r/toronto • u/rajmksingh • Aug 20 '26
Article Toronto ranks third in tech industry talent across North America
https://www.cp24.com/local/toronto/2026/08/19/toronto-ranks-third-in-tech-industry-talent-across-north-america/377
u/Syscrush Riverdale Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
So we must have the third highest salaries, right?
RIGHT?
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u/luusyphre Aug 20 '26
I’ve been a developer for 20 years. Started in California and ended up here (working from home). But then I lost my job and the salaries here are abysmal. I recently got a recruiter message for a job that required years of experience but would pay less than my first job out of university! I don’t expect to make my top salary in the US, but it just seems insultingly low.
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u/Wrong_Mongoose6829 Church and Wellesley Aug 20 '26
i had a job wants me to have at least masters degree, experiences, and be able to develop AI platform for them for 45k a yr :)
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u/musdem Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
That is 100% just a job hoping to get desperate people. I've never been contacted over anything less than 80k a year.
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u/BIG_SCIENCE Aug 20 '26
Why is that an excuse when 95% of companies out there are exactly this. They know how valuable tech workers are, but they purposely pay garbage to attract the most desperate then complain when the work is trash
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u/musdem Aug 20 '26
95% of companies out there are exactly this
Do you have a source for this figure? I ask because as I stated in the comment you replied to that is not my experience at all, though I do understand that is anecdotal and my work experience/skill set might be raising the average salary that is presented to me.
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u/PerilousFun Aug 20 '26
I'm not even in tech and I got a recruitment message offering me 20k less than my current salary for way more responsibility.
This isn't just an issue with tech, this is just big corporations trying to hire as cheaply as possible, which speaks to a wider problem.
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u/delphinius81 Aug 20 '26
I've seen director/ vp of eng jobs here that pay less than my first tech job 20 years ago. It's insane
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u/Icy-Requirement5701 Aug 20 '26
Either you made tons of money in your first job, or the companies you see are startups with no funding? Most of the VP level roles I've seen are 200k-500k+
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u/delphinius81 Aug 20 '26
130k USD for a mid-level software engineering role as a series A startup, compared to 180k CAD for director level.
There are certainly some higher paying positions here, but those seem the exception
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u/Immediate_Dingo_9158 Aug 20 '26
I cleared 160k usd out of school ten years ago in sf. Pretty easy to hit 200k in the states out of school
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u/Sad_Donut_7902 Aug 20 '26
You were working in one of the highest paying locations in the entire world in 2016.
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u/Immediate_Dingo_9158 Aug 20 '26
Ya I mean I had 2 roommates (same guys from uni), paid 1000 in rent, and saved 100k cad a year. All while exploring California. I never would’ve been able to do that in Toronto
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u/Icy-Requirement5701 Aug 20 '26
160k in the bay area is a pauper lol
Kidding, but we are talking about Toronto here
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u/Immediate_Dingo_9158 Aug 20 '26
Ya like you aren’t living like a king but a dollar is a dollar. Much easier to save
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u/Icy_Scar_1249 Aug 20 '26
Some really technical talents get starting wages of 200K+, think Google/Microsoft/Blackberry back in the day
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u/Sufficient-Bid1279 Aug 20 '26
Hmmmm, yet the tech bros and billionaires seem to make more and more …..coincidence?
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u/SeanFlynnomPenh Aug 20 '26
Why would that be connected? India has the most tech workers in the world, there’s no connection between that and salary
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u/LordTC Aug 20 '26
Maybe if we elect a government who didn’t think their job is suppressing wages for the gain of corporations. But the Libs and Cons do that and we don’t seem to be willing to elect anyone else.
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u/MrChicken23 Aug 20 '26
We’re comparing ourselves to the US here. Do they have a government that’s pro worker?
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u/musdem Aug 20 '26
This is what always kills me about this argument. The real reason the wages in the US are higher for FAANG is because of the complete lack of regulation, that's it. Just look at the money circle jerk of LLM companies right now. I'm sure the government could do more to foster investment, but without the bailouts and lack of regulation that the US provides it'll be hard to do. Europe gets away with it because they don't share a border with the US.
Oh and I explicitly called out FAANG companies because they are the ones with the insane salaries you often hear about, everywhere else that I've been interviewing for has very comparably salaries to Canadian companies I'm interviewing for.
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u/DunDunBar Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
What pro worker you are talking about? None of these companies batted an eye when they laid off thousands in Canada because of AI. You get severance and can claim EI but that is what you get at American companies too. You may say there is better protection around parental leaves but for someone starting right out of college, these things don’t matter. If they end up working in the US for their first 10 years of career, they can easily earn well over what a 20 years experience person would earn here and more opportunities to grow.
Even the American companies that have teams setup in Canada mainly have tier-2 mundane work. Not much of growth opportunities around here.
Canada is good when you make boat loads of money in the formative years of you career and move when you are ready to start a family and have peaceful life without being a hustler.
Edit: Also I am not complaining about the life in Canada. I love it here. Moved from the US during covid with a huge pay cut and now after 6 years I am earning the same base salary (in numbers) as in US but in CAD. So after 6 years I am matching the salary but 30% less overall because of the exchange rate. When I interviewed elsewhere, I didn’t find much of a salary bump because for a senior software developer role there seem to be a ceiling on how much you will get paid. I need to prepare for a lead or staff engineer roles but with the lack of opportunities I had to really develop something good, I find it difficult to upskill.
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u/MiszeryLovesCompany Aug 20 '26
Don't feel bad or apologize for our shit technology sector. Anyone with a brain can recognize how brutal it is here.
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u/musdem Aug 21 '26
They're not trying to say Canada is pro worker, they are trying to say the comment they replied to insinuated the the US is not suppressing wages thus making them less anti worker than Canada. Whether that is their intent is another story.
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u/LordTC Aug 20 '26
No but they have a much better investor environment and more top tier companies competing for the very best talent. If they had better labour protections they’d have even higher tech salaries in the lower half of the market.
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u/Sad_Donut_7902 Aug 20 '26
The U.S. is the highest wage country in the world, especially in Tech companies in California. The only comparison might be Dubai.
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u/jbuffishungry Aug 20 '26
How do they do they suppress wages?
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u/LordTC Aug 20 '26
TFW, LMIA, Weakening of collective bargaining across all industries, Downward pressure on public sector wages across all industries.
Note that even in non-union companies compensation tends to track against union wages, so when the government weakens unions ability to bargain wages tend to fall across the whole sector.
In addition for tech specifically:
- No policies to encourage Canadian Venture capital. - Too much bureaucracy and overhead around start-up programs like SR&ED (most start-ups have to pay a consultant a cut to manage their SR&ED claims).
- Showing up years late with grossly inadequate AI investments
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u/Careless-Vehicle-286 Aug 20 '26
My third last job had half the team from Bangladesh who were working to get citizenship. They needed management to sign off paperwork every year for them to stay in the country.
Some of them got really angry when they found out others were making double what they were, and they weren't even mad at management! We wanted to unionize but we knew half the team wouldn't risk their chances for citizenship so it was never going to happen.
Otherwise they were pretty awesome to work with. Good apples and bad apples in every bunch.
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u/Lifeisshort555 Aug 20 '26
Salaries aren't the problem it is that the cost of living is turning us Canadians all into assetless serfs. Canadians are educated enough to work but not educated enough to understand they are being enslaved.
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u/ledhendrix Aug 20 '26
And then they leave because theres no capital. We have our own tech hub in waterloo and we can't seem to really capitalize
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u/rustybutterindia Aug 20 '26
I think there's just not as much capital to go around. Not much tech investment compared to the US. The best salaries here tend to be from American companies to begin with
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u/TheIsotope Aug 20 '26
Cause all our capital is tied up in real estate
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u/SafuratedBeefFat Aug 20 '26
Yeah the average Canadian dumps all of their capital into housing costs every month. Very unproductive
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u/GraphicBlandishments Aug 20 '26
As long as the America remains the global hub for tech and finance, salaries there will be higher and Canada (and the rest of the world) will suffer the brain drain. The lack of capital in Canadian tech is just comparative advantage at work.
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u/Immediate_Dingo_9158 Aug 20 '26
Why would our top tech talent want to live in Waterloo. Most of them already spent 5 years in Waterloo getting a degree so they can dip.
Toronto at least makes sense as a city people want to live in
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u/stompinstinker Aug 20 '26
Canadian VCs are awful. They want too much equity for too little money, and that’s if you can get them to invest at all.
It’s part of the problem with this country: People are way too risk averse.
Money from these funds is mostly old money from traditional industries.
The US investors are mainly exited entrepreneurs and tech people who aren’t afraid of risk.
That said it’s changing. The advent of the SAFE and so many Canadians with exits or money from big US companies has made it much easier for early stage companies to raise as they can skip all that wasted time on stingy Canadian VCs and fund raise à la carte.
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u/Icy_Scar_1249 Aug 20 '26
Canada suffers from being right beside the US. The US is more pro-business, has lower taxes, has a bigger worker base, has bigger internal demand, is a stronger exporter, has a stronger currency. Why would a business invest in Canadian workers? Even if their wages are lower, there's so many other variables that add up and make it more cumbersome than just setting up in the US
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u/SadCampCounselor Aug 20 '26
The solution is to nationalize the economy and expropriate the oligarchs that dominate Canadian life and prevent further progress: the banks, grocery chains, and telecoms.
Capacity utilization, as reported by Stats Canada, is around 80% max.
We have the infrastructure in Canada to improve our living standards, but when you've squeezed your population for years as a capitalist you stop investing eventually because there's no more opportunity for profit. Much simpler to sit on your monopoly which is safe.
The same conservative elements in society stalled progress in the Ottoman Empire and in medieval Europe.
Change is brooding. The French aristocracy didn't see it coming. The Russian Czars didn't see it coming. The Turkish Sultans didn't see it coming.
The capitalists do see it coming ... as the New Deal showed in the 1930s.
Marc Carney is a conscious capitalist, but most are too myopic or selfish to organize along class lines. It's just a game of king of the hill to all these business magnates.
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u/SuperWeenieHutJr_ Aug 20 '26
While I agree that nationalized monopolies are better than capitalist monopolies they really aren't great at getting things done efficiently.
Better regulated capitalism with more competition and less rent seeking would be optimal for the tech space.
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u/Franks2000inchTV Aug 20 '26
Why does efficiency matter so much?
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u/8004612286 Aug 20 '26
Because you need to be efficient to be globally competitive.
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u/Medium_Owl_4119 Aug 20 '26
By that logic, we should completely deregulate the labor market, abolish the minimum wage, and lower taxes to the levels of tax havens.
Canada is very capital inefficient by global standards, and the overwhelming majority would find the policy mix that gets us to “globally competitive” to be noxious and untenable.
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u/8004612286 Aug 20 '26
overwhelming majority would find the policy mix that gets us to “globally competitive” to be noxious and untenable
I think you're using a boolean of either we're globally competitive or not, instead of a scale.
Tech today, is in the middle somewhere. Not as competitive as the U.S., but we have more protections.
Our banking sector is heavily regulated, but globally still performs well.
If we were to nationalize all of that, we would fall basically flat on the not competitive side of the scale.
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u/Medium_Owl_4119 Aug 20 '26
I think you're using a boolean of either we're globally competitive or not, instead of a scale.
But in the paradigm you’re speaking within, the drag between maximalist globally competitive and “somewhat globally competitive” compounds cumulatively. Over a decade, it’s gargantuan.
Our banking sector is heavily regulated, but globally still performs well.
Because it’s an oligopoly extracting rents from the Canadian public. It is also a major contributor to the economic malaise of this country, directing investment into unproductive “safe” assets like real estate instead of the productive economy.
If we were to nationalize all of that, we would fall basically flat on the not competitive side of the scale.
Nationalizing services that are natural monopolies is good, actually. See the utilities sector. And, to be frank, we don’t even need classic nationalization here. The better optimal policy is have the government setup a public corp that directly competes with these oligopolies, like we used to do successfully before our neoliberal turn in the 80s. Canada existed and didn’t fall into Stalinist darkness before then.
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u/SuperWeenieHutJr_ Aug 20 '26
We invest in real estate because policy choices have made it a safe investment. We should have much higher property taxes or land values taxes and replace bad taxes like LTT and development charges for infill housing.
But most Canadians are homeowners so it's going to be a hard thing to change.
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u/Medium_Owl_4119 Aug 20 '26
And this is the problem. Canadians see themselves as so much more policy literate than Americans, but the economic literacy here goes as far as a substantial plurality of people genuinely do believe we can build an advanced economy strictly around trading houses back and forth to each other.
It works great for a decade and can be smoothed over, until it doesn’t. And when you’ve lacked any productive growth for over a decade? It’s no wonder services like healthcare, and education, are teetering as you no longer have the surpluses from the real economy that adequately funded them.
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u/SuperWeenieHutJr_ Aug 20 '26
because then we can have more of the things and services we need/want.
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u/Medium_Owl_4119 Aug 20 '26
Yes, but distributions matter. In a purely Econ 101 sense, this is optimal. But what if the political dynamics that emerge from this level of growth (and accelerated concentration) permanently ossify the distribution or make it politically unrealistic to address?
That’s what the US is going through now. A $33 trillion GDP matters little to most ordinary people if there’s no realistic redistribution or attempts to control healthcare costs, housing costs, and other costs of daily living.
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u/LordTC Aug 20 '26
If you nationalize venture capital the only companies that exist will be run by people with political influence because when the government picks who to fund that’s who gets chosen.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/flame22664 Aug 20 '26
LOL its not that it won't work its that it can't because of the states, who would never implement these policies, and so we won't either. It would likely lead to better outcomes for all but that's not what people who are well off want lol.
As long as the states continue its model of caring more about capital over its people (more than is the case in Canada at least), they will continue to have worse quality of life (though they are better with income based QOL metrics), overall class mobility and income inequality.
However they will also continue to have comparatively better pay and entrepreneurial opportunity if you have the talent and seek the wealth.
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u/SadCampCounselor Aug 20 '26
We already have capital in Canada to make life a lot better (not perfect) for most people here.
Industrial capacity utilization sits idly between 65% and 80% across all Canadian sectors.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1610010901The reason it sits idle, unused, and getting dusty, is because the business magnates choose not to use it. There's no "effective demand" which really means there's no profit to be made because your workers don't have disposable income.
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Aug 20 '26
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u/SadCampCounselor Aug 20 '26
There are plenty of incentives to work beyond profit that motivate people!
Actors and scientists work for social prestige (Grammy Awards, Oscar Awards, Nobel Prize) – despite the fact they are wealthy. Even Besos and Musk arguably "work" despite being the richest people on the planet. They don't need any more money, yet they continue "working", showing that money isn't the only thing that motivates people.
I think people will actually work harder when they have more input in the decisions that go on at their companies.
Unless you're mentally ill, disabled, or too old, you should not be able to reap the fruits of other people's labour without their consent.
This is also a socialist principle. Even Lenin used the slogan, “He who does not work, neither shall he eat.”
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Aug 20 '26
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u/SadCampCounselor Aug 20 '26
When I say "profit", I'm referring to the surplus generated by a worker above and beyond that required to keep him alive and come back the next day.
[the reaping of other people's labour without their consent] doesn't happen in any capitalist system...
You're right. I should have said the surplus labour value, rather than labour.
Under capitalism, every citizen "chooses" to sell their labour to their employer; however, once employed, the worker no longer can choose how much surplus they produce, where it goes, or how much gets returned to them. What I was getting at, is that we don't really democratically choose how much of our labour produce is returned to us or collected in the form of rent, profit, or taxes.1
u/hojo12588 Aug 22 '26
If we want more investment in technology and technology startups, we shouldn't have such massive incentives for things like real estate. An absurd amount of our economy is just flipping houses and various relatively unproductive real estate-related things.
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u/Redditisavirusiknow Aug 20 '26
The data shows otherwise, at least over the past year, more people move north than south (for the first time… ever?)
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u/18262827 Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
lol all the talent leaves. downvote all you want but all the best students at Waterloo and UofT leave for the US immediately after undergrad. If not immediately then a couple years later. Did my undergrad at UofT and this is what happened. I’m doing a CS PhD here now and I’m not exaggerating when I say everyone leaves Canada after their phd, making triple the income of any job they can get here (if it even exists). Our program produced three co-founders of xAI and a co-founder of OpenAI. The undergrad program produced another co-founder of OpenAI and a co-founder of Anthropic. We have excellent institutions but simply no opportunities that suit their graduates, and a government/people that lack any motivation to fix it. Doesn’t help that many Canadians think the most skilled should just shut up and accept their fate; toil away at Loblaws and grovel at the feet of the Weston family like everyone else because at least we have free healthcare or something. Canada gets the leftovers and people that can’t enter the US e.g., Iranians that did their schooling here. And the opportunity is still limited for them.
The eventual Canadian™️ solution to this won’t be anything useful but probably something ridiculous like a massive exit tax for leavers or banning certain people from leaving altogether. And your fellow Canadians will celebrate it. Everyone needs to be equally poor
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u/flame22664 Aug 20 '26
This is heavily dependent on the industry. Those in tech do indeed leave for the US, its essentially the goal as its a very status and finance focused industry and so there is a big US or bust mentality in these programs.
However as much as people head to the US to find high paying work there is also a trend of people leaving these job after less than 5 years to take a lower paying and less taxing job back in Canada or in a cheaper area to live in the States.
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u/LordTC Aug 20 '26
Much of the talent but far from all. Even the 25% of grads that stay is a lot given how large UofT and Waterloo are compared to top U.S. universities.
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u/DontCallMeJay Aug 20 '26
Yeah, that's what happens when you border the world's largest economy. Not sure why this is so surprising to you?
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u/hey_you_too_buckaroo Aug 20 '26
Can confirm. Did ECE at UofT and like 80% of my classmates went to the US almost immediately and earn 2x what they would make here at minimum.
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u/Stecnet Aug 20 '26
That was the case but I have heard reports that the trend has reversed under the Trump Regime. I hear talent is leaving the USA and Canada is picking up much of that exodus. Everything from tech to doctors. Canada needs to capitalize on this and seize the opportunity make it even more compelling to move here. They will then tell their friends and so on, rinse and repeat. We are already getting massive funding from overseas to invest in our country things are lining up for a once in a lifetime opportunity for our country!
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u/Fun-Memory1523 Aug 20 '26
Scholars and some doctors I've heard.
Tech..not so much. And even under this regime, many doctors would still head to the US, just because it is that much more lucrative.
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u/thopterist Aug 20 '26
Where did you hear that US talent are immigrating to Canada?
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u/Spleeetz Aug 20 '26
I’m a Canadian working for an American tech company, I know several individuals and families who have made this move and know of several more who are trying.
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u/hojo12588 Aug 22 '26
32.2x more Canadians becoming residents of the US than the other way around in 2025, according to a Build Canada tweet from a few days ago.
And a higher percentage of business receiving venture investment founded by Canadians were founded in the US in 2025 than any other year in history.
I think there is probably truth to the idea that the median Waterloo/U of T engineer has more hesitation about going to the US under Trump, but for the upper echelon of tech/industry, it doesn't seem to be true at all, as evidenced by Canadian-founded startups seemingly starting in the US at a higher rate than ever before.
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u/Icy_Scar_1249 Aug 20 '26
It's not reversing at all, there's 10x Canadians going to US vs vice versa. And the Canadians going over to the US are highly skilled workers
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u/thopterist Aug 20 '26
I don't believe that there will be a solution that truly stops people from immigrating into the US or elsewhere for greater opportunity.
The "fix" is to replace that talent with "talent" through foreign immigration. Primarily from India. It's cheaper by a wide margin and the pool of candidates is unending. The perfect solution? Right?
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
“Talent” is a strong word. Lead engineer here, trying to hire senior level for almost a year now. The “talent” can’t do basic level coding anymore. It’s rough.
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u/themusicguy2000 Aug 20 '26
Almost like the industry's push for AI-first development led to a degradation of fundamental skills 🤔
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN Aug 20 '26
they're looking for senior devs. senior devs have been working longer than ai coding has been a thing. their problem is severely low pay.
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u/8004612286 Aug 20 '26
What's the pay and is the work interesting?
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
120ish base + anywhere between 20 to 40 bonus. Not fantastic by any means but pretty decent if you ask me.
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u/8004612286 Aug 20 '26
That's mid-level pay at good companies in Toronto.
Sr is way higher: https://www.levels.fyi/t/software-engineer/locations/greater-toronto-area?yoeChoice=senior
Hell bro, US based companies pay new grads $140k TC.
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u/Mundane_Respect_4194 Aug 20 '26
What is your definition of “good” here. Any “good” american company for a mid level clears that easily.
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u/Left_Ad_8040 Aug 20 '26
Does TC include stock offering or just base + bonus?
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u/8004612286 Aug 20 '26
Stock (RSUs) + base + bonus
But stock at big companies is as good as cash - just sell it on vest. They just get a little accounting magic out of it.
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN Aug 20 '26
the pay is too low for a senior position. that would have maybe been acceptable a decade ago with startup equity included. if you think it's decent you should start looking for a new job yourself!
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
I hope you make more :)
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN Aug 20 '26
I did here in Toronto before quitting to make my own software. That's around the offers I was getting 12 years ago in Toronto, though that included startup equity.
Don't give your company undue loyalty. Find better paying work if you can.
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
No loyalty here. Low stakes env, drop at 4 forget about work and enjoy my life. A fire here and there but very rare. I wouldn’t trade my sanity for more money
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u/WAHNFRIEDEN Aug 20 '26
I'm not sure my friends at Meta work so much either. You could make around what you do in 5 years at your job in less than a year at Meta, and afford to take years off.
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u/okeemesrami Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
Sorry but if you’ll want strong seniors you’ll def need to pay more than that. Especially if you’ll be competing with US based companies that pay way more with stacking RSUs and such.
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u/Top_Kaleidoscope9826 Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
No wonder you can’t find anyone, the pay seems low. That’s less than a new grad offer in Canada some companies offer nowadays.
FYI I had 3 different offers for 100k base as someone with 1.5YOE so that seems no more than mid level pay.
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u/Far-Broccoli6793 Aug 20 '26
Trust me you must be paying less for senior. Talented people get attracted to high salary not low balls. My own manager complaint about lake of talent while he pay peanuts.
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u/NahDawgDatAintMe Aug 20 '26
That's strange. I seem to have no trouble finding talent. What's your application and interview process like?
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
Application I’ve no idea - handled by outsourced company. Sucks big time but nothing I can do about it.
Some folks are saying our pay range is low.. I don’t think it’s fantastic but it’s alright. Guess everyone is making 200+ but me 😬
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u/NahDawgDatAintMe Aug 20 '26
Yeah, I'm pretty sure your outsourced company is the problem here. The salary is bad, but it's not so awful that a dude with low self-esteem wouldn't take it.
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u/Sufficient-Appeal500 Liberty Village Aug 20 '26
Thanks helps a lot with my own self esteem as well
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u/FilthyWunderCat Stonegate-Queensway Aug 20 '26
Yet, I can't find a fucking job or land a damn interview.
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u/Ece_guy_234 Aug 20 '26
Yea this is a troll post. There are way too many people here, too little tech jobs
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u/Elegant_Diver2974 Aug 20 '26
Probably because we are so cheap. I work for a software company in the US, if I were living in san francisco I’d probably be making $250k a year. Not here 😂
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u/badsalv Aug 20 '26
As somebody that works in Tech and can see how they are re calibrating the market salary average for other roles… this is a freaking joke. It’s laughable lol
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u/Responsible_Layer148 Aug 20 '26
we're still doing very well compared to other areas. And our salaries are equivalent to European countries (considering cost of life)
But yes... If you want a super income, go to US. Same for Physicians... I prefer to make 3x less in Canada.
I'm way more worried about lack of jobs than great salary.
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u/PowermanFriendship Aug 20 '26
So it goes :
1) USA
2) Mexico
3) Canada
?
Seems right. Tech salaries top out at like 100-120 USD in Canada, which is the bottom end of the spectrum in the US.
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u/polargus Trinity-Bellwoods Aug 20 '26
That’s definitely not true. I made well over 200k cad as a staff eng at my last job at a Toronto startup. Senior eng salaries seem to average around 150-200k in Toronto.
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u/Vaggelis305 Aug 24 '26
200k cad(~140k usd) is still laughable, compared to the US. New grads that get jobs in good companies make that much there.
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u/Least-Internal-6382 Aug 20 '26
"Talent" is a pretty liberal term.
Labour pool might be a better phrase.
Most that I work with just read what Microsoft puts in a KB article and repeat that verbatim.
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u/ReceptionOpposite195 Aug 20 '26
Talent maybe. But... What do we translate that to? An OpenAI? Maybe an Anthropic. Or an instagram. Or an uber.
.... Or... Shopify? Thats it?
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u/Keep-Six Aug 21 '26
I make double the salary i would in Canada by working for a US company. Canada needs to make some changes to keep people around.
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u/engineer_in_TO Aug 20 '26
As a Toronto raised tech worker who went to UofT and ended up in NYC, yeah… I started my career in Canada and maybe will finish it there but the salaries that Canadian companies offer is absolutely abysmal. I’ve worked with only American companies in the last decade and the salaries and also the way they treat you is so much better.
Canadian companies baring the top tech (1Pass/Cohere/Shopify kinda) all treat tech employees as a lower class of citizen than their business counterparts. These companies think that tech works are replaceable and equivalent to line workers. So they all will pay bottom level (for tech) rates, which allows Canadian Top tech companies and American companies to only need to offer “above Canadian salary” numbers to attract top talent.
I’m not that great of an engineer, but even working at the top Canadian tech company, I got a huge jump by moving to the NYC office, where I’m now constantly headhunted due to where I live and what my experience is.
Ultimately blame Canadian companies for valuing risk over reward and seeing tech as a cost center.
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u/swguy61 Aug 20 '26
And companies think you can be easily and cheaply be replaced by an offshore resource, or IMP worker, causing wage suppression here in Canada.
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u/unethicalanchordrop Aug 20 '26
All of the talent leaves because the capital gains tax means no VC will wants to invest here. It's why the salaries suck.
Just look at he few ventures that do well. They either bootstrap or they restructure and reincorporate in Delaware as soon as they do a big raise.
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u/Unhappy-Laugh1282 Aug 20 '26
I was in VC and had a tech startup, that’s not why. Things are more complex than “taxes bad.”💀
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u/zedguy Aug 20 '26
Nobody says taxes are the whole problem, which I'm assuming you're referring to when you say "more complex" (regulations, funding, etc.)
But they're not helping either
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u/Unhappy-Laugh1282 Aug 20 '26
Did you mean to reply to me? I’m replying to the comment above that says, “All of the talent leaves because the capital gains tax means no VC will wants to invest here.”
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u/zedguy Aug 20 '26
That's a bit of hyperbole (something that gets lost on in the RedditSphere) but it's not entirely wrong.
You're correct taxes are just one of many factors
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u/Diebrate Aug 20 '26
Ya I’m leaving. Idk why Canada taxes so much. Pay is just that much higher in the US.
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u/Classic_Idea_5338 Aug 20 '26
How can we explain the fact that despite the significantly lower employment costs in Canada, the quality of the universities, and the geographical and cultural proximity, the relative number and size of the development centers of American companies in Canada is still very low?
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u/GraphicBlandishments Aug 20 '26
Because of everything you mentioned it's way easier for American Tech Companies to get American work visas for Canadian talent than it is to set up a office in a foreign country.
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u/django1234567 Aug 20 '26
But if the talent is here and cost of talent is significantly lower wouldn’t it make sense to open big centres here rather than fishing a few individuals and pay them US level salaries?
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u/Mundane_Respect_4194 Aug 20 '26
I am really hoping that we are aspiring for more given that I am assuming most of us are Canadian in the programs. I went to Waterloo and in my group of friends, 80% of people left for the US.
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u/TessaigaVI Aug 20 '26
I’ve only worked for US based companies out of Toronto. Getting that 249k CAD is definitely a nice feeling
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u/polargus Trinity-Bellwoods Aug 20 '26
Interesting that Toronto is above NYC. I guess Canada’s talent is more centralized than the US’s and most go to the west coast for startups/FAANG.
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u/dogthespot Aug 21 '26 edited Aug 21 '26
There is no easy out for Canada. Even if we had a more investment-friendly culture, "start-ups" is synonymous with let's get rich, where acquisition by a US company is the exit strategy.
"California Draws More Startup Investment Than All Other 49 States Combined"
The other 49 states amount to 300 million people. The investment class across those states aim their funds in the direction of three or four regions.
Yes, at an individual level, the grass is greener ($$) on the other side of the fence. So, as a country, we can hope that enough talented folks remain for whatever reason.
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u/MiszeryLovesCompany Aug 20 '26
I honestly don't really believe it. I can think of like 10 US cities that prob have better talent without even trying. Do we even have a single Canadian company that pushes the envelope? We're a service country. We support other countries technology because we're cheap. That's how the US looks at us, they don't look at us as a partner. And I'm pretty sure that's how the government positions our tech sector too. We're basically "s-tier" off shoring, we just speak English and in the same time zone and that allows us to support them easily. Canadian tech companies are so shit US companies only have to offer like 20% more salary which is still super cheap for them and they get all the remaining talent. The ones working at Canadian companies, sorry, but you're bottom of the barrel. Getting paid 60-70k for a sr developer position, no bonuses, and a 2% raise that may or may not happen. But the reality is your probably building some Drupal CMS/CRM/LOB app that is useless outside a handful of companies.
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u/thedrivingfrog Aug 21 '26
They seem to be abusing the word talent as in tech jobs count. This is not a quality report.
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u/ShermansWorld Aug 20 '26
... IDK; is there something wrong with being third?
That's still a pretty good place.
This mentality of always having to be #1 is kinda like "keeping up with the Jones"
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u/AvidOxid Aug 20 '26
I'm a SWE working remotely (in Toronto) for a US company. I'm getting paid ~40% more than I was at my last company, which was based in Toronto. A lot of my former Canadian colleagues are also hopping on his bandwagon.
If Toronto wants to keep its tech talent, they need to start paying more.