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As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salarie
by neivin 8y ago
As a Toronto native, who now lives in Silicon Valley (part of the brain drain from Waterloo), there is a reason why everyone leaves Toronto/Canada - the salaries are simply laughable when compared to the bay area.
The only reason you would stay in Toronto for a job in tech is if you wanted to stay close to family, or your girlfriend/boyfriend/spouse.
Or, you just hate money and being at the center of the tech industry...
- jherdman 8y agoOr, you know, political reasons. This seems to be a motivator for myself and my peers in the Toronto scene.
- rescripting 8y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted; it's not exactly the best time to be an immigrant in America. Maybe if you're not a visible minority and never leave the valley you could stick your thumbs in your ears and just cash the cheques.
- wetpaws 8y agoCanada is not exactly perfect either.
- jonny_eh 8y agoIt's all relative.
- ojbyrne 8y agoIf you're a Canadian its a choice between not being an immigrant and being an immigrant.
- slededit 8y agoI moved back after 10 years. While being an immigrant sucks in ways a lot of people don't imagine - its worth it for the initial education and career boost. It will also teach you to "think like an american" which is important when the majority of capital is controlled by US persons.
- parthdesai 8y agoIt is much much easier to immigrate to Canada than to USA.
- xienze 8y agoSpits drink Are you serious? Canada has a point-based system that requires you have some actual real skills and an education. I wish we had an immigration system like that in the US. Here, you can just sneak across the border or claim asylum citing vague claims of "persecution" and you'll have an entire political party fighting on your behalf to keep you in the country at all costs. If it were truly that easy to immigrate to Canada people would have actually made good on their "if Trump wins I'm moving to Canada" threats.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> Canada has a point-based system that requires you have some actual real skills and an education. While based on binary categories rather than point-based system, so does US employment-based immigration. It also often requires a sponsoring employer, as well. OTOH, Canada, like the US, also has family based immigration—and because it doesn't have per-country limits, it doesn't have decade+ wait times from some high-interest countries in key categories (though it does have smaller multi-year waits in some categories for immigrant visas, but it also has renewable multi-year “visiting family” supervisas which you can apparently take advantage of while an immigrant visa is pending.) > Here, you can just sneak across the border or claim asylum citing vague claims of "persecution" and you'll have an entire political party fighting on your behalf to keep you in the country at all costs. Canada not only has asylum (and accepts proportionately more refugees than the US even before Trump), but it doesn't seem to have a major political party scapegoating them and illegal immigrants to justify policies cutting back on legal immigration. > If it were truly that easy to immigrate to Canada people would have actually made good on their "if Trump wins I'm moving to Canada" threats. No, they wouldn't; difficulty of immigration isn't the reason people who make that kind of hyperbolic threat every election almost never follow through.
- apercu 8y agoI found it way easier to move emigrate to Canada than most of my Canadian friends going the other way. Anecdotal but that's been my experience.
- nailer 8y agoWhy? I know there's some clamp downs on H1-B but they don't seem huge, and most tech migration is legal.
- klipt 8y agoWhen Trump's travel ban rolled out and people with green cards were being blocked at the border, I was terrified. Thank goodness the courts struck down that version. My wife and I aren't from any of the blocked countries, but who knows how the list could have grown at Trump's whim and current "enemy of the week".
- randomdata 8y agoAlthough I find salaries to be lower in Toronto than in small town Canada. Tech professionals prefer the city, so companies outside have to pay a premium to attract people. And that is before accounting for the substantially lower cost of living. So if it's just a preference for the Canadian political climate, then Toronto still does not seem like the best bet.
- ttt111222333 8y agoThere are no big companies in Toronto that have tech jobs. Google, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc. don't have tech jobs in Toronto. Amazon just started adding tech jobs in Toronto in the past maybe year or two and Shopify is the only exception to this rule. If any toronto natives know of some big companies in Toronto with tech jobs please prove me wrong.
- learned 8y agoShopify
- snug 8y agoGoogle does
- parthdesai 8y agoGoogle has very few jobs in downtown TO, though tons in KW. Square has jobs in KW. I know Apple is hiring some JS devs in Toronto as well.
- anxrn 8y agoNot quite Toronto, but Google has a number of software engineering openings at Waterloo. https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=en-US&jl=43.4642578%3A-80.5204096%3AWaterloo%2C+ON%2C+Canada%3ACA%3A%3A5.732112535543975%3ALOCALITY&jld=20&jcoid=7c8c6665-81cf-4e11-8fc9-ec1d6a69120c&jcoid=e43afd0d-d215-45db-a154-5386c9036525&jcoid=4ce051e9-0861-4457-ae74-ed29d709e6d9&jcoid=db402fa7-80f9-417e-90f8-cabc095ab328&jcoid=4da87eaf-2d83-4e44-aec5-3277162353f3&jcoid=368ee4a3-8f63-4554-b52c-8c5ad137a48a&jcoid=8e95bc8e-bc66-4a8f-a30c-4be6e037beab&jcoid=65a96848-6a90-403f-b350-76dcbf787382&jcoid=7143c4f4-17a1-4061-a066-69aafca4467b&jc=SOFTWARE_ENGINEERING& https://careers.google.com/jobs#t=sq&q=j&li=20&l=false&jlo=e...
- leevlad 8y agoAmazon has had a development office in Toronto since at least 2013.
- rpeden 8y agoI'm not sure if you'd count IBM, but they have their Toronto Software Lab here. It's technically in Markham now, but if it were on the south side of Steeles instead of the north side, it would be in Toronto proper. AMD also still has a large office in Markham in what used to be ATI headquarters. I've seen a few articles about Apple hiring developers in Toronto, so there's that too. Maybe Waterloo is a bit too far away to count, but Google has a fairly big engineering office there.
- analyst74 8y agoI moved from Toronto to SF last year, I think the CoL-adjusted salary is pretty close, or actually better in Toronto. This is comparing good mid-sized company in both cities. One misconception I think, is that many people moved to SV for big-N companies and comparing that with average Toronto salaries.
- neivin 8y ago> I think the CoL-adjusted salary is pretty close, or actually better in Toronto. This is a common misconception, and is promoted by a lot of tech companies in Toronto. It actually frustrates me whenever someone says that the compensation in the bay vs Toronto is the same after adjusting for CoL. It's really not. You will end up with more absolute savings by working in the bay area, than you will in Toronto in a similar living situation.
- otoburb 8y ago>>It's really not. You will end up with more absolute savings by working in the bay area, than you will in Toronto in a similar living situation. Almost every expat Canadian working and saving in the US also has a little voice in the back of their mind reassuring them that even if the absolute number of saved US dollars is the same as saved Canadian dollars, there's a really good chance their US dollars will go further [when|if] they move back home in X years due to the historical exchange rate.
- apercu 8y agoI've worked in both the Bay Area and Toronto. Salaries are significantly higher in the Bay Area even counting COL.
- analyst74 8y agoTo put things in concrete terms, for a single person living 1br downtown high-rise with one car. Cost of living difference is about 30k higher in SF. At 100-200k range salaries, it's around 50k pre-tax income. (Figures not accounting for exchange rate) Salary difference between medium no name companies in the two cities are about that much.
- danielmorozoff 8y agoI was just in Toronto. It could also be because your buying power is significantly more than in the valley. You make more but everything (house or rent) is also more...
- j7ake 8y agoEverything is more in Valley compared to Toronto, including the absolute dollars you save per month. Unless you're saving $0 per month, then you benefit from the higher salary, even if adjusted for cost of living.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoCan confirm. Staying in Toronto because prospects are fewer outside of the city. Girlfriend is from the west coast but helps head up a very popular establishment group in town. Family is from ~2 hours outside of the city on Lake Erie. I've been casually seeking either something more profitable so that I can save, or otherwise a viable remote position so that we can move a little out of the city (or to the coast). (Both profitable and remote would be ideal in this case, but I can take one before the other as either would help get me there). Hell, I'd probably even move to the right suburb if I could land a substantially compensated job with Honeywell or something for a while. Judging my present circumstances, you'd probably wager that I do hate money. I used to have a lot more fun here than I do these days.
- thescriptkiddie 8y agohttps://www.wired.com/2016/10/data-reveals-american-dream-alive-well-canada/ https://www.wired.com/2016/10/data-reveals-american-dream-al...
- refurb 8y agoI hate when economic mobility is measured that way (bottom quintile to top quintile movement). It completely ignore the absolute amount of money earned. Let's say you're in Canada and you move from the bottom quintile to the top. Top quintile starts at $100K, and you're making $110K. Great! Those poor American's who don't make it to the top quintile ($150K) and only the 4th quintile are making $125K. Which one would you prefer? Does the US actually have lower income mobility? Relatively speaking, yes. Not in absolute terms though.
- nathan_f77 8y agoMy wife and I really want to move to Toronto one day. I interviewed at a tech startup and got an offer for ~$60k CAD plus some equity. It was a good amount of equity, and they were pretty small. Their product and mission was really awesome, and I think I would have had a good time working there. But I wasn't going to move for that kind of money. That's 2.5 times less than an "entry-level" tech salary in SF ($120k USD.)
- apercu 8y agoI've probably hired around 50-60 tech workers in Toronto. Only entry level (degree plus a year or two of experience) were paid close to $60k. Most of my team was between $75-110k. This is four-five years ago so I imagine it's higher now.
- ryanbrunner 8y agoFor what it's worth, that's low enough to be near-scam level in Toronto. Someone with even a modicum of experience shouldn't have a problem getting $80-90K (still well below SF levels, but not THAT low). SUPER early stage startup (like pre-seed) might be an exception, but that's almost more of a co-founder situation.
- x1ph0z 8y agoAs the others have said, they absolutely low balled you. I got a higher offer for a company in Burlington, which is ~1hr outside of Toronto as a new grad.
- baybal2 8y agoI got 84k on first serious tech job in Vancouver, and my case was very weak (that was at the time CAD/USD was around 1.1) I feel, there is more hype in Vancouver tech scene, with more emphasis on "trendiness bonus" Local job boards periodically explode with generic "enter the buzzword" specialist/developer jobs. More VC funding spilling over the border. More "1 month startups." Even these days, I heard, generic facebook clones still manage to somehow secure multimegabuck funding.
- apercu 8y agoI think there are really good reasons to be in Ontario and in Canada. (I'm a US citizen) but the ONLY reason I would move to the Bay area would be climate and money. And I've worked in PA/Mountain View before. Didn't like it.