<story><title>Google&apos;s expansion plans show why Canada&apos;s tech boom is here to stay</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/google-canada-expansion-analysis-1.5455122</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Sytten</author><text>Tech salaries in Canada are very low and I really hope this will raise the bar for everybody. Most of the talent (outside of Quebec) migrates south of the border at some point, because it makes no financial sense to stay. Innovation outside of Toronto is low&amp;#x2F;inexistent and it is hard to get funding. I am always amazed when founders make the national news here when they raise 1-2M$ CAD. At the same time, you have CEOs complaining that the video game industry is poaching dev unfairly (because the salaries are subsidized) instead of raising their own salaries... It really is a sad state. It might be due to the fact that we have a culture of small&amp;#x2F;medium businesses that are very slow to adopt new technologies and a mentally of what we called in french &amp;quot;born for small bread&amp;quot;. At the same time, since nobody is really making a lot of money you also have a more equal society leading to a better quality of life IMO (less crime, more generosity, etc).&lt;p&gt;As a new grad myself, I am in this situation where I get offers of &amp;gt;120k USD if I move to SV with a growth potential (both in technical and financial terms) far better than what I can get here. In Quebec (where I live), I saw most of my peers stay around and accept salaries ranging from 65k CAD to 80k CAD (50k-61k USD). From what I know, an average senior can expect 120-130k CAD in Montreal. The only way to make more is by being a consultant, which is why you see a lot of them around here (for better or worse). I would feel a bit guilty to move to the US right now considering I got basically a free education and I do want to contribute back to society.</text></comment>
<story><title>Google&apos;s expansion plans show why Canada&apos;s tech boom is here to stay</title><url>https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/google-canada-expansion-analysis-1.5455122</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>jariel</author><text>As a Candian, it seems to me so very pathetically and predictably Canadian to literally herald the surrender of your own industries to foreign takeover.&lt;p&gt;Canada is (often) to tech what Mexico is to cars.&lt;p&gt;Mexican &amp;#x27;assembly&amp;#x27; of cars is fine and good, but they don&amp;#x27;t exactly move up the value chain from there.&lt;p&gt;Canada produces a lot of decent tech people, who will work for 2&amp;#x2F;3 the wages, unfortunately, this doesn&amp;#x27;t map to a successful entrepreneurial climate. Now, that&amp;#x27;s a hard thing to contemplate, as &amp;#x27;nobody&amp;#x27; can really compete with SV at their own game, but it&amp;#x27;s disingenuous in the least to farm out labor and compare that activity with those doing much of the higher-level work, and most importantly: controlling the profits.&lt;p&gt;Maybe the Mexico analogy goes a little bit too far, as there are tech startups and a few decent companies in Toronto, by and large, but they have serious trouble scaling into anything. To be fair, it&amp;#x27;s not like most US cities are any better. In fact, aside from the weather and lack of charm, Toronto is a &amp;#x27;better all-around city&amp;#x27; than most American cities.&lt;p&gt;But there&amp;#x27;s a serious lack of exceptionalism, and far too many of Toronto&amp;#x27;s best move on to the US, London, or elsewhere.&lt;p&gt;This kind of &amp;#x27;pathetic nationalism&amp;#x27; is why loathe the CBC. It&amp;#x27;s as though they are utterly unaware of the extent to which they extoll mediocrity.&lt;p&gt;Canadians are well educated, get along pretty well, and the &amp;#x27;average person&amp;#x27; in Canada in many ways lives better than the average American, at very least there&amp;#x27;s a lot less calamity, fraud, there&amp;#x27;s full healthcare which isn&amp;#x27;t great but it&amp;#x27;s mostly good.&lt;p&gt;But - on the issue of talent and exceptionalism, it&amp;#x27;s a disaster. We are near the bottom of the OECD it talent and R&amp;amp;D expenditures. Canada sends China &amp;#x27;raw materials&amp;#x27; and they send us back finished goods: this is the opposite of &amp;#x27;first world&amp;#x2F;developing world&amp;#x27; trading norm.&lt;p&gt;We should not be hailing mediocrity as a victory. It&amp;#x27;s nice to have jobs, but there is no Valley of the North.</text></comment>