Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/google-canada-expansion-analysis-1.5455122

by rubayeet • 6 years ago

180 253 6 years ago

lucidone• 6 years ago

The cheap labour pool as a consequence of the weak Canadian dollar certainly helps, alongside having identical time zones and nearly identical culture to the United States. Lots of Canadian consultancies butter their bread with USD.

wenc2• 6 years ago

The pool of technical talent is also pretty great.

If you're in a non-primary market in the U.S. (non NYC/SF/Boston), my experience has been that you can hire comparable or better talent in Canadian cities for less the local U.S. median salary, especially in talent-starved markets within the U.S. It's an open secret that many Americans are somehow unaware of.

jonathankoren• 6 years ago

Also with easier immigration, Canada’s talent pool will only get better. Already the US is losing people to Canada due to overly restrictive immigration laws. I’ve even heard immigration offices offering to help with Canadian immigration on the radio in the SF Bay

https://www.csmonitor.com/EqualEd/2019/0304/Go-north-young-g...

https://movnorth.com/

thinkingkong• 6 years ago

For way too long Canada has had this weird artificial market capture problem. The easier it is for us to break down those fake barriers, the better it is for everyone.

Salaries are about to go up way more for the average employee. Simultaneously, any companies that were making money on labor price arbitrage are about to have a real tough time; Good riddance.

thinkloop2• 6 years ago

Which barriers?

ttul3• 6 years ago

If you get into a senior role at one of the big tech firms, pay matches the valley. For lesser roles, Canada is cheaper, but the gap is closing rapidly as talent runs dry.

fulafel• 6 years ago

How would currency factor into the situation?

sandworm1013• 6 years ago

> nearly identical culture to the United States.

Lol. Maybe a similar culture to some parts of California or Washington, and that is a stretch, but Vancouver is very very different than "the United States". Live in both for a while and all the little difference (the guns, health care, government, police, civil-military relations, the environment, land use, education etc) add up to markedly different approaches to life.

tathougies5• 6 years ago

Have you been to Alberta? Vancouver is not representative of canada.

lawnchair_larry4• 6 years ago

Strongly disagree. The difference between somewhere like Vancouver and Seattle is much smaller than the difference between somewhere like San Francisco and Tulsa. Statement is plenty accurate.

goodcanadian• 6 years ago

I, too, would accept "similar culture," but it is far from "nearly identical." I say this as a Canadian who lived in the United States for several years.

krrrh• 6 years ago

I think anyone who had spent time living outside of North America will recognize that the cultures of Canada and the US are indeed nearly identical. Especially in the context of this thread, which is about the workplace.

mgh2• 6 years ago

It is always cheap labor. Same with Taiwan. Doesn’t say much about the country itself.

tanilama2• 6 years ago

Or Bay Area cost is out-of-reach even for Google

chrisseaton2• 6 years ago

Cheap? These Canadian cities? The cost of living is insane and tech hiring competition is already intense. It’s not going to be cheap to hire anyone there.

jessriedel2• 6 years ago

Software engineer salaries are significantly lower than in the US.

The median Canadian “Software Engineer” salary is CA$72,000. The median US salary is US$91,000.... The cost of living in Vancouver is about 4.8% higher than Austin. While the median Software Engineer salary in Austin is 40% higher than Vancouver when accounting for the exchange rate.

https://medium.com/@sprice/more-canadian-software-engineers-...

ehsankia• 6 years ago

Indeed, Toronto is more expensive than most places Google has an office in, except Bay Area itself and maybe NY.

paxys• 6 years ago

Yes cost of living is insane but market rate salaries for top tier software developers in cities like Vancouver or Toronto is 40-50% cheaper than Silicon Valley.

adventured• 6 years ago

I often see people framing the US & Canada primarily as a competition in tech. The exact opposite is largely the case. The US benefits enormously from having a wealthy, vibrant Canada, including in its tech sector. We're permanent allies, liberal democracies and share a very large border as well as $600 billion in goods trade. The ability for technology, labor, products, services and capital to freely flow back and forth between the two of us makes us both far better off. Canada prospering in tech, rather than taking away from the US, brings more to the US-CA economic zone, including any talented persons they import that the US doesn't. There is more than enough tech riches to go around, the US doesn't need to own everything and shouldn't try to.

If anything the US should be directly helping Canada to boom in tech. Enlarge the regional blackhole, suck up all the world's talent. They're our largest export market, the richer they get, the more people they have, the more US exports they are likely to buy (and vice versa). Canada's tech talent will occasionally also go south and start companies in the US. Canadian investors can fund US start-ups from their successes. US investors can back Canadian start-ups and public companies. The more the merrier.

ajayyy3• 6 years ago

Most people in this field are leaving to the US. It's surprising how many. See https://s3.amazonaws.com/chartprod/Lb7EHT9ksyZyjHqo5/thumbna....

I am in a Canadian software engineering program right now, and it is a goal of many people here.

Source: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/technology/article-...

ttul3• 6 years ago

I graduated in 2000 from Computer Engineering (in Canada). A solid fraction of my peers ended up in Silicon Valley. It’s not just for the wages. Silicon Valley just where most of the jobs are and it remains the best place in the world if you’re an engineer.

dntbnmpls• 6 years ago

I often see people framing the US & Canada primarily as a competition in tech.

I've never heard US and Canada mentioned as competition in anything - let alone in tech. Geographically, demographically, technologically and economically, Canada is in no position to compete with the US.

The US benefits enormously from having a wealthy, vibrant Canada, including in its tech sector.

Enormously? Canada pretty much sells us their resources and some canadian manufactured US cars. We account for 76% of all canada's trade, canada represents a much smaller portion of our overall trade. One party benefits a lot more than the other party.

We're permanent allies, liberal democracies and share a very large border as well as $600 billion in goods trade.

No such thing as permanent allies. Just like there is no such thing as permanent government since canada existed mostly as a nonvoting subject of a monarchy.

They're our largest export market

And also one we seem to have a neverending trade deficit with.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/t...

If anything the US should be directly helping Canada to boom in tech.

Or we could help arkansas, idaho, pennsylvannia and a countless other states "boom in tech". Shouldn't Canada be the ones helping themselves? Shouldn't the US be helping ourselves?

The more the merrier.

Sounds like a utopian dream.

blazespin• 6 years ago

The best thing that could ever happen to Canada would get rid of that god awful TN-Visa. TN - Talent Nuke. Completely sucks us dry of people moving to the US.

ma2rten• 6 years ago

I don't think keeping people in your country by making it harder to leave is a good strategy.

cmrdporcupine7• 6 years ago

IMHO when education is subsidized by public funds (which it is here), those funds should have to be repaid if you're leaving the country within a certain number of years or before you've paid some amount in income tax.

That would improve the talent situation here.

ajayyy3• 6 years ago

Locking people in is never going to solve anything.

kaaie• 6 years ago

Alternatively, if wages were competitive in Canada (even considering cost of living and health care) there would be no reason to move. Personally, I'd much rather be in Canada to be near my family but I'd be making 1/2 the wage and have less talent to learn and grow from.

prlambert2• 6 years ago

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.

buzzkillington4• 6 years ago

Half is pretty generous, for mid/seniour developers it starts at a quarter and gets worse.

I was looking to move because I like colder weather/climate change related reasons and I had one recruiter tell me "You can't possibly ever make that much, that's CEO pay!".

deepGem• 6 years ago

I still don't understand the pay rhetoric in Canada. I live in Bangalore, and I make more or less the same pay as in Toronto for nearly 1/5th the cost of living.

Why are salaries so low in Canada ? Now at least owing to the US immigration fiasco, more labour should move in and salaries should technically rise - but I don't see that happening. Not sure why.

Competitive salaries on par with California or even NYC will have a dramatic impact on the influx of immigrants.

shdh2• 6 years ago

Definitely less talent.

FpUser• 6 years ago

Are you proposing tech version of Iron Curtain? I think the best solution for Canada is to try something that attracts the people rather then have them seeking greener pastures. Otherwise they'd leave TN-1 or not.

wenc2• 6 years ago

I think companies like Shopify are destination companies to work for in Canada. Ottawa is not a destination town for most, but people seem to be willing to move there just to work for Shopify.

fredophile4• 6 years ago

I moved to the US from Canada on a TN. I would've liked to stay where I was but the local job market wasn't great at the time. At the time I viewed it as temporary. Now I have no plans to go back. I'm making twice the base salary and I'm in an area with a significantly lower cost of living.

The TN wasn't responsible for my leaving and it isn't the reason I'm staying away.

jariel9• 6 years ago

You actually just proved the opposite: your TN was the thing that got you a job paying 2x as much, gave you your foot in the door and exposure, and some time to establish longer-term plans.

Without the TN it's likely you may not have been hired because it's not worth the effort for most companies: T1 is easy, then once you're in they can process it more.

FYI this is not an argument for or against TN.

abtinf• 6 years ago

Part of the reason for this is that the Trump administration has made it very hard for Canadians working for tech companies to visit the US on business. I have friends who used to frequently and freely travel between the two countries for meetings, and now they all have corporate policies forbidding it.

As is always the case with protectionist policies, the country imposing them experiences a net loss.

smnrchrds4• 6 years ago

This is the first time I am hearing about this. Could you please expand on what the policy change is?

WalterBright• 6 years ago

As is always the case with protectionist policies, the country imposing them experiences a net loss.

Both sides lose equal amounts. It's just that the larger economy notices it less.

yellowait444• 6 years ago

First time I hear about this too and I know lots of people who travel for work and never had problems. Care to elaborate?

parasubvert4• 6 years ago

This is, as far as I can tell, completely false.

Things haven’t changed in any particular way on TN status, L status, or B-2 status.

cunac• 6 years ago

I would say this is totally false. I am working for Canadian office of US company and travel to the US on average once a month for meetings. Doing that for 10+ years and if anything I noticed I get fewer questions at the US border lately.

bitL• 6 years ago

Microsoft and Amazon used to park people that didn't get H1B in Vancouver. Wasn't that the same as what Google is doing now?

mav3rick5• 6 years ago

No Google has proper engineering in Toronto / Waterloo.

amscanne3• 6 years ago

Not really Toronto (sales and business primarily) but there’s engineering in Montreal also.

mabbo• 6 years ago

Amazon has over 3500 development staff in Canada, between Vancouver and Toronto. Some major orgs and AWS features are based in these offices.

There may be a few people here for visa reasons (I know one or two), but that's now a very small portion.

juskrey• 6 years ago

Allowing to park people and outsourcing is not a tech boom. Different mindset, different understanding, different risks, limited upside at the end. A country on salary.

gyulai7• 6 years ago

...we've been having these kinds of headlines from local media outlets pretty much everywhere where FAANG have created/expanded presences. -- But it seems to me that these companies are extremely centralized and only decentralize to the extent that it is unavoidable (e.g. distributed data centers for reasons of latency) or that it captures special opportunities (e.g. Apple expanding in Munich right now, but doing only hardware and chip design work in what seems to me like a play to pick up talent from competitors like Infineon)

Also: I'd quite like to see what the distribution of carreer-levels is, when comparing Silicon Valley to non-Silicon Valley locations for these companies. I'd be willing to bet that non-Silicon Valley locations have predominantly more junior people, and that certain promotions are harder to get and will come with the necessity to move to the valley.

qeqeqeqe3• 6 years ago

How is opening 5000 new jobs in Canada a sign that Google is "extremely centralized"? In regards to your Munich example, what exactly is the issue with that? If there's a large amount of talent in some area why wouldn't you want to try and compete for it? Anyway, I have a good feeling that office will grow soon, there's plenty of non-hardware and chip design talent in that area :) You do have to start somewhere though. I will also make an educated guess that Google isn't hiring just junior people, and even if they were, they would grow into more senior roles anyway.

unicornmama• 6 years ago

There’s no transparency on what the roles will be. Engineering? Accounting? Datacenter operations? Fly fishing?

gyulai7• 6 years ago

5000 new jobs is not what the article is saying, but capacity to grow to 5000. I don't know how many they have now, and creating capacity to do something is not the same as actually doing it. Also, to put the number in perspective: 5000 would be only 4.3% of their global workforce, and my guess would be that Canada must actually be one of their biggest non-U.S. presences. (London also has a strong one for Google).

I'm also not saying that there's anything wrong with these companies expanding their presences outside the valley. (I would very much welcome it), only that we're not seeing enough of it right now to contradict the notion that these companies are still very much centralized. Maybe real estate prices and competition for tech talent will eventually force them to properly decentralize. But I could also see a scenario where those companies could put their might into play to overcome that resistance-level and allow them to continue growing while remaining centralized. It's simply too early to tell which way this thing is playing out.

echelon• 6 years ago

Also: I'd quite like to see what the distribution of carreer-levels is, when comparing Silicon Valley to non-Silicon Valley locations for these companies. I'd be willing to bet that non-Silicon Valley locations have predominantly more junior people, and that certain promotions are harder to get and will come with the necessity to move to the valley.

As a tech worker in Atlanta, I find that quite the opposite is true. People tend to career-(s)hop out in the valley and don't stay at the same company for long.

In Atlanta people tend to stay with the same company for years and grow their role and influence. As such, the SF headquarters tends to put its most important pieces in its remote offices.

I also think SF sees a lot of products spun up as promotion vehicles, whereas remote offices tend to think long term with long time horizons.

skybrian• 6 years ago

Google has large engineering offices in major cities all over the world. Seattle, New York, Dublin, London, Zurich, Tokyo...

There are advantages to being at headquarters but it's not practical to move everyone to the SF Bay Area.

cmrdporcupine7• 6 years ago

Here the engineering office is in Waterloo while Toronto is sales/marketing/administrative. Toronto certainly counts as a major city (3rd or 4th largest in North America depending on how you count).

tanilama2• 6 years ago

I'd be willing to bet that non-Silicon Valley locations have predominantly more junior people, and that certain promotions are harder to get and will come with the necessity to move to the valley

This doesn't sound right TBH.

Most junior people are actually in HQ, because HQ has head counts and can offer to train them, while satellite office won't have so many HCs and usually there to snatch up experienced developers.

As to promotions to higher level, yes HQ are definitely better, but that is only because it is HQ, so critical decision is made there naturally.

aygthrwy• 6 years ago

Yeah, I've noticed a recent exodus of mid-level and senior people out of the Bay Area and to the major satellite offices in the US and abroad.

The traditional wisdom is that you should work from HQ to maximize your career advancement, but I think many people are weighing this against the untenable housing situation and realizing it's not worth it.

Also, San Francisco was considered a fun alternative to living in Cupertino or Menlo Park or Mountain View, but the city just keeps going further downhill. Junior employees likely have a higher tolerance than senior employees for the quality-of-life issues you deal with in San Francisco.

seanmcdirmid5• 6 years ago

Google has been decentralized for a long time. Seattle, NYC, Zurich, and London are all big offices that are at least comparable to Mountain View, not to mention a bunch of other smaller but very serious offices.

Facebook, Google, and Apple all have large or rapidly growing presences in Seattle. It does the real estate market and traffic no good, but it is what it is.

allhacks• 6 years ago

Yeah but at Seattle is building housing. Unlike SF and most of the Bay Area...

username902• 6 years ago

Seattle, NYC, Zurich, and London are all big offices that are at least comparable to Mountain View

No they aren't, Mountain View much bigger than all of those combined.

ulfw2• 6 years ago

Competitors like Infineon?

They bought Infineon (through intels purchase of Infineons mobile chip assets years ago)

gyulai7• 6 years ago

Infineon is a publicly-traded company. A part of Infineon was sold to Intel, who in turn sold a part of that to Apple. Anyway: The long-standing presence of Infineon and a whole ecosystem around it (business partners, educational opportunity, etc.) means that Munich has hardware talent, and despite Munich being the most expensive and high-paying city in Germany (next to Frankfurt), salaries are still low, and real estate is still cheap, compared to the valley. That's what I mean by "special opportunity" if you look at it from Apple's point of view.

jpz• 6 years ago

I would imagine a lot of this is de-risking the issues surrounding the nativism in US politics. Canada is a good nearshore location. I presume visas for foreigners are considerably less problematic.

I'm in Sydney and we see Amazon do a lot of recruitment sessions here.

memory_vandal2• 6 years ago

Expand expand expand, in small incremental replacements that actually offer no net gain over time...

torgian• 6 years ago

It seems to me they’re doing it partially because it’s cheaper in Canada ( compared to the US dollar ) as far as salaries, etc go.

Pretty soon, rent is going to be too high for someone making 100k Canadian ( if it isn’t already )

loufe2• 6 years ago

The dollar is likely a factor, as you mention. But from their list of cities only Toronto has a crisis of home affordability. Montreal is still within sane levels and Waterloo is not too much worse.

arboghast• 6 years ago

From Toronto but live in Montreal.

Rents in Montreal are going up but still no where near Toronto level. Cost of living is lower too on many levels. Of course it depends on the area but generally it's reasonable.

You can live pretty comfortably on a 75k salary and lots of people in the tech sector make more than this, infosec paying even 6 figures in some places.

I recently turned down an offer from Google for a job in Sunnyvale because even though I might have been paid twice as much, I knew the cost of living was much higher and quality of life probably not as good.

rapind• 6 years ago

I live in the Waterloo region and affordability is questionable. Not terrible for most tech workers, but definitely not great for the "working class". All of Canada is in a serious housing bubble, but definitely worse in Toronto and Vancouver.

blaser-waffle4• 6 years ago

Montreal has a crazy-low cost of living for what is otherwise a fantastic city. Been there three times now and all were grand.

Part of it is that QC has crazy high taxes, which drives down demand and keeps the big money in VAN or YYZ, and also that there are a lot of open / in demand jobs in the QC. They offer decent salaries -- but they want people who are bilingual or purely Francophone. I get weekly notices from LinkedIn for Data Center Mgmt roles around MTL -- HydroQuebec = cheap power and therefore cheap colo -- but I don't speak enough French.

econcon• 6 years ago

Or they've failed to influence government elsewhere.

It seems Google will try to influence city government soon or it might already be doing.

bobthepanda• 6 years ago

The business with Quayside and Sidewalk Labs shows that it’s either already happening or pretty damn close.

jariel9• 6 years ago

As a Candian, it seems to me so very pathetically and predictably Canadian to literally herald the surrender of your own industries to foreign takeover.

Canada is (often) to tech what Mexico is to cars.

Mexican 'assembly' of cars is fine and good, but they don't exactly move up the value chain from there.

Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2/3 the wages, unfortunately, this doesn't map to a successful entrepreneurial climate. Now, that's a hard thing to contemplate, as 'nobody' can really compete with SV at their own game, but it's disingenuous in the least to farm out labor and compare that activity with those doing much of the higher-level work, and most importantly: controlling the profits.

Maybe the Mexico analogy goes a little bit too far, as there are tech startups and a few decent companies in Toronto, by and large, but they have serious trouble scaling into anything. To be fair, it's not like most US cities are any better. In fact, aside from the weather and lack of charm, Toronto is a 'better all-around city' than most American cities.

But there's a serious lack of exceptionalism, and far too many of Toronto's best move on to the US, London, or elsewhere.

This kind of 'pathetic nationalism' is why loathe the CBC. It's as though they are utterly unaware of the extent to which they extoll mediocrity.

Canadians are well educated, get along pretty well, and the 'average person' in Canada in many ways lives better than the average American, at very least there's a lot less calamity, fraud, there's full healthcare which isn't great but it's mostly good.

But - on the issue of talent and exceptionalism, it's a disaster. We are near the bottom of the OECD it talent and R&D expenditures. Canada sends China 'raw materials' and they send us back finished goods: this is the opposite of 'first world/developing world' trading norm.

We should not be hailing mediocrity as a victory. It's nice to have jobs, but there is no Valley of the North.

cmrdporcupine7• 6 years ago

"Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2/3 the wages,"

Actually Canada products a lot of decent tech people, most of which go south the US. The ones that stay, or the ones that immigrate here, mostly work for 2/3rd (or less) of the wages.

But yes, Canadian economy is mostly "rip and ship"; and that seems to apply to talent education as well.

graeme• 6 years ago

This seems shortsighted. Auto assembly workers don’t start car companies. But tech company workers do start companies.

If people immigrate to canada instead of the us to work in tech, I would expect there to be more companies founded here eventually. Further, fewer caandians will go to the us if hiring rises. I can only imagine it will have upwards pressure on wages too, which will eventually help create a pool of people with some capital for angel investing.

jariel9• 6 years ago

I am not against Google hiring in Canada.

I am against the narrative of this as equivalent to, or comparable to the Silicon Valley.

Of course, it is 'good for Toronto' in many ways, there's little doubt.

The Ontario government, during negotiations with Cisco for a juicy corporate subsidy, indicated that salaries are 'very competitive' and that they'd do 'anything to keep it that way'. Literally stating that he wanted to keep us 'poorer' to guarantee the jobs. (Sorry I can't find the reference).

From a certain perspective, it's understandable: Ontario's competitive advantage is 'a lot of decent tech workers with lower pay' so it makes sense to back that, after all, it's what brings the jobs.

But the very thing that provides a nice economic baseline of wealth (compared to most other countries), also severely limits our potential to be competitive in most areas. Basically, a gilded cage.

The problem with Canada's approach to the US and globalism in this manner is that it systematically reduces the ability of Canadian businesses to be competitive at higher levels.

A commenter noted 'that it brings tech jobs and they might go on to make startups' - which is a good point. But this won't likely be the case, paradoxically, the opposite.

Essentially, NAFTA/USMCA makes Canada an economic suburb: nice place, with basic prosperity, but lacking in exceptionalism and the ability to form groups that bring in real profits, excess surpluses, control, power & influence.

It seems like a paradox - shouldn't free trade, migration etc. make Canada more diverse and competitive? But it's not: Since NAFTA and 'globalization' and 'all of these jobs' ... Canada's expenditures on R&D has actually decreased. Have a look [1].

This in particular, is a disaster. Very important to note that public spending on R&D is not that low (i.e. Canada does good research at University level). And it's not so much that Canadian tech companies spend less on R&D' but it's that Canada produces less and less of the companies that naturally spend on R&D i.e. drugs, medical equipment, tech, etc..

Not only that, in the last 30 years, industrial diversity has actually been shrinking! Have a look [2] Canada isn't even in the top group anymore. Not only this, the sophistication of exports has been going down.

So therein lies the paradox: intelligent people keep saying 'these jobs are great, they'll help us move up the ladder', but it's not the case. NAFTA, large scale migration, other artifacts of globalization and Canada's peculiar history have meant that we get to go to a very 'good spot on the ladder' but actually going higher than that gets even harder.

The Canadian economy is increasingly dependent on Natural Resources and Auto Manufacture for export, and internally, it's driven by 'core businesses' like Finance & Insurance (especially mortgages), construction (again housing) and all of the other things that make a civic community work.

Basically, Canada is becoming a 'very well run civic entity' with less and less R&D spending, less economic complexity, less exceptionalism, fewer knowledge-based exports, and ever greater consumption of foreign products and service and it's the natural result of plain vanilla economic liberal policies, applied without really much thought to the special context of the country. Due to Canada's unique history and lack of its own institutional foundations, it means something different for us than say, Sweden. Almost all of Canadian media consumption is American. The vast majority of the products and services we consume are designed and produced elsewhere, usually in the US.

In order to 'get better' I think we might need a new approach, but I don't think that's what Canadians want - I think even popularity, most Canadians just want 'decent jobs, safety, their Toyota and Netflix'. And so a new Google office is perfect for that.

[1] https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2018/will-can...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...

loufe2• 6 years ago

Having extra tech jobs in Canada will certainly, at least, keep some talent in the market. Having talent kept in the local market makes it easier for entrepreneurs to attract them. I don't agree with your assessment that this is peanuts.

Canada• 6 years ago

I agree with everything you said. Especially your point about the blindness to it all. People spin these narratives like "Silicon Valley North" and "Hollywood North" when reality it's all branch offices.

There is a lack of investment capital available to companies based in Canada. Programs like IRAP and SR&ED don't help in any meaningful way.

Canada is a great country, but we've been underperforming for a while now and we should be a lot more concerned about that.

amscanne3• 6 years ago

Another Canadian in strong agreement chiming in.

I think IRAP and SRED are okay, they just led to government picking winners (IRAP) and an awful ecosystem of vendors and abuse (SRED).

I’m of the opinion that Canada should take that money and do what Israel did with Yozma. Match the creation of VC funds with government capital and generous exit terms (e.g. government matches with 50% capital, is totally silent partner and can be bought out at any time with a 30% premium). I bet big VCs would jump at the opportunity and everyone would win (Israel actually saw a return in the end).

cambalache• 6 years ago

Now, that's a hard thing to contemplate, as 'nobody' can really compete with SV at their own game

As in total aggregate, I agree. On a per-capita basis, no. Some countries have a very healthy tech sector without being as large as in the US. Canada does not not need to have FAANG, just an F is enough.

jariel9• 6 years ago

Very true, but we don't have an 'F'.

An 'F' generally requires a critical mass of competitive expertise in certain areas, along with the 'F' (and smaller entities) to commercialize it. Basically an 'industrial hub'.

Sweden, Switzerland have F-like companies, but also the surrounding competitive base (and often direct participation of government) to support them.

Switzerland is very competitive in drugs, among many other things.

Interesting example: Sweden makes Fighter Jets (Grippon), maybe the most sophisticated of all product categories.

Making 'Fighter Jets' requires a highly specialized industrial base, and the investment/cooperation of government: Jet sales are done as much through the diplomatic corps as anything else. Policy is shaped around it.

But how did Sweden get there? Well, because they're a sovereign nation and have fought several wars with Russia, 'everyone serves' as part of their community requirements. In the 1960's tiny Sweden had one of the largest air forces in the world! So, out of this (and other developments), they have the ability to make advanced fighters.

So it's a panacea of cultural elements and underpinning institutions that enable exceptional entities.

The problem with what I have just described, is that it 'does not compute' in the American, neoliberal model. In America, entrepreneurs 'raise money' and 'make companies' and 'many fail, but some win'. This kind of neoliberal model is heralded as the 'true free-market solution', but in reality, it disproportionately favours very large countries.

Smaller nations have to play a different game.

The Canadian elite has mostly bought into the neoliberal model, even most 'progressives'. So Canada s a small country, caught up in playing from the American ideological playbook.

parasubvert4• 6 years ago

Canada is already nearly as big as Mexico for cars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_car_exp...

I’m not sure why you’re upset with the CBC over this, we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s. A lot of this has to do with Canadian temperament and mindset, which isn’t particularly entrepreneurial due a dearth of leadership from its investor class.

There have been many tech darlings out of Canada over the years (top of my head - Shopify, Hootsuite, Flickr, Matrox, ATI, BioWare, Eidos, iStockPhoto, Nortel, Corel, BNR, Cognos, Delrina, Hummingbird, Newbridge, Jetform, RIM/Blackberry, OpenText, Mitel, Newbridge networks, QNX, Sierra Wireless, SMART technologies, Redknee, PointClickCare, Solace) but often a reasonable exit lies with pools of capital outside of the country such as IPOing in the US capital markets.

Which gets to my confusion over your complaint. The problem with Canada over the last 50+ Years is that its capital holders are extremely risk averse and largely old money. That’s changing with recent funds, but it takes time for that to lead to improved VC and other funding. But we see this problem in every industry. A major chunk of Canada’s Oil and Gas interests for example are owned by foreigners. I’m not sure what your suggested approach is — Government subsidized entrepreneurship? We already have that to some degree.

Even in the USA we are increasingly seeing grads taking the FAANG paycheque instead of doing a startup. The stress and market barriers are too high to make it worthwhile relative to the alternative of making $150k at age 22.

ta4164255• 6 years ago

  I’m not sure why you’re upset with the CBC over this

Not just the CBC, but they do it a lot. There is this cloying "we've finally made it!" back-slapping the press reliably produces every time a well-known company announces an expansion, no matter how big or small, and really any time some positive PR comes out of the Canadian tech sector. The energy we spend congratulating ourselves for a job well done unintentionally lays bare how provincial we really are.

The reason this is so infuriating is the congratulatory rhetoric rings hollow for many Canadians with US work experience who realize how much better it is, in so many (but not all) ways, to be a tech worker in the US vs. in Canada.

To produce articles with the tone of the OP, you would need to be either myopic or disingenuous.

This is especially so in the context of a company like Google. If you're a Canadian engineer who can get a job at Google, your take-home pay after housing will be dramatically higher in the US than in Canada (if you don't like the lifestyle sacrifices that requires in the Bay Area or NYC, you can do better in umpteen smaller cities). All the while you will have access to better health care, lower wait times, and easy immigration status (TN).

  we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s. A lot of
  this has to do with Canadian temperament and mindset, which
  isn’t particularly entrepreneurial due a dearth of
  leadership from its investor class.

No argument there. Those in Canada who really control the money are overwhelmingly complacent, more interested in maintaining what they have than taking real risks. Much of it isn't self-made, it's just inherited from early 20th century industrialists. Not that many modern self-made wealth stories other than a bunch of people speculating on real estate, literally collecting rent rather than adding productive capacity or consumer surplus.

jariel9• 6 years ago

"we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s."

Wherever you want to draw the line - R&D investment, industrial complexity, and product sophistication have been going down for the last 30 years and the major turning point was NAFTA, large scale migration, and the more globally oriented policies. Most it seemed pretty rational at the time (much of it still does) but now that we see the results, it's time to take a more nuanced approach.

Invictus0• 6 years ago

Not a Canadian, but Canada is leagues ahead of the US in a lot of important ways. In my opinion, at the level of nations, it's much better to be boringly mediocre than outrageously good or bad in any one way or another. Toronto is a first class city, like you said: what more "exceptionalism" do you need?

ta4164255• 6 years ago

Competent investment in (and stewardship of) transit infrastructure would be nice.

joiawjdoia89• 6 years ago

For any Canadian citizens wanting to work in USA: https://chanian.com/2010/08/01/tutorial-moving-from-canada-t...

Sytten2• 6 years ago

Tech salaries in Canada are very low and I really hope this will raise the bar for everybody. Most of the talent (outside of Quebec) migrates south of the border at some point, because it makes no financial sense to stay. Innovation outside of Toronto is low/inexistent and it is hard to get funding. I am always amazed when founders make the national news here when they raise 1-2M$ CAD. At the same time, you have CEOs complaining that the video game industry is poaching dev unfairly (because the salaries are subsidized) instead of raising their own salaries... It really is a sad state. It might be due to the fact that we have a culture of small/medium businesses that are very slow to adopt new technologies and a mentally of what we called in french "born for small bread". At the same time, since nobody is really making a lot of money you also have a more equal society leading to a better quality of life IMO (less crime, more generosity, etc).

As a new grad myself, I am in this situation where I get offers of >120k USD if I move to SV with a growth potential (both in technical and financial terms) far better than what I can get here. In Quebec (where I live), I saw most of my peers stay around and accept salaries ranging from 65k CAD to 80k CAD (50k-61k USD). From what I know, an average senior can expect 120-130k CAD in Montreal. The only way to make more is by being a consultant, which is why you see a lot of them around here (for better or worse). I would feel a bit guilty to move to the US right now considering I got basically a free education and I do want to contribute back to society.

jjohansson2• 6 years ago

In 2019, PDFTron, a Vancouver-based tech company, received a USD $71 million investment from Silversmith Capital Partners (a Tier 1 growth equity firm).

Vancouver’s tech scene is exploding, with a number of top tier tech companies being based here (like Clio) and majors setting up dev offices (Shopify, Amazon, Microsoft).

Sytten2• 6 years ago

That's really good news and we need more of it for sure. But looking at objective total $ invested (and growth), it does not paint the same picture. Those examples are still exceptions rather than the new norm, we just don't have that many (would-be) unicorns/fast-growing companies. Even if we did, I am still unsure the salaries would go up and most companies don't give equity... I am rather pessimistic about this tech boom narrative that the medias try to sell us. What I see is some large firms taking advantage of a low CAD while most tech companies are still at low/zero growth and offer very mediocre salaries. Maybe it's only in Quebec though.

stiray2• 6 years ago

I just love to hear this.

/sarcasm on

With 26 years in software development, low level linux (kernel "stuff") and low level windows (kernel "stuff" again), with work including from analyzing malware to writting DRM that was left unbroken for 3 years, to high level software, system administration on various unixes and unix like beasts, including low level networking, fluent in c, c++, asm x86/64, go and some "stuff" I am not proud off (c#, java, python, js, php), expirience in management, team leadership, working for bluechips, US three letter agencies and army (as a part of my previous jobs), annoyingly proficient in security (..., there is more, but who cares) I earn 24k netto euros a year and consider myself lucky, due to a fact that I cant move to another country based on broken marriage and my wish to still parent my kid every second week. Oh, you have 120k salery? I wouldnt complain if I were you.

/sarcasm off

Just my 5 cents, Instead of counting the money, concentrate on what makes you happy. You will pass better on long term. At the end there is not much you can take into grave. And money certanly doesnt make it softer.

tmpz22• 6 years ago

SV is so gluttonous that we forget how good we have it relative to almost every other market in the world. We do half-page rants just because we accidentally stepped in dog doo before work.

teddyh2• 6 years ago

writting DRM that was left unbroken for 3 years
and some "stuff" I am not proud off (c#, java, python, js, php)

I would venture that maybe you should be less proud of the first one and less ashamed of the second one.

criddell3• 6 years ago

Your advice at the end is good but I would add that you shouldn't let others take advantage of you.

People aren't being paid $200k-$2M / year for reasons of charity. They get paid that much because their contribution to the company is higher than that.

svrma• 6 years ago

I'm curious about the salaries and potential for career growth for software engineers with 5,10,15 years of experience in Canada. Levels.fyi is handy for the US salaries but not so much for Canada.

Fwiw, I am a foreign grad student currently happy with the lifestyle in Canada. But I'm wondering whether I've made the right career move moving to Canada.

edit: include career growth

raydev2• 6 years ago

As an American who's committed to staying in Canada until my kids leave the house, and who's experienced the Canadian hiring market for the last 10 years, I'm both excited and concerned.

Excited, because now that I've joined one of these SV companies recently expanding their presence Canada, my yearly TC is now an integer multiple of what I was making at a local small company.

But I'm also concerned, because the majority of Canadian companies absolutely cannot compete. At all. My fear is all the biggest talent will get sucked into US-based companies. Super hypocritical of me, I know.

Canada needs so many more Shopifys.

quantified• 6 years ago

Google’s expansion means that Google is succeeding, not the scene around them. Their hiring more people doesn’t increase the number of tech-related companies at all. Maybe the number of banh mi shops will grow. It just means that Google likes the lower cost of running some operations up there.

The scene around might grow and might not. Wannabe Googlers might come on spec and work for a different employer if Google doesn’t work out. Xooglers will be emerge eventually, but if they’re not making googly money, it’s hard to see them staying to work in tech.

blaser-waffle4• 6 years ago

Also a USA-ian in Canada, under similar circumstances.

Currently remote for a US firm, doing well by local standards. I desperately wish there were more competitive local options, esp. in places that are NOT Toronto or Vancouver. In the US you can go to Austin, Denver, Seattle, the Washington DC area, NYC, SF, even Raleigh-Durham for tech jobs... but in Canada it's just YYZ and YVN.

geodel• 6 years ago

The most interesting takeaway for me is that never talk about 'super evilness' of FANG etc when discussion is about salaries. Instead berate companies which have no worldwide ad money pouring in for not matching the otherwise evil companies.

Google's expansion plans show why Canada's tech boom is here to stay

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