4 ms·

I work for Google Cloud on the sales and consulting end. We’re hiring exclusively in Canada and India. We have a handful of US positions open, but leadership w

I work for Google Cloud on the sales and consulting end. We’re hiring exclusively in Canada and India. We have a handful of US positions open, but leadership wants us to prioritize Toronto. Now we’ve been asked what teams could operate 100% in Toronto without customer being the wiser. I don’t expect we’ll have a functional team that isn’t primarily leadership in the United States by the end of 2025.

sosodev 3y ago
How does that make sense? Canadians are cheaper to hire than Americans but not by that much, right?
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  In the Google pay scale, not a huge difference really. At least for engineering. Or at least some years ago when there was an internal spreadsheet circulating. Big part of compensation is in RSUs, in USD. Now... cost of living in Toronto is as high as the Bay Area. I wonder if the above commenter meant Waterloo (hour from Toronto), because that is where the bulk of the SWE staff is.
  - tylerhou 3y ago
    Canadian compensation for Google engineers AFAIK is about 60%-70% what it is in the Bay Area.
    - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
      Base compensation, or GSUs? My base compensation was only maybe 1/3rd of my total comp.
      - tylerhou 3y ago
        Total, and for L3/L4. But this was my impression a few years ago; Google has changed comp a fair bit since then (e.g. vesting schedule).
        cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        It was worsening before I left (end of 2021). But relative to anybody else in Canada it was very high, and competitive with plenty of US companies, though yes, not quite as high as Google in MTV. Around 2014 I recall a spreadsheet making the rounds that people voluntarily and anonymously submitted to, and it showed, yes, about 3/4 the total comp. But if you live in Kitchener-Waterloo like most SWEs do, that was an incredible package as housing costs there were about half of Toronto's. In general since then all salaries in Canada have not come close to keeping pace with the broken cost of living / housing price bubble here.
  - moandcompany 3y ago
    Quite a few of the Google Cloud sales/consulting/TAM roles are based out of Google's the New York Office(s). Using L3-L5 SWEs as a reference point, the typical difference between Toronto (Canada) and New York (US) for the same level and role was around 30%+ less if a person was based out of the Canada office. There are/were a non-trivial number of Canadian Googlers that made New York their official office but were unofficially trying to live/work out of Toronto to take advantage of the compensation difference as well as trying to dodge the difference in income tax rates.
- qaq 3y ago
  Immigration is way easier you can hire people from anywhere in the world. Similar thing is happening in Ireland.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    This is the answer. It's just way easier to hire here than in the Bay Area. Now, unlike a lot of other shops, actually the people Google hired were mostly top notch, regardless of where they came from.

sosodev 3y ago

How does that make sense? Canadians are cheaper to hire than Americans but not by that much, right?

cmrdporcupine 3y ago
In the Google pay scale, not a huge difference really. At least for engineering. Or at least some years ago when there was an internal spreadsheet circulating. Big part of compensation is in RSUs, in USD. Now... cost of living in Toronto is as high as the Bay Area. I wonder if the above commenter meant Waterloo (hour from Toronto), because that is where the bulk of the SWE staff is.
- tylerhou 3y ago
  Canadian compensation for Google engineers AFAIK is about 60%-70% what it is in the Bay Area.
  - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
    Base compensation, or GSUs? My base compensation was only maybe 1/3rd of my total comp.
    - tylerhou 3y ago
      Total, and for L3/L4. But this was my impression a few years ago; Google has changed comp a fair bit since then (e.g. vesting schedule).
      - cmrdporcupine 3y ago
        It was worsening before I left (end of 2021). But relative to anybody else in Canada it was very high, and competitive with plenty of US companies, though yes, not quite as high as Google in MTV. Around 2014 I recall a spreadsheet making the rounds that people voluntarily and anonymously submitted to, and it showed, yes, about 3/4 the total comp. But if you live in Kitchener-Waterloo like most SWEs do, that was an incredible package as housing costs there were about half of Toronto's. In general since then all salaries in Canada have not come close to keeping pace with the broken cost of living / housing price bubble here.
- moandcompany 3y ago
  Quite a few of the Google Cloud sales/consulting/TAM roles are based out of Google's the New York Office(s). Using L3-L5 SWEs as a reference point, the typical difference between Toronto (Canada) and New York (US) for the same level and role was around 30%+ less if a person was based out of the Canada office. There are/were a non-trivial number of Canadian Googlers that made New York their official office but were unofficially trying to live/work out of Toronto to take advantage of the compensation difference as well as trying to dodge the difference in income tax rates.
qaq 3y ago
Immigration is way easier you can hire people from anywhere in the world. Similar thing is happening in Ireland.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  This is the answer. It's just way easier to hire here than in the Bay Area. Now, unlike a lot of other shops, actually the people Google hired were mostly top notch, regardless of where they came from.