Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

> Though Toronto lost the bid, Amazon still opened a 113,000 square-foot office in the downtown core in December and said it would hire 600 new employees.

Wow, they really didn't do any research on this.

Amazon's first Toronto office opened almost 8 years ago. I moved to the office 7 years ago, when it was 25 people Growth has been constant or accelerating since then. We now have over 1000 full time employees- mostly devs, but also some AWS and Ads sales folks now too. Every department seems to have at least a couple teams here. There's two buildings, both running out of space.

And it's not like it's all "couldn't get a US visa, send them to Canada" either. Most of those folks, after a year with Amazon, could probably qualify for an L-1 and transfer to Seattle- but they don't. And a lot of the people being hired are local talent.

Like most of my coworkers, I could definitely get an increase in total comp if I moved to a US office. My wife and I don't want to live in America though- the culture isn't one we like, the politics are terrifying, the gun obsession and violence... Toronto's not perfect, but it's where we want to stay.

> the culture isn't one we like, the politics are terrifying, the gun obsession and violence

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.

Even relatively liberal Washington State, which is culturally similar to BC, is an open carry state. Many Canadians would be uncomfortable to find some random dude walking around the super market with a gun.

I've lived in Washington my entire life (except for a stint in Vancouver) and have never seen anyone walk around with open carry in public. Technically it's on the books but once again the average day to day experience isn't people walking around at Costco strapped up. This is what I'm talking about, everyone talks about how insane the US is, but our day to day life isn't that different.

I wonder how many have actually been?

edit: this is not to take away from the serious challenges that the US has when it comes to many issues. I am by no means excusing our income inequality or absurd healthcare system. Just trying to convey a perspective from someone who lives there. There's a lot we need to improve but this isn't the wild west either.

For what another anecdote is worth, I lived in Washington state for 3 months and have seen it twice. (Once in a Seattle food court). As a Canadian it was quite a culture shock.

> Vancouver might as well be a larger Seattle

Seattle is bigger, actually.

Also i'm pretty sure Seattle is second to Bay Area in all the graphs yet they are not listed.

A pretty mediocre article imo.

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