
Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay - rubayeet
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/google-canada-expansion-analysis-1.5455122
======
Sytten
Tech salaries in Canada are very low and I really hope this will raise the bar
for everybody. Most of the talent (outside of Quebec) migrates south of the
border at some point, because it makes no financial sense to stay. Innovation
outside of Toronto is low/inexistent and it is hard to get funding. I am
always amazed when founders make the national news here when they raise 1-2M$
CAD. At the same time, you have CEOs complaining that the video game industry
is poaching dev unfairly (because the salaries are subsidized) instead of
raising their own salaries... It really is a sad state. It might be due to the
fact that we have a culture of small/medium businesses that are very slow to
adopt new technologies and a mentally of what we called in french "born for
small bread". At the same time, since nobody is really making a lot of money
you also have a more equal society leading to a better quality of life IMO
(less crime, more generosity, etc).

As a new grad myself, I am in this situation where I get offers of >120k USD
if I move to SV with a growth potential (both in technical and financial
terms) far better than what I can get here. In Quebec (where I live), I saw
most of my peers stay around and accept salaries ranging from 65k CAD to 80k
CAD (50k-61k USD). From what I know, an average senior can expect 120-130k CAD
in Montreal. The only way to make more is by being a consultant, which is why
you see a lot of them around here (for better or worse). I would feel a bit
guilty to move to the US right now considering I got basically a free
education and I do want to contribute back to society.

~~~
stiray
I just love to hear this.

/sarcasm on

With 26 years in software development, low level linux (kernel "stuff") and
low level windows (kernel "stuff" again), with work including from analyzing
malware to writting DRM that was left unbroken for 3 years, to high level
software, system administration on various unixes and unix like beasts,
including low level networking, fluent in c, c++, asm x86/64, go and some
"stuff" I am not proud off (c#, java, python, js, php), expirience in
management, team leadership, working for bluechips, US three letter agencies
and army (as a part of my previous jobs), annoyingly proficient in security
(..., there is more, but who cares) I earn 24k netto euros a year and consider
myself lucky, due to a fact that I cant move to another country based on
broken marriage and my wish to still parent my kid every second week. Oh, you
have 120k salery? I wouldnt complain if I were you.

/sarcasm off

Just my 5 cents, Instead of counting the money, concentrate on what makes you
happy. You will pass better on long term. At the end there is not much you can
take into grave. And money certanly doesnt make it softer.

~~~
criddell
Your advice at the end is good but I would add that you shouldn't let others
take advantage of you.

People aren't being paid $200k-$2M / year for reasons of charity. They get
paid that much because their contribution to the company is higher than that.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
_> Your advice at the end is good but I would add that you shouldn't let
others take advantage of you._

Everybody is being taken advantage of if you think about it, especially if
you're a salaried employee.

Hell, if you ask Googlers earning $600k they'll think they're being taken
advantage of. If you ask CEOs of F500 companies they'll also think they're
being take advantage of. If you ask Multi-Billionaires with offshore accounts
in tax havens to pay their fair share of taxes, they'll also think they're
bein taken advantage of.

If you let this way of thinking drive your life, you'll end up very miserable.

~~~
criddell
> Everybody is being taken advantage of if you think about it, especially if
> you're a salaried employee.

I disagree.

If you think every employer is going to take advantage of you, then you should
start a business and become self-employed.

I'm very happy working where I do. I'm well paid and genuinely like the people
I work with. I've been here for 20 years now.

------
adventured
I often see people framing the US & Canada primarily as a competition in tech.
The exact opposite is largely the case. The US benefits enormously from having
a wealthy, vibrant Canada, including in its tech sector. We're permanent
allies, liberal democracies and share a very large border as well as $600
billion in goods trade. The ability for technology, labor, products, services
and capital to freely flow back and forth between the two of us makes us both
far better off. Canada prospering in tech, rather than taking away from the
US, brings more to the US-CA economic zone, including any talented persons
they import that the US doesn't. There is more than enough tech riches to go
around, the US doesn't need to own everything and shouldn't try to.

If anything the US should be directly helping Canada to boom in tech. Enlarge
the regional blackhole, suck up all the world's talent. They're our largest
export market, the richer they get, the more people they have, the more US
exports they are likely to buy (and vice versa). Canada's tech talent will
occasionally also go south and start companies in the US. Canadian investors
can fund US start-ups from their successes. US investors can back Canadian
start-ups and public companies. The more the merrier.

~~~
ajayyy
Most people in this field are leaving to the US. It's surprising how many. See
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/chartprod/Lb7EHT9ksyZyjHqo5/thumbna...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/chartprod/Lb7EHT9ksyZyjHqo5/thumbnail.png).

I am in a Canadian software engineering program right now, and it is a goal of
many people here.

Source:
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-...](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-
canada-facing-brain-drain-as-young-tech-talent-leaves-for-silicon/)

~~~
ttul
I graduated in 2000 from Computer Engineering (in Canada). A solid fraction of
my peers ended up in Silicon Valley. It’s not just for the wages. Silicon
Valley just where most of the jobs are and it remains the best place in the
world if you’re an engineer.

~~~
andrewzah
The grass is always greener, I guess. I’m a software engineer from the US and
I’d never move to SV in a million years. There are more things in life than
money.

There are so many cities here with better quality of life and lower cost of
living.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Quality of life is subjective, and there are no cities that offer as much
financial and career opportunity to the average senior software developer as
SV does right now. Yes, cost of living is high, but you’ll still come out far
ahead the average senior software dev living in some midwestern city. There
are exceptions / edge cases, but they’re just that.

~~~
andrewzah
> _you’ll still come out far ahead the average senior software dev living in
> some midwestern city_

Come out far ahead how?

I'm already pulling close to 6 figures, and I expect to reach $120-130k in a
relatively short time period. Do I -need- to move to SV and live in much
shittier conditions and have an insane cost of living just to earn some more
money? ... I feel that remote work makes this an outdated concept (my company
is fully distributed).

I'm almost 24 and if I continue to manage my finances correctly, I should have
my own spacious home by 25. I'm in South Carolina, but there are plenty of
other reasonable places in the US. The money that I don't have to spend on
high cost of living goes straight to my savings. I get that my situation is
atypical, but it's absolutely possible to have a great life and earn great
money while not living in SV. If I ever feel like I need to earn more money,
there's nothing stopping me from creating my own startup, etc.

I guess I'll never have the "prestige" of working in SV, but I seem to do just
fine by going to conferences and networking.

~~~
triceratops
> Come out far ahead how?

Check out levels.fyi. Moving to the Bay Area to work at a random startup makes
little sense, but moving to one of the BigCos can be very financially
rewarding.

> I'm almost 24 and if I continue to manage my finances correctly, I should
> have my own spacious home by 25

Check out this comment someone made complaining how high the CoL is in the Bay
Area, even for someone making $300k.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228756)
Their analysis is flawed and overstates expenses, but even then this
hypothetical tech employee saves > $110k/year (including a 401k and match).
That's enough to put a down payment on a house in SC _every year_. If you're
investing minded, you could own an apartment building in about 10 years and
never have to worry about money again.

~~~
andrewzah
That's certainly compelling, but it still comes with huge downsides like lack
of space, having to live with roommates, not having any family nearby, not
being able to work fully remotely, likely not having a healthy work-life
balance, etc.

If I weren't working remotely, this would be more compelling I think.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Lack of space is subjective, you certainly don’t have to have roommates if you
make $300k, and work/life balance is above average at many of these companies.
That said, remote work is more rare, and flights from SF to SC to visit family
are a pain.

I think the bigger issue for many people is probably cultural. I’ve loved my
time in SF and NYC because I love cities, am fairly liberal-minded, don’t mind
small living space, and don’t really care about living near extended family.
Working remotely from a sprawling home in a small town near family is the
opposite of what I want for my life. YMMV!

------
jariel
As a Candian, it seems to me so very pathetically and predictably Canadian to
literally herald the surrender of your own industries to foreign takeover.

Canada is (often) to tech what Mexico is to cars.

Mexican 'assembly' of cars is fine and good, but they don't exactly move up
the value chain from there.

Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2/3 the wages,
unfortunately, this doesn't map to a successful entrepreneurial climate. Now,
that's a hard thing to contemplate, as 'nobody' can really compete with SV at
their own game, but it's disingenuous in the least to farm out labor and
compare that activity with those doing much of the higher-level work, and most
importantly: controlling the profits.

Maybe the Mexico analogy goes a little bit too far, as there are tech startups
and a few decent companies in Toronto, by and large, but they have serious
trouble scaling into anything. To be fair, it's not like most US cities are
any better. In fact, aside from the weather and lack of charm, Toronto is a
'better all-around city' than most American cities.

But there's a serious lack of exceptionalism, and far too many of Toronto's
best move on to the US, London, or elsewhere.

This kind of 'pathetic nationalism' is why loathe the CBC. It's as though they
are utterly unaware of the extent to which they extoll mediocrity.

Canadians are well educated, get along pretty well, and the 'average person'
in Canada in many ways lives better than the average American, at very least
there's a lot less calamity, fraud, there's full healthcare which isn't great
but it's mostly good.

But - on the issue of talent and exceptionalism, it's a disaster. We are near
the bottom of the OECD it talent and R&D expenditures. Canada sends China 'raw
materials' and they send us back finished goods: this is the opposite of
'first world/developing world' trading norm.

We should not be hailing mediocrity as a victory. It's nice to have jobs, but
there is no Valley of the North.

~~~
parasubvert
Canada is already nearly as big as Mexico for cars:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_car_exp...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_car_exports)

I’m not sure why you’re upset with the CBC over this, we’ve been a branch
plant economy since the 1960s. A lot of this has to do with Canadian
temperament and mindset, which isn’t particularly entrepreneurial due a dearth
of leadership from its investor class.

There have been many tech darlings out of Canada over the years (top of my
head - Shopify, Hootsuite, Flickr, Matrox, ATI, BioWare, Eidos, iStockPhoto,
Nortel, Corel, BNR, Cognos, Delrina, Hummingbird, Newbridge, Jetform,
RIM/Blackberry, OpenText, Mitel, Newbridge networks, QNX, Sierra Wireless,
SMART technologies, Redknee, PointClickCare, Solace) but often a reasonable
exit lies with pools of capital outside of the country such as IPOing in the
US capital markets.

Which gets to my confusion over your complaint. The problem with Canada over
the last 50+ Years is that its capital holders are extremely risk averse and
largely old money. That’s changing with recent funds, but it takes time for
that to lead to improved VC and other funding. But we see this problem in
every industry. A major chunk of Canada’s Oil and Gas interests for example
are owned by foreigners. I’m not sure what your suggested approach is —
Government subsidized entrepreneurship? We already have that to some degree.

Even in the USA we are increasingly seeing grads taking the FAANG paycheque
instead of doing a startup. The stress and market barriers are too high to
make it worthwhile relative to the alternative of making $150k at age 22.

~~~
ta416425

      I’m not sure why you’re upset with the CBC over this
    

Not just the CBC, but they do it a lot. There is this cloying "we've finally
made it!" back-slapping the press reliably produces every time a well-known
company announces an expansion, no matter how big or small, and really any
time some positive PR comes out of the Canadian tech sector. The energy we
spend congratulating ourselves for a job well done unintentionally lays bare
how provincial we really are.

The reason this is so infuriating is the congratulatory rhetoric rings hollow
for many Canadians with US work experience who realize how much better it is,
in so many (but not all) ways, to be a tech worker in the US vs. in Canada.

To produce articles with the tone of the OP, you would need to be either
myopic or disingenuous.

This is _especially_ so in the context of a company like Google. If you're a
Canadian engineer who can get a job at Google, your take-home pay after
housing will be dramatically higher in the US than in Canada (if you don't
like the lifestyle sacrifices that requires in the Bay Area or NYC, you can do
better in umpteen smaller cities). All the while you will have access to
better health care, lower wait times, and easy immigration status (TN).

    
    
      we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s. A lot of
      this has to do with Canadian temperament and mindset, which
      isn’t particularly entrepreneurial due a dearth of
      leadership from its investor class.
    

No argument there. Those in Canada who really control the money are
overwhelmingly complacent, more interested in maintaining what they have than
taking real risks. Much of it isn't self-made, it's just inherited from early
20th century industrialists. Not that many modern self-made wealth stories
other than a bunch of people speculating on real estate, literally collecting
rent rather than adding productive capacity or consumer surplus.

~~~
parasubvert
Being a tech worker in the US isn’t all that great once you’re building a
family and need to consider the education, housing, healthcare impacts of the
US system. There is more to life than comp. In particular , having experienced
both systems quite intensively, I really don’t agree the healthcare is better
in the US.

I certainly encourage young Canadian tech workers to move to the US for a
while (as I did) to make some money and see what it’s like.

However, many of us eventually moved back. One of the better deals is to work
remotely for US tech while in Canada, to get some of the comp benefits while
living in a much better overall country (in terms of many factors - happiness,
quality of life, life expectancy, inclusiveness, etc). This will be subjective
of course. But I don’t think it’s disingenuous or myopic to be happy that
these tech giants are growing in Canada. It keeps people here. Being here
makes a difference.

------
joiawjdoia89
For any Canadian citizens wanting to work in USA:
[https://chanian.com/2010/08/01/tutorial-moving-from-
canada-t...](https://chanian.com/2010/08/01/tutorial-moving-from-canada-to-
america-as-a-software-developer/)

------
raydev
As an American who's committed to staying in Canada until my kids leave the
house, and who's experienced the Canadian hiring market for the last 10 years,
I'm both excited and concerned.

Excited, because now that I've joined one of these SV companies recently
expanding their presence Canada, my yearly TC is now an integer multiple of
what I was making at a local small company.

But I'm also concerned, because the majority of Canadian companies absolutely
cannot compete. At all. My fear is all the biggest talent will get sucked into
US-based companies. Super hypocritical of me, I know.

Canada needs so many more Shopifys.

~~~
quantified
Google’s expansion means that Google is succeeding, not the scene around them.
Their hiring more people doesn’t increase the number of tech-related companies
at all. Maybe the number of banh mi shops will grow. It just means that Google
likes the lower cost of running some operations up there.

The scene around might grow and might not. Wannabe Googlers might come on spec
and work for a different employer if Google doesn’t work out. Xooglers will be
emerge eventually, but if they’re not making googly money, it’s hard to see
them staying to work in tech.

------
bitL
Microsoft and Amazon used to park people that didn't get H1B in Vancouver.
Wasn't that the same as what Google is doing now?

~~~
mav3rick
No Google has proper engineering in Toronto / Waterloo.

~~~
amscanne
Not really Toronto (sales and business primarily) but there’s engineering in
Montreal also.

~~~
mav3rick
Chrome has really important teams in Waterloo. Sales is a small part of that
office.

~~~
amscanne
Toronto and Waterloo both have offices. I said Toronto is sales and business,
not Waterloo.

------
lucidone
The cheap labour pool as a consequence of the weak Canadian dollar certainly
helps, alongside having identical time zones and nearly identical culture to
the United States. Lots of Canadian consultancies butter their bread with USD.

~~~
sandworm101
>> nearly identical culture to the United States.

Lol. Maybe a _similar_ culture to some parts of California or Washington, and
that is a stretch, but Vancouver is very very different than "the United
States". Live in both for a while and all the little difference (the guns,
health care, government, police, civil-military relations, the environment,
land use, education etc) add up to markedly different approaches to life.

~~~
tathougies
Have you been to Alberta? Vancouver is not representative of canada.

~~~
earth_walker
It seems you're insinuating that Alberta is somehow more (U.S.) 'American'
than the rest of Canada.

I have lived in Alberta for over ten years, and though culturally distinct
from the rest of Canada (as is every other province I've spent time in)
Alberta's brand of rugged individualist / conservatism is still very Canadian.

And though we may look very different to the urbanites of GVRD (Vancouver and
surrounding) and the GTA (Toronto and surrounding), you'll find many more
similarities between us and those living in rural Canada with resource-based
economies, like the people living in B.C.'s forestry-dependent areas, the
northern prairies or NorthWest Ontario. The difference for us is that we have
very vocal, oil-industry-controlled politicians and a population that is
immediately suspicious of any time an easterner tries to tell us what to do.

Sometimes the easiest way to see our distinctiveness is by contrast -
immediately evident when crossing over to even the closest border states.

I love Montana and its people, but boy do you know you're not in Canada
anymore - roadways lined with advertisements; cops everywhere you look; huge
rich/poor divides; razor wire, visible drug problems and ghettos in even the
smallest cities; and a love of all things military.

All that to say, there's far more to being Albertan than oil, guns and god,
and those three things don't make us a 'murican.

~~~
sandworm101
Agreed. I lived in the us for five years, it was a shock. The big thing for me
was the guns, the constant militarism. Albertans might own lots of guns but
they don't take them to pizza hut. And cops everywhere. I was in seattle
recently and counted 8 different TYPES of police car on a quick 4-block walk
between buildings. Not car paint jobs, different types of police. ICE, fed,
state, local, atf... America seems to have more police than not. Canada, all
of canada, doesn't feel like that.

------
gyulai
...we've been having these kinds of headlines from local media outlets pretty
much everywhere where FAANG have created/expanded presences. -- But it seems
to me that these companies are extremely centralized and only decentralize to
the extent that it is unavoidable (e.g. distributed data centers for reasons
of latency) or that it captures special opportunities (e.g. Apple expanding in
Munich right now, but doing only hardware and chip design work in what seems
to me like a play to pick up talent from competitors like Infineon)

Also: I'd quite like to see what the distribution of carreer-levels is, when
comparing Silicon Valley to non-Silicon Valley locations for these companies.
I'd be willing to bet that non-Silicon Valley locations have predominantly
more junior people, and that certain promotions are harder to get and will
come with the necessity to move to the valley.

~~~
qeqeqeqe
How is opening 5000 new jobs in Canada a sign that Google is "extremely
centralized"? In regards to your Munich example, what exactly is the issue
with that? If there's a large amount of talent in some area why wouldn't you
want to try and compete for it? Anyway, I have a good feeling that office will
grow soon, there's plenty of non-hardware and chip design talent in that area
:) You do have to start somewhere though. I will also make an educated guess
that Google isn't hiring just junior people, and even if they were, they would
grow into more senior roles anyway.

~~~
gyulai
5000 new jobs is not what the article is saying, but _capacity to grow to_
5000\. I don't know how many they have now, and creating capacity to do
something is not the same as actually doing it. Also, to put the number in
perspective: 5000 would be only 4.3% of their global workforce, and my guess
would be that Canada must actually be one of their biggest non-U.S. presences.
(London also has a strong one for Google).

I'm also not saying that there's anything wrong with these companies expanding
their presences outside the valley. (I would very much welcome it), only that
we're not seeing enough of it right now to contradict the notion that these
companies are still very much centralized. Maybe real estate prices and
competition for tech talent will eventually force them to properly
decentralize. But I could also see a scenario where those companies could put
their might into play to overcome that resistance-level and allow them to
continue growing while remaining centralized. It's simply too early to tell
which way this thing is playing out.

~~~
drivebycomment
> we're not seeing enough of it right now to contradict the notion that these
> companies are still very much centralized.

What are you basing this on, and what would be enough ?

4.3%, if indeed happens that way, would be a substantial portion. They already
have significant presence in NYC, Seattle/Kirkland, London, Zurich, LA,
Hyderabad, Dublin, Tokyo, Austin, etc. A few thousand here and a few thousand
there add up quickly.

EDIT: Added a few more that I remembered.

~~~
gyulai
The numbers in the article are country-level, and you're responding by saying
things about cities. NYC, Seattle and LA are all in the U.S. They're
centralized inside the U.S. at the city-level to Mountain View. They're
centralized within the English-speaking world at the country-level to the U.S.
They're centralized globally w.r.t. language communities to the English-
speaking world.

~~~
mav3rick
You have no basis for your comment, no numbers, sources etc. Zurich, London,
Tokyo all have very senior levels and many important teams. Canada is growing
to those levels as well. Do your research before burying a hatchet.

------
torgian
It seems to me they’re doing it partially because it’s cheaper in Canada (
compared to the US dollar ) as far as salaries, etc go.

Pretty soon, rent is going to be too high for someone making 100k Canadian (
if it isn’t already )

~~~
loufe
The dollar is likely a factor, as you mention. But from their list of cities
only Toronto has a crisis of home affordability. Montreal is still within sane
levels and Waterloo is not too much worse.

~~~
arboghast
From Toronto but live in Montreal.

Rents in Montreal are going up but still no where near Toronto level. Cost of
living is lower too on many levels. Of course it depends on the area but
generally it's reasonable.

You can live pretty comfortably on a 75k salary and lots of people in the tech
sector make more than this, infosec paying even 6 figures in some places.

I recently turned down an offer from Google for a job in Sunnyvale because
even though I might have been paid twice as much, I knew the cost of living
was much higher and quality of life probably not as good.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
You probably want to keep quiet about that.

------
svrma
I'm curious about the salaries and potential for career growth for software
engineers with 5,10,15 years of experience in Canada. Levels.fyi is handy for
the US salaries but not so much for Canada.

Fwiw, I am a foreign grad student currently happy with the lifestyle in
Canada. But I'm wondering whether I've made the right career move moving to
Canada.

edit: include career growth

------
geodel
The most interesting takeaway for me is that never talk about 'super evilness'
of FANG etc when discussion is about salaries. Instead berate companies which
have no worldwide ad money pouring in for not matching the otherwise evil
companies.

------
jpz
I would imagine a lot of this is de-risking the issues surrounding the
nativism in US politics. Canada is a good nearshore location. I presume visas
for foreigners are considerably less problematic.

I'm in Sydney and we see Amazon do a lot of recruitment sessions here.

------
blazespin
The best thing that could ever happen to Canada would get rid of that god
awful TN-Visa. TN - Talent Nuke. Completely sucks us dry of people moving to
the US.

~~~
kaaie
Alternatively, if wages were competitive in Canada (even considering cost of
living and health care) there would be no reason to move. Personally, I'd much
rather be in Canada to be near my family but I'd be making 1/2 the wage and
have less talent to learn and grow from.

~~~
prlambert
Yes there still would be: weather. There's literally no place in Canada that
doesn't have a generally unpleasant outdoor experience for at least half the
year. I say that as a proud Canadian. It's honestly the main thing holding my
family from moving back. My wife is from Vancouver and hates snow. I'm from
Calgary and can't take rain (I did 3 winters straight in Vancouver promising
myself to never do another until I finally got out). We've been looking for
somewhere in Canada and we can't find a solution.

It may sound small but it has a major impact on our happiness, energy levels,
and overall well-being.

~~~
frandroid
Toronto has none of Vancouver's rain and almost none of Calgary's snow. I wear
running shoes for all save maybe 3 or 4 weeks of winter. -15 is considered a
deep freeze and happens about 3 times per winter. What are you waiting for?

~~~
prlambert
My wife is a UofT grad, so spent 4 years in Toronto. That's where her snow
feelings come from – she still tells stories of marching to class in -20C and
snow. It may not be Calgary, but it's not California either. Maybe we're
wimps, but such is the situation we find ourselves in!

Maybe we'll be back some day. Toronto is the most likely.

On topic for the parent – we're both Googlers but right now Google has no tech
employees in Toronto proper (it's all sales and marketing). Waterloo is the
only product/eng office and that's a tough commute. I'm not sure if that is
changing with this announcement.

~~~
ialyos
That isn't true. Downtown Toronto has multiple Google engineers. I know one in
brain and one in cloud. One has been in TO for ~2.5 years, the other for 1
year. As far as I know the only way to get into the office is by special
permission. One of them only got their role because they said they were
quitting due to the waterloo commute.

Fwiw I'm a Canadian that just signed a Google offer to work out of downtown SF
because I hate the winter too. I think people care more or less about the
weather based on their hobbies / interests.

~~~
ta416425
The number of engineers at Google Toronto is so small that they're the
exception that proves the rule, though. For all intents and purposes beyond
some very special cases (and the Hinton stuff) you can treat the site as
having no engineering.

~~~
balfirevic
> The number of engineers at Google Toronto is so small that they're the
> exception that proves the rule, though.

Exceptions don't prove the rule.

~~~
selimthegrim
The point of this idiom is that they end up not being exceptions at all.

~~~
angry_octet
That is not what I understand it to mean -- rather, the opposite. That is,
finding an engineer at the Toronto office is so improbable that it is
_remarkable_ , hence you are reminded that it is normally an engineer free
zone.

There are some idioms that do mean it is unexceptional. You might be familiar
with the Pratchettism "Million-to-one chances happen nine times out of ten."

------
juskrey
Allowing to park people and outsourcing is not a tech boom. Different mindset,
different understanding, different risks, limited upside at the end. A country
on salary.

------
memory_vandal
Expand expand expand, in small incremental replacements that actually offer no
net gain over time...

------
mgh2
It is always cheap labor. Same with Taiwan. Doesn’t say much about the country
itself.

~~~
chrisseaton
Cheap? These Canadian cities? The cost of living is insane and tech hiring
competition is already intense. It’s not going to be cheap to hire anyone
there.

~~~
jessriedel
Software engineer salaries are significantly lower than in the US.

> The median Canadian “Software Engineer” salary is CA$72,000. The median US
> salary is US$91,000.... The cost of living in Vancouver is about 4.8% higher
> than Austin. While the median Software Engineer salary in Austin is 40%
> higher than Vancouver when accounting for the exchange rate.

[https://medium.com/@sprice/more-canadian-software-
engineers-...](https://medium.com/@sprice/more-canadian-software-engineers-
should-work-remotely-c69f52c746d4)

~~~
smnrchrds
As an aside, I passionately hate that graph. It implies that Canadian tech
salaries are abnormally low. I wish it was either showing just the US, or
included more countries than just US and Canada. Had they included London,
Sydney, Berlin, Amsterdam, etc. in the graph, it would have showed that
Canadian salaries are in line with and towards the higher end of world
salaries except US, and that US salaries are a huge outlier in the world
stage.

~~~
deanCommie
This needs to be more visible.

I'm a Canadian working for a US FAANMG company, and I've been based out of
both their Canadian and European offices.

I make way more in Vancouver than my peers in ANY European office (which
include Zurich, London, Berlin)

And those places are more expensive than Vancouver (not counting buying real
estate which is not relevant to me as a renter)

But of course I'm keenly aware that I'd make 30% more in Seattle, and 50% more
in Silicon Valley.

Does it bother me? Not really. I've been to those places and I would take the
lifestyle quality of both Vancouver and Canada over any part of the US. Plus
these days, I don't see a way of living in the US, and not feeling complicit
in all the evils of the country. Not without radical participation in trying
to destroy the system from within.

And despite what people say about the similarity in work culture, it's more
reasonable in Canada from sick leave to vacation, to day-to-day expectations
of work-life balance.

~~~
wbl
Is your employer spending the same in all these places? If not it should
bother you.

------
abtinf
Part of the reason for this is that the Trump administration has made it
_very_ hard for Canadians working for tech companies to visit the US on
business. I have friends who used to frequently and freely travel between the
two countries for meetings, and now they all have corporate policies
forbidding it.

As is always the case with protectionist policies, the country imposing them
experiences a net loss.

~~~
smnrchrds
This is the first time I am hearing about this. Could you please expand on
what the policy change is?

