14 ms·

Canada’s new tech talent strategy

232 points by faramarz 3y ago

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Discussed earlier today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152
belval 3y ago
I'm happy I just closed on a house because something tells me affordability will keep being an issue in the coming years.
- th33ngineer 3y ago
  Do you live in the GTA by chance? There is still a ban on foreign buyers in effect, even those with a work or study visa.
  - rcme 3y ago
    The foreign buyer ban doesn't apply to foreigners working on work permits in Canada.
  - dumdumchan 3y ago
    > GTA Greater Toronto Area for those unaware.
    - for1nner 3y ago
      Thank you - was really trying to understand why OC was being sniped at with a Grand Theft Auto reference (much less what the ref was supposed to imply...)
Shank 3y ago
> This measure will remain in effect for one year, or until Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) receives 10,000 applications. Only principal applicants, and not their accompanying family members, will count toward the application cap. Only 10,000 people? Sounds like a good, but quickly fading opportunity.
- umeshunni 3y ago
  FWIW, the H1B program has what - 100K visas available and 780K applicants each year.
  - trustingtrust 3y ago
    This is not for applicants I think. Only those with an H1B approved visa. The ones who have an approved H1B but no job in the US would move to Canada. So they are not targeting those who have a job in US ( they have little to no incentive to move any way).
- jfoster 3y ago
  Sounds like a trial. Would be great for more governments to try new ideas & evaluate the results like any business might.
- mschild 3y ago
  Considering that the US has ~333m and Canada ~36m people, the proportions to the H1B sound about right, no?
  - humanlion87 3y ago
    Canada's population just hit 40m this week. Still small compared to the US, but it is no longer in the 30s :)
    - travisgriggs 3y ago
      Curious where the growth is. I’m assuming in cities. And I’m assuming that “90% of Canadians live within 90 miles of the US border” more than ever. I want my assumptions to be incorrect. But I worry they are not.
idiotsecant 3y ago
A person might be forgiven for viewing this cynically as a way for large corporations to reduce the wages they need to pay by hijacking and bypassing the regular immigration system to import indentured tech servants that they can exploit ruthlessly and underpay.
- itake 3y ago
  Or they are trying to offer a legal way for people to do what they are already doing illegally
  - pkaye 3y ago
    Canada is already allowing a large amount of immigration already. Those H1B workers could have already gone directly to Canada.
  - throwawaylinux 3y ago
    Yes, banish the thought a government might from time to time fail to act in the best interests of its citizens.
    - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
      In the US of A, corporations are people and then some.
      - throwawaylinux 3y ago
        The article is about Canada.
        FollowingTheDao 3y ago
        I know that.
        throwawaylinux 3y ago
txcan 3y ago
Anyone interested in this should also check out Canadian home prices, rental prices, the broken healthcare system and the peanuts that Canadian tech companies pay. You will be glad you did before jumping ship.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > broken healthcare system Relative to the USA’s really broken healthcare system, it’s still an improvement.
  - pschuegr 3y ago
    Both bad in their own way, both with users thankful they're not on the other system. It's a triumph of propaganda!
  - radq 3y ago
    As someone that's used to live in Canada and is currently in the USA, this is not true. Six month wait time to get an x-ray for a hairline fracture, people dying because of long wait times for cancer screenings etc. In the USA things are expensive but you at least get access when you need it.
    - throwawaysleep 3y ago
      > but you at least get access when you need it. As long as your insurance approves.
      - jdboyd 3y ago
        And of course, as long as you have insurance or piles of cash.
        joshlemer 3y ago
anonymous344 3y ago
[flagged]
- MattRix 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - shyn3 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - PierceJoy 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - chillbill 3y ago
        [flagged]
        PierceJoy 3y ago
        [flagged]
        chillbill 3y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 3y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. We end up having to ban accounts that do that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
        dang 3y ago
111111IIIIIII 3y ago
The limit is 10,000 people. If those spots weren't already filled before the announcement was made, they are now.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Ralo 3y ago
I'm a Canadian that's been trying to get into this field. There is no "talent" issue. Any job that pops up is flooded with applicants. It's night and day compared to America. All the companies are in America, while we find only a handful of start ups or some branch's of corporations in Canada. Give a read to the /r/cscareerquestionscad subreddit There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job". Articles like this make me want to quit everything. I try so hard to get into these field then the government claims no one can fill these roles and we need to import more people instead.
- throwawaysleep 3y ago
  Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. The choice is between jobs going offshore or people coming to work here as most new grads are not job ready. I have interviewed ones who have never done a pull request before.
  - devoutsalsa 3y ago
    I've also never written a press release.
    - speedgoose 3y ago
      I’m guessing PR stands for pull request in this context. But it could also be project review or peer review. We may never know.
      - devoutsalsa 3y ago
        I was trying to be funny. PR stands for public relations.
  - _yy01 3y ago
    How do you expect a new grad (assuming no internship experience) to have done a PR? I agree the university should've taught version control, though. I am an Indian graduate who has decent experience with actual programming, even contributed to open source, and yet struggled to get a job in between my peers who have done 300 Leetcode problems and nothing else. So I assume the hiring meter for most juniors is not "can use version control" or "can architect a 1000 line codebase with decent OOP". It's "can recurgigate 300-500 common Leetcode problems and can cheat in online coding tests". We are all in a bubble.
radq 3y ago
I don't expect a lot of people to take this up. Express Entry was already an option for these folks and you get permanent residency from the start under that program.
- klardotsh 3y ago
  The exception case is those of us without degrees: Express Entry is a non-starter without a degree unless you go through a provincial nomination program that's willing to also overlook the lack of degree (AFAIK the BC Tech Pilot may be the only relevant example to us software folk). The Global Talent Stream visas are (to my knowledge) the only skilled worker visas in Canada that don't require degrees, and thus are what I used for the year or so I lived in Canada. I suspect this new open work permit scheme will resolve the lone issue GTS visas had for such workers: that if the job didn't work out, as mine didn't, you have to (1) flagpole, or (2) go home (which is what I did). So, yeah, probably still relatively low takeup, but it's going to solve a corner case that, if I had the energy or interest to move back to Canada (which unfortunately seems to have suffered lots of the same issues the US has in the past several years, just in differing flavors at times), I'd be thankful to have solved.
  - abigail95 3y ago
    At least Singapore explicitly has in their Visa requirements that founding and selling a company is equivalent to a high level degree for their work visa requirements. So many of these "talent" visa's don't look at talent at all.
  - lambdasquirrel 3y ago
    Express entry also penalizes those of us who are a bit older. Kind of sucks, because I don't think I really hit my stride as a dev until I was around 35.
    - jossclimb 3y ago
      It's really not far off ageism. I can't ever imagine them giving points for a whiter shade of skin.
tyiz 3y ago
Since 2020, not a beautiful country anymore.
seydor 3y ago
in a free world where capital and goods move freely, but not people
latenightcoding 3y ago
"unveiled at North America’s top tech conference" ... Collision. Give me a break, Collision is Grifter Olympics.
CSMastermind 3y ago
As someone who has hired software developers in Canada and looked into opening an office there in a previous role, I'll tell you that taxes are prohibitive both for employers and employees. With the US this close it's often cheaper and easier for everyone involved to deal with the US immigration process and pay and employee's moving expenses than it is to try and set up a Canadian headquarters or hire workers there. This is true on a state by state basis in the US as well. Hawaii is a nightmare to hire workers in, so much so that our HR put their foot down and told me they're not supporting it anymore. Meanwhile hiring someone in Washington, Texas, or Florida is a breeze. I pulled out of Mexico in my current role and moved those jobs to Chile, Brazil, and the Balkans. The reason had nothing to do with the talent of the engineers in Mexico and everything to do with how painful it is to deal with their government. If Canada wants high paying tech jobs there is a very straight-forward way for them to get them: make their government bureaucracy more efficient and pass those savings on to your citizens.
- hestefisk 3y ago
  At least for those taxes, one gets somewhat free healthcare. I’d rather pay higher taxes and get access to a solid public healthcare system, rather than relying on the expensive private care in the states.
  - humanlion87 3y ago
    The healthcare system is not as solid as one might think. Getting family doctors in certain provinces is almost impossible - the waiting lists are months to years now. Seeing specialists, again 6-12 months wait time. If you are dying, yes you will get good care at the ER. But anything less urgent, you have to wait for hours to be seen. There is an acute shortage of doctors and nurses. And there is no proper solution being put forward by politicians. Some of them are focused on gutting the public healthcare system so that private players can move in and reap profits.
  - option 3y ago
    tech workers in US generally have very good health insurance provided by employer which means access to better and faster care than in Canada
hackermeows 3y ago
One of the main problems people have with this is “housing costs “, what’s causing the housing problem there. Surely its not just the immigrants that are to blame . Canada has swaths of land, it definitely does not have a space issue. It has plenty of resources (major economic driver is natural resources) , no resource issues either . What exactly is causing the housing price to stay so high compared to income .
- joshlemer 3y ago
  It's zoning which forbids the construction of any denser forms of housing than single-family detached houses in the vast majority (like, ~90%) of the land in most Canadian cities. And more broadly an insane amount of bureaucracy and friction that developers have to go through in order to get a building approved. In Vancouver, they are literally tearing down apartment buildings and replacing them with multi-million dollar mansions, within walking distance to downtown, because it's no longer permitted to build apartments in the neighbourhood and the buildings are end-of-life. Check this map here, all the yellow areas are zoned for houses (luxury mansions in this market) only https://maps.vancouver.ca/zoning/ https://maps.vancouver.ca/zoning/. This (https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2632824,-123.0709435,3a,82.3y,245.66h,84.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sh46758DHSeH54mURWRJwTg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2632824,-123.0709435,3a,82.3...) is across the street from Commercial-Broadway station, the busiest skytrain station in Metro Vancouver at the intersection of the two major lines. The lines were constructed in 1986 and 2002 so they've had a good 37 years to densify the area. It's the same story in every city outside of Montreal and Quebec City. Then there's the many ways that Canadian homeowners benefit at the expense of everyone else from subsidies. Unlike in the US, capital gains on primary residences in Canada are completely tax free with no limit. That incentivizes people to invest as much as possible into buying as much home as they can. Then, in some jurisdictions like Ontario and BC, owner-occupied homes are actually charged less property taxes. In other words, renters are subsidizing homeowners. Then, in some provinces like in BC, you can actually apply to defer paying property taxes entirely until you're dead at which point the estate pays the balance. Further, homeowners with a home worth less than about 2.125 million, and you are 65 or older, you are eligible for a grant of $1045 per month discount on your property taxes simply for being a poor downtrodden homeowner. Being a homeowner also gives you the right to vote in every municipality that you own property in. So we have a municipal politics in which property owners are given more of a voice than residents themselves. Absolutely fucking disgusting
dang 3y ago
Recent and related: Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries permits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 - June 2023 (583 comments) Canada's new tech talent strategy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 - June 2023 (78 comments)
appleaday1 3y ago
But where will these new people stay? There is not enough housing being built for people, you are going to see people come here only to leave when they realize that they can't afford the housing for their families there. Net migration is probably pretty high in Canada right now and will increase once people figure out that there is not enough density or proper housing for them. Check out these two top threads thread at canadahousing subreddit: [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came_to_canada_3_years_ago_and_now_leaving_due_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came... [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/ontario_get_readyyoure_going_to_lose_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/onta... I am waiting to see what the cabinet shuffle looks like, but we are probably going to run some billboard campaigns or do some fundraising soon to address the housing crisis if the government is not tackling this properly. If you are Canadian or have interest in this space on addressing these social issues, hit me up.
- joshlemer 3y ago
  I've seen first hand refugees come to Canada from Ukraine, realize that this country is in their words "not a country where you can have an easy life" and within 6 months figure out a way to get to the states.
  - peanuty1 3y ago
    I could've been making a great salary in Canada as a new grad but it just didn't make sense to stay when I could make 1.5x more in the US (and in USD!).
    - wesapien 3y ago
      Good on you! I wish I could do the same leave Canada.
  - f6v 3y ago
    > I've seen first hand refugees come to Canada from Ukraine Software developers are used to paying sub-10% income tax there (or no tax at all).
fwungy 3y ago
Aggressive immigration without proper planning raises rents and lowers wages. It is exploitation under the guise of benevolence.
- Andaith 3y ago
  Wait until you see what Australia is doing :'( Plan is to increase our population by about 500k per year(I think about 200K natural growth & 300K immigration). We already have a housing shortage. They created a 10bil housing fund. Plan is for this fund to... invest in the stock market, and use the interest to fund the construction of 6000 houses a year. It's a fucking joke. People talk about Big Australia(govt policy of sharply increasing population) for geopolitical reasons, but I think it's simpler than that. My personal theory is that the govt doesn't want to go into a technical recession and be excoriated in the murdoch press as bad economic managers because they were left holding the previous govts turd sandwich. The parallels between Australia & Canada are interesting, but i'm curious why the Canadian govt is motivated to do this...
  - somerandomqaguy 3y ago
    >Plan is to increase our population by about 500k per year(I think about 200K natural growth & 300K immigration). ....... ? Canada's number of permanent and non permanent residents increased by 1 million or so in 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-22/canada-s-population-grows-by-more-than-1-million-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-22/canada-s-...
    - throwaway462910 3y ago
      > Wait until you see what Australia is doing
  - wesapien 3y ago
    The Common (un)Wealth. The society they've built is self extinguishing. Birth rates from immigrants fall off and become part of the status quo in a generation.
AntiRemote 3y ago
[dead]
hackpelican 3y ago
I have tried to get into Canada as a FAANG engineer through internal transfer from within the company. The pay was hilarious compared to what I would have gotten in the US, but I had personal reasons to choose Canada instead. It has been a total shitshow. I started the process in June of 2022, eventually the team I was moving to got bored of waiting for the work permit in March 2023. Factoring out the (ridiculous) 3 months it took for the relocation agency to prepare and submit my work permit application, it was six months of waiting with no feedback at all from the IRCC about where the process is stuck. All inquiries went unanswered. Once I lost the position, I emailed the local Canadian embassy to let them know my thoughts, I was (expectedly) greeted back with an automated email saying that emails about immigration will not be looked at. All in all, the processes in Canada are very immature and if you value predictability and stability in your life, do not attempt to get a job there.
- vancouverwill 3y ago
  Any thing bureaucratic in Canada takes longer than you could possibly imagine. Very frustrating when you are relying on it.
- light_hue_1 3y ago
  > It has been a total shitshow. I started the process in June of 2022, eventually the team I was moving to got bored of waiting for the work permit in March 2023. Someone did something very wrong. The wait time for a temporary work permit from the US is a whole 5 weeks. I've done this, the process was very transparent and predictable. Compared to the US system it's amazing.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - hackpelican 3y ago
    That was my impression as well until my first-hand experience. In comparison, a colleague started the transfer process to the US 2 months after I started with Canada and left to the US in 2 months after that. It has not been a good experience with me and has soured my impression of Canada tremendously.
GrigoriyMikh 3y ago
I'm currently trying to migrate from Germany to Canada. It appears to me that the job market in Canada is horrible at the moment. I have 8YoE in Cloud and quite in demand in Germany(recently got a good offer, which i'm considering, from a German company purely because of my open source contributions, also passed HC in one of FAANGs, but stuck in team match phase due to layoffs). I sent 10s of applications(it's hard to send 100s as i'm highly specialized) and didn't get a single interview from that.
- goodcanadian 3y ago
  Speaking as a Canadian who has spent most of his adult working life outside of Canada, the Canadian job market for anything STEM has always been pretty poor.
gxt 3y ago
Usual incompetence from Ottawa again and again. There hasn't been a shortage of applicants since at least 2019. Recently had to fill two roles and out of more than 70 candidates we hired none and transferred two people from other teams. Lots of people pretending to have the required skills who can't answer basic questions and people with unrealistic salary expectations.
MrDresden 3y ago
Good for them. I tried to immigrate to Canada, from Europe, some 8 years ago. Degree in CS, many years of experience under my belt. Even had a remote senior developer job and was looking into using a dual taxation law that my country has with them, so that I could pay my taxes in Canada. Took the language tests and got a ~95%. Then just hit a wall. Needed points (in their point based application process) to progress my application. And I would have gotten plenty of those if I had quit my high paying tech job to become a store clerk. At that point I decided this was just silly, packed my suitcases and went back home.
- badpun 3y ago
  Sounds like the Soviet Union. Store clerks, factory workers and other working-class people were of the "desirable" background and had extra points when e.g. their children applied to universities.
bagels 3y ago
Is the strategy to offer enough pay to attract talent? If not, good luck with the pitiful pay and snow.
aborsy 3y ago
People compare Canada with US. But don’t forget the situation is worse in Europe, and many parts of the world (low salaries, high taxes, expensive housing, inflation and unemployment, bureaucracy and inefficiency, crime and safety problems, general dysfunction etc). Canada is great in many respects.
Eumenes 3y ago
If I wanna visit Canada, I can spend a few weeks/months in the places I wanna see (Quebec, BC, Alberta), work remotely for a US company and make 2-3x the money w/o spending half my income on taxes/insane rents.
happyjack 3y ago
There's two sides to the immigration issue. On one hand, you can bring some very great people who are in terrible situations and will work their damndest to contribute and create a life for their family. On the other hand, Western countries are very indebted and the only way out is growth. Immigrants tend to have more kids, and work harder, longer hours for less money. There's a reason white millennials in north america aren't having kids and growing the economy: it just simply doesn't make sense. It's not obtainable.
Jemm 3y ago
Canada is crumbing and desperately trying to solve the problem with immigration. Do yourself a favour and don't fall for it.
kderbyma 3y ago
This policy is terrible unless you want to inflate the housing market and deflate the salaries....
semilattice 3y ago
Countries that export to US [1] or to EU, and US itself will have an unreasbly (un-deservedly) high standardard of living. That will always attract both talent and con-artists to US, Canada etc. Because for the same amount of effort (or same amount of risk for the con-artists) -- the rewards are much higher. This will only change if US currency will stop being the reserve currency of the world. When (or if) US will stop being reserve currency of the world, it will cause a cascading effect that will likely cause a temporary collapse of the socio-economic, judicial, and political pillars of Western economies and Canada, Australia. Then all these talent acquisition strategies will stop working. All the policies will turn towards reducing chances of civil wars that will be breaking inside these countries. Until then, it is hard to blame immigrants for seeking higher standard of living for the same amount of effort. And governments will not really care what will benefit the locals. Because the political systems in Canada, US, UK are not really representative of the people, they are representative of the lobbyist and powerful interests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...
kazinator 3y ago
It used to be that Canada brought in more and more immigrants in order to have de facto slaves to work in service jobs like retail, delivery and what not: you know, to help uphold the standard of living for the previous immigrants who upgraded their education and skills and became mega consumers. People who drive their SUV to a "U pick" farm, and just buy a box of washed and sorted blueberries in the parking lot, ... rather than working in such a place. Unfortunately, those service-job immigrants are now priced out of housing due to all the previous immigration. So in order that residential properties continue to inflate, we now need to bring in "tech talent": immigrants who have some ghost of a chance of actually affording to live here. In some ten years, Immigration Canada will be all about attracting "CEO talent", "chief of hospital talent" and such.

232 points by faramarz 3y ago

Discussed earlier today, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152

I'm happy I just closed on a house because something tells me affordability will keep being an issue in the coming years.

th33ngineer 3y ago
Do you live in the GTA by chance? There is still a ban on foreign buyers in effect, even those with a work or study visa.
- rcme 3y ago
  The foreign buyer ban doesn't apply to foreigners working on work permits in Canada.
- dumdumchan 3y ago
  > GTA Greater Toronto Area for those unaware.
  - for1nner 3y ago
    Thank you - was really trying to understand why OC was being sniped at with a Grand Theft Auto reference (much less what the ref was supposed to imply...)

Shank 3y ago

> This measure will remain in effect for one year, or until Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) receives 10,000 applications. Only principal applicants, and not their accompanying family members, will count toward the application cap. Only 10,000 people? Sounds like a good, but quickly fading opportunity.

umeshunni 3y ago
FWIW, the H1B program has what - 100K visas available and 780K applicants each year.
- trustingtrust 3y ago
  This is not for applicants I think. Only those with an H1B approved visa. The ones who have an approved H1B but no job in the US would move to Canada. So they are not targeting those who have a job in US ( they have little to no incentive to move any way).
jfoster 3y ago
Sounds like a trial. Would be great for more governments to try new ideas & evaluate the results like any business might.
mschild 3y ago
Considering that the US has ~333m and Canada ~36m people, the proportions to the H1B sound about right, no?
- humanlion87 3y ago
  Canada's population just hit 40m this week. Still small compared to the US, but it is no longer in the 30s :)
  - travisgriggs 3y ago
    Curious where the growth is. I’m assuming in cities. And I’m assuming that “90% of Canadians live within 90 miles of the US border” more than ever. I want my assumptions to be incorrect. But I worry they are not.

idiotsecant 3y ago

A person might be forgiven for viewing this cynically as a way for large corporations to reduce the wages they need to pay by hijacking and bypassing the regular immigration system to import indentured tech servants that they can exploit ruthlessly and underpay.

itake 3y ago
Or they are trying to offer a legal way for people to do what they are already doing illegally
- pkaye 3y ago
  Canada is already allowing a large amount of immigration already. Those H1B workers could have already gone directly to Canada.
- throwawaylinux 3y ago
  Yes, banish the thought a government might from time to time fail to act in the best interests of its citizens.
  - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
    In the US of A, corporations are people and then some.
    - throwawaylinux 3y ago
      The article is about Canada.
      - FollowingTheDao 3y ago
        I know that.
        throwawaylinux 3y ago

txcan 3y ago

Anyone interested in this should also check out Canadian home prices, rental prices, the broken healthcare system and the peanuts that Canadian tech companies pay. You will be glad you did before jumping ship.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> broken healthcare system Relative to the USA’s really broken healthcare system, it’s still an improvement.
- pschuegr 3y ago
  Both bad in their own way, both with users thankful they're not on the other system. It's a triumph of propaganda!
- radq 3y ago
  As someone that's used to live in Canada and is currently in the USA, this is not true. Six month wait time to get an x-ray for a hairline fracture, people dying because of long wait times for cancer screenings etc. In the USA things are expensive but you at least get access when you need it.
  - throwawaysleep 3y ago
    > but you at least get access when you need it. As long as your insurance approves.
    - jdboyd 3y ago
      And of course, as long as you have insurance or piles of cash.
      - joshlemer 3y ago

anonymous344 3y ago

[flagged]

MattRix 3y ago
[flagged]
- shyn3 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - PierceJoy 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - chillbill 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - PierceJoy 3y ago
        [flagged]
        chillbill 3y ago
        [flagged]
        dang 3y ago
        Please don't perpetuate flamewars on HN. We end up having to ban accounts that do that. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
        dang 3y ago

111111IIIIIII 3y ago

The limit is 10,000 people. If those spots weren't already filled before the announcement was made, they are now.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Ralo 3y ago

I'm a Canadian that's been trying to get into this field. There is no "talent" issue. Any job that pops up is flooded with applicants. It's night and day compared to America. All the companies are in America, while we find only a handful of start ups or some branch's of corporations in Canada. Give a read to the /r/cscareerquestionscad subreddit There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job". Articles like this make me want to quit everything. I try so hard to get into these field then the government claims no one can fill these roles and we need to import more people instead.

throwawaysleep 3y ago
Those are new grads and frankly most Canadian CS programs are awful to the point that if you are forced to hire one of those, may as well hire an Indian contractor remotely. The choice is between jobs going offshore or people coming to work here as most new grads are not job ready. I have interviewed ones who have never done a pull request before.
- devoutsalsa 3y ago
  I've also never written a press release.
  - speedgoose 3y ago
    I’m guessing PR stands for pull request in this context. But it could also be project review or peer review. We may never know.
    - devoutsalsa 3y ago
      I was trying to be funny. PR stands for public relations.
- _yy01 3y ago
  How do you expect a new grad (assuming no internship experience) to have done a PR? I agree the university should've taught version control, though. I am an Indian graduate who has decent experience with actual programming, even contributed to open source, and yet struggled to get a job in between my peers who have done 300 Leetcode problems and nothing else. So I assume the hiring meter for most juniors is not "can use version control" or "can architect a 1000 line codebase with decent OOP". It's "can recurgigate 300-500 common Leetcode problems and can cheat in online coding tests". We are all in a bubble.

radq 3y ago

I don't expect a lot of people to take this up. Express Entry was already an option for these folks and you get permanent residency from the start under that program.

klardotsh 3y ago
The exception case is those of us without degrees: Express Entry is a non-starter without a degree unless you go through a provincial nomination program that's willing to also overlook the lack of degree (AFAIK the BC Tech Pilot may be the only relevant example to us software folk). The Global Talent Stream visas are (to my knowledge) the only skilled worker visas in Canada that don't require degrees, and thus are what I used for the year or so I lived in Canada. I suspect this new open work permit scheme will resolve the lone issue GTS visas had for such workers: that if the job didn't work out, as mine didn't, you have to (1) flagpole, or (2) go home (which is what I did). So, yeah, probably still relatively low takeup, but it's going to solve a corner case that, if I had the energy or interest to move back to Canada (which unfortunately seems to have suffered lots of the same issues the US has in the past several years, just in differing flavors at times), I'd be thankful to have solved.
- abigail95 3y ago
  At least Singapore explicitly has in their Visa requirements that founding and selling a company is equivalent to a high level degree for their work visa requirements. So many of these "talent" visa's don't look at talent at all.
- lambdasquirrel 3y ago
  Express entry also penalizes those of us who are a bit older. Kind of sucks, because I don't think I really hit my stride as a dev until I was around 35.
  - jossclimb 3y ago
    It's really not far off ageism. I can't ever imagine them giving points for a whiter shade of skin.

tyiz 3y ago

Since 2020, not a beautiful country anymore.

seydor 3y ago

in a free world where capital and goods move freely, but not people

latenightcoding 3y ago

"unveiled at North America’s top tech conference" ... Collision. Give me a break, Collision is Grifter Olympics.

CSMastermind 3y ago

As someone who has hired software developers in Canada and looked into opening an office there in a previous role, I'll tell you that taxes are prohibitive both for employers and employees. With the US this close it's often cheaper and easier for everyone involved to deal with the US immigration process and pay and employee's moving expenses than it is to try and set up a Canadian headquarters or hire workers there. This is true on a state by state basis in the US as well. Hawaii is a nightmare to hire workers in, so much so that our HR put their foot down and told me they're not supporting it anymore. Meanwhile hiring someone in Washington, Texas, or Florida is a breeze. I pulled out of Mexico in my current role and moved those jobs to Chile, Brazil, and the Balkans. The reason had nothing to do with the talent of the engineers in Mexico and everything to do with how painful it is to deal with their government. If Canada wants high paying tech jobs there is a very straight-forward way for them to get them: make their government bureaucracy more efficient and pass those savings on to your citizens.

hestefisk 3y ago
At least for those taxes, one gets somewhat free healthcare. I’d rather pay higher taxes and get access to a solid public healthcare system, rather than relying on the expensive private care in the states.
- humanlion87 3y ago
  The healthcare system is not as solid as one might think. Getting family doctors in certain provinces is almost impossible - the waiting lists are months to years now. Seeing specialists, again 6-12 months wait time. If you are dying, yes you will get good care at the ER. But anything less urgent, you have to wait for hours to be seen. There is an acute shortage of doctors and nurses. And there is no proper solution being put forward by politicians. Some of them are focused on gutting the public healthcare system so that private players can move in and reap profits.
- option 3y ago
  tech workers in US generally have very good health insurance provided by employer which means access to better and faster care than in Canada

hackermeows 3y ago

One of the main problems people have with this is “housing costs “, what’s causing the housing problem there. Surely its not just the immigrants that are to blame . Canada has swaths of land, it definitely does not have a space issue. It has plenty of resources (major economic driver is natural resources) , no resource issues either . What exactly is causing the housing price to stay so high compared to income .

joshlemer 3y ago
It's zoning which forbids the construction of any denser forms of housing than single-family detached houses in the vast majority (like, ~90%) of the land in most Canadian cities. And more broadly an insane amount of bureaucracy and friction that developers have to go through in order to get a building approved. In Vancouver, they are literally tearing down apartment buildings and replacing them with multi-million dollar mansions, within walking distance to downtown, because it's no longer permitted to build apartments in the neighbourhood and the buildings are end-of-life. Check this map here, all the yellow areas are zoned for houses (luxury mansions in this market) only https://maps.vancouver.ca/zoning/ https://maps.vancouver.ca/zoning/. This (https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2632824,-123.0709435,3a,82.3y,245.66h,84.8t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sh46758DHSeH54mURWRJwTg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu https://www.google.com/maps/@49.2632824,-123.0709435,3a,82.3...) is across the street from Commercial-Broadway station, the busiest skytrain station in Metro Vancouver at the intersection of the two major lines. The lines were constructed in 1986 and 2002 so they've had a good 37 years to densify the area. It's the same story in every city outside of Montreal and Quebec City. Then there's the many ways that Canadian homeowners benefit at the expense of everyone else from subsidies. Unlike in the US, capital gains on primary residences in Canada are completely tax free with no limit. That incentivizes people to invest as much as possible into buying as much home as they can. Then, in some jurisdictions like Ontario and BC, owner-occupied homes are actually charged less property taxes. In other words, renters are subsidizing homeowners. Then, in some provinces like in BC, you can actually apply to defer paying property taxes entirely until you're dead at which point the estate pays the balance. Further, homeowners with a home worth less than about 2.125 million, and you are 65 or older, you are eligible for a grant of $1045 per month discount on your property taxes simply for being a poor downtrodden homeowner. Being a homeowner also gives you the right to vote in every municipality that you own property in. So we have a municipal politics in which property owners are given more of a voice than residents themselves. Absolutely fucking disgusting

dang 3y ago

Recent and related: Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries permits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 - June 2023 (583 comments) Canada's new tech talent strategy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 - June 2023 (78 comments)

appleaday1 3y ago

But where will these new people stay? There is not enough housing being built for people, you are going to see people come here only to leave when they realize that they can't afford the housing for their families there. Net migration is probably pretty high in Canada right now and will increase once people figure out that there is not enough density or proper housing for them. Check out these two top threads thread at canadahousing subreddit: [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came_to_canada_3_years_ago_and_now_leaving_due_to/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came... [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/ontario_get_readyyoure_going_to_lose_your/ https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/onta... I am waiting to see what the cabinet shuffle looks like, but we are probably going to run some billboard campaigns or do some fundraising soon to address the housing crisis if the government is not tackling this properly. If you are Canadian or have interest in this space on addressing these social issues, hit me up.

joshlemer 3y ago
I've seen first hand refugees come to Canada from Ukraine, realize that this country is in their words "not a country where you can have an easy life" and within 6 months figure out a way to get to the states.
- peanuty1 3y ago
  I could've been making a great salary in Canada as a new grad but it just didn't make sense to stay when I could make 1.5x more in the US (and in USD!).
  - wesapien 3y ago
    Good on you! I wish I could do the same leave Canada.
- f6v 3y ago
  > I've seen first hand refugees come to Canada from Ukraine Software developers are used to paying sub-10% income tax there (or no tax at all).

fwungy 3y ago

Aggressive immigration without proper planning raises rents and lowers wages. It is exploitation under the guise of benevolence.

Andaith 3y ago
Wait until you see what Australia is doing :'( Plan is to increase our population by about 500k per year(I think about 200K natural growth & 300K immigration). We already have a housing shortage. They created a 10bil housing fund. Plan is for this fund to... invest in the stock market, and use the interest to fund the construction of 6000 houses a year. It's a fucking joke. People talk about Big Australia(govt policy of sharply increasing population) for geopolitical reasons, but I think it's simpler than that. My personal theory is that the govt doesn't want to go into a technical recession and be excoriated in the murdoch press as bad economic managers because they were left holding the previous govts turd sandwich. The parallels between Australia & Canada are interesting, but i'm curious why the Canadian govt is motivated to do this...
- somerandomqaguy 3y ago
  >Plan is to increase our population by about 500k per year(I think about 200K natural growth & 300K immigration). ....... ? Canada's number of permanent and non permanent residents increased by 1 million or so in 2022. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-22/canada-s-population-grows-by-more-than-1-million-for-first-time https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-22/canada-s-...
  - throwaway462910 3y ago
    > Wait until you see what Australia is doing
- wesapien 3y ago
  The Common (un)Wealth. The society they've built is self extinguishing. Birth rates from immigrants fall off and become part of the status quo in a generation.

AntiRemote 3y ago

[dead]

hackpelican 3y ago

I have tried to get into Canada as a FAANG engineer through internal transfer from within the company. The pay was hilarious compared to what I would have gotten in the US, but I had personal reasons to choose Canada instead. It has been a total shitshow. I started the process in June of 2022, eventually the team I was moving to got bored of waiting for the work permit in March 2023. Factoring out the (ridiculous) 3 months it took for the relocation agency to prepare and submit my work permit application, it was six months of waiting with no feedback at all from the IRCC about where the process is stuck. All inquiries went unanswered. Once I lost the position, I emailed the local Canadian embassy to let them know my thoughts, I was (expectedly) greeted back with an automated email saying that emails about immigration will not be looked at. All in all, the processes in Canada are very immature and if you value predictability and stability in your life, do not attempt to get a job there.

vancouverwill 3y ago
Any thing bureaucratic in Canada takes longer than you could possibly imagine. Very frustrating when you are relying on it.
light_hue_1 3y ago
> It has been a total shitshow. I started the process in June of 2022, eventually the team I was moving to got bored of waiting for the work permit in March 2023. Someone did something very wrong. The wait time for a temporary work permit from the US is a whole 5 weeks. I've done this, the process was very transparent and predictable. Compared to the US system it's amazing.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- hackpelican 3y ago
  That was my impression as well until my first-hand experience. In comparison, a colleague started the transfer process to the US 2 months after I started with Canada and left to the US in 2 months after that. It has not been a good experience with me and has soured my impression of Canada tremendously.

GrigoriyMikh 3y ago

I'm currently trying to migrate from Germany to Canada. It appears to me that the job market in Canada is horrible at the moment. I have 8YoE in Cloud and quite in demand in Germany(recently got a good offer, which i'm considering, from a German company purely because of my open source contributions, also passed HC in one of FAANGs, but stuck in team match phase due to layoffs). I sent 10s of applications(it's hard to send 100s as i'm highly specialized) and didn't get a single interview from that.

goodcanadian 3y ago
Speaking as a Canadian who has spent most of his adult working life outside of Canada, the Canadian job market for anything STEM has always been pretty poor.

gxt 3y ago

Usual incompetence from Ottawa again and again. There hasn't been a shortage of applicants since at least 2019. Recently had to fill two roles and out of more than 70 candidates we hired none and transferred two people from other teams. Lots of people pretending to have the required skills who can't answer basic questions and people with unrealistic salary expectations.

MrDresden 3y ago

Good for them. I tried to immigrate to Canada, from Europe, some 8 years ago. Degree in CS, many years of experience under my belt. Even had a remote senior developer job and was looking into using a dual taxation law that my country has with them, so that I could pay my taxes in Canada. Took the language tests and got a ~95%. Then just hit a wall. Needed points (in their point based application process) to progress my application. And I would have gotten plenty of those if I had quit my high paying tech job to become a store clerk. At that point I decided this was just silly, packed my suitcases and went back home.

badpun 3y ago
Sounds like the Soviet Union. Store clerks, factory workers and other working-class people were of the "desirable" background and had extra points when e.g. their children applied to universities.

bagels 3y ago

Is the strategy to offer enough pay to attract talent? If not, good luck with the pitiful pay and snow.

aborsy 3y ago

People compare Canada with US. But don’t forget the situation is worse in Europe, and many parts of the world (low salaries, high taxes, expensive housing, inflation and unemployment, bureaucracy and inefficiency, crime and safety problems, general dysfunction etc). Canada is great in many respects.

Eumenes 3y ago

If I wanna visit Canada, I can spend a few weeks/months in the places I wanna see (Quebec, BC, Alberta), work remotely for a US company and make 2-3x the money w/o spending half my income on taxes/insane rents.

happyjack 3y ago

There's two sides to the immigration issue. On one hand, you can bring some very great people who are in terrible situations and will work their damndest to contribute and create a life for their family. On the other hand, Western countries are very indebted and the only way out is growth. Immigrants tend to have more kids, and work harder, longer hours for less money. There's a reason white millennials in north america aren't having kids and growing the economy: it just simply doesn't make sense. It's not obtainable.

Jemm 3y ago

Canada is crumbing and desperately trying to solve the problem with immigration. Do yourself a favour and don't fall for it.

kderbyma 3y ago

This policy is terrible unless you want to inflate the housing market and deflate the salaries....

semilattice 3y ago

Countries that export to US [1] or to EU, and US itself will have an unreasbly (un-deservedly) high standardard of living. That will always attract both talent and con-artists to US, Canada etc. Because for the same amount of effort (or same amount of risk for the con-artists) -- the rewards are much higher. This will only change if US currency will stop being the reserve currency of the world. When (or if) US will stop being reserve currency of the world, it will cause a cascading effect that will likely cause a temporary collapse of the socio-economic, judicial, and political pillars of Western economies and Canada, Australia. Then all these talent acquisition strategies will stop working. All the policies will turn towards reducing chances of civil wars that will be breaking inside these countries. Until then, it is hard to blame immigrants for seeking higher standard of living for the same amount of effort. And governments will not really care what will benefit the locals. Because the political systems in Canada, US, UK are not really representative of the people, they are representative of the lobbyist and powerful interests. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_partners_of_Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

kazinator 3y ago

It used to be that Canada brought in more and more immigrants in order to have de facto slaves to work in service jobs like retail, delivery and what not: you know, to help uphold the standard of living for the previous immigrants who upgraded their education and skills and became mega consumers. People who drive their SUV to a "U pick" farm, and just buy a box of washed and sorted blueberries in the parking lot, ... rather than working in such a place. Unfortunately, those service-job immigrants are now priced out of housing due to all the previous immigration. So in order that residential properties continue to inflate, we now need to bring in "tech talent": immigrants who have some ghost of a chance of actually affording to live here. In some ten years, Immigration Canada will be all about attracting "CEO talent", "chief of hospital talent" and such.