Silicon Valley Looks North as Tech Giants Expand in Toronto

Life in the US isn't like that for most people who live here. It's fine you don't want to live here, that's okay. But the idea that the majority or even many Americans are gun toting nutjobs is false. If you live in a major US city your life is almost exactly the same as any major Canadian city. Vancouver might as well be a larger Seattle. Having lived in both countries, your day to day differences are fairly minor.

There are outliers of course, Texas and Florida are very unique places. The South is generally higher crime. But living in Chicago, Seattle or NYC isn't that different from Toronto or Vancouver.

Toronto's murder rate is 3.11 per 100,000 people, which is higher than NYC and Seattle: https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/stats-show-sharp-uptick-in-tor... Many Canadian cities are on par with their US cousins.

The major difference is actually healthcare.

It takes decades to build Silicon Valley, and Canada's focus on foreign talent, business friendly regulation, and general North American enterprising culture might get it there over time.

Here is why.

In the uk immigrants from non eu countries, and thus on restrictive work visas (somewhat similar to h1b) usually earned way less than locals or eu citizens because they had no option but to take any offer only to be allowed to stay in the country. Example: ai engineers from south korea would earn 35k gbp a year, while their uk or eu counterparts could earn well above 70k gbp.

Restrictive visas and abusive employers are a wage depressing mix, unfair to both locals and new comers. My guess would be that if your employer underpays your former h1b colleagues then that is not an employer you want to work for because indeed your pay will stay low.

Eu citizens however were free to work without restriction and as such compete on equal terms as locals. Much like in Canada where immigrants under express entry are able to change jobs as they wish, eu citizens could change jobs as they wish. The result was that instead of outsourcing to india or other countries, uk companies suddenly started growing at home as they had plenty of resources. Thus job opportunities and pay went up both for locals and eu immigrants. As a hiring manager, demand was so high that either eu immigrants or locals had to be payed more and more each year.

Similarly, in Canada, the more resources companies will find, the less they will outsource and the more pay will go up over time.

As brexit is biting in and less devs are on the market, some of those companies are now either outsourcing or opening new branches in other eu countries to hire the same people as they would have in the uk, simply because there are not enough devs left. This means less opportunities for locals.

Another thing is that more devs, means more ideas floating around, and that means more skills you can get.

It can be frightening and if there are many abusive employers and restrictive visas wages can go down, but something tells me they will go up as indeed canada is a country with a north american business mindset. And if you mix tech and capital the result will be job and pay growth which i have seen in london/europe. You should embrace this if you want your pay to double in the next 5 years. Mine did in london as when i moved there the “revolution” was only starting and it was an awesome ride.