[thinkingkong]

Vancouver and Toronto are developing rather robust local economies. Vancouvers is more satellite offices for large American companies like Amazon (15k). Shopify announced prior to Covid that they were opening an office with 1000 people. A large portion of the jobs here have traditionally been as a visa clearing house prior to having people move to the main campus but there are lots of locals.

The biggest challenge in tech in Canada is salaries. Youre paid less and then youre paid in CAD which is around 70% of USD. Then you factor in high house prices in both Toronto and Vancouver and things arent so great.

If youre willing to live outside these areas then there are lots of opportunities. Canada as a country in general is great, but it has its own set of issues. Namely a lame resource extraction based economy and a hyper willingness to sell all its assets - information economy and otherwise - at discount prices to boost jobs.

[riskneutral]

The biggest issue in Canada is a lack of imagination and risk taking by the capitalist class. They would rather stick to what they know, digging rocks and sand out of the ground.

[dang]

That's harsh and put in a flamebaity rather than interest-furthering way (which, please don't on HN!) but I think it's true that Canada is more risk-averse than the US. If you think about it, that can be traced straight back to the founding of the two countries. The two populations even self-selected for risk tolerance to some extent. (I'm talking about English-speaking Canada.)