Microsoft Opens New HQ in Toronto
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techbomb.ca
We’ve had about 4 developers move to Canada already. I wouldn’t be surprised if retaining these developers is one of Microsoft’s intended goals of this “HQ”.
US immigration is a mess and Canada's is delightful even if it's pissing off the locals a bit these days.
I've been saying for a while that US and Canada have been playing a zero sum game for Dev jobs. US' loss is Canada's gain.
EU immigration for non-EU citizens is also very simple, basically just a rubber stamp nowadays in Countries like Germany for example.
[0] - https://se-legal.de/immigration-lawyer-germany/family-reunif...
Canada does not currently have a viable immigration model for non-dependents immigration. The Parents-Grandparents stream takes 30,000 applications a year through a lottery system because demand is so high. So it could take many years before you get to bring your parents.
Canada already has massive immigration relative to its population - the built environment and capacity for services hasn't increased relative to that immigration. It doesn't matter what insurance you have when there aren't enough surgeons, 130+ days wait for an MRI, etc etc.
Allowing "unlimited" parents per immigrant is essentially tripling immigration on its own. Maybe the answer isn't "limitless immigration" when the problem is lack of housing, capacity, and services.
In my opinion canada's immigration policies are already unsustainable and have cost a huge portion of the canadian population in quality of life.
But why, though? Aren't there any surgeons among the immigrants? Don't immigrants generate tax revenues to pay for new infra?
because they can pick up and move to the states and double or triple their income, so the surgeons have to be people who expressly wish to stay in canada over increase their income.
> Don't immigrants generate tax revenues to pay for new infra?
that has not been the case so far. Housing, healthcare, etc are in crisis in canada. meanwhile the government is allowing fast food restaurants to import temporary workers.
Not really any good. Compare that to the US where your parents get a GC no questions asked if you're a citizen.
Almost any country in the world allows you to bring your parents if you are a citizen. The path to citizenship in US is very very long. Canada allows this while you are on a PR. And not every immigrant is happy to change citizenship, it's a much riskier bet than being a PR.
It's important to be careful about how much of your own propaganda you believe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto-Dominion_Centre
I'm sure if they had their own facade to show off they'd have a photo in the article.
Pics of inside at https://www.blogto.com/tech/2022/05/microsoft-new-headquarte... it doesn’t show too many of the meeting rooms and work areas though :( it is open plan, well lit, well furnished. Mirrors other recent MSFT offices.
Waterloo is possibly the best CS school in the world, but we keep ignoring it. (Or talking about Hamilton or Toronto or whatever and not that obvious gem in the crown.) This, too, is hilariously Canadian.
Indeed.
Canada and California have about the same population. One might plausibly, if generously, posit Toronto and McGill as rough equivalents to Berkeley and UCLA. But Canada does not have a Stanford, Caltech, CalArts, UCSF, USC, UCSD, etc., etc. Waterloo? SJSU, maybe, and California has a dozen other colleges at about that level.
Would someone really reject Berkley for one of these schools? Assuming tuition and securing a visa isn't an issue.
>Would someone really reject Berkley for one of these schools? Assuming tuition and securing a visa isn't an issue.
True. I was thinking of the quality excluding other factors (and specifically noted that the comparison was still generous to Toronto/McGill). But I agree that anyone accepted to both Berkeley and Toronto/McGill is going to choose California over Canada, with the following exceptions:
* Toronto/Montreal has some specific personal appeal
* The Canadian schools' tuition works out to be substantially less than Berkeley. I know that McGill, in particular, has historically been a popular choice for eastern US students whose families make too much for financial aid from US schools, got turned down from their first choices (typically an Ivy), and choose McGill for both the relatively low cost even for out-of-country students and being able to say that they are going to another country for college (even if it's just across the Canadian border, quite possibly closer to home than an American alternative).
But you did say to exclude cost and visas as a factor. Certainly, no foreign student accepted to both will ever choose Canada (except, say, a francophone who chooses McGill for that reason); Berkeley has a worldwide brand name that Toronto and McGill do not.
The French schools actually have an interesting dynamic. Having worked with a few French Canadians here in the Bay they pretty much all told me they never considered going to an American school (or more generally working for an American company) due to their perceived language gap. It was later they figured out that if the whole room understands you then maybe you don’t have a language gap.
Yes, I think Polytechnique Montréal is a popular choice for French looking to study STEM in North America. (Despite my mentioning McGill earlier, it wouldn't necessarily be the first choice for Francophones because it's an English university in the English part of Montreal.)
Based on my experience at multiple FAANGs and medium sized name brand tech companies... they'd much rather have a Waterloo grad than the above. Can't beat the education combined with the co-op experience.
It certainly wasn't what I observed. I guess for smaller firms that can't compete on salaries it make sense since they have no hope of being first pick at Stanford/Caltech/MIT.
University of Waterloo is a relatively young university - established in 1959 - so it may look unattractive compared to old big name universities, especially on the usual metrics used for ranking universities.
However, UWaterloo positioned itself into a very peculiar position by offering the most extensive undergraduate co-op program. Co-op students graduates with up to 2 years of field experience, and many of them get offers from the companies they worked for during co-op terms (and among them are Big Tech and other IT giants). This allows Waterloo graduates to get high-end jobs pretty quickly, and, as a result, it's currently one of the most popular universities in SV and Big Tech[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Waterloo#Ranking...
> The quality of students is also just above mediocre given the smaller talent pool of that exists in Canada.
The pool is NOT limited to the population of Canada, because Canadian immigration policy create a lot of synergy here.
Canada has a very lax immigration policy compared to US, so it's very easy for foreign students to settle in Canada after finishing their co-op. IIRC, both the federal gov and provincial gov roll their own immigration programs, so there's practically no shortage of immigration options when you graduate from a Canadian university. Hell, some people even use their shiny new Canadian PR/citizenship to re-immigrate to US, while a lot of foreign students in US get kicked out after graduation. The door is much more wide open in Canada.
So, Waterloo co-op program is a great opportunity for foreign students to get a decent SWE job in North America - one of the most well paying jobs in the world. This makes Waterloo attract talents from abroad.
Mostly research output and quality.
> it's currently one of the most popular universities in SV and Big Tech
How much of that is due to the sheer size of the undergraduate class? There are more undergrads at Waterloo than at MIT, Stanford, CMU, Caltech, Harvard, Princeton and Yale... Combined!
The quantity still needs to be backed by the quality. Companies don't roll the dice when hiring people. They filter and interview. The numbers certainly prove that Waterloo draws many talents who can survive that process.
Not really. In a resume pile you should get almost 8x more applicants from Waterloo than MIT. You could flunk 7 out of 8 candidates and still claim the university is “as popular as MIT” in SV.
Source?
Possibly, but I suspect Cambridge would like a word ;-)
https://www.levels.fyi/company/Microsoft/salaries/Software-E...
- old buildings that do not comply with seismic code because codes don't apply retroactively
- new buildings built on the liquefaction zone
- Millenium tower already has defects even without earthquakes
- some buildings are already sinking
Everything is going to get rekt. SF is a huge house of cards about to collapse.
But they will probably have it better than the guys at Hayward, CA... a town built on top of the Hayward fault line. Why would you do that?
That's not to mention the worsening crime rates, even at the more suburban places. Oh, and the traffic, having nowhere to park your car, having to spend 1 hour in traffic to move 1 mile at peak hours, and seeing the city collapse each time a major conference takes place. And public transport is full of hallucination-haunted junkies that get randomly triggered.
Sounds like exactly the right place to live, form a family and spend all my money. Or maybe not.
*: https://www.google.com/amp/s/abc7news.com/amp/asian-man-robb...
If an American company paid 80% of American salary to Canadians they would have their pick of Canada’s top talent. This slowly appears to be happening with Meta jobs in Canada.
Canada has the same time zones, a similar culture, is geographically close, the same language, and excellent computer science/engineering programs.
What Canada doesn’t have is a strong venture capital pool, a culture of risk taking, or a domestic market of 330 million people which stifles new businesses.
I tried to raise a ~$300k seed round in Toronto in 2014. Most Canadian investors we met with wanted to see us have something like $10k/month in recurring revenue before considering an investment. We spent a week in SF and left with a $250k offer at a $4M valuation, when we were pre-revenue!
(We declined, and eventually our business failed (acquhired by a team in SF, though....). But still. Wow! What a difference!)
The US owns the money printer to the world trade currency (USD), and has the military force to defend this unique position, so of course it can afford to outspend everyone else.
It has nothing to do with the federal reserve and everything to do with risk tolerence.
No, kids, if Saudi Arabia suddenly started selling all its oil in Euros or Yen on renminbi, the US would not send the Sixth Fleet off its shore, any more than it did so to force KSA to use the US dollar to price its wares in the first place. Saudis (and Russians, and Chinese, and everyone else) use the US dollar because they find that a) using it is more convenient than another hard currency like the Swiss franc or British pound, and b) no one else wants riyals, rubles, or renminbi.
I can make the same argument without mentioning the military - we benefit from a virtuous cycle of having the most dynamic economy which allows us access to credit to improve it, making it even more dynamic, and we simply pay it back as a lesser share of % GDP later.
The Canadian risk/reward curve is weird. They won't look at anything barely promising but will go "all in" once it hits a bit of traction (even if the business model is wonky)
Also, we were near completing a $10k/month enterprise deal but didn't have the runway to finish those sales in time. Additionally, we had Government of Canada contracts at $3k/month in the pipeline, which we did eventually complete. Our software was running on millions of phones, we had enterprise pipeline deals, signed government contracts (hard to come by I hear!) and a darn good team.
Hard to say how it would have played out, but, what's clear to me is that it wasn't clear that the $300k would have been lost.
Replace Canada with EU and it's the same.
> Sure, but let's compare apples to apples (UK to EU) as US is unique in being the world leading economy.
EU has a higher GDP than the US and is therefore the world leading economy.
Sure, you can bunch the countries together and get high GDP number but that's not an Apples to apples comparison with the US as every EU country has it's own completely different languages, economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and tax system, and local issues plus high levels off autonomy from the EU.
The EU is not the United States of Europe therefore cannot compete with the US toe to toe as it's not 300 million people speaking the same language and having the same culture and laws, but 300 million people spread across 27 countries, speaking 24 official languages, with little overlap in laws and culture from end to end, that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe and there's no EU military.
The US is not a single united market. Each state has it's own economy, political and economic agenda, culture, market, legal and taxes, and local issues.
> that's why there are no successful software giants that came out of Europe.
this is just false. There are plenty of succesful european software giants , and there are numerous "unicorns" too; Spotify being the textbook example. There's an absolutely booming video games industry, Fintech and crypto (not my thing but can't argue there's no money in it) have very very solid bases across the EU too.
There's no single reason as to why the US has a stronger software market than the EU, but I would put money on it being "it's where the money already is".
Therefore to end the argument here and save my sanity, I'll stop replying to you. Have a good day sir.
You made the comparison between US and EU, so it's in play. QED.
Just don't open an office in the province of Quebec:
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/protest-montreal-bil...
* https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/breaking-down-th...
I thought top talent Canadians who want high salaries just moved to the US :)
(Of course, this could be because such high salaries aren't offered in Canada.)
Or, to hire international tech workers who you can't bring to your US office for visa reasons.
According to a director I spoke with it’s because they can’t find enough qualified engineers, not to save money.
Seems we should just be opening more offices in Hyderabad, I don’t know why that isn’t done more. Political security maybe?
Depends, it's not just about the employees salaries. Some EU countries have pretty high taxes and high worker's rights so big tech actively avoids them.
So in the grand scheme, Indian offices might yeld better return on their investment.
Anyway I know of plenty of people who landed remote jobs at US companies, or US-based companies opening offices within Europe. I mean most US companies operate through Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg anyway because of tax evasion.
Except high taxes its an issue though but for the company's taxes, not the employees' taxes. You even said it yourself later ["I mean most US companies operate through Ireland, the Netherlands and Luxembourg anyway because of tax evasion"] it just so happens that the countries with low corporate taxes also have low income taxes and countries with high corporate taxes usually also have high income taxes.
There's a reason why all big tech in EU is parked in those countries with low taxes and simple laws like Luxembourg, Ireland, Netherlands and not in countries with high taxes and complex laws like France, Belgium, Austria, etc.
And no, most big tech don't really hire EU-wide remotely outside of their HQ country and a few select other countries since we have no standardized EU wide corporate and workers' laws so a lot of EU countries get left out due to their stricter laws.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/company/corporate-trends/go...
I agree that there is scarcity on the market, but unless a company is really paying top salaries for their devs, they really cannot say that it’s not money.
If I had known that I could make $750k in tech then the gap is small enough that the improved work life balance and lower stress might have tipped me to tech.
People in finance make a lot money and fantasize about having another job. People in medicine make a lot of money and play golf.
Holy cow, how is that possible?! In my European country staff level goes up to 85K. That's insane.
Have a look at https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,Facebook,Google&track...
(Sorry, I don’t want to grumble.)
If you look at the net immigration flow between Canada and the US, the trend is pretty clear.
US immigrants of Canadian origin (2019): 11,900 [1]
Canadian immigrants of US origin (2019): 10,800 [2]
Of course, with 8.7x the population of Canada, you'd expect the net neutral number to 1:8.7 (Canada to US), but it's actually 1:1. So ~9x more Canadians per capita immigrate to the US than reverse.
[1] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/us-immigr... [2] https://www.cicnews.com/2020/02/a-quarter-of-canadas-immigra...
That's it? This is a major HQ?
A typical office is going to need at 150 to 200sqft per person total between desk areas, common areas (kitchen, hallway) and conference rooms.
132,000 sqft is a tight fit for 70 people.
I guess they're expecting most employees to be mostly remote then.
Edit: Yep, I'm off my an order of magnitude! Not deleting this for the sake of posterity. Remember folks: don't post before your morning caffeine.
Definitely feels like calling something an HQ is a press move though.
Calling that "something political that I don't recall anymore" is downplaying it. It was very real. It wasn't partisan either: Sen Orrin Hatch (R-UT) was very pro-Utah companies like Novell and WordPerfect. And there was a 1995 antitrust involving RealNetworks before Microsoft-Netscape; Sen Maria Cantwell (D-WA) was a former VP at RealNetworks.
Some commentators have said MSFT deliberately tactically kept its HQ just south of the Canadian border, for leveraging ongoing negotiations on taxes, IP, visa laws and quotas, etc.
My spouse is a case worker in the housing department of an Ontario municipality so I get all kinds of inside information on the subject.
You're not gonna personally get yelled at/followed every week, but confrontations are not rare. I know several people including myself who have experienced it a few times.
There's a huge, poorly addressed mental health issue in Ontario, and downtown Toronto concentrates a lot of that.
Tangent: Coming from a third world country, homelessness in North America has a huge contrast with South America: my own anecdata is that mental health issues among the homeless are more common in NA and they're very irate and confrontational. I often wonder why there's such a contrast.
Microsoft has recently opened a development center in Kenya.