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Canada had poached 10k tech workers from the U.S. – in just 48 hours
- Racing0461 3y agocool, they can have them. the canadian white collar middle class is absolutely destroyed. edit: color -> collar
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> the canadian white color middle class Ooof. Quiet part out loud.
- Racing0461 3y agochill with the virtual signaling (no pun intended). fixed.
- JJMcJ 3y agowhite collar? I hope that's what you mean.
- gowld 3y agoMisleading title. 48hrs isn't any sort of rate. The 10K is pent-up demand. > Canada’s immigration ministry has been asked by Canadian tech employers to extend a program launched last month that has seen 10,000 foreign tech workers in the U.S apply for permanent residence in Canada.
- kdamica 3y agoCanada will be a major beneficiary of climate change as the continent’s northern reaches warm. If they combine that with smart policy-making like this (i.e. increasing population while attracting industry), I think Canada could be a world superpower in 100 years. Note: I’m not a highly informed person in this regard, but I think this is interesting to consider as a possibility
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoUgh, not this again. Our northern regions are rugged, heavily forested, undeveloped, and in the northernmost regions, experiencing loss of permafrost upon which communities and transportation corridors are built. The southern parts of the country, where most people live, are increasingly experiencing record heat and drought that's straining our cities and threatening crop and grazing land, putting out food system at significant risk. Maybe very long term northern countries can find a way to benefit from still being habitable, but by then the damage will have already been done.
- kdamica 3y agoThere’s no doubt that climate change will negatively affect most countries in some way, but the question is: do you think Canada will fare better or worse relative to other countries? I would wager that if future Montreal, for example, had winters more similar to today’s New York, far more people would want to live there.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoI can only assume you've not been to either city if you think Montreal is that much worse or NYC that much better, in terms of year-round climate. But more importantly, you can't increase your population if your cities have to ration the water or food supply because climate change has destroyed both. And mass migration is not going to happen without destroying lives and livelihoods.
- kdamica 3y ago
- f6v 3y agoHow many have moved?
- chronic7393 3y ago> How many have moved? Same number when Americans said they’d move to Canada after trump was elected. Zero
- f6v 3y agoOk might not be zero, but I suspect getting visa wasn’t what was keeping them in the USA. It was rather trivial to get a Canadian residence permit. Still, they did worse than the US at attracting talent and there’s a reason for that.
- JacobThreeThree 3y agoThe Canadian government on the one hand is trying to position Canada as an international tech leader, while on the other hand are trying to implement laws that are fundamentally at odds with tech norms (i.e. trying to force companies to pay for links with Bill C-18). It's nice to have the tech workers. But will the tech employers want to invest in a regulatory basket-case country?
- MichaelZuo 3y agoI'm fairly certain the Canadian government has more strength, more endurance, and more defendable resources, then all major tech companies on Earth combined have at their disposal, if they fully set all their efforts in that direction. But this is idle fantasizing regarding extreme scenarios either way. In reality they likely will commit a small fraction to it and only a small fraction of interested tech companies may loosely coordinate against it. Even in that case I think they have better then 50-50 odds of seeing it through. So the actual situation could be the opposite.
- SonicScrub 3y ago> I'm fairly certain the Canadian government has more strength, more endurance, and more defendable resources, then all tech companies on Earth, combined, if they fully set all their efforts in that direction. This seems like a weird point to bring up in this context. The only thing that matters for a tech company to "defeat" Canada over this regulatory bill is whether the population cares enough to make this topic a voting issue. Canada's GDP and mineral resources don't really help it win this kind of "war". I don't really think we expected Zuckerberg to lead the Meta-Battalion across the 49th parallel just to get CBC articles on Facebook sans-tariff.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago> The only thing that matters for a tech company to "defeat" Canada over this regulatory bill is whether the population cares enough to make this topic a voting issue. Canada does not operate on the US system in terms of politics, it's much more like the UK in that regard.
- djkivi 3y agoReddit's busy thread on this topic: https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/15s968t/how_canada_poached_10000_tech_workers_from_the_us/ https://old.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/15s968t/how_canada_...
- igetspam 3y agoCan I sign up? They told me that I'm useless after 35.
- faluzure 3y agoAs a Canadian tech worker, fuck this. I get paid 'market rate' which is substantially less than my American peers.
- silisili 3y agoSounds like 'market rate' is about to get lowered even more...
- faluzure 3y agoJust like our GDP per capita.
- space_fountain 3y agoAre you saying this change will result in a lower gdp? How do you figure that? Usually it would mean that Canadian companies can get more done for less money right thus boosting overall gdp?
- JacobThreeThree 3y agoAccording to a recent Bank of Montreal analysis, Canada's GDP per capita is likely to decrease. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-real-per-capita-gdp/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-canada-real... >Canada’s population growth will likely slow from its current frantic pace as immigration officials work through the pandemic backlog of applications, but not by all that much. Barring a vast improvement in productivity, Canada’s per-capita GDP – and our standard of living – appear headed for an outright decline.
- space_fountain 3y agoI don't think that reads as saying immigration is leading to reduced gpd let along gdp per capital. Usually we think immigration increases both
- 3y ago
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoI'm all for immigration, but I'm not a fan of companies benefiting from cheap labour and driving down our already middling tech industry salaries. Brain drain to the US is already a huge problem due to the vastly higher compensation available there. This will only make things worse.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> Brain drain to the US is already a huge problem But this sounds like an inflow of brains to Canada. Wouldn't this help build Canada's tech industry?
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoNo because those brains increase the pool of inexpensive labour in the market, which will allow companies to avoid increasing salaries. To be clear, this is a super hard problem and I'm not claiming limiting tech labour immigration is a panacea. It's not. But unless this policy is paired with policies to increase local labour demand as well (which is the real hard problem), all this can do is drive down salaries while exacerbating the housing shortage, which is most acute in the markets where these workers are likely to settle (Vancouver, GTA, and Montreal).
- UncleOxidant 3y agoThis has been debated in the US ever since the H1B started. Does it suppress tech salaries or does it enable tech companies who are labor-limited to expand? Probably some of both. Still, many of these H1Bs in the US actually got their (higher) education here so letting them stay and apply that gained knowledge seems beneficial for the US economy. If they start moving to Canada they take that knowledge gained in the US with them and instead of building the economy here it contributes to building it there.
- BaseballPhysics 3y ago> If they start moving to Canada they take that knowledge gained in the US with them and instead of building the economy here it contributes to building it there. Which is why I say you have to pair this policy with policies to create local demand. You've gotta give people a reason to build their business in Canada. Simply having a high quality labour pool isn't enough, especially now that remote work is so much more widely available. Even basic things like getting funding is much harder in Canada because the center of mass is in SV. But it's a super hard problem and few other places have cracked it (I'm looking at you, Stockholm!)
- mcv 3y agoPoached? Are tech workers wild animals? A better way to phrase it is "Canada has employed 10k American tech workers in 48 hours." But that doesn't sound nearly as nefarious.
- sen 3y agopoach (verb) poached; poaching; poaches intransitive verb […] 2 b: to appropriate (something) as one's own c: to attract (someone, such as an employee or customer) away from a competitor
- rcfox 3y ago"Poached" is a pretty common term with respect to hiring employees away from other employers.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- chrstphrknwtn 3y agoWorkers? Is that all these human beings are? A better way to phrase it is "Canada has employed 10k people in America in 48 hours". But that isn't worthy of being pointlessly outraged by everyday language.
- delaynomore 3y agoNot even employed. Just "10K H1b workers applied for the permit in 48 hours". No guarantee that they will follow through with the application or have jobs.
- jackbravo 3y agoPoached is indeed a bad term. But from what I understood, they have not employed any new worker, they just gave them visas, most should be still working for US companies, and are using this as an escape plan in case their US Visas are not extended to avoid returning to their original country.
- scohesc 3y agoThe Canadian economy is fueled by rising real estate prices, price gouging/profiteering by a select few families, and wage suppression. I'm not surprised the government is enticing 10k (and potentially more) tech workers who are running out of time on their H1-B to come to Canada. I only hope these jobs are for skilled workers who already have a decade+ of experience and are specialists, otherwise we're going to have a lot of natural-born Canadians graduating college that will have next to no chance at finding entry-level work.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> The Canadian economy is fueled by rising real estate prices, price gouging/profiteering by a select few families, and wage suppression. Sounds like the US economy as well.
- frandroid 3y agoIt's night and day. The U.S. economy is very diverse and sports a large proportion of medium-sized companies of all kinds. There's a huge gap in Canada where many of our medium-sized get snapped up by American investors who either move them to the U.S. or integrate them to their existing Canadian operations, torpedoing our chances at developing new large companies in the long term.
- m3kw9 3y agoHouse prices ticked up at the same time span
- ChumpGPT 3y agoEnjoy your poverty. Basement apartment for 3k a month, cost of food and everything else more expensive, taxed at 45% and even double taxed, so your 60-100k becomes more like 35k-55k. You will live paycheck to paycheck if you're lucky to find a job. California, NY, TX, etc are full of Canadian Tech workers that were lucky to escape. What a joke....
- LASR 3y agoI am a Canadian tech worker clearing about C$400k/yr total comp as a Staff Eng. I pay $5k for my mortgage. Taxed once. I work for a SF company that has set up a Canadian arm of the business. Despite all that, it’s a bargain compared to Bay Area pay.
- avtar 3y agoSafe to say your salary is an anomaly in the Canadian tech landscape.
- bawolff 3y agoAs a staff eng? That is a fairly high rank. Doesn't sound that crazy.
- avtar 3y agoOthers can comment with their experience but my guess was informed by recent job searches and forums, albeit not for this title. Doing a search right now for a Staff Engineer in Toronto seems to hint at 180 - 200K CAD being the upper limit.
- ChumpGPT 3y agoYou are an outlier and only because you work for an American Company that pays you what they might pay locally in SF. Perhaps they don't know they could pay you 1/2 of that easily.... On a tangent what are you're taxes like, 52%?
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- titanomachy 3y ago"Delete the algorithm"? What does that have to do with the rest of your comment?
- kitanata 3y ago[flagged]
- lampshades 3y agoHe cracked yesterday for some reason, go check out his history.
- dhirenb 3y agoA large number (majority?) of these applicants are Indians on h1b in the US using Canada as a backup in lieu of going back to India. It's insurance against layoffs, not being able to get a Green Card, etc. It remains to be seen how many actually move. And after moving how many actually stay for long or try to come back to the US on a TN or L1 visa. I would bet most won't end up staying in Canada long term.
- beiller 3y agoI bet that none will wind up in Canada. The scenario here is being fired in USA, and the visa holder clearly want to be in USA, not Canada, otherwise they'd be in Canada already. So the scenario lets say comes to pass, mass USA layoffs at tech companies hiring H1Bs. Why would Canadian tech companies (Which tech companies BTW?) be hiring while everyone else is firing the cheapest labor force available? Just my thoughts. I have worked with many visa holders in USA and their biggest fear is layoffs due to having to leave USA. But every visa holder I know who was laid off (had a big layoff at my company), was hired less than 1 month after they layoff in USA.
- jejeyyy77 3y agoWhat's that based on? Canada has 1 major advantage for immigrants - and that is the ability to sponsor family/relatives.
- dhirenb 3y agoThis is not actually true. The only advantage Canada has, for Indian immigrants in particular, is a skill-based immigration program that is fast and does not discriminate based on the country that they're from. Canada allows a lot less family-based immigration than the US. Parent-sponsoring permanent residences are limited to 10,000/year compared to no cap in the US. Overall it's the opposite. The US places a heavy emphasis on family-based immigration vs Canada that puts most of their emphasis on point-based skilled immigration.
- red-iron-pine 3y agothat's been heavily altered in the last few years. you can still do so, but the application process has changed to a lottery system, where you get pulled and are then your family is invited to apply. wait time may take years and its not a guarantee. source: am in Canada, know people who have done it, have done so myself
- kryptiskt 3y agoLiterally the only reason that the US is attracting the best talent is that the pay is the highest by far there. Nothing is going to change that position unless salaries increase in other countries (or crash in the US, in the glass half empty version). So I don't understand the triumphant rhetoric about "poaching" tech workers from the US.
- jimmaswell 3y agoWhat does Canada offer me as an American professional? In particular I enjoy living in my state with no sales/income tax and no restrictions on my gun hobby. Many of my generation would move to Canada solely as a political performance though I suppose.
- rebeccaskinner 3y agoYou can enjoy your gun hobby. A lot of other people prefer their “ability to legally receive health care” and “not being targeted by the state for their identity” hobbies, and while imperfect Canada is certainly better than a lot of the US in that regard. People wanting to protect themselves isn’t political performance.
- jimmaswell 3y agoHealth care is a serious issue, but not relevant to the well-paid software engineers in question. Not every state is Florida. Nobody in the government is targeting me for my identity here.
- rebeccaskinner 3y agoYou are right, but a lot of states are like Florida for things like reproductive health care and LGBT rights. If someone is going to uproot their entire life to move someplace that is safer (and will almost certainly have a higher cost of living) it's not unreasonable that they choose another country. I'm not saying it's the only reasonable choice, just that there's a lot more to the rationale than political performance. Real people are having to make real decisions because of actual impacts to their lives. I think it's important to remind people of that.
- busterarm 3y agoWhen I was living in Canada, my ex's family drove to the US for nearly 100% of medical screenings and 100% of dental work because waiting 6 months for an MRI or root canal when you're in debilitating pain is totally unreasonable. It's better now, but now Canada also has shit like: "tired of waiting? try assisted suicide". The US might have high standard costs but at least you have the option to pay for better than standard.
- slantedview 3y agoLet them poach. This is a short sighted prospect that will drive tech wages down, which are already lower in Canada than in the US. Of course, policies like this are meant to benefit business owners, not workers.
- Waterluvian 3y agoAs tech worker in Canada I'm a big fan of this as I feel there's no ceiling in which the tech industry can find itself saturated. We need to continue evolving towards a tech industry, particularly as the energy sector undergoes a major reform. Would I like to be paid more? Always. But not through putting walls up to artificially inflate the value of my role in the economy at the cost of Canada's economic future. There's a ton of months-old accounts here with very low karma loading the comments section up with feckless cowardice in the form of anti-government, anti-immigration, unthinking garbage. Seriously, click on a bunch and see. There's a LOT of valid criticism about Canada's economic situation. But carefully observe how every one of those comments plays on your fears and anxieties. They speak with hyperbole and aggression. They're trying to manipulate you through your instincts.
- bovermyer 3y agoI would love to immigrate to Canada. However, my Express Entry score is lower than that of twenty-somethings, so I have yet to get picked up in a round. I'm hopeful I'll get picked in one of the new tech rounds, but we'll see.
- frfl 3y agoThis comment is just my observations about the nature of comments regarding Canada. I'm not trying to lean one way or another by writing this... I can't speak to the honesty, atroturfing, propaganda, whatever you wanna call it, but online I've noticed a general negative tone and attitude towards the Canadian economy and government. Very little of the opinion pieces I see say anything good. By opinion pieces I refer to HN/Reddit, not news corporations. It's very one sided online.
- mgh2 3y agoSometimes HN/Reddit can be more realistic/honest than news corporations, but both can be biased or manipulated.
- Waterluvian 3y agoThere is a TON of astroturfing going on. And we've got a Conservative Party leader who is happy to encourage the classic cowardice-based attitudes about how the immigrants other easy targets are to blame for it all. Basically, "this is a very complex situation but I want to be elected so I'll distill it down to something raw and emotional for votes." But that's really just a symptom of the fact that there are very real economic problems here. Climate change is becoming a disaster. Economic ripples from COVID continue. The housing market is completely broken. Inflation up. When times are tough, people get scared. When people get scared, they respond more to emotion and impulse than logic and reason. That creates a market for charlatans who will give them simple explanations and simple solutions.
- lampshades 3y agohttps://archive.is/ThwbI https://archive.is/ThwbI
- injb 3y agoI'm seeing a lot of replies along the lines of "what does Canada have to offer me as a US tech worker?". I gather from the tone and from the fact that this is even being asked that these people are US-born, or at the very least have had some easy path to permanent residency. The linked article clearly explains that this is aimed at H1-B workers in the US, and it goes into plenty of detail about what Canada is offering them that the US isn't.
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoI've lived in Canada long enough to be able to answer that question. > what does Canada offer me? Cold weather, poutine, "eh", higher taxes, free health care, and American culture light. Whether they want to admit it or not, Canada is basically America with an identity crisis of claiming to not be America. You can still own guns in Canada and about a quarter of Canadians do.
- angarg12 3y agoI'm a new tech immigrant worker to the US and I'm borderline tempted to qualify it as "cruel". I've lived in different countries so I'm familiar with immigration processes. The US has by far the most obtuse, difficult, involved and painful of all of them. And I say this as a Rest of World (ROW) worker, I know my Indian and Chinese colleagues have it much worse. Yes yes I know, all of this is by design, there is plenty of demand, and they can get away with it. That doesn't detract from the fact that it is a crock of shit. Good for Canada. There is a huge market for countries to attract talent simply by treating them humanly, specially as remote work makes people more mobile and wages more competitive.
- arroz 3y agoYay, now H1B visa holders can have Canada as a back up plan in case they get laid off and can’t find a job in the US Wage suppression + housing bubble, here we go!
- freitzkriesler2 3y agoWhat a joke! The majority of those workers were H1Bs aka indians. Canada just took more Indian workers and saturated their already over burdened labor and property markets. If you're a native Canadian, you'd behoove yourself to not leave Canada and get a job in the States where you can make way more and have the opportunity to actually afford a house or at least a condo. > Healthcare If you're a tech worker, you won't be unemployed long enough to even have to worry about losing it and even if you do Obamacare will cover you just fine.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]