11 ms·

Indian technology talent is flocking to Canada

108 points by RachelF 8y ago

gesman 8y ago
proper_title = replace(title, "talent", "job seekers");
tphan 8y ago
This is just an anecdotal alternative but a lot of my Australian co-workers are eschewing all the US political turmoil and are still choosing to emigrate to America.
- ianhowson 8y ago
  Australians get easy access to the US through the E-3 visa. For countries that need an H1-B, Canada's visas are much easier to obtain and live with.
- beerlord 8y ago
  It is well known that a lot of Indians move to Australia just to eventually get access to the E3 to work in America. Then they get rejected by the Americans for having insufficient roots in Australia! Be careful what you wish for Canada. Indian IT workers will simply drive down wages in the IT sector, and the quality of work received will not be world-class.
  - pl1234 8y ago
    also the indian men are widely regarded as unattractive and tend to repel women away from the field.
  - ydushyant 8y ago
    you are delusional...
  - amf12 8y ago
    > Indian IT workers will simply drive down wages in the IT sector, and the quality of work received will not be world-class. But unlike the US they are not randomly selecting immigrants based on a lottery. They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in. Also, immigrants are free to move around and switch jobs. Canada is doing a lot of the things which US is doing wrong.
    - beerlord 8y ago
      On the surface, the points system is how they do it, yes. However, the reality is that the system is completely rorted and broken. You can be completely lacklustre, and as long as you study at any Australian college, University or degree mill, then stay in the country long enough by stringing visas together, you can eventually get Permanent Residency. Most people study in Australia for work purposes, since the student visa allows anyone to work 20 hours a week (and most work beyond that, paid cash). It is for this reason that Australia has 600,000 - 800,000 international students at any one time, the second highest of any country on Earth behind the USA (1 million). The Australian education system is simply in the business of selling Australian Passports to foreigners. Read this account from an Economics Professor in Australia: https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray/status/1066464084244058112 https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray/status/10664640842440581... Some excerpts: "12. Halving the number of international students would keep all the good students, boost standards for all, and remove the visa scams. 13. But this would remove $4.5billion per year of revenue to the universities. (7/n) 14. In sum, universities are being degraded so they can be used as a back-door immigration program, and no one at the senior levels of universities or major political parties want to change it."
    - namelezz 8y ago
      > They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in I keep hearing about Indian tech talents but I haven't met one in real life yet. The ones I know are very good at nepotism. They usually exaggerate each other's works and belittle non-Indians' works. At my workplace, many even take credits of others. I understand that they are doing all of these to reinforce the rumor of Indian tech talents and to pressure managers to hire more Indians. However, I must admit that I haven't met one with actual technical skills and decent characters. IMO, many are political talents.
- ksh2 8y ago
  There is always turmoil. Turmoil is not a new thing. What do you think it felt like moving here after the dot com bust or after 9/11 + George Bush or after the 2008 financial meltdown. Whats happening at macro levels are out of your control. Imho people who are driven and persistent succeed no matter where they go.
- pjc50 8y ago
  You can eschew turmoil, but that doesn't mean it will eschew you, as my EU co-workers are discovering in the UK.
devereaux 8y ago
Considering the startup ecosystem in Canada, I fear much of that talent will be wasted. We really need to fix immigration laws to make recruiting foreign IT professionals easier. The H1B system and the years of waiting is a disgrace.
- Bombthecat 8y ago
  Germany just opened up (alot) you just need to find a job and can you can stay. (in IT not that hard right now)
  - konschubert 8y ago
    Oh, can you point me to more information about this?
    - Bombthecat 8y ago
      https://www.germany-visa.org/germanys-new-immigration-laws-open-door-for-skilled-labor/ https://www.germany-visa.org/germanys-new-immigration-laws-o... Here for example.
- brianwawok 8y ago
  H1Bs don’t work at startups. They work at BigCo doing Boring Stuff.
  - wenc 8y ago
    The H-1B is a specialty occupation visa that spans more occupations than most people are aware. Most people associate it with IT workers, but many accountants, research scientists, engineers, and other professionals also hold H-1Bs. Where I work, it is the latter categories of professionals that dominate. Many of them have degrees from schools (e.g. MIT, CMU, etc.) much better than schools most of us went to. And yes, some of them work at startups. They usually start out with an OPT after graduating and then convert to an H-1B. IT worker and H-1B are not synonymous -- the former is a subset of the latter. It's unfortunate that the latter is used as shorthand for the former, and the two categories are conflated.
throwaway1219 8y ago
I am an Indian, living in US for the last 8 years, my I-140 was approved 7 years ago and I am at least another 10 years away from my green card. I don't to be working on H1B for the next 10 years worrying about my immigration status. I want to start my own company, I thought H4EAD would work out for me to do my startup. But for the last 2 years I could not risk move into H4EAD because the administration keeps saying they will cancel it "soon". I am looking to move to Canada in 2019 (scheduled my IELTS and getting educational credentials evaluated for applying for Canadian PR). I love living in the bay area, but unfortunately things are not working out for us. Thanks to the economic boom, the money I saved up over these years should help our family settle down in Canada when we move.
- throwawaymjabba 8y ago
  Another Indian with a similar mindset (not wanting to be on the h1b leash until I may or may not get the green card in another 10-20-30 years). Lived in US for 6 years. Had my i140 approved a few months ago and got H1B approved for 3 more years. Was finally in the middle of getting a promotion to an architect role after 6-7 years working for the team. Literally threw away all of it and came back to India 2 months ago. Haven't even started looking for a job. They gave me RFE for my H1B extension. I saw the RFE document and it was just a copy paste from some template. They didn't even have my employer name correct. And since I was in a state where they give driving license based on h1b, I couldn't drive for 3 months because of the RFE delay. I am finally at peace after spending the last 6 years on the h1b leash, always living in uncertainty. There is no way I would have lasted while I wait for the green card. On some days, I used to cry while driving to work. I used to feel really strong emotional pain on most of the days. I haven't experienced any of that since I came back. I think quality of life is not just a higher salary or a clean environment or better job opportunities. Part of my brain must have been seeing all this uncertainty as life threatening and pushed me away. I don't know how else to explain it. Sometimes I wonder if this is one way US is filtering out people because they want only the most mentally strong to be part of their society.
  - fouc 8y ago
    I welcome both of you to Canada. The technology company I worked for in Toronto had an incredible number of immigrants that were well on their way to getting full citizenship (I think it takes just 5 years?). It was a great work environment with an eclectic mix of east asians, eastern europeans, etc.
pl1234 8y ago
Alt title: The elites who control Canada are decreasing already low salaries and increasing parasitic housing costs even higher by important more Indians. There is a reason Toronto is considered a joke and talent usually leaves to the US.
namelezz 8y ago
Talent or cheap labour.
- kerneltime 8y ago
  Both..
jbarham 8y ago
This article reminds me why I cancelled my Economist subscription years ago. But gotta love the obligatory shout out to Richard Florida that pops up whenever the media covers the tech sector in Canada! Question: If there will supposedly be 200,000 tech vacancies in Canada by 2020, why are tech salaries in Canada so low compared to the US? Another question: If the Canadian government is serious about developing the high tech sector, why doesn't it reform the absurdly overpriced telecoms oligopoly? See e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/low-cost-data-crtc-1.4949421 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/low-cost-data-crtc-1.494942... that reports on the imminent introduction of $30/month for 1 GB of wireless data as "low-cost" with a straight face. That's literally 10X what I pay here in Australia (https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/data-sim-card https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/dat...) never mind what it costs in Europe! I think the primary reason Canadian policymakers want to juice immigration to Canada is to delay the real estate bubble from popping on their watch...
- cauldron 8y ago
  From my understanding, jobs in Canada are scarce, at least for new immigrants, it seems most of them can only start off of menial jobs. Since Canada is relatively easy to immigrate to, newcomers have to stay within the country to compete for scarce and low pay jobs, while citizens of Canada can pursue high salaries abroad.
  - kankroc 8y ago
    This is only true for refugees, economic migrants usually have a wide range of good jobs to choose from. And unemployment is at its lowest point in year in Canada.
  - apercu 8y ago
    Good, high paying jobs are scarce. But if you can speak the language passably getting a job in a Canadian city is easy.
- jpatokal 8y ago
  Makes perfect sense, the vacancies stay vacant because the salaries are so low!
thwy12321 8y ago
The H1B visa is mostly a cheap worker program. There are definitely high skilled H1Bs coming to America, but the overwhelming majority are meant to undercut American labor, and this is not just on salary, but also on the number of hours they are willing to work, the projects they are willing to take on, and the benefits they get. This idea that the immigration situation in this country is anything different needs to stop.
ziont 8y ago
its already happened here in Vancouver, BC. indian tech workers make up a huge part of startups to pre-IPO companies. having said that glassdoor reviews show them to be awful places to work-shit pay, shit code, that turns to overtime. I know one friend who was pretty much ousted by indian managers. just don't expect new arrivals to respect or even be conscious of Canadian cultures or customs. i hope they eventually learn and integrate here however. not so great for tech workers already in canada.
- truncate 8y ago
  Plural of anecdote is not data, and certainly not when you are insinuating "indian managers" in particular to be worse than others and "indians" in particular creating toxic work environment.
  - sonnyblarney 8y ago
    No, even a singular anecdote is data. Having worked for a 99% Indian/Pakistani company in tech myself, I can confirm that 'it's really different'. We were treated well, but when we were not ... it was in odd ways. And can confirm salaries were generally lower as so many people were in visa-limbo or migration situations, the company used it to it's advantage. It was a slide on the deck to investors. Which is maybe not so nice, but the logic makes sense: company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers, uses cultural aspect of migration sensitivity to their advantage. Also, curiously, though the notion of Indians and Pakistanis coming together to form a successful enterprise is amazing and progressive ... a lot of the 'class based' issues were imported as well. The execs were all from elite Indian Subcontinent families.
    - zozbot123 8y ago
      Not sure why you would expect a "company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers" to pay higher than newcomer-salary. At the end of the day, everyone gets what they pay for.
    - riskneutral 8y ago
      I don’t think hiring based on ethnicity is a legal investment strategy in Canada. Even if it was written down by some idiots on a slide.
abhinai 8y ago
To be honest, if we can stop the abuse of H1B visas by Indian IT firms, the H1B program will be in a much better shape. A separate visa category for Indian IT firms will fix this problem.
asianthrowaway 8y ago
Thanks Trump?
m0zg 8y ago
Wouldn't this, as a logical consequence, lead to Canadian technology talent "flocking" to the US due to the wage depression created by the influx of foreign workers? I mean, it's a lot easier for a Canadian to come work here, and they are paid easily twice as much as in Canada. And in the long run, isn't this kind of "native" brain drain counterproductive for Canada?
lyrachord 8y ago
NON-discrimination: There are 2 phenomena: Indians always talk about their talents. The Black created brilliant sciences and technologies and civilizations in movies.

108 points by RachelF 8y ago

proper_title = replace(title, "talent", "job seekers");

This is just an anecdotal alternative but a lot of my Australian co-workers are eschewing all the US political turmoil and are still choosing to emigrate to America.

ianhowson 8y ago
Australians get easy access to the US through the E-3 visa. For countries that need an H1-B, Canada's visas are much easier to obtain and live with.
beerlord 8y ago
It is well known that a lot of Indians move to Australia just to eventually get access to the E3 to work in America. Then they get rejected by the Americans for having insufficient roots in Australia! Be careful what you wish for Canada. Indian IT workers will simply drive down wages in the IT sector, and the quality of work received will not be world-class.
- pl1234 8y ago
  also the indian men are widely regarded as unattractive and tend to repel women away from the field.
- ydushyant 8y ago
  you are delusional...
- amf12 8y ago
  > Indian IT workers will simply drive down wages in the IT sector, and the quality of work received will not be world-class. But unlike the US they are not randomly selecting immigrants based on a lottery. They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in. Also, immigrants are free to move around and switch jobs. Canada is doing a lot of the things which US is doing wrong.
  - beerlord 8y ago
    On the surface, the points system is how they do it, yes. However, the reality is that the system is completely rorted and broken. You can be completely lacklustre, and as long as you study at any Australian college, University or degree mill, then stay in the country long enough by stringing visas together, you can eventually get Permanent Residency. Most people study in Australia for work purposes, since the student visa allows anyone to work 20 hours a week (and most work beyond that, paid cash). It is for this reason that Australia has 600,000 - 800,000 international students at any one time, the second highest of any country on Earth behind the USA (1 million). The Australian education system is simply in the business of selling Australian Passports to foreigners. Read this account from an Economics Professor in Australia: https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray/status/1066464084244058112 https://twitter.com/DrCameronMurray/status/10664640842440581... Some excerpts: "12. Halving the number of international students would keep all the good students, boost standards for all, and remove the visa scams. 13. But this would remove $4.5billion per year of revenue to the universities. (7/n) 14. In sum, universities are being degraded so they can be used as a back-door immigration program, and no one at the senior levels of universities or major political parties want to change it."
  - namelezz 8y ago
    > They have a point based system which lets decently talented immigrants in I keep hearing about Indian tech talents but I haven't met one in real life yet. The ones I know are very good at nepotism. They usually exaggerate each other's works and belittle non-Indians' works. At my workplace, many even take credits of others. I understand that they are doing all of these to reinforce the rumor of Indian tech talents and to pressure managers to hire more Indians. However, I must admit that I haven't met one with actual technical skills and decent characters. IMO, many are political talents.
ksh2 8y ago
There is always turmoil. Turmoil is not a new thing. What do you think it felt like moving here after the dot com bust or after 9/11 + George Bush or after the 2008 financial meltdown. Whats happening at macro levels are out of your control. Imho people who are driven and persistent succeed no matter where they go.
pjc50 8y ago
You can eschew turmoil, but that doesn't mean it will eschew you, as my EU co-workers are discovering in the UK.

devereaux 8y ago

Considering the startup ecosystem in Canada, I fear much of that talent will be wasted. We really need to fix immigration laws to make recruiting foreign IT professionals easier. The H1B system and the years of waiting is a disgrace.

Bombthecat 8y ago
Germany just opened up (alot) you just need to find a job and can you can stay. (in IT not that hard right now)
- konschubert 8y ago
  Oh, can you point me to more information about this?
  - Bombthecat 8y ago
    https://www.germany-visa.org/germanys-new-immigration-laws-open-door-for-skilled-labor/ https://www.germany-visa.org/germanys-new-immigration-laws-o... Here for example.
brianwawok 8y ago
H1Bs don’t work at startups. They work at BigCo doing Boring Stuff.
- wenc 8y ago
  The H-1B is a specialty occupation visa that spans more occupations than most people are aware. Most people associate it with IT workers, but many accountants, research scientists, engineers, and other professionals also hold H-1Bs. Where I work, it is the latter categories of professionals that dominate. Many of them have degrees from schools (e.g. MIT, CMU, etc.) much better than schools most of us went to. And yes, some of them work at startups. They usually start out with an OPT after graduating and then convert to an H-1B. IT worker and H-1B are not synonymous -- the former is a subset of the latter. It's unfortunate that the latter is used as shorthand for the former, and the two categories are conflated.

throwaway1219 8y ago

I am an Indian, living in US for the last 8 years, my I-140 was approved 7 years ago and I am at least another 10 years away from my green card. I don't to be working on H1B for the next 10 years worrying about my immigration status. I want to start my own company, I thought H4EAD would work out for me to do my startup. But for the last 2 years I could not risk move into H4EAD because the administration keeps saying they will cancel it "soon". I am looking to move to Canada in 2019 (scheduled my IELTS and getting educational credentials evaluated for applying for Canadian PR). I love living in the bay area, but unfortunately things are not working out for us. Thanks to the economic boom, the money I saved up over these years should help our family settle down in Canada when we move.

throwawaymjabba 8y ago
Another Indian with a similar mindset (not wanting to be on the h1b leash until I may or may not get the green card in another 10-20-30 years). Lived in US for 6 years. Had my i140 approved a few months ago and got H1B approved for 3 more years. Was finally in the middle of getting a promotion to an architect role after 6-7 years working for the team. Literally threw away all of it and came back to India 2 months ago. Haven't even started looking for a job. They gave me RFE for my H1B extension. I saw the RFE document and it was just a copy paste from some template. They didn't even have my employer name correct. And since I was in a state where they give driving license based on h1b, I couldn't drive for 3 months because of the RFE delay. I am finally at peace after spending the last 6 years on the h1b leash, always living in uncertainty. There is no way I would have lasted while I wait for the green card. On some days, I used to cry while driving to work. I used to feel really strong emotional pain on most of the days. I haven't experienced any of that since I came back. I think quality of life is not just a higher salary or a clean environment or better job opportunities. Part of my brain must have been seeing all this uncertainty as life threatening and pushed me away. I don't know how else to explain it. Sometimes I wonder if this is one way US is filtering out people because they want only the most mentally strong to be part of their society.
- fouc 8y ago
  I welcome both of you to Canada. The technology company I worked for in Toronto had an incredible number of immigrants that were well on their way to getting full citizenship (I think it takes just 5 years?). It was a great work environment with an eclectic mix of east asians, eastern europeans, etc.

pl1234 8y ago

Alt title: The elites who control Canada are decreasing already low salaries and increasing parasitic housing costs even higher by important more Indians. There is a reason Toronto is considered a joke and talent usually leaves to the US.

namelezz 8y ago

Talent or cheap labour.

kerneltime 8y ago
Both..

jbarham 8y ago

This article reminds me why I cancelled my Economist subscription years ago. But gotta love the obligatory shout out to Richard Florida that pops up whenever the media covers the tech sector in Canada! Question: If there will supposedly be 200,000 tech vacancies in Canada by 2020, why are tech salaries in Canada so low compared to the US? Another question: If the Canadian government is serious about developing the high tech sector, why doesn't it reform the absurdly overpriced telecoms oligopoly? See e.g. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/low-cost-data-crtc-1.4949421 https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/low-cost-data-crtc-1.494942... that reports on the imminent introduction of $30/month for 1 GB of wireless data as "low-cost" with a straight face. That's literally 10X what I pay here in Australia (https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/data-sim-card https://www.optus.com.au/shop/broadband/mobile-broadband/dat...) never mind what it costs in Europe! I think the primary reason Canadian policymakers want to juice immigration to Canada is to delay the real estate bubble from popping on their watch...

cauldron 8y ago
From my understanding, jobs in Canada are scarce, at least for new immigrants, it seems most of them can only start off of menial jobs. Since Canada is relatively easy to immigrate to, newcomers have to stay within the country to compete for scarce and low pay jobs, while citizens of Canada can pursue high salaries abroad.
- kankroc 8y ago
  This is only true for refugees, economic migrants usually have a wide range of good jobs to choose from. And unemployment is at its lowest point in year in Canada.
- apercu 8y ago
  Good, high paying jobs are scarce. But if you can speak the language passably getting a job in a Canadian city is easy.
jpatokal 8y ago
Makes perfect sense, the vacancies stay vacant because the salaries are so low!

thwy12321 8y ago

The H1B visa is mostly a cheap worker program. There are definitely high skilled H1Bs coming to America, but the overwhelming majority are meant to undercut American labor, and this is not just on salary, but also on the number of hours they are willing to work, the projects they are willing to take on, and the benefits they get. This idea that the immigration situation in this country is anything different needs to stop.

ziont 8y ago

its already happened here in Vancouver, BC. indian tech workers make up a huge part of startups to pre-IPO companies. having said that glassdoor reviews show them to be awful places to work-shit pay, shit code, that turns to overtime. I know one friend who was pretty much ousted by indian managers. just don't expect new arrivals to respect or even be conscious of Canadian cultures or customs. i hope they eventually learn and integrate here however. not so great for tech workers already in canada.

truncate 8y ago
Plural of anecdote is not data, and certainly not when you are insinuating "indian managers" in particular to be worse than others and "indians" in particular creating toxic work environment.
- sonnyblarney 8y ago
  No, even a singular anecdote is data. Having worked for a 99% Indian/Pakistani company in tech myself, I can confirm that 'it's really different'. We were treated well, but when we were not ... it was in odd ways. And can confirm salaries were generally lower as so many people were in visa-limbo or migration situations, the company used it to it's advantage. It was a slide on the deck to investors. Which is maybe not so nice, but the logic makes sense: company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers, uses cultural aspect of migration sensitivity to their advantage. Also, curiously, though the notion of Indians and Pakistanis coming together to form a successful enterprise is amazing and progressive ... a lot of the 'class based' issues were imported as well. The execs were all from elite Indian Subcontinent families.
  - zozbot123 8y ago
    Not sure why you would expect a "company of largely newcomers, lead by newcomers" to pay higher than newcomer-salary. At the end of the day, everyone gets what they pay for.
  - riskneutral 8y ago
    I don’t think hiring based on ethnicity is a legal investment strategy in Canada. Even if it was written down by some idiots on a slide.

abhinai 8y ago

To be honest, if we can stop the abuse of H1B visas by Indian IT firms, the H1B program will be in a much better shape. A separate visa category for Indian IT firms will fix this problem.

asianthrowaway 8y ago

Thanks Trump?

m0zg 8y ago

Wouldn't this, as a logical consequence, lead to Canadian technology talent "flocking" to the US due to the wage depression created by the influx of foreign workers? I mean, it's a lot easier for a Canadian to come work here, and they are paid easily twice as much as in Canada. And in the long run, isn't this kind of "native" brain drain counterproductive for Canada?

lyrachord 8y ago

NON-discrimination: There are 2 phenomena: Indians always talk about their talents. The Black created brilliant sciences and technologies and civilizations in movies.