[lewisl9029]

Waterloo grad here. Seeing pretty much the same thing.

Really not difficult to imagine why Canadian tech companies have mostly stopped being competitive on the global stage, considering most of the talent they have access to at these pitiful salaries are essentially left-overs.

Unfortunately, I honestly don't see how the situation can improve. It's a classic tragedy of the commons situation. Companies act in self-interest by paying as low as they possibly can, with no regards for the damage being done to the Canadian talent pool, and have little incentive to do otherwise until most of their peers do the same.

[gdilla]

This happened before in the late 90s. Before the first bubble. What happened then was some slingshot effect, when Canadians go to SF and make $200K for 10 years, and still can't afford a house and are faced with mediocre schools unless they want to commute (which they don't) they may come back.

[cmrdporcupine]

come back to Toronto where they also can't afford a home? Or live in the suburbs of the GTA and slog it through some of the worst traffic in North America for two hours each way?

[gdilla]

Compared to SF? And it's not the only factor. And I didn't say they'd all come back to Toronto. Schools, proximity to extended family, less likelihood of mass shooting, and room in your house for your kids can all be additional factors. If you're established enough in your career, you can work remote for US companies or bring work with you in some other way. Sure, Toronto and Vancouver aren't cheap, but they're more affordable than many places in the bay area, especially for what you get.

[kmanraj]

SF Bay Area isn't that much different from GTA. High housing costs, high cost of living, long commutes. Although the big difference is that the high salary somewhat makes up for it (although whether or not the salary is actually high enough is debatable).

[cmrdporcupine]

Yep the salaries in the Bay Area are from what I have seen about double what one would get in the GTA. The housing prices are insane, but a nice three bedroom in Toronto that is transit accessible to the downtown is just shy of a million $ now, or over it. And the salaries are far lower.

So yeah, a lot of talent will just go south. Or get lucky like me and go work for Google in Waterloo. The actual Toronto employment market is pretty yuck.

[pyre]

> a nice three bedroom in Toronto that is transit accessible to the downtown is just shy of a million $ now

I own a house that is on two bus routes, and it takes me 45 ~ 50 minutes to get downtown (specifically work which is right downtown), and it's not even close to that price.

[That said, I looked into moving to another neighbourhood with worse transit access that was not that far away, and the real estate agent was selling it with a "crap" house for ~$800K with the idea that you would spend money on top of that to tear the existing house down and rebuild another one on top of it.]

[pyre]

Too late to edit, but I realize that I may have not been entirely clear with the 'not even close'. My house is worth much less than the $1m price point mentioned above.

[mhkhung]

Detached house is over 1M in Toronto. But there are plenty of semis and townhouses that are way less (700K?) and condos walkable to downtown for half of that.

Amazon is in a class-A tower right next to the banks and they cannot hire enough.

And ALL the good engineers I know have good jobs in Toronto or Waterloo. But there are plenty of bad ones that wouldn't pass a phone screen.

[deadtofu]

Winnipeg will rise again.

[dpc59]

Montréal is going great too.

[RyanMcGreal]

Something something Hamilton!

[cmrdporcupine]

I'm rooting for Hamilton. I live just outside it. It's a place with such huge potential.

But seems like the centre of gravity for not-Toronto tech in southern Ontario is Waterloo, unfortunately.

[nilved]

I definitely knew who wrote this comment before checking it.

[086421357909764]

Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here. I think sometimes people are trying to cash in on the ideal before it's even been formed. Why is everyone so rushed to be the next SV anyway? Why not be the best Toronto, or whatever city of focus that happens to support entrepreneurship through whatever programs.

I feel like being a next SV town is sort of like how every un-employed person I know is the CEO of a startup : / .

[lewisl9029]

> Interestingly this is almost the same commentary for every "next silicon valley" city we read about here.

That may be true, but you have to realize even the other "next silicon valley" contenders in the US can easily offer more than double the salary to developers compared to Canadian cities like Toronto and Vancouver. Toronto is not even playing in the same league in that aspect.

[cmrdporcupine]

Even worse than the salary is the attitude at Toronto area startups. Elitist "you-should-feel-so-lucky-you're-at-a-startup-now-work-for-peanuts"...

Leaving the Toronto ad-tech startup I was at to work (remote) for a NYC ad-tech startup (well, recent startup and growing) was the best thing that ever happened to me. Got lucky to work for the best founders and senior management I have ever had in my career.

[Apocryphon]

Well, sounds like that got that part of Silicon Valley right.

[tensor]

Outside of silicon valley and New York salaries in the US are not actually that great. According to glassdoor the average junior developer is actually only 60k when you consider the whole country. Junior software engineer on payscale is median 55k.

Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x. Salaries in Toronto are still low, but not nearly as much as some people make it out to be.

[lewisl9029]

The US is a big place, so if you look at it as a whole it's definitely not going to look as attractive. If you look specifically at the tech hubs however, even if we don't account for the 2 biggest US tech hubs, SV and NYC, places like Seattle and Boston still have much higher median salary and salary potential compared to the two biggest Canadian tech hubs, Toronto and Vancouver, and with comparable cost of living to boot.

The AngelList salaries data confirms this at least when it comes to the startup job sector: https://angel.co/salaries

[tensor]

Sampling a bunch of the jobs listed for Seattle shows that most are senior level. Senior level in Toronto is less on average, but it's definitely not half as much in comparable places.

One notable exception is Amazon, who starts people out of school at 90k. This is definitely an outlier. If you can get into Amazon out of school, might be worth taking advantage of it.

[lewisl9029]

> Sampling a bunch of the jobs listed for Seattle shows that most are senior level. Senior level in Toronto is less on average, but it's definitely not half as much in comparable places.

I fail to see the value in making a distinction in terms of seniority unless you have good reasons to believe why the Seattle postings on AngelList might be skewed towards senior level to a higher degree than the Toronto postings, but your point is certainly valid.

If we look at the aggregate data, Toronto and Vancouver have average salaries of $61K and $59K respectively, and Seattle and Boston, $92K and $91K. That's closer to 1.5x, so "more than double" was definitely a bit hyperbolic, but this vicious death spiral (of low Canadian salaries -> brain drain into the US -> under-competing Canadian companies -> rinse and repeat) has been taking quite a toll on the Canadian tech sector, and has serious implications for its future, so I'd rather err on the side of hyperbole over understatement because I have a vested interest in this matter as a Canadian citizen and tech worker.

[sndean]

> Also, in some place like San Fransisco the cost of living is going to be 2x or more, so that 2-3x higher salary will end up translating into maybe 1.2x.

This is a pretty important point...

Currently it looks like a ~100k salary in San Fransisco is required to maintain the same standard of living that 55k gets you in Atlanta, Dallas, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, and essentially every other big city I've looked at. So about 1.8x higher is required.

For Toronto it's about 1.9x.

[seanp2k2]

I've heard this argument often and it's somewhat valid, but it doesn't take into account that the amount left after expenses are paid is still a lot more in the Bay Area, and that can be saved or invested or used to open up other options which are not available to the person making half as much with half the expenses somewhere else.

Cars cost basically the same across the US. So do flights, vacation homes, stocks, etc. For many, the idea is to pay the high cost of living here, save up, then move to somewhere much cheaper after an early retirement, career change, etc. Or you can stay until you retire and be extremely wealthy relative to the rest of the country / world. For me, it's not a tough choice, even though rent is ridiculous.

Edit: let us not also forget that the ceiling for pay as an engineer in the Bay Area is currently around half a million a year in salary, more if you get valuable stock options. It's not really possible to come close to that anywhere else as far as I'm aware. The average is lower than that, but where I'm from, you'd be very lucky to get 100k as a senior engineer. It makes things like renting a place here while paying off the mortgage on a home you rent out elsewhere (Portland or Hawaii or whatever you're into) totally viable.

[sndean]

> For many, the idea is to pay the high cost of living here, save up, then move to somewhere much cheaper after an early retirement, career change, etc.

I can definitely understand why this is attractive. Maybe I'm on the other side of the argument because I'm not really an engineer and don't plan on being one. So while there are jobs I'd consider in the Bay Area, there's a similar number of similarly paying jobs in NYC and DC, where rent is less.

> Cars cost basically the same across the US. So do flights, vacation homes, stocks, etc.

Yes, but the cost of living calculator should be resulting the same amount saved, after all expenses are paid.

> Edit: let us not also forget that the ceiling for pay as an engineer in the Bay Area is currently around half a million a year in salary

This is the most convincing argument, I think... If that's true, that the ceiling (after adjusting for cost of living) is higher in the Bay Area, then yeah it's a pretty clear choice for engineers.

[086421357909764]

:*(

[megablast]

> Why not be the best Toronto

Toronto is already the best Toronto in the world, although it was a close competition last year.

[Apocryphon]

With whom

[aji]

agreed. and I agree with many people out here in Seattle, that I'd really rather not see the city become "the next Silicon Valley". I'd much prefer Seattle become the best it can be, by itself, without needing to draw on Silicon Valley (or anywhere else, for that matter) for guidance and inspiration. that's the way I'm sure a lot of people here and in other cities feel about their own towns.