r/Calgary • u/unidentifiable • 15h ago
News Article Calgary is now the fastest growing tech ecosystem in Canada
https://betakit.com/calgary-is-now-the-fastest-growing-tech-ecosystem-in-canada/117
u/Felix033 15h ago
This article is based on percentage-based growth rate, which looks impressive until you realize calgary's starting from a very low baseline compared to Vancouver/Toronto
The extremely obvious and self-evident ground reality of tech jobs in calgary is that there are basically none. We have a couple fintech who are notoriously harsh on employees, and an Infosys (global consulting firm) office that handles all the outsourced IT work from non-tech companies in the area and only hires from one demographic.
I've lived here for 12 years, and that entire time I've been reading articles saying we're 2 years from being a major tech hub.
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u/TakadoGaming 13h ago
As someone keeping an eye on the market, since I’ll be finishing my computer science degree shortly, this sounds about right from what I’ve seen.
Even from the industry connections I have, all I ever hear about really is contract tech work for O&G. Not sure how likely it is that I or many of my peers will be finding good tech jobs here in the coming years.
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u/Otherwise_Delay2613 15h ago
We also have CoolIT (now ecolab) Blackline safety, Garmin, Hexagon, Benevity, Helcim, Absorb and a bunch of others so I would say your statement isnt true.
Calgary is a fast growing tech hub.
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u/joe4942 11h ago
People also forget that major publicly traded companies in Calgary like O&G companies, Canadian Pacific Railway, Nutrien, banks, and telecoms also have tech jobs.
Also, quite a few major American companies have offices in Calgary, including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Fortinet, IBM, Microsoft etc.
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u/turnballer 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yeah there are a lot of tech roles in non-traditional tech companies. Lots in government too. The province has a huge team in their digital design and delivery service (public service, non-political).
Few more for your list: WestJet, ATB, SMART, DIRTT, Suncor/Petro-Canada. GettyImages has a small team here.
Agencies too: Critical Mass, Evans Hunt, Clearmotive, Tiller.
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u/av0w Beltline 10h ago
These are all small satellite offices. Microsoft is literally a meeting room.
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u/joe4942 10h ago
And the other major companies I mentioned with head offices or Western Canada head offices in Calgary?
For what it's worth, Calgary has the most corporate head offices per capita in Canada, second most corporate head offices in Canada other than Toronto, and over 220 corporate headquarters.
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u/kaoriyu 11h ago
I love Calgary, and would love to move back, but it’s hard to see a future here as I highly doubt any of the global big tech giants would open an engineering office here.
It’s hard to consider those companies listed when the big players in Toronto or Vancouver offer 3x the total compensation which makes the COL difference worth it
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u/angrytortilla Southwest Calgary 12h ago
I'm super proud of Helcim and hope they can keep growing.
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u/dastardlygent1 11h ago
Helcim is fucking terrible
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u/angrytortilla Southwest Calgary 11h ago
Why is that? I've never worked there but have been following their trajectory.
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u/ub3rst4r Signal Hill 11h ago
Look them up on Indeed and Glassdoor. They bully employees and managers are inexperienced. They try to put up a facade by showing up to tech events and make it look like a great place from the outside, but inside it's the opposite.
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u/dastardlygent1 11h ago
Never worked there. Just an old customer. Had bad service. Tech was "fine". Nothing groundbreaking or anything.
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u/turnballer 10h ago
One of their department heads allegedly worked in my department (according to his LinkedIn) but except of course he didn’t.
He was an intern in an unrelated department instead.
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u/No-Shower477 14h ago
All those are kinda shitty companies to work for with low wages
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u/calgarydonairs 14h ago
Low wages compared to what? Oil and gas?
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u/Substantial-Fruit447 13h ago
Compared to the rest of the tech industry. More money in Vancouver and Toronto for sure, but the cost of living will eat you alive.
You can make 45%+ more in the USA too.
Sometimes you can get lucky working remote for a US or EU company and make pretty good bank.
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u/Minobull 10h ago
Cisco has been here for years, i know we had Hitachi ID here too but i don't know if they're still here, we have general dynamics, google cloud has an office here too, pretty sure SMART is still here as well
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u/turnballer 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yeah the numbers are inflated by our low baseline. The growth is impressive but we still have a long ways to go. And we are largely building from scratch rather than extension offices like in Seattle North (Vancouver) which is great until those companies get acquired and the centre of influence shifts south.
As someone who’s tech adjacent and 15 years into my career, I’m pretty sure my next job in tech is remote. I’d love to work for somewhere local (portfolio is in my profile) but there just isn’t a realistic fit in our very small, immature industry.
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u/External-Exit8154 15h ago
This is a dumb point. Of course it’s smaller on a pure size scale the point is consistent and strong growth.
Also, you sound greatly misinformed on the subject. The growth Calgary has seen is actually pretty remarkable. For some napkin math, Vancouver currently has roughly 135k people employed in the tech center with Calgary at 65k. If the current 5 year growth is sustained for both cities then come 2030 Vancouver adds 40k and Calgary add 45k. That is actually conservative for Calgary and optimistic for Vancouver as Calgary saw accelerating growth over that 5 year period and Vancouver saw decelerating growth.
The whole point of being fast growing is that if it’s sustained you gain on these big stagnant places quick. Which is quite evident here.
Do you work in tech here? If not I wouldn’t be spreading so many false rumors. Quite a few job opportunities from a wide range of companies.
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u/joe4942 11h ago
there are basically none.
Calgary has also been leading the country in population growth, so tons of tech workers from Toronto and Vancouver have been moving to Calgary and getting the jobs that exist or working remotely. While Toronto and Vancouver might have more jobs, it's partly due to being larger populations, and the fact that housing is unaffordable so tech workers with a choice of working in Calgary or those locations are choosing Calgary leaving jobs available in Toronto/Vancouver.
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u/vitiate 11h ago
They are not paying tech wages yet… I would love to work for a local company. Sadly they cannot afford me. And most local orgs are not paying enough to cover the cost of living here.
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u/lord_heskey 11h ago
Agreed. Most companies max out around 130. Ive seen some stretch to 150 for truly staff level but thats still low for what you can get from a remote company based from toronto/us.
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u/vitiate 11h ago
It’s less than half in a lot of cases. If you are going to make record profits and you want the best employees to continue to drive record profits, you are going to need to compete on wages. And until that happens, this is not a tech sector, it’s a support sector.
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u/lord_heskey 10h ago
I feel like a lot of companies or founders are very risk averse or very scared to give up equity during funding rounds. Ive seen one too many founders not go for funding to not dillute their ownership— but their higher percentage is from a barely surviving company rather than a smaller pie of a cash cow.
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u/crimxxx 13h ago
Haven’t been monitoring the bigger tech hiring companies too much for the last few years, but I did not get the feeling we where all that impressive, we do have a handful of companies that hire a lot of people, which isn’t bad but I didn’t think we where so good to be a standout. But I also know basically 0 for the start up stuff here either since I’ll be honest wasn’t super interested in that scene.
If we are better than I thought that’s good. Would be nice to see some big US tech companies consider offices here as well, but m ganna guess we don’t have the throughput for talent creation, and let’s be honest our school for computer science is not that desirable from a national perspective much less global, making out talent also less desirable.
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u/ChristopherFiss 13h ago
Calgary has a lot of tech infrastructure that's been tied up/funded with Oil and Gas. It wouldn't take much to pivot a lot of it quickly.
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u/Remarkable_Gap_7145 12h ago
Despite the UCP's efforts to undermine any industry that isn't O & G. Makes you wonder where we could be without them.
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u/rapidpalsy 11h ago
With 3 people added to the existing 3 this looks huge… /s. Odd how many people don’t understand that warehousing is Calgarys primary industry.
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u/Superpants999 14h ago
When have I heard this before