I think the BS is pretty much established from the comments, so no point adding to that.
Last year, I spent a week in Toronto and I absolutely loved it. During a tour of the area, it was mentioned that the tech sector was growing, and that there are loads of initiatives to get tech workers into the city.
There seems to be some decent opportunities in Toronto, but it falls at the most basic hurdle. The salaries are too low, and the cost of property/rent is too high. It's a lovely place, but the world is full of lovely places.
I would say this comment is accurate. I just moved to Toronto. The cost of housing is obnoxious and makes the overall cost of living extremely high, and unfortunately salaries don't make up for it. There is no doubt about that. And of course the traffic is horrible.
However, Toronto has everything Canada has to offer in terms of big city life. It's got the hustle of a global big city. It's has amazing food and entertainment. If you live in Canada and like big, global cities, then there's not much choice.
I have to agree. Even if you don't speak French, there is less emphasis on money wealth, more on everyday important factors, and the city just has more history and is more relaxed without the money imperative injecting itself in everything. And there is a decent, diverse tech scene too, though language will be factor if you want to work locally.
I personally don't find the traffic that bad as someone who commutes from Mississauga to Toronto every day, but maybe I'm conditioned to think it's normal. What city are you comparing it to?
As a person who moved from Vancouver to Toronto, I really don't think this post grasps what opportunities the rest of Canada, nevermind North America or International, has available.
Toronto is expensive. I need to express that. Business operating costs will always be lower of you compare another city to one that is often ranked exceedingly expensive. Relative references are not appropriate since you don't have a baseline. So, use a baseline of what the average operating cost is.
Toronto is HARD to get around. My morning commute is over 1 hour of driving at 5:40am - 6:50am with some variations depending on weekday, accidents, and time of year. My shift starts at 10am. If I leave at 8am I would arrive at 10:30am and be late for work. I hope this perspective shows how hard it is to get into downtown Toronto and how bad their traffic is. (The office is located away from the GO train and there's free parking in case people are wondering why I drive instead of transit.)
Toronto is also a bit old in tech. When I came from Vancouver and went to meetups, I felt like someone had rolled the clock back by two years. It was an odd feeling. The community just felt... Behind. I think this comes from businesses not giving as much time for developers to explore new technologies, hence why there may be larger delays in new tech popping up in Toronto.
Businesses are... Conservative. Having worked in Vancouver and coming to Toronto there was a cultural change that needed to be made. Businesses operated with less focus on employee happiness and talent retention and more on "talent results" (read: work or replaced) and transparency on 3x salary ROI. Banks and conservative businesses practices are very much the norm in Toronto. Very helpful for a business but to an employee, Toronto has a lot of cons for workplace lifestyle.
If you live in Toronto, I recommend working remote with US companies. Or, if you are inclined to do so, move to Vancouver or Calgary. Because of these issues that Toronto presents, I have myself been planning on moving to Calgary in a year or two.
> My morning commute is over 1 hour of driving ... into downtown Toronto
I can't understand why you'd attempt to drive into the centre of a major city in the first place. That seems like obviously a bad idea. Why are you trying to do that? Where do you even park? Isn't there a train you can take?
There is. It would take over two hours of transit time for me. 10 minutes driving to a go station, 1 hour and a half on train, 20 minutes on TTC. Then walking time to office.
Vancouver is just a smaller city. Your instincts didn't work well for you when picking your current housing. Reasonable commute times are a huge factor in picking housing out here.
They were not instincts. They were heavily researched and strategic to maximize money saved and minimize transit times. I still stand by where I live and have thought about moving closer, but the data never suffices.
I have turned down two jobs because they were in Toronto. I don't want to commute or move my family there. We need more remote work and more work in other cities.
I moved from Toronto decades ago. Since then I've rejected offers constantly because, quite frankly, IMO, Toronto is a hole. I now find myself living north of Toronto, with limited career options but much happier near the 'outdoors' with my family.
As someone from Northern Ontario who moved to SW Ontario for work as a software dev - how did you do this? I'd love to move back home, but there are very few jobs, and the ones that do exist are dramatically lower salaries with outdated approaches (~45k, Visual Basic or C++98 vs ~80K, whatever web tech I want). Do you work remotely?
The trick is not look for work in a startup/dev environment, but in the institutional and corporate environment. Their are jobs and the payscale you desire, just not in the quantities you desire.
For instance, I was at my last position for 6 years. The last 3 of which, I was actively looking for work. It took a while, but I'm making equiv to Toronto wages in a new position.
But yes, the majority of postings are in the low rent payscale neighbourhood. Which is weird, because you'd think to attract skilled talent away from T.O., the scale would in fact be higher.
There isn't. I'll be working remotely as time progresses with my current company. And Calgary is looking very attractive to a first time homebuyer. Although income tax is a little higher, the lack of a provincial tax and cost of gas is major savings.
I think Calgary is a good choice for a place to live in Canada.
However, I don't agree that the meetups in Toronto show legacy technology thinking. I just went to a meetup at Shopify on Istio. Just Istio. Google and Microsoft have big presences. Shopify is a huge company on the cutting edge of tech. And there are tons of smaller startups that are doing great work, pushing the boundaries. There is also a lot of AI work going on as well. I don't completely get Blockchain, but Toronto has gone crazy for it.
I guess it could be true that there's a bit of culture difference in terms of East/conservative/older vs west/progressive/newer. However, it also seems to me there's a much stronger demand for software developers in Toronto - the salaries are higher.
Which tech/communities are you looking at? For example, I think the Elixir community is bigger/more active in Toronto.
Also I can't imagine that commute is better in Vancouver if you get a house that's just as far away.
I think outside of sf, most companies are in general really behind. The newness in sf comes from the fact that the city has a lot of startups. Companies that just start will choose the latest and greatest.
What do you think of Vancouver, with respect to SF and NYC? When living in the latter, Vancouver felt like the only other city I’d be happy to move to, probably because of its density.
Vancouver has a high quality of living. No need for a vehicle, TransLink is oddly rated the highest of transit systems. It's beautiful there. But, it comes with a financial price.
By far the biggest problem in Toronto is that we do not have a deep startup tech talent pool. They all leave for the SFBay.
Why? Startups here pay engineers 1/3 to half of what they'd make in the SFBay while only being ~25% less expensive. In real terms, I've heard that a "Sr. Engineer" is $75-85K CAD ($60K USD) where in at a typical SF startup (lower than FAANGs) you'd look at $130-140K+ USD.
Startups that get excited about low wages are rarely $B rocket ships. This makes the equity story difficult as there aren't employees who got rich from joining an early stage company. AND, the startups that did succeed also gave out less equity as it wasn't valued. Thus, a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Startups and large tech companies would get founded/move here if there's an overflow of top tier talent. There's talent but not overflowing.
Good Solutions:
* Startups should pay more.
* Toronto should attract a FAANG or Uber/Lyft/Airbnb to build a serious office here.
* Employees should hop around more.
* Import talent through Canadian visas for foreign workers (which also takes advantage of more stringent US H1-B visas)
Crazy Solution: End the TN visa forcing a FAANG to open an office in Toronto.
Originally from Toronto, lived in SF and ran a VC-backed startup from 2011-2016 and moved home to Toronto in April to found a startup doing robotaxi ops software. Plug: we're hiring.
#2 and #4 have already been done, haven't they? Amazon has a significant dev office in Toronto, and Canadian immigration rules are much more straightforward than the US ones.
A previous poster made the point of not having a major top tier tech firm with an HQ here as well. It's an interesting point I haven't thought of. I know MS is building a new big office. Google is planning a pretty large build via sidewalk labs. I need to do some research.
MS is not creating a new office. They are moving their head quarters from suburbs (Mississauga) to Downtown Toronto. They do plan to increase number of jobs from previous location though.
This is dishonest. I’d counter on almost every point. I’m speaking as someone who lived there for over 10 years. I’m back living in London, UK, the opportunity difference is a wide chasm. I’d like to be proven it’s really changed since I’ve been away but I visit fairly regularly to see family and don’t see it.
I'd agree although I'm not up to date on the situation. I applied for a couple of jobs in Toronto a couple of years ago. There seemed to be a lot of competition for few jobs. Taking jobs out of the equation, rent in London was flatlining, while Toronto was rising rapidly.
Right, I really want to believe it was true because with a young family now, London is difficult. Canada’s space is alluring, but no I don’t see it with respect to the economy and tech. Remote work or an online business would be the better way to make it work there probably.
Though it sometimes seems like it, Toronto didn’t become a worldwide tech hub overnight. In fact, it was a years-long process that led to Canada’s biggest city being mentioned alongside tech markets like New York and Silicon Valley.
Yeah, I'm going to need a citation for that being a thing even now. London, Berlin, Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Tel Aviv, Beijing, Singapore... but Toronto? Srsly?
As a former Toronto person, I am certain there is an intentional behind the scenes campaign to promote Toronto as a global destination. Some of the articles I've run across have been quite breathless in describing features that would be mundane in other places. Sure, it's a nice enough city, more or less a New York wanna-be but with most of the growth extending back only a few decades. It does not deserve to be compared alongside other cities with extended history, geographical features, etc. It's clear many of the publications that published these articles received a payoff, or an insider had influence.
You don't need to dig that deep. Brainstation sells bootcamps in downtown Toronto. If they can show that working in tech in Toronto yields crazy opportunities and salary, they'll get more people to buy their bootcamps.
If you look behind the stories and check on which company's blog or who wrote these praises to Toronto, you'll see they all have something to sell from people thinking that Toronto is the place to be. Usual incentives include: difficulty hiring cheap talent, astroturfing for more VC money, selling a Toronto-tech related product.
Brainstation is a web dev/data science bootcamp. This article is not written to speak to you, it's written to market Brainstation as the reader's ticket to a big $ career in Toronto.
Hundreds of people move to the city daily as job opportunities are not as plentiful outside the Greater Toronto Area. These could be international students, fresh college grads, people looking for a career change, etc. They've heard of blockchain and AI just enough to worry that they'll be left behind if they don't join "the tech industry".
So of course Brainstation will mention AI and Blockchain. These articles are lead generations pieces for their training programs. For SEO keyword purposes alone, they would have mentioned it.
Toronto has serious housing, traffic, transit and salary problems. It is heavily dependent upon real estate speculation to bolster it's economy and it is quickly being picked a part by the province. This article is trash.
I agree with everything you've said, and that first sentence is a killer, but I don't quite get the "picked apart by the province" part. Could you expand on that a bit?
Ontario PM Doug Ford is getting revenge on Toronto municpal government. There's a little bad blood with his brother and them. A little is an understatement.
Imagine 40 or so co-workers cheering behind your back that your brother died of cancer. I hope this gives a good perspective as to how he may be feeling.
Thanks. I agree, there is some kind of vendetta. However, messing with Toronto's economy could have disastrous effects. I guess we'll see how it plays out. :)
Sorry, I didn't mean to connect the economy with what Doug Ford's government is doing, but his/their actions will ultimately hurt the economy too, it's just not clear yet. What was I alluding to was the decimation of city council and uploading of the TTC to the province. I'm sure there will be more nonsense to come.
This is nonsense. Toronto is a backwater in tech. There is no first-tier tech company headquartered here. Heck, there isn't even a second-tier company. Plus the pay is peanuts. That article is a PR plant at best.
Indeed. There's a dead reply to your comment that mentions eastern european salaries being comparable. That might be a bit of an exaggeration but there are outsource to Canada companies that, I think, are mainly in the KW area and are not really that much more expensive than eastern europe (think like $90k per head vs $70k per head)
I moved to Toronto from Calgary four years ago to do my PhD at the UofT. I love Toronto.
* Toronto has a legacy as one of the best places to do ML, and while it felt like it was losing momentum, the Vector Institute's opening has infused the academic community with incredible energy. Vector's been recruiting top researchers from around the world, but particularly from the US -- there are a number of new Vector members who've come from the Boston/Cambridge area. The academic community in Toronto will only become stronger over the next few years, given how hostile the US has become to students from abroad.
* The strength of the academic community is fuelling a burgeoning startup scene. While it's still early days, there are a number of accelerators associated with the UofT and other entities, so given the talent coming out of the academic system here, I think the community will grow rapidly.
* Quality of life is fantastic. The food and music scenes are world-class, stemming largely from how diverse Toronto is. Downtown Toronto feels like a mixture of Manhattan and Brooklyn, just on a smaller scale. I don't own a car, and only use the subway perhaps once a week -- everything is in easy walking distance.
As to downsides:
* We have a reasonably cold winter from November to March. It's far less harsh than Calgary, though.
* Rent is expensive and rising. I've lived in the downtown core for all four years on a grad student's salary, so it's possible to make it work. But finding accommodations seems only to be getting harder.
* The political interests of the city are often overwhelmed by the sprawling suburbs surrounding it that make up the Greater Toronto Area. The new provincial government seems to be intent on attacking Toronto at every opportunity.
I've had the privilege to travel around the U.S. and Europe quite a bit during my PhD, and it's made me realize how well Toronto compares to the rest of the world. I plan to settle here after graduating -- the tech scene here seems like it's going to explode over the next decade, and it will be a lot of fun to be part of it.
You need to realize that you, and your peers at Vector, are the exception, not the rule. I'ver heard Uber ATG is headhunting people with $500K/year salaries, right after PhD graduation.
Toronto's tech scene is not limited to that narrow and elitist scope of workers.
I think it's easy to dismiss Toronto, but the quality of life items you listed are absolutely correct, as far as I'm concerned. If only housing weren't so expensive and we had a better transit system.
Quality of life is low in Toronto IMHO. It's impossible to find a decent apartment to rent for most: not necessarily because rents are crazy high (2k/mo for a 1BR poorly built condo anyone?) but because landlords are so picky that if you don't offer more than the asking rent include a personal letter, and are luckier than the other 50 applicants, you'll never get a place to live in. The city is also overly crowded and polluted. Traffic is beyond ridiculous, cycling is a nightmare (most dangerous city to cycle in North America). People here are obsessed with money and with living to work. There aren't that many parks and green spaces but a lot of concrete, noise and pollution. A significant number of employers demand that you incorporate so they can "hire" you as a freelancer rather than an employee, and so that the tax fallout of being reclassified as an employee is all on you (because you incorporated.) Overtime is rampant, and most of my colleagues are happy to oblige. Really, Toronto is not a nice place to live. It's an interesting experience because of how diverse it is (I've never seen so many people from so many countries, and I've lived abroad a lot!), but don't come here for quality of life or to make a good living.
I'll take all brainstation articles with a grain of salt. They are a bootcamp school and thus they will want to promote Toronto's tech scene to attract people who are not in tech to take their courses in order to switch their careers.
Another BS article. If you are a developer and have even an ounce of ambition better to pack your bags and leave for the states. Leaving the city was the best decision I ever made. I'd be willing to move back if the salaries are double what they currently are. Toronto is just waay to expensive a city to live in for someone in a modest salary and living in the surrounding suburbs is a hellish experience if you expect to commute to downtown on a daily basis. Not a fan of the urban design in the greater toronto area, sprawl as far as the eyes can see.
I both agree with the general sentiment of this piece and the backlash in the comments against its overly optimistic view. My gut sense as a newcomer to Toronto is that the _trajectory_ looks amazing, but there's simply no doubt that any comparison to the tech super clusters like Bay Area and NYC is totally disingenuous right now.
I'd love to get some advice from fellow tech migrants like myself that have moved from one of those places (NYC in my case) to a less vibrant but still honestly quite exciting environment like Toronto. Accepting a giant pay cut while still tying myself to a corporate 9-5 here is a depressing thought, and I'm not yet convinced that I feel right simply working remotely for US based companies, even if compensation opportunity is on average 1.5-2x better. Has anyone found a good balance between those worlds? Something that gives back to the local tech ecosystem but also taps in to the the better market potential to the south? I suppose building a business here and selling to the US, but trying to stay headquartered in Toronto is one way to do that, but any other thoughts?
I am in a similar situation, and settled on start-up life. AI here is strong, and there are a fair number interesting companies built around it. Get into one, and you’ll have a lot of freedom to guide the tech environment. Compensation is still limited, but a decent exit can at least reduce the bleed. It’s suboptimal, but I do appreciate how teachable my coworkers are.
That makes me feel better. Joining an AI startup is exactly what I ended up doing, so it's good to have someone in a similar situation to end up with the same answer!
If Toronto doesn’t appeal to you, check out the Kitchener/Waterloo area (about an hour from downtown Toronto). Been living here for 17 years and love it. Very tech friendly and educated community.
This article makes me think of some people who are the only one laughing at their own jokes at parties. If you have to tell me you're funny/smart/successful you probably aren't.
This is scary. People should read about what Canada did to the visual effects industry with outsourcing. Big budget movies now purchase all their effects from Canada because Canada decided to subsidize the industry. It's no joke.
Essentially if you live in Toronto and you're working for a company in SF you are getting half the salary.
I'm noticing that in SF, a ton of companies are outsourcing to Canada. Canada already pretty much destroyed the vfx industry with outsourcing. I'm curious what the future holds here.
Advertising agencies have long been outsourcing work to Canadian companies. The ad/media/comms industry is highly consolidated, where a few large companies own a bunch of small agencies and move projects around. The motivation is what you'd expect; lower costs, but same time zone, English-speaking, familiar org culture.
Surprised there hasn't been more of it in the tech space as yet. I keep hearing that the future of software dev is microservices, so if that allows for more remote work where teams don't have to collaborate as closely, I could see growth in development outsourcing.
Last year, I spent a week in Toronto and I absolutely loved it. During a tour of the area, it was mentioned that the tech sector was growing, and that there are loads of initiatives to get tech workers into the city.
There seems to be some decent opportunities in Toronto, but it falls at the most basic hurdle. The salaries are too low, and the cost of property/rent is too high. It's a lovely place, but the world is full of lovely places.