't be ignored that labour co

Toronto is the finance & arguably tech centre of Canada. Great universities & access to VC cash, lots of startups. It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US, due to the weaker dollar, lower wages, cheaper medical insurance, and SR&ED credits that let you write off developer salary costs.

tenpies 9y ago
> It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US Should add that this works both ways. Most Canadians who can, do end up leaving for the US since they can easily make 2 - 4X the income, even after CoL and insurance. There is a non-trivial amount of brain drain happening in Canada.
- redthrowaway 9y ago
  Absolutely. The talent in the US is certainly higher than it is in Canada, due in no small part to the brain drain which has been happening for decades.
- parasubvert 9y ago
  s/most/some I was an expat in the US for many years, the story was the same in the mid-90s. Many try it, some stay, some come back. I still work for a US company but moved back. The current political climate has a big impact on encouraging people to stay in Canada, especially with NAFTA and the H1B programs hanging by a thread. Imagine thousands of Canadians with TN status getting told they need to move back immediately (More likely 30-60 days after a status change application) upon withdrawal from NAFTA. It will be a chaotic brain drain in reverse. Amazon, Microsoft, Google all have large Canadian outposts lately for a reason.
  - lawnchair_larry 9y ago
    That reason has nothing to do with those. It's to get around H1-B Visa caps by transferring them after a year.
  - eigenvector 9y ago
    I know Google Waterloo has some actual permanent engineering teams but Microsoft and Amazon Canada seem to be strictly L-1 visa farms. The political climate is much talked about but if anything the rate of brain drain has increased as more and more SV companies make an effort to recruit in Toronto. In the early 2000s the subset of US companies that recruited at all in Canada did it strictly at UW. Now all the majors have a campus presence at even mid-tier Canadian schools like UVic.
    - mhkhung 9y ago
      Amazon must have nearly 400 R&D people in Toronto now. Probably 300 when I left. I was always involved in recruiting and Amazon hires the best from all over the world and probably over 70% of the engineers were from Waterloo and the new comers are mostly from Europe, plus we got a few returning from US Amazon as well. There is always some who wanted to move to Seattle after 3-4 years but the number is like 1 in 15..
    - parasubvert 9y ago
      L-1 farm is entirely too cynical, most hires I know at AWS or Google Toronto have zero interest in leaving Canada. At Pivotal we have a number of US people doing transfers INTO Canada lately. This is not to say transfers south are not done... but it's not the primary purpose of having a Canadian presence.
- mabbo 9y ago
  A lot of us come back though. Five years ago I loaded up a truck and moved from Seattle to Toronto. My wife and I didn't want to settle down in America, even if the money would have been that much better. Seattle is a great city, but it's still very American and that overall American culture never felt like home to us.
  - jmreid 9y ago
    My wife and I did the exact same thing, except it was SF. We're very happy that we moved back to Toronto and Canada in general. It's our home (friends and family are here) and we didn't want to have kids in SF.

tenpies 9y ago

> It also shouldn't be ignored that labour costs in Canada are less than half of what they are in the US Should add that this works both ways. Most Canadians who can, do end up leaving for the US since they can easily make 2 - 4X the income, even after CoL and insurance. There is a non-trivial amount of brain drain happening in Canada.

redthrowaway 9y ago
Absolutely. The talent in the US is certainly higher than it is in Canada, due in no small part to the brain drain which has been happening for decades.
parasubvert 9y ago
s/most/some I was an expat in the US for many years, the story was the same in the mid-90s. Many try it, some stay, some come back. I still work for a US company but moved back. The current political climate has a big impact on encouraging people to stay in Canada, especially with NAFTA and the H1B programs hanging by a thread. Imagine thousands of Canadians with TN status getting told they need to move back immediately (More likely 30-60 days after a status change application) upon withdrawal from NAFTA. It will be a chaotic brain drain in reverse. Amazon, Microsoft, Google all have large Canadian outposts lately for a reason.
- lawnchair_larry 9y ago
  That reason has nothing to do with those. It's to get around H1-B Visa caps by transferring them after a year.
- eigenvector 9y ago
  I know Google Waterloo has some actual permanent engineering teams but Microsoft and Amazon Canada seem to be strictly L-1 visa farms. The political climate is much talked about but if anything the rate of brain drain has increased as more and more SV companies make an effort to recruit in Toronto. In the early 2000s the subset of US companies that recruited at all in Canada did it strictly at UW. Now all the majors have a campus presence at even mid-tier Canadian schools like UVic.
  - mhkhung 9y ago
    Amazon must have nearly 400 R&D people in Toronto now. Probably 300 when I left. I was always involved in recruiting and Amazon hires the best from all over the world and probably over 70% of the engineers were from Waterloo and the new comers are mostly from Europe, plus we got a few returning from US Amazon as well. There is always some who wanted to move to Seattle after 3-4 years but the number is like 1 in 15..
  - parasubvert 9y ago
    L-1 farm is entirely too cynical, most hires I know at AWS or Google Toronto have zero interest in leaving Canada. At Pivotal we have a number of US people doing transfers INTO Canada lately. This is not to say transfers south are not done... but it's not the primary purpose of having a Canadian presence.
mabbo 9y ago
A lot of us come back though. Five years ago I loaded up a truck and moved from Seattle to Toronto. My wife and I didn't want to settle down in America, even if the money would have been that much better. Seattle is a great city, but it's still very American and that overall American culture never felt like home to us.
- jmreid 9y ago
  My wife and I did the exact same thing, except it was SF. We're very happy that we moved back to Toronto and Canada in general. It's our home (friends and family are here) and we didn't want to have kids in SF.