[reustle]

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto

As some companies are (finally) starting to realize, there are incredibly talented people all over the world, who are not within 1.5 hours of your office. Allowing them to work remotely opens your company up to a much higher caliber of talent for the same, if not lower, cost. The tools are out there now and they work well. I have a distributed team of developers for my small consulting company, and I feel no pressure to open an office any time soon.

EDIT: Why was this post flagged? Comments now disabled?

[robinson7d]

Another option: offer SF "senior-level talent" salaries in Toronto. They'll be spending more than this by relocating and then hiring down there anyway. I expect they'd find that there's plenty of talent already in Toronto, or willing to move.

To me, it seems pretty obvious that the move to SF is more about image than about whom they can hire.

[keithwhor]

I'm not sure. If you're in San Francisco you can hire from any major metropolitan area in North America, and probably the world. Relocation tends not to be that big of an issue - it's Silicon Valley, there's tremendous opportunity. It's not just that the "talent" is already in SF, it's that the talent from all over the world is drawn to the Valley by brand recognition alone.

[paulgb]

I disagree, I know a lot of people who reluctantly moved to the Bay Area for salary who would rather be elsewhere. The Bay Area appeals to some people, but not everybody

(also, hey Keith :))

[keithwhor]

Yeah, but the question here isn't "Bay Area" v "Everywhere Else", it's "Bay Area" v "Toronto". Toronto has lower salaries, colder weather, and generally fewer investors that are more risk-averse (which puts companies there at more risk existentially, especially in early stages). It's a beautiful city, I love Toronto, I was born and grew up there. But there's a lot of work to be done to make it competitive with the Bay Area.

The saving grace is this: I imagine the counterintuitive first step of continuing to bolster Toronto's tech scene is actually efflux of talent towards the Bay Area. The few who do "strike oil" in SV are more likely to direct some of that capital back home, make bigger bets, and mentor entrepreneurs there.

[robinson7d]

Of course, your first qualm (lower salaries) was exactly what the comment said to remove by providing SF "senior-level talent" salaries. USD-converted rates and all. Quality of life in Toronto with those salaries would be excellent, and I think it would attract a lot of talent.

Though you're right - the cold did drive me away.

[paulgb]

I prefer my seasons on a annual cycle to a daily cycle :)

Weather preferences aside, an entry-level SV salary could buy a pretty great quality of life in Toronto vs. comfortably scraping by in the valley.

[johan_larson]

Strange decision.

Expanding into the US is a great move, and creating a US office to support that makes perfect sense. Moving the actual HQ to the US seems more questionable. And getting rid of two thirds of their employees when they are still ramping up sounds just plain crazy.

I think the smarter move would have been to create a US office and locate it close to either customers (What is the main US center for the construction business, anyway?) or capital (meaning the Bay Area). But retain the office in Toronto and the current staff. They could then choose to hire additional staff in either the US or Canada, whichever made more sense. For ordinary talent hiring in Canada, even in Toronto, would be significantly cheaper.

[wcarss]

Joist had a San Jose office, which was also closed.

[cm3]

I've encountered companies that are already globally distributed but try to force you to move to one of their offices permanently. I can imagine arguments for it, but the arguments I was presented with were unconvincing and more of the hand-wavy kind.

[raverbashing]

> Kathan told BetaKit that the “incredible difficulty” of acquiring senior-level talent in Toronto

No, it isn't

But they're probably looking for "the perfect candidate" and the one that thinks and does things exactly as they expect

They won't find it in SF as well

[mhurron]

> They won't find it in SF as well

The person they want already exists in SF, because their perfect candidate hits the bullet point 'exists in San Francisco or Silicon Valley.'

As long as everyone continues to believe California is some sort of special, magical place, this will happen. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. Everyone goes to California to work at the 'best' places, the 'best' places go to California to get the 'best' people.

It's amazing how many of these 'best' places are run by micromanagers who can not deal with remote workers. So to work at the 'best' places, the 'best' people all have to cram into one physical place to make web apps.

[hga]

As long as everyone continues to believe California is some sort of special, magical place

It is when it comes to the enforcement of non-competes. True for the US in general, and a few minutes with Google makes it look like they're not well favored by Canadian courts, which prefer non-solicitation provisions, but non-competes still can be enforceable, and I can speak from harsh experience outside of California that they have a chilling effect without you ever stepping into a courtroom. Killed two neat pieces of/concepts of technology as well.

Non-solicitation can also get nasty, when it includes your former co-workers, and I've gotten the impression that they're also not very enforceable in California, I recall a court case where a salesman was able to take a customer list, which is considered to be a gold standard of enforceability in e.g. Virginia.

Massachusetts has finally started to realize this is crippling them, but the last time I checked wasn't able to muster the political will to make the change. Other locations that say they want to be the next Silicon Valley ... nope, they're not willing to give this up at all.

[prodigal_erik]

California isn't magical, but it's the only place where you aren't left with a dead sea effect of candidates who weren't willing or able to move away to a better labor market.

[giarc]

There's a guy in the comments that said he just relocated from USA to Canada to work with the company. So obviously they can find staff willing to relocate.

[vinceguidry]

EDIT: Why was this post flagged? Comments now disabled?

I think you're running into the comment-cooldown feature. The reply button doesn't appear until a comment has been live for a couple of minutes. I'm not a big fan of the feature, it leads a lot of people to think they're being messed with by the moderators.

[reustle]

Hmm possibly. The story showed [flagged] on the left of the title, next to the upvote button. I don't think comment cooldown would trigger that?

[dang]

When you see [flagged] it means that users flagged the story and that there are enough flags to predominate over the upvotes. If [flagged] goes away it means that upvotes regained the upper hand.

But please don't take HN threads even further off-topic by editing your comment to complain about this kind of thing. The way to get an answer, as the guidelines explicitly say (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) is to email [e-mail].