65.93% of Software Engineering graduates end up working in the US after graduation. Not a great statistic for Canada's tech industry.
Above else, thought, in SV I just feel like I belong. On the train here, an old man snapped at me for reading a maths text with some anti-intellectual line.
I worked in MTV for 4 months, 4 months in Seattle, and I'm leaving on Monday to SV again for the summer.
I know Canadians like to think of themselves as "different", but I could see more difference between the three cities I'd visited in the previous couple of weeks - NY, DC and LA than I could between Toronto and anywhere else in the US
Perhaps I didn't stay long enough, but if I compare with other cities, like Berlin, Rome, Lisbon, London, Singapore, Nairobi, Sydney, Delhi, Tokyo, etc, Toronto just felt like a typical North American city.
Costs across Canada are getting pretty absurd. Air travel, mobile data, wages, shipping, consumer goods, housing, insurance https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/8gui6r/are_canadian...
But I have spent a lot of time in silicon valley and it has recently felt a lot worse, dangerous and gross. I hope my next trip brightens my spirits but it's getting harder for me to love the bay area.
But SV will still pay almost double.
I had one guy pushing a cart trying to sell me drugs, a bunch of school kids leering at everyone and making a nuisance of themselves and just a general feeling that everyone with any sort of reasonable level of income was not using public transit.
I’m from London, where you’ll be on the tube train with everyone from cleaners to financiers. It’s pretty democratic. Not so in San Jose at all. Very depressing in fact.
There are two major train systems going through the area. There's Caltrain, which will be full of professionals if you ride it close to working hours.
Then there's VTA Light Rail, which is effectively "the bus on rails." Later in the evening it will be full of the type you describe.
The South Bay is just really suburban and car-friendly, and the VTA was a failure as a result because most people in the South Bay are happy travelling by car don't need to use the VTA. In contrast, Caltrain is used to travel to SF, which isn't car friendly, so a lot more professionals use it.
See, that's the difference with much of Europe, including London.
Those financiers probably don't use the bus that often, as they have a home just a couple of minutes walk from the station. But they won't have a prejudice against using the bus.
Problem with Vancouver is it's kind of dull entertainment-wise. Lacks vibrancy of some US cities. It's more or less as expensive to live as SF is, and obviously has less of a startup culture.
But overall I'd agree Canada is not all that appealing to people who have choices. Had I been able to choose when I was younger I'd have not ended up in Vancouver, but it sure beats out (IMO) London, UK which was my alternative.
I am effectively priced out of the local dev market at this point.
I was just in Montreal - the difference in prices with the US was staggering. You forget how wealthy we are, sometimes, even compared to the rest of the developed world. (Had an incredible French meal with 2 bottles of wine over 3 hours and it came out to ~$90 a head American)
Canada is more "courageous" in some senses, but very conservative in others. I'd describe its adoption curve as flat in the beginning and then bending upwards.