[mlex]

As someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.

[xenihn]

It's not just the taxes/rent/COL. I know three Canadian SWEs whose parents could have easily bought them a nice house or condo in any major Canadian city, if they had wanted to stay.

One of them explained it to me this way: the quality of employers, coworkers, and the overall software engineering work you'll do in Canada just doesn't compare to the US. Even if pay/finances were exactly the same, going to the US would still be the better career choice, because that's what everyone with talent and ambition does. The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.

[yladiz]

I was with you up until the end. There are numerous reasons why people “stay behind” beyond them not being “people you want to work with”, so don’t just lump everyone in that bucket of “they’re not good enough”.

[xenihn]

Not my thoughts. I've never even been to Canada.

[nasalgoat]

I "stayed behind" because I didn't qualify for an H1B visa due to being self-taught, but now 25 years later I'm glad I stayed here with my free healthcare and high standard of living. Yes, lots of talented people leave but lots stay as well, for reasons beyond the mighty dollar.

[betaby]

Without any sarcasm, do you use that 'free healthcare'? Because in QC it's not that available. Wait times are really bad, even once something is scheduled it can be pushed to future multiple times. Screens are constantly 'forgotten', pushed to the future. All of my colleagues with European/Indian passports traveled for medical reason to their home countries. Again that's Montreal experience, and as I read that's typical for Canada in general.

[nasalgoat]

I have a primary care physician who I can book online to see usually within a few days, or if I choose one of the other oncall doctors I can see them same or next day.

I recently had a referral to a specialist for a non-emergency exam that was scheduled out two months. When I've had an emergency I've gone to the hospital and been seen within a few minutes to a couple of hours depending on the issue.

I would say I am fairly satisfied with the access I get, and I'm especially happy that I never have to worry about being denied coverage, or ending up "out of network", or having different levels of coverage depending on my employment.

[betaby]

'was scheduled out two months' - that's in fact a very long wait. Again, speaking about Montreal, I was able to see a specialist for 'problem A' in about two months as well, while had to wait for another 'specialist B' for a year+. I find those times just horrible.

[nasalgoat]

For my particular issue I wasn't too put out. If I had wanted faster service I probably could have paid out of pocket to get it.

The point is, the system works. I never have to really worry about healthcare or its costs.

[sradman]

> The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.

This sounds like a generalization in need of evidence. Ultimately, the co-op program at UoW has a long history that includes ranking/matching data for co-op employers and students. It would be interesting to see the trends over time. My intuition is that the top ranked students accept jobs from their co-op employers after graduation but that may have changed.

[908B64B197]

> The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.

From my experience, the only place the last statement hasn't been true is Montreal.

There are a lot of engineers over there that could move but won't ever. That's partly why everyone is setting AI shops over there.

[canucker2016]

This has been happening for over 30 years.

I and three other CS/Eng seniors were going through full time job interviews on campus in Canada. We interviewed with the big Canadian software firm at the time and with a large US software company.

Three of us got offers from the Canadian company, four of us got offers from the US company. All of us ended up going to the USA.

[abdullahkhalids]

How many of the CS students are non-Canadians who came for their undergrad and now moving to wherever they get the best job, or perhaps even move to California for weather?

Edit: I found the answer in the attached document [1]. About half the class immigrated to Canada. The stats for non-immigrant Canadian might be more interesting.

[1] https://uw-se-2020-class-profile.github.io/profile.pdf

[canucker2016]

There are two survey questions concerning non-Canadian born students in the linked 2020 profile PDF:

1) International vs Domestic students (6.2% vs 93.8%)

2) Did you immigrate to Canada? (47.56% yes)

You used the answer for 2).

I think the answer for 1) answers your question better than the answer for 2), which doesn't answer when/why they immigrated to Canada.

Plus you're looking at the profile for the 2020 Software Engineering class. Computer science is a different program in the Math faculty. The two programs may have different international student composition.

Tuition is one of the reasons there are so few international students. International students in UWaterloo SWEng pay almost 4x as much as domestic students (C$61.3K vs C$17.1K) - see https://uwaterloo.ca/future-students/financing/tuition.

International CS students pay C$45.5K vs C$9.3K for domestic CS students.

[mlex]

One factor I'd like to bring up here is that it's significantly easier for Canadians to work in the US than it is for people of other countries. Canadians have access to the TN visa, which is effectively automatic, while most other countries need an H-1B, which is lottery-based (last time I was in the lottery it was about a 1/3 chance of getting it).

As a result, I think "non-Canadians who came for their undergrad and now moving to wherever they get the best job" is a smaller set of people than you'd think, simply because they're held back by the (Byzantine) immigration system in the US.

Another related factor is that if you go to an American university for undergraduate CS rather than a Canadian one, you get the opportunity to use OPT (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optional_Practical_Training), which gives you up to 36 months to roll for an H-1B visa. Add onto that the fact that there are so many good American CS universities to choose compared to Canadian ones, I'd expect most international students to study in the US versus at Waterloo if their goal was to work in California.

[username90]

If 84% leave and half are Canadians then at least (84% - 50%) * 2 = 68% of Canadians leave. Meaning best case 1 Canadian stay for every 2 that leave.

[908B64B197]

Why doesn't Canada simply... Compete?

I mean just looking at the aerospace sector and the CSeries saga, Trudeau immediately bowed down to Trump when tariffs were imposed, despite later being thrown out in courts. All he did was to basically threaten to not buy Boeing fighter jets and instead get f35 from Lockheed (which he was contractually obligated to anyways). No support for the industry, nothing. And that was for a flagship prestige technological project.

I still don't understand why he reacted so submissively to Trump. Having the CSeries sold to Airbus at a huge discount was foolish: The plane already had a profitable amount of orders. Now Europeans are reaping the benefits.

Canadian politicians even pitched Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. I mean I'm all for it, my comp being stock-based I'm pocketing the difference.

Is that something the Canadian public... approves of?

[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...

[chrisseaton]

I think a lot of the problems are deeply ingrained in society and culture. In the UK for example, engineering, especially software engineering is just fundamentally a low social status job, and people with high status running companies are fundamentally adverse to paying for it, and that's unlikely to change for a generation or more.

If you try to recommend people pay more to get better engineers and stop them all going to the US so they can build bigger and stronger companies here you just get dead eyes back - they can't comprehend why you'd give an engineer money.

At some point you need to look after yourself and go elsewhere.

[username90]

Software Engineering was low status in US as well until they started to have a ton of software engineer first companies like Google where engineers hires and bosses around business people instead of the other way around.

Basically if typical engineers have business people anywhere in their management chain it is not an engineering first company. Not a lot of large companies are like that outside USA.

[francisl]

It's all political.

If the government fight hard, then lose, the opposing party will blame them for that and most likely make them win the next election. If they just do a marketing campaign telling they did the best possible, winning the next election is more probable.

And Trudeau has nothing to do with that, conservative or liberal, it will be the same strategy.

In order to make Canada more competitive, I think it should be addressed on the provincial level. We definitely need more startup to change the culture and have a place to keep the best talents. High risk funds, change in laws (so anybody can freely invest), etc.

[rchaud]

Speaking only w/ regard to tech salary differences:

How do you compete against the VC-powered economic system in the US? VCs allow startups with often pie-in-the-sky visions and shaky business models to recruit the best of the best from across the world. The recruits know that they may be looking for a new job in a couple of years if the cash dries up. For them, it's OK because there will be another startup flush with cash. For the VCs, as long as 1 out of 10 of those bets go public, the ROI still works out.

This is simply not something that exists at a comparable level outside of the US, outside Silicon Valley even.

[RestlessMind]

I have worked for 15 years in tech (in the US) and hardly ever worked at a "VC-powered" firm. All the companies I worked at were cash flow positive and payed a lot. Bulk of the compensation came from stocks specially for senior levels. So there must be something else going on here rather than just "VC-money".

[MattGaiser]

Bombardier is a badly run company that consistently fails to deliver. Government money kept being poured into them for mediocre results. At a certain point they had to be cut off.

[908B64B197]

That's an opinion customers of the CSeries don't seem to share, judging by the orders for the plane.

Care to elaborate?

[betaby]

CSeries was on the few exceptions. Their train division flopped and was sold not a long time as I recall.

[908B64B197]

Bombardier Aviation (planes) and Transport (trains) have been distinct since the 80's. The business jets have been tremendously profitable.

Train is a different market. Rail projects are a political nightmare, as every buyer is a government (municipal, state, national) and wants their rail equipment to be manufactured in their jurisdiction. So they can make a big announcement that the X millions they just paid is actually creating good jobs. Then a few years later the job dries up for a designated site (project completed) so the local government keeps bailing it out else they'll get voted out for getting rid of all these jobs!

Plus, of course, every project is custom hardware. And is long enough that it will span at least two municipal, state or national administrations so expect a feature creep/change of requirements in the middle.