[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?

[j45]

After many years of visiting Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Montreal yearly, for more than a week at a time..

Toronto is not perfect, it has some of the worst weather in Canada. Summers are too hot (due to humidity), and the winter is cold and windy (due to humidity).

It’s not much different than most places in Canada but the lakes add a bite to the -15 to make it feel like the rest of the country (save Vancouver). The rain is brutal in Vancouver, but can keep you busy like cold does in the rest of Canada. Canada’s winter months are synonymous with precipitation, and you might be surprised to find where the most sunshine is.

Most of my friends from Toronto rarely or meaningfully ever leave Toronto to have an informed opinion of all 4 seasons nationally.

Commuting time takes away years of waking living time in GTA and GVRC unless you live downtown, except many startups are leaving downtown for affordability and keeping their people happy. All of this can be balanced away if you get other things that are worth it, including market size relative to Canada.

There are a few entrepreneurial pockets like Waterloo, and even Kelowna that are worth paying attention to. I don’t live in any cities listed here but travel often instead.

[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.

[cmrdporcupine]

It absolutely is true in actual practice; unless you're some unicorn ML researcher all our engineering talent is in Waterloo (or Montreal). If it was possible to work in Toronto I wouldn't have had to have sold my house and moved my family years back.

We do have a rather comfortable bus which runs from Toronto, if you don't mind the 2 hour (each way) commute.

(The company I worked for was bought by Google back in 2011. We had people in NY and Toronto; all our Toronto people were told we had to move to Waterloo and that was that. Most of us have stayed @ Google but for some the practice of having to rip up their entire lives in Toronto to move wasn't ideal and they left.)

[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.

[arcosdev]

Huh? Toronto's weather is all over the map. One second its -17C, next it's flooding, in the summer 35C+ happens on the regular. Toronto has crazy weather.

[frandroid]

The parent post just complained about winter, not summer...

[jariel]

" There's literally no place in Canada that doesn't have a generally unpleasant outdoor experience for at least half the year."

Much of BC. The rain is not that bad.

Also, winter is not that bad at all, it's really the long thaw that bites.

And if you live near hills and the countryside, it's fun.

Weather is a barrier to people coming to Canada, but it's generally not a reason people leave.