My impression is that the tech workforce here is healthy for a few reasons:
1) the presence of tech giants such as IBM in Markham (plus Toronto's fame for multiculturalism and for having high quality of life) means it attracts a lot of Indian, Chinese and eastern Europe talent. There's also a fair amount of ex-IBMers etc spilling over into growing mid-sized companies that need senior level tech workers with large corp experience.
2) there's a relatively healthy startup scene, but investment here is fairly conservative. Startups without profit strategies tend to die quickly, so as a result, startups here tend to be less pie-in-the-sky than SF unicorn wannabes. Because companies grow steadily and conservatively, they often provide high job security environments that encourage long single-company careers. This creates an incentive for experienced tech workers to stay in Toronto, rather than chase higher salaries elsewhere. I know many tech people that have been in a single company for 7+ years (some even 16+ years!)
3) there are some strong tech education options like Waterloo, which often collaborates with big name organizations like Mozilla. Internships to help get new grads get their foot in the door of the industry are also fairly common
I remember reading the below article. Prof. Hinton can probably claim quite a bit of credit for his city's successes. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/24/science/scientists-see-adv...
Yann LeCun, the director of AI at Facebook, also did a postdoc at Toronto.
"Six degrees of separation: how U of T's Geoffrey Hinton is connected to top AI researchers around the world" https://www.utoronto.ca/news/six-degrees-separation-how-u-t-...
Toronto has grown up a lot in the pst few years. The canadian dollar is about 20% less than USD, so VC dollars go further - and while competitive, hiring engineers is nothing like the bay. That said, there is a shallow pool of senior SaaS startup folks in Toronto compared to SF or New York.
How expensive a nation is and the exchange rate of its currency is independent.
http://www.hark.com/clips/ssxbqzctpx-toronto-is-just-like-ne...
One of the local TV stations used it in their station IDs for a while, which I thought was hilarious.
ATM there is about a 37% difference in CAD-USD. So that is just a bonus.
It is also Canada's biggest city and business capital. The only real cons is the price of real estate and high taxes but Google has all kinds of money so that shouldn't be an obstacle. There is also the an issue of poor transportation infra but since this will be developed downtown that shouldn't be an issue either.
I am sure the Provincial/Federal Gov will throw in quite a few enticements since there is an election coming up and they are desperate for some kind of meaningful employment gains.
It's a nice city to visit but you have to be wealthy to live there. It's Canada's version of NYC (a much, much, much smaller version).
I can barely afford to live in Toronto on my salary, never mind Vancouver and the cost of moving across the country. To my knowledge -- in spite of the higher cost of living -- Vancouver-based software professionals don't make any more than they do here.
That and most people here still equate software = computers = IT department = "Can you fix my laptop?"/"Why doesn't the projector work?"
Each country has different costs, taxes and otherwise, for both employees and employers. The effects of those costs have not been included with those figures.
[1] https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-ca/home-values/
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/real-estate-toronto-tr...
https://www.zillow.com/san-francisco-metro-ca_r395057/home-v...
Choosing the comparison probably can't be done objectively, but the core of Toronto is about 4 times larger (area) than the city of San Francisco.
When it comes to lifestyle, money generally goes way further in Toronto than it does in SF; you're getting paid less for a reason.
Oh also...enjoy your free healthcare [PS i'm Australian, so don't go thinking I'm a crazy maple syrup drinking Canadian who just loves this place because i was born here]
63k USD/100k CAD for a good senior engineer is a very poor salary in the US. Typically they make 2-3 times that in TX.
maybe I should just be looking for new work.
There's also the emotional expense involved, but that's everywhere. Can't say I'd be willing to go in for $100k CAD doing DB or web work at say X-Syngery Unicorp Inc who might supply toilet paper dispensers to all junior-level and public restrooms in Suchacorp's east tower.
That one's on me, though.
I don't suffer. I share a 1 bed apartment with my girlfriend. Between the two of us I'd say we pull in ~$100k. Our rent is $1650 and we rent our parking space for $150. These days, it looks like a steal. I make rent, eat healthy, can afford transit and clothing and the odd night out, but doing all of that and saving any money is a good stretch right now.
But there are complications. We paid even less for a 2 bed condo we rented and were happy as hell, but condos have owners and I've experienced them visiting to have a look at the place they bought but never visited and decide to move in and kindly ask us to leave (with notice). Because of the housing market here, rents increase year-over-year by a not insignificant margin. To find a new 1bed downtown that isn't in a basement we're looking at $2k now. Next year it may be more if the bubble can't be curbed.
My salary doesn't go up at that margin. I'm also wearing a heap of student loans that are held by a bank, with a small share in OSAP (Ontario-Canada Student Loans). The bank treats student loans differently than the government, where there is no amity or relief on offer. Had to take this on to get into school because during the Harper years belts tightened and I fell into the narrow margin of my father made enough money to not warrant OSAP considering me at-need, but nowhere near enough to help me through any of the expense of higher education. I'm from a very rural area, so there were no local options.
TL;DR: much of my background of circumstance will better explain what I said, and might make me seem a little less crass and out of touch as you put it. In a vacuum, I agree. I have never lived in a vacuum, it's been a long road to where I am and longer to get where I want to go.
Front 151 was a major hub for North America and allowed co-location and cheap fiber so a lot of DC activity sprang up around it and that in turn led to many start-ups choosing Toronto. The fact that there are two excellent universities nearby (Waterloo and UFT) helped a lot in that it sourced a stream of very capable programmers.
The only thing that stopped Toronto from developing further as a high tech city is the brain drain to the valley were engineers could easily make double of what they could make in Toronto.
- The border is a barrier to moving to NYC or SF for a higher paying job. So salaries are lower.
- There are more agencies than product companies. Toronto has always had a lot of ad agencies, but the CAD has been trending down since 2013 without a major bump in salaries. So there are many ad agencies and contract app shops that take advantage of the spread.
So in general the Toronto tech scene is smaller and lower paying than either of those cities. But it's the best in Canada, so it attracts a lot of the local talent.
Should add that this works both ways. Most Canadians who can, do end up leaving for the US since they can easily make 2 - 4X the income, even after CoL and insurance. There is a non-trivial amount of brain drain happening in Canada.
I was an expat in the US for many years, the story was the same in the mid-90s. Many try it, some stay, some come back. I still work for a US company but moved back.
The current political climate has a big impact on encouraging people to stay in Canada, especially with NAFTA and the H1B programs hanging by a thread. Imagine thousands of Canadians with TN status getting told they need to move back immediately (More likely 30-60 days after a status change application) upon withdrawal from NAFTA. It will be a chaotic brain drain in reverse.
Amazon, Microsoft, Google all have large Canadian outposts lately for a reason.
The political climate is much talked about but if anything the rate of brain drain has increased as more and more SV companies make an effort to recruit in Toronto. In the early 2000s the subset of US companies that recruited at all in Canada did it strictly at UW. Now all the majors have a campus presence at even mid-tier Canadian schools like UVic.
This is not to say transfers south are not done... but it's not the primary purpose of having a Canadian presence.
My wife and I didn't want to settle down in America, even if the money would have been that much better. Seattle is a great city, but it's still very American and that overall American culture never felt like home to us.
The unions in the US are pathetic, and corrupted by the mafia, and workers are suffering humiliations because of that.
Here's a tragicomic anecdote that illustrates my point:
Recently in Germany, Tesla has been struggling with the German unions because Tesla has been paying below union wages to a German company they bought. So far, Tesla offered each employee a one-off €1,000 ($1,090) bonus, an extra €150 a month, and €10,000 of Tesla shares distributed over four years to calm the situation, but the negotiations are still on-going.
In the US, where they're facing worker revolt for the low wages and bad working conditions but currently aren't unionized, they promised free frozen yoghurt and, Musk claimed this is his favorite, a Tesla electric pod car roller coaster.
You can find many takes on it with a quick google on Tesla's unionization suppression efforts in their Fremont factory and Tesla's battles with the United Auto Workers US union.
The German dispute is also in the news, in English and German, and can be found with a quick google as well.
[1] http://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/25/workers-involved-in-union-act...
[2] http://prospect.org/article/charge-time-electric-car-workers...
[3] http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/18/toxic-waste-spill-at-tesla...
[4] http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-launches-investigat...
Essentially, America was able to use its mythology as a land of opportunity and equality to convert $20/hr being sent elsewhere to getting 20 somethings to move to the US after their home country took up all the burden of paying for them being raised through their childhood and subsidizing their education and pay them to stay in the US and spend money there (and get a good chance of creating a billion dollar startup in the US instead of their home country as well).
Much like most decisions Americans have been making lately, the push to de emphasize immigration is pretty much all downsides for the US, for little to no return, other than "we stuck it to them!"
I disagree with you there. This push is really showing people how little these multinational corporations care for them. The economy has been growing, but instead of passing that growth down to its employees, it's keeping wages down or shipping jobs overseas. If we shift gears as a country and limit outsourcing and immigration, there will be a period of time when large companies leave ship, but chances are good that the lower and middle classes would finally start seeing their wages go up.