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Canada's Play For Immigrant Tech Talent (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Axios report: When it comes to high-skilled immigration, the U.S.'s loss could be Canada's gain. Canada recently launched a Global Skills Strategy visa program to make it easier for its companies to bring in foreign workers with specific technology or business skills. The program allows firms to have a position pre-approved and get visas within two weeks -- a stark contrast to the months-long U.S. visa process. Why it matters: The Trump administration has moved to restrict the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. on work visas, which worries big tech and consulting firms that use the H-1B visa program to fill technical and specialized jobs. Canada's government is seizing the moment to provide an option for engineers, executives and other tech talent who may no longer qualify for an H-1B visa or who simply don't feel comfortable staying in the U.S. Open for business: Navdeep Bains, Canada's Minister of Innovation, told Axios that Canada wants to be open to ideas, open to trade, and "more importantly, we want to be open to people" in order for companies to grow. Bains stopped short of framing the program as a way to poach talent from Silicon Valley, instead saying that the government is "open to whatever region has talent."
Theodp isn't going to like this. Plus they are probably teaching kids how to program too. The horrors!
Great opportunity for all those Americans who want to get away from the current government to leave. Of course, they have to have a useful skill.
Canada doesn't have any Egg McMuffins.
They don't have any Canadian Bacon in Canada.
Vancouver has the mildest climate. But no one can afford it.
Which part of Canada is similar in climate to Silicon Valley and/or California?
Guess that depends on what you define as comfortable.
Barely living above poverty on a six-figure income, dreaming of the day you could actually afford to buy a house or save for retirement is a rather unique climate that is somehow justified with little more than Califuckinawesome weather...
So if Trudeau is a Marxist, just what does that make the left-of-the-Liberals NDP?
I know it's the typical internet thing to go for whatever term is the absolute worst, but seriously, calling anyone who's even slightly left of center a Marxist means that by the time an actual f*cking Marxist comes along, you've got nothing better to throw at them. The left is guilty of it too - call everyone to the right of you a fascist, and by the time some actual fascists come along, nobody pays as much attention because they're used to ignoring it.
That there really isn't that great an influx of useable and creative (key word creative) talent on these programs, but that it merely gets used to bring in cheap, lower quality labor to help drive down the prevailing wage.
You guys have fun with that.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Salary is; the salary gap from top tier city (e.g. Toronto) in Canada cannot compare with the likes of NYC or SF/SV. Salary gap is easily 30-50% with exchange rate, which makes it pretty hard to recruit when a candidate for literally makes 2x in US.
H1-B is not a good visa for competing with tech talent. Now, I have certainly worked with some very bright people, even PhDs, who are here on H1-Bs. But, I've also worked with slightly shrewder PhDs who have negotiated to get O-1 visas (not that difficult if you have a PhD in an in demand field). It seems to me that the problem isn't the immigrants, it's the visa. Change the visa, kick out the outsourcing mills and indentured servants, keep the high-tech talent and give them a green card. That's a solution that puts America first.
Barely living above poverty on a six-figure income, dreaming of the day you could actually afford to buy a house or save for retirement is a rather unique climate that is somehow justified with little more than Califuckinawesome weather...
I already do that on a five-figure income in Silicon Valley.
Poor countries are poor precisely because they fail to use the talents of skilled people. There is no incentive to be productive and innovative when your earnings will be taken away by a corrupt kleptocratic government.
Canadian citizens will lose as the H-1Bs take all the jobs.
This is the lump of labor fallacy. There is not a fixed number of jobs in an economy, and immigration tends to create more jobs than are taken.
The Trump administration has moved to restrict the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. on work visas, which worries big tech and consulting firms that use the H-1B visa program to fill technical and specialized jobs.
When in the more recent past has anyone used H-1B for that? Is that even legal?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Barely living above poverty on a six-figure income, dreaming of the day you could actually afford to buy a house or save for retirement is a rather unique climate that is somehow justified with little more than Califuckinawesome weather...
I already do that on a five-figure income in Silicon Valley.
Hate to break it to you, but US poverty line income is five figures ($22,162 for a family of four with two children under 18).
Why? 70k a month ain't that bad. Or is that before tax?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Go live in Vancouver, then. They don't have winter there.
Don't you ever take a job in Iceland. Or anywhere in Europe north of Italy for that matter.
But on the up side, you got sunlight from 4am to 10pm in the Summer, too.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I work in tech in canada, and there is a shortage of skilled labor, in many areas. I wish i would get more resumes from Canada, but i don't.
You aren't getting resumes because you're offering peanuts. Increase the salary to market levels. If you can't afford it your company is too inefficient to survive.
Great opportunity for all those Americans who want to get away from the current government to leave. Of course, they have to have a useful skill.
There is only one skill you will ever need to get any job anywhere in the world that you want:
You need the skill to be willing to work for less than anyone else who wants the job.
It's just like the two guys getting chased by a bear . . . you don't need to run faster than the bear . . . just faster than the other guy.
High Tech "bosses" lie like rugs when they claim that they want to attract high skill folks. All that they really want are cheaper "human" resources.
I say we haul those execs up in front of a Congressional investigative committee, and ask them, Big Tobacco Style, if they truly believe that cigarettes are healthy and non-addictive. In this case, ask them if they need to attract the best talent, or if they are just "bottom fishing"; trying to see have far they can push down IT wages.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If those H1-Bs work somewhere else and take all the jobs anyway, isn't it then arguably better for Canada to import them into Canada where they can pay Canadian taxes. The notion that everyone in the U.S. or Canada is perfectly capable of any tech job if only education were better is foolhardy at best. In the past, one could always get a factory job, or if you couldn't even manage that as hired farm labor, but most of those jobs are going as we product labor saving devices capable of performing all of those low skill tasks.
At best, importing high skill labor and taxing it to keep the worst off from turning to drugs, crime, and other things that have far higher costs than taxes isn't a bad plan. The best plan would be figuring out a good way to reduce the number of people who are incapable of adding value to a society from being born into it. A good second is getting intelligent, high skill workers to drive down the cost of keeping the incapable as wards of the state. The worst is thinking that home-grown talent can fill all the jobs when it's estimated that 15%+ of high school graduates are functionally illiterate.
For a senior position near Silicon Valley (admittedly Sacramento is a bit cheaper, but still), they should be looking at around $150-200k. $70k is way out.
so Vancouver then
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Hate to break it to you, but US poverty line income is five figures ($22,162 for a family of four with two children under 18).
The poverty level in Silicon Valley and San Francisco is $100K per year for a family of four.
The nation simply cannot support a wholesale migration of the U.S. technology sector - the threat is comparatively small.
except the value of labour itself goes down in the process.
I can't speak for everyone, but I have no problems with immigrants coming to Canada to work, but they should be paid just as well as Canadians would expect to be paid for the same job. So if the average Torontonian expects $100k/year but some person from India comes in and is happy with $50k/year, then we have a problem.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Um, Canada is NOT only the great white north. Toronto is quite warm on average, especially recently. It's not as hot as California and we get snow 2-2.5 months out of the year on average (the ski business are not pleased), but given how hot California is likely to be this summer, that is a good thing. Toronto is tech central for Canada BUT...housing prices have been so crazy it's reflecting San Francisco. Good news on that though (unless you own property): Markham and Richmond Hill (2 neighbouring cities that people frequently commute to Toronto from) appear to have burst their real estate bubble (their housing prices were as expensive as Toronto) and inventory has been sitting as long as a month (and counting). So...that could be changing in 6-12 months. So maybe it IS a good time. Don't go to Vancouver: their living costs are higher and jobs pay less. The sweet spot for cost of living may be Montreal: 30% less than Toronto, not as many jobs that there are enough. You can live in Montreal and not speak any French (outside of Montreal is another story). They had major flooding this year (2k homes ruined, but are getting a 1.8 Billion cash infusion for repairs. That may boost things in jobs and it's close to New York. It may be a good time to check them out. Anyway, there are likely opportunities here and the tech world is very strong here. Check it out. I have 2 family members who went to San Fran and are leaving after being forced to live in Oakland due to insane prices for rent in San Fran. So back to New York for them. Maybe they too will consider Toronto or Montreal.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
We've been having fun with it for decades and decades. The key is to be welcome to them, embrace their culture and contributions, and they turn into great Canadians of their own volition.
"Old man yells at systemd"
The reason why we don't let any immigrant in to work is we want to protect American jobs. On average, most H1B1 visa holders get paid about 10% less than American workers. I suggest a simple solution. 10% foreign worker tax on employers.
3 Steps:
1) Offer a new visa that lets you work in America, but your employer must pay an additional 10% tax beyond all normal taxes. If the employer fails to pay this tax, it is treated as if they themselves cheated on their personal taxes.
2) These visas last for up to 7 months, and then you have to leave the country for at least 3 months before you apply again. You can't get one if you are sick or pregnant at the time of application.
3) These visas are unlimited. We would give out 500 million of them if that many people asked.
This solves most of the immigration problems. It lets employers hire people if they can't find Americans willing to do the job, but won't let foreigners take our jobs willy-nilly. It kills the industry supporting illegal immigration by removing their customers, negating the need for a fence, let alone a wall. It gives our country a nice extra boost of cash to pay for any additional expenses, or (more likely) reduce the deficit.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yeah. This is just to drive wages down. There are a lot of unemployed engineers in Canada.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Uuuuh, that is about HALF the salary for that area. You know who gets the other half? The outsourcing company.
Why? The job climate in Canada isn't that great so why would they need to bring in workers if the whole "retrain workers" works??? So many under lying issues that this story doesn't want to touch so they write a piece to bash the US.
Right now our problem in Canada is finding anyone skilled in certain areas, regardless of salaries. Decent data scientists, for example, are close to impossible to recruit. Despite very high salaries and benefits, enrolment in computer science was down, last i checked.
Even in non-tech, there is a labor shortage. Unemployment in Quebec is at the lowest since we record it, with all the boomers retiring. Ive talked with numerous factory managers that are looking to robotize, not to lower cost, but because they just cant find employees, regardless of compensation.
Just like California!
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Winter weather anywhere in Canada except the south west coast (Vancouver/Victoria area) sucks. Vancouver and Victoria get rain then. That's lousy, but at least you don't need winter tires, a parka, and snow boots for 4+ months of the year, and then get super humid with a zillion bugs the rest of the time. Cost of living is very high in Vancouver, and high in Victoria. Still, if you're coming from the Silicon valley, it's probably not that different.
I know several tech people that have left Canada to work for companies like Google and Epic games and other big tech firms. Even if this program merely stems the flow or evens out the egress, it may be a win.
the question isn't, do immigrants help the economy?, but rather, Does any of that economic benefit trickle down to the 99%? Some of it does in the form of McJobs supporting the white collar immigrant workforce. But so far in America almost all of those gains have gone to the top 1%. That's not me being a libtard, it's a fact.In America widespread income inequality and a lack of social services makes immigration a raw deal. Your entire quality of life here depends on your job.
Canada's a bit different. They at least has single payer and a moderately functional safety net (albeit not one as robust as the Scandinavian countries AFAIK). They might see some benefit. It depends on whether their ruling class can exploit the divide between city & rural voters to cut those services like they did in America. They're definitely trying.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Seems to be a US specific problem. In Europe there are efforts to attract talent that might otherwise have gone to the US too, e.g. France is making a big push. It doesn't seem to result in depressed wages for "native" skilled workers, if anything it has been shown to push their wages up.
It seems like if a skilled worker is needed for a particular project but not available, the project doesn't happen and other people who would have worked on it don't get employed either. Plus the rules here don't create the kind of indentured servitude that the US has.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
You could at least read what I write before answering. The joke isn't that hard to notice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That would be Vancouver BC (yearly average temperature of 50.7 deg F vs 57.3 deg F for SF) but without the drought (so really more like Seattle/Portland climate-wise). Although programmers spend all their time indoors anyways so I'm not sure why climate matters.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
"immigration tends to create more jobs than are taken."
Yes, but that doesn't benefit the residents of the country receiving immigrants.
There are more jobs because immigrants suppress wages. It's supply and demand. If you have people who are willing to supply their labor at a lower price, demand for labor increases. But the rest of us laborers are stuck on the same supply curve as the immigrants.
San Jose? I thought that the highest Indian population was in NJ. Last I looked, Silicon Valley was split b/w Indians, Chinese, Vietnamese & Koreans.
It's right over hear.
Since the vast majority of H1-B visas end up going to junior and mid-level people at best as opposed to the "highly skilled" pool of people that the system was ostensibly designed for, they're all yours Canada! Enjoy!
Earth is a single point of failure.
"Afford a home" as in "live in your mom's basement"?
When Avro cancelled the Arrow and the AvroCar, Canada lost many talented engineers and the US got all these people to work in the space program. Talk to some old timer Canucks and they are still fuming over Diefenbaker.
mfwright@batnet.com
Canada can't possibly absorb a lot of IT workers - there are not enough jobs for them. Unless more US companies open Canadian offices and create jobs to be filled with these H1B losers this will go nowhere. But this would be hardly different from traditional outsourcing.
This simply is not true. There is no labor shortage, and in fact the very idea of a "labor shortage" is pure lunacy; it cannot exist. The only thing that can exist is a shortage of labor willing to work for the wages offered.
Despite very high salaries and benefits,
Wrong. Canada is infamous for paying peanuts for tech jobs. That's why so many Canadian tech workers move south of the border to work in the US, despite a much worse social safety net and much higher healthcare costs. Those worse conditions are much more than made up for when you can get double or triple the salary in the US than in Canada.
Ive talked with numerous factory managers that are looking to robotize, not to lower cost, but because they just cant find employees, regardless of compensation.
Again, that's bullshit. These employers aren't offering enough money, plain and simple. If they offer $10M per year, I guarantee they'll find someone. They just don't want to pay what it takes to find qualified people.
Yeah, the article and the summary seem to be anti-Trump, pro H1B, but I'm left scratching my head as to exactly who this is/ever was supposed to be good for. It's definitely good for the immigrants, because they have massively expanded employment opportunities. Is it good for Canadians? I guess it's good for the Canadians who own tech/engineering companies but aren't themselves much interested in tech/engineering and just want the money. Not so good for the Canadian techs/engineers who are suddenly competing with the entire world, strictly non-reciprocally. So I guess I'm supposed to be empathetic to the immigrants who have expanded job opportunities but not empathetic to the Canadians who have reduced job opportunities?
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
and then get super humid with a zillion bugs the rest of the time.
We need to work on genetically engineering dragonflies so there's a lot more of them and they're more resistant to whatever things in the environment are hurting their reproduction. Dragonflies are great for eating biting insects.
do they have a good min pay level and do they need to do a real search for local workers first?
We'd enforce our immigration laws strictly and kick out illegal immigrants, instead of harboring 10-20 million illegals and dreaming up new ways to let them stay.
We'd give strong preference to immigrants and workers with high skills, instead of having a race- and family based immigration system.
We'd cut the Medicare/Medicaid budget in half, or alternatively, cover all Americans on the current Medicare/Medicaid budget.
How about it?
Oh wait, the tax bit was meant to be a joke? o.O
when it comes to integrating pieces of shit that don't want to integrate, are less intelligent than average, and have a higher propensity for committing violent crimes.
I don't think Canada's looking to import US white trash. We're waaaay over our quota on those.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
After you realize that most post-docs don't make so much, and are far more concerned with the sweet sweet reward of Single Payer National Healthcare that Canada has, you realize that, after they come to the US to get their PhD or Masters, they are going to Canada to work.
Sad.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Sounds like you've been hurt before. Sorry. Want to talk about it over a double double and a maple glaze? Might make you feel better.
Perhaps the same corrupt bonus culture that has dominated the US is now looking north.
It is sad that Canada wants to gut its middle class.
It should make for some interesting elections there.
In the US, the original intent of the H-1B visa was to be a safety valve to find and hire the most talented people you could find regardless of their current location. I actually know several people whose employers used it for this purpose. But, it has been shown that all the body shops use it to bring in cheap labor. The visa rules state that the minimum salary is $60K, and it never got adjusted for inflation. So, say you're a company in San Francisco and have to pay your IT staff $200K a year just to keep their heads above water. TCS or Infosys or Cognizant will come around and offer you 2 "qualified resources" for the same price, and you get to wash your hands of the IT department. It's not surprising they win outsourcing deals.
Hopefully Canada won't repeat the same mistake. I doubt it though -- there's no point in participating in politics unless you have millions of dollars to buy the laws you want. I'm sure all the big companies have purchased themselves nice loopholes similar to the ones we have. It's a shame too, because I would move to Toronto or Montreal in 2 seconds if I could find a good job.
You're making the mistake of thinking that we can just wave a magic wand and suddenly everyone can be a high-skill professional. It doesn't work like that and there's a percentage of every population that is less capable than the rest. If you live in a society where you just need to be able to do some low-skill work like subsistence farming in order to get by then you'll be able to get on well enough. But if you live in an advanced, industrialized society, at some point there won't be any skilled labor position you can be trained to hold.
People are not equally capable interchangeable parts. There's always going to be a percentage that aren't even capable of getting through high school unless you lower the bar so much as to make a high school diploma worthless. Trying to hold people up to impossible standards isn't going to work.
The problem is that at this point, you can't go around calling yourself a Feminist without taking on the mantle of Marxist at the same time. Despite however Feminism may have began, now, in the current year, it's entirely immersed in Marxist thinking.
Whether you think Marxist thought is bad in and of itself it a whole other question. But Trudeau boldly and proudly proclaimed his Feminism, which by extension makes him a Marxist. Scratch any Feminist and you'll find the commie underneath.
4+ months of the year? Clearly not southern part like Toronto or Montreal. And a "zillion" bugs? Curious where you are in Canada, friend. Recently Toronto is getting a LOT of rain recently. (to the point it's reminding me of Japan during the rainy seasons minus the hurricanes). Wonder what the rain is like in Vancouver now.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
> Is it good for Canadians? I guess it's good for the Canadians who own
> tech/engineering companies but
Just stop and think about it for even a second....
Do you think the economy would be better off if we stopped teaching engineering?
Because that would increase demand for the few that were left and drive up their wages.
Or do you think that training more engineers might lead to more engineering firms? Which leads to more employment, which leads to more open positions, which leads to more offers, which leads to higher wages?
Because when I look around the planet, it looks a lot more like the second of those two options is true. It certainly seems to be the case in Silicon Valley, and all the other mini-valleys too.
Honestly, your line of reasoning is so brain dead I have to conclude you're not an engineer - god do I hope that's the case.
> you don't need winter tires, a parka, and snow boots for 4+ months of the year,
You don't need that in Toronto any more either. Not for the last decade.
> with a zillion bugs
There are no bugs in Toronto. I'm serious, it's one of the first things I noticed when I moved in. That and how my asthma basically disappeared, which I guess is due to pollen.
hey bud, along the toronto-waterloo corridor there are three world class universities that teach a multitude of engineering subjects. We teach plenty of engineering and our engineers ARE having a hard time finding work. I am a recent graduate of university in Canada and many of my fellow students are having trouble finding work.
The problem is that Canada is refusing to learn from the united states and hoe the H1B visa's were used to drive wages down. It has already been happening and will continue to degrade even furthur.
Our largest problem up here is that our leader may be more socially adept in the eyes of the general public but yours is more intelligent. Ours cant even follow through on one of his main campaign promises (changing our electoral system)
You need the skill to be willing to work for less than anyone else who wants the job.
... a no brainer actually.
In your world. The rest of the world is quite different.
No one is replacing my job because he is cheaper. Actually I was the first applying for it who could prove in an interview that he has the required qualifications.
So: the job offer is closed. No one can even apply to it
I terminated about 10 open applications today and canceled one phone interview.
If I need a new job, it takes me 3 - 5 days to get one and rarely more than a month.
And: I get the price I want, as I'm applying to an actual open position. I'm not replacing someone who charged more. I either apply to a complete new position, or to a position where the previous person simply left.
My job gets replaced when I quit the job. But usually my position simply vanishes when the project is finished.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
This simply is not true. There is no labor shortage, and in fact the very idea of a "labor shortage" is pure lunacy; it cannot exist. The only thing that can exist is a shortage of labor willing to work for the wages offered.
That is bollocks.
From where should a high skilled developer come?
Hu? They are not there. Simple. That had nothing to do with wages.
Your particular company, can offer a super high wage to get some developer switch to you from another company.
Now the other company has an open job offer and can not find one.
The shortage is still there, only wages have increased, and only some other company is at the losing end.
To prevent labourer shortages you need to plan education better, as a country/ministry of education. Does the US even have a 'ministry of education'.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Hey...let Canada learn from our lessons...
That there really isn't that great an influx of useable and creative (key word creative) talent on these programs, but that it merely gets used to bring in cheap, lower quality labor to help drive down the prevailing wage.
Well, it becomes a tool for corporation to dump the wage down because how the way the program is currently working in the U.S... Corporations have already learned and exploited the loop hole of the program for a long time, but no one (from both sides) does anything to fix it but rather use it to their political advantage.
I don't know how the way the program works in Canada, so I wouldn't make an assumption like you do.
> Or is that before tax?
Major taxes in Canada are *slightly* lower than the US overall. The tax brackets are actually lower, but kick in at lower numbers. Offsetting this is that there are many fewer write-offs, most notably home mortgages.
We also pay for health care through our taxes, so that's on top. However, as has been pointed out endlessly on both sides of the border, we pay less on average. We do not get a drug plan, however, although many companies offer that as a perk and government versions are slowly coming in here. I understand the average out-of-pocket for health insurance in the US is around $5000 circa 2010 (not including deductibles and copays), but I really don't know what the comparable rate is up here.
Then there's the GST/HST/etc, which adds another 5 to 13% to almost everything. I won't even try to explain that one - a donut has GST, a dozen donuts doesn't because then it becomes "food" instead of a "snack food" (I shit you not). That's difficult to compare because its the equivalent of several state-level taxes in the US, including sales taxes, business taxes and so forth. Whether this is higher or lower really depends on where you live.
In the end, if you make less than $82,000 a year USD, you'll pay less tax in Canada. Over that you're better off in the US. If you own a home, the advantage line moves depending on how highly leveraged you are.
>integrating pieces of shit that don't want to integrate
If you read the post above yours, you'd see that Canada really doesn't care if you want to integrate or not. So long as they don't commit crimes and don't cause problems, nobody cares what it is that your selection of culture wants of you.
>are less intelligent than average
That is doubtful, even if if they are, again, if they're not committing crimes, if they are earning a living, and don't cause problems, nobody cares in Canada.
>and have a higher propensity for committing violent crimes.
Canada has a long history of kicking immigrants out of the country for seriously breaking the law.
Maybe your country should try those ideas out and see how it works for you?
It is a race to the bottom. Companies don't want long term retention these days; they want short term point tools (employees) Incentives to stay such as pensions and retirement vesting are relics. It's a shame since they don't seems to value institutioanl knowledge anymore. I can do your RF layout, but there really isn't any RF (distributed circuit) layout on phones, other than power and signal integrity. All the RF is in the antenna integration. The rest is RFIC.
That's like saying most people can afford to buy whatever they want by simply spending all the money they have. That's now how it works. When you say you can't afford something doesn't necessarily mean you don't have the money for it. Similarly, it makes no sense to offer more than what the employee is worth to them as a business.
Iceland is actually not particular cold in winter.
Germany, France etc. has no winters more since decades.
If I would live in France I would spent my somers in Brittany and my winters in Provence.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
> Toronto is tech central for Canada BUT...housing prices have been so crazy it's reflecting San Francisco.
Vancouver laughs and pats your cute little head over the housing prices...
Just did a search on realtor.ca for detached homes in Toronto within a 7 km radius of downtown and there are 171 detached properties under $750,000. A similar search in Vancouver shows 3... one of which is a houseboat in Coal Harbour with no land, and the other two are on infamous Musqueam land that you lease from the band for "only" $35,000 per year. Upping the cost to $1M adds another 3 listings. Even upping the threshold to 1.5M only shows 142 listings. All in all if I was looking to buy, Toronto looks way better from a price perspective. And your tech jobs pay about 20% better too.
That said, neither Toronto nor Vancouver are anywhere near the crazy of San Fran yet. Yet. Give it time.
> Talk to some old timer Canucks
In eastern Canada, maybe. Talk to them out west and it's universally "good riddance". There it was seen as a massive and horribly expensive labor welfare program.
I know several tech people that have left Canada to work for companies like Google and Epic games and other big tech firms. Even if this program merely stems the flow or evens out the egress, it may be a win.
Most of the folks I know that have left Canada did it for higher wages and more opportunity. I suppose Canada can attempt to backfill with immigrants from other nations, but I suspect in the best case all it will do is create a "discount" Silicon Valley (similar to India, but which isn't 12.5 timezones away).
A better strategy would be for Canada figure out how to attract more investment money, not discount employees to prevent their current brain-drain (and might accelerate their current problems). Actual investment (and tax incentives) is how Canada advanced their movie industry. The Canadian movie industry was able to take significant business away from Hollywood. Canada didn't simply open the doors to discount actors and fast track immigration and hope for the best...
But hey, they are welcome to try it their way...
Not sure if serious? Tokyo - 13 million. Canada - 35 million.
Please stop APK.. you're only hurting yourself.
Like all of western Europe have much better weather than Canada. Summers don't fuck you with +35C and winters are done with in 3 months, and almost nowhere this freakin windchill
Well compare that to USD salaries and there you see your problem. a low six figure salary in Canada is ~80k in USD, and this is for years of experience. On top you have much higher cost of living up here. Groceries or like anything on Amazon costs +30-50% more.
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4 months comes from the sort of people who wear a "parka" in 23 degree weather, rather than shorts and tshirt in 12 degree weather. Winter tires and snow boots is a huge exaggeration for Toronto although it does apply when you drive a short while out of the city & suburbs where the urban development traps heat. Similarly, step outside the city and everything is bug-infested. It's all the freestanding freshwater in Ontario. Cascadia is oddly low-insect even in wilderness areas.
Toronto tends to have slightly more rainfall than Vancouver, it's just that it's misting for a long period of time in Vancouver whereas Toronto tends to get periods of torrential downpours and then nothing. It's kind of shocking when you've never literally been in pain from rainfall impact before, instead living in a place where you can walk through the rain for hours and step inside and be dry within seconds.
Last election, Liberal Party played marxist with promising very leftist proposition like legalizing pot, big deficit, who is actually at least 5 times than promised. NPD with Thomas Mulcair was centric, they promised no deficit. And their still the real possibility that Justin Trudeau is the biological son of Fidel Castro.
These visas are still arbitrarily limited to people with advanced degrees. They (generally) don't target the tech talent that actually knows what the fuck it's doing.
Your ass is well insulated, creimer, don't worry about freezing it off.
No, it's not. I have a bicyclist's ass. All bone, no padding.
I'm Canadian, and this is a great country to live in, but most of the people I've met overseas who are considering coming to Canada are only doing it because it's considered easier to migrate to Canada if you have a graduate degree, and then they're still looking to get into the United States, once they're in Canada. For some reason that I don't quite understand, the idea of just migrating to Canada because it's a great place to live doesn't occur to them. Of course there are lots of people who immigrate here and stay, so I assume they figure it out eventually.
The unfortunate thing is that the graduate degree doesn't get you hired in Canada. Most companies here don't care either way about the master's or Ph.D., but want to see experience and a demonstration of good problem solving. If you've spent your life in school getting the graduate degree so you can migrate to Canada, you'll find that nobody will hire you because they're looking for an undergrad degree plus experience, not more academic credentials.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Search for "population of tokyo". You will see that he was referring to Tokyo and area with a population of ~37.5 million. FWI, Canada is more like 37 million so they are basically the same. But if you look at only Tokyo, it is more like 9 million.
Ouch, make that 13 million, as you stated.
It's about 300,000 code monkeys. I don't know about you but I'm not trying to compete with German rocket scientists I'm trying to compete with programmers from Indian diploma mills.
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It's a country with the population of California, but is geographically the second largest country in the world.
and a fairly good one. Why not ask the Netherlands, France, UK, Germany, etc how socialism in the form of Single Payer works out for them? Or how about Australia, which our own president admits has a better healthcare system.
Venezuela is an economy in freefall because they have exactly one valuable commodity: oil. Oil is crap right now. Oil will recover and so will Venezuela. If they weren't being punished by right wingers and denied the kinds of aid countries like that used to get when they fell on hard times we wouldn't be having this conversation.
The 1% aren't masters of anything. Their Grand Daddies passed that wealth on. And they weren't masters either. Google "Survival Bias" sometime.
And your suggestion about being free is lovely until you need a heart stent. Do you have the slightest inkling about what life was like before modern civilization? The term is so broad I could spend hours explaining the wonders of plumbing, water treatment, medicine, food growing and food safety.
Again, you're just a troll. But it worries me that somebody who isn't might read your post and take it seriously. That's basically what got us in this mess in the first place.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I'd love to know what your definition of 'great Canadian' is.
My definition is the one who invented the escargot poutine I had in Ottowa.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
the working class all over the world is constantly at each other's throats. I'm well aware that my interests should align with those of India's working class. But the fact is I can do little to make their country the sort of place they want to stay in. There's just no political will for what would be needed to do that (things like high tariffs on goods made with poorly paid labor or polluting factories). What there _is_ political will for is cutting immigration. And as the saying goes, a general goes to war with the army he's given.
But you're right, if we stopped to think about it we're realize how screwed up it all is. How we should all welcome each other with open arms. But if we really stopped to think about it we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place...
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This has nothing to do with "poaching talent" and everything to do with opening a backdoor for Tech companies. Tech companies are claiming "shortages" in tens of thousands while slashing hundreds of thousands of US workers each year. What tech companies want isn't to be able to fill chairs, they can do that with US talent, they don't want tech workers to have a negotiating position with rising salaries year over year. Since the US remains the largest market it isn't practical to export most positions due to poor/distant infrastructure. Canada doesn't have the labor pool but it is right next door and has decent low latency infrastructure. So import your asian labor into the canadian wing of your company.
Remember this every time somebody tries to sell you something that benefits the US economy by stimulating "US based" companies, these are global companies now. They and the top 0.01% by wealth who hold 40% of US wealth have absolutely no loyalty to the US beyond the size of its market, they are NOT US companies and they will gladly jump ship with the wealth they've siphoned off us in a heartbeat the moment it yields the best numbers on paper. They have no qualms about using imminent domain for their latest building project that will ruin lives but for some reason they've got you snowed into thinking turnabout to reclaim 40% of our nations wealth "ruining their lives" to the tune of getting a job would be the greatest of evils.
I find it fascinating that before SR71, the Arrow was fastest ever, Mach 3, imagine that in late fifties it was only 0.3 Mach slower than Blackbird. That's a whole story itself. I wonder if years from now someone will post of college professors, "they couldn't even talk about it they were still so angry after all these years of having to compete with 300,000 code monkeys."
mfwright@batnet.com
That's not what a cyclist's ass looks like, creimer.
You're comparing my bony ass to professional bicyclists who had a bicycle seat surgically implanted up their ass?
Canadians now get to experience guest worker fraud, lower wages, and less citizen opportunity.
Pour les Québécois:
Les Canadiens ont maintenant l'expérience de la fraude des travailleurs invités, des salaires plus bas et moins d'opportunité pour les citoyens.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's not Vancouver, but a city of rotting houses with absentee owners.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
I work in tech in canada, and there is a shortage of skilled labor, in many areas. I wish i would get more resumes from Canada, but i don't.
So you want to import PhDs from Western Europe and Japan? From places with equal or better education than Canada? Or are we talking places where people shit in the street and drink their own urine and where you really can't tell whether those degrees they have mean anything at all? If you want to import highly educated foreigners with advanced degrees and pay more than the local market wage for them I don't think you will get many complaints, but I highly doubt that is what this is. This isn't about importing highly intelligent German or Swiss or Japanese labor with reputations and advanced degrees at well known universities. Maybe you are the exception, but the point remains. This is mostly about trying to put a downward pressure on the local price of labor and not so much about Canadians being dumber or less educated than Indians or Pakistanis or whatever poor third world country this is mostly about in Canada.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
You can't bike that much and have 350 pounds of muscle, and end up with a chair-ass.
I rode a bike for 20 years. When I stop riding a bike, I switched to the gym and started weight training 11 years ago. My legs are not the KFC drumstick legs that Chris Christie has.
Actually you are a fat fuck.
You mean I'm not a fat virgin? Oh, thank God!
it was good enough for most geeks in the 80s and 90s until the Indians came along. The jobs were easy, paid great and had great benefits.
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Your ability to refuse work is a luxury not enjoyed by many.
Realistically speaking, people do have the qualifications (or are trainably close) yet they're passed up for being a fully protected citizen.
Short of litigatively (or worse, literally through physical/chemical means) wiping the arrogant smirk off of businesses, I'm not sure how things would change.
Guest worker programs need to DIAF and their proponents brought to task.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's like saying most people can afford to buy whatever they want by simply spending all the money they have. That's now how it works.
No, you're misstating the problem entirely.
I want a Bugatti supercar, but they won't sell one to me for $20K, and instead they demand $1M for one. Does that mean there's a shortage of Bugattis? No, it means that I simply can't afford one and I need to stop complaining and get something within my budget.
Similarly, it makes no sense to offer more than what the employee is worth to them as a business.
If they're offering and no one's biting, that means that they're offering too low. If that's all they can afford, then they need to do something different, or go out of business, not complain that they can't find anyone. They're lying, and lying is wrong.
You seem to have a fundamental inability to grasp basic economics.
Yes, they need to hire a developer away from some other company. This is good for the developer and the economy, because he was being underpaid in his previous position. Now the old company needs to pay more to fill that position, or they need to just go out of business because they're obviously not economically viable if they can't afford the market rate. Yes, some other company is at the losing end: the one that isn't profitable enough to compete for the limited supply of highly skilled developers. That's how it goes in business: the ones that can't compete go under.
To prevent labourer shortages you need to plan education better, as a country/ministry of education. Does the US even have a 'ministry of education'.
No, you also need to provide jobs that pay enough to attract people to that field. Obviously, Canada is failing at that. The US seems to be doing much better. And yes, we do have a Department of Education, which is the same thing, even though the person running it now is a complete moron (but that's only been going on for a few months, not nearly long enough to see major negative effects from).
...one that contributed to my own father's death more than a decade ago: ...
https://www.drfuhrman.com/lear...
"PCI is not a long-term solution to coronary artery disease. Approximately 21 percent of stent placements clog up again (called restenosis) within 6 months, and about 60 percent of arteries treated by angioplasty and stenting eventually will undergo restenosis.11,12 PCI treats only a small portion of a vessel, while atherosclerotic plaque continues to develop at many sites throughout the cardiovascular system. Most often, the most risky and vulnerable plaque areas, likely to cause a heart attack, are not those that are most obstructing and treated with stenting. This is even worse, because the patient is led to believe they are more protected and often continues the dangerous eating style that was the initial cause of the heart disease. Consequently, the heart disease progresses.
President Bush needed aggressive nutritional counseling and potentially life-saving nutritional information. It sounds like he was not properly informed of these studies that document the ineffectiveness of PCI and the value of the proper dietary intervention. If that is the case, I consider that malpractice.
Was President Bush informed about Dr. Ornish's Lifestyle Heart Trial, which scientifically documented that lifestyle changes alone can reverse coronary artery disease? We have no way of knowing, but it seems unlikely, given the media reports. It sounds like President Bush was misinformed about PCI by his doctors and given the false impression this procedure was life-extending and lifesaving. Certainly the media reports gave the American people the impression that this procedure was necessary for him.
Every day, patients are counseled to undergo these unnecessary and potentially dangerous procedures by their cardiologists. Instead, an arterial blockage should be seen as a wake-up call, a motivating factor to pursue optimal health via superior nutrition and exercise.
Optimal medical therapy is not enough; heart disease is preventable and reversible with superior nutritional therapy, which produces dramatically more effective results than PCI or OMT and provides dramatic protection against future cardiac events. In my clinical experience with hundreds of patients with advanced heart disease, I have seen dramatic and consistent reversal of heart disease, relief of angina symptoms, and future freedom from heart disease in those who have chosen to follow my Nutritarian eating style."
That said, I agree with much of the rest of your post!
Your unfortunate choice of example though is itself an example of the problems of civilization. Remember, doctors used to promote smoking for weight loss too. And most recently the incorrect "fat makes you fat" meme promoted by the medical profession has led to the deaths of millions from heart disease as they turned to sugar and starch instead and spiked their blood sugar causing inflammation which led to clogged arteries. Meanwhile people living traditional low-tech "bluezones" lifestyles often live into their 90s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
One other downside to modern civilization is supernormal stimuli:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for todayâ(TM)s densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life.[1] T
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
You seem to have a fundamental inability to grasp basic economics.
There is no basic economics.
There is only the bullshit you (that means YOU in YOUR country) learn in school, and the harsh reality that absolutely does not match what you learn in school.
Yes, some other company is at the losing end: the one that isn't profitable enough to compete for the limited supply of highly skilled developers. ... there will never be enough to fulfill demand: because those people simply don't exist!!!
You seem not to grasp it: X open positions. Y possible candidates. Y < X. You can shift the payment for the job as high as you want, can afford
So collapses your supply demand fallacy .... and your "basic economics" ... wow, that was easy.
By increasing the price/wage for a job you don't get more people able doing that job. The amount of people able to do that job stays constant. ... but you (you as a society) have no plan.
That is why you either need immigrates or a better "ministry of education" with "a plan"
Sorry, that I sound so cynical ... it is 3:00 at night at my place, and actually I should not teach people from other countries how bad their education and "basic economics" classes are.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Great opportunity for all those Americans who want to get away from the current government to leave. Of course, they have to have a useful skill.
There is only one skill you will ever need to get any job anywhere in the world that you want:
You need the skill to be willing to work for less than anyone else who wants the job.
Emphatically not true.
Many employers have learned the hard way about encouraging a race to the bottom. If you pay peanuts you'll get monkeys. Further more, it only takes one employer to break ranks and pay a better wage to create something called "competition" and when there's a quid to be made, someone will always break ranks.
As an immigrant, there are five magic words the employer needs to hear, "I already have my visa". As long as you've already sorted your right to work and live in the country, you're golden. I'm an Australian living and working in the UK, I got my visa myself, I have a path to citizenship with it. I need nothing from an employer and I've been earning more than the average for my position almost since I got here.
The problem with H1-B or 457 type visas isn't the intent of the program, but the abuse of them. It starts with the fact you need a company to endorse you for a visa. Get rid of that, make it so all applications have to be personal application, enforce that and most of the abuse will disappear overnight.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
The sun still rises and sets according to latitude. And pretty much all of Europe is north of Toronto.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This simply is not true. There is no labor shortage, and in fact the very idea of a "labor shortage" is pure lunacy; it cannot exist. The only thing that can exist is a shortage of labor willing to work for the wages offered. That is bollocks. From where should a high skilled developer come? Hu? They are not there. Simple. That had nothing to do with wages.
That's a stupid argument and you should feel stupid for making it.
The skilled developer already has a job. If you have a situation where a skilled developer does not have a job then your entire economy is tanking anyway, so the skilled developer already has a job. In Canada, at any rate, there are enough Universities churning out qualified, if inexperienced, developers. This is irrelevant, because the skilled developer already has a job anyway.
If you want them to leave their current job and come work for you then you need to offer them more. Companies tend to whine when their offer is too low to entice skilled developers to leave. They complain "There are no engineers to hire", when the real complaint is "there are no engineers at this price point".
Assume that you're an employer, employing skilled developers. You need 5 extra skilled developers for the next year. Where do you think you're going to find them?
Do you think that skilled developers are simply sitting around, unemployed, waiting for someone to offer them employment?
Of course not - they are already employed because they have the skills! So, when you are looking for skilled developers, you already know upfront that these people who you want are already employed.
If you already know that they are employed, then why are you not offering them more than they are making now?
TLDR: Skilled developers aren't sitting around unemployed, and people who think that skilled developers should be sitting around unemployed are literally too stupid to be part of society. If you want them, you have to offer enough to make them move. If you don't offer them enough to move, they won't move. It's only a question of money, nothing else.
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
Learns from 'our' lessons? Ha ha... Almost all Americans are actually immigrants. So you are one old immigrant crying to see newer ones coming in?
How is that any different than someone going in for an interview, and demanding $10 million as the salary. The company refuses. Are they now allowed to claim that they can't find anyone? Or if we apply your bizarre logic, only if they were unable find a warm human body that they can claim a labor shortage? That is not a definition of labor shortage that any practical person applies to anything, or is even useful in any way.
Canadians were leaving decades ago because there all sorts of affirmative action programs were implemented. With the arrival of Hong Kong Chinese, the government instructed companies to make it their priority to make them feel welcome. So they got the entry level engineering jobs and salaries fell. Canadians then had to move to the USA.You'll see that with Computer Science PhD's.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Which part of: we have a serious skilled worker shortage in Germany do you not grasp?
By hopping from job to job due to offering better wages, there are no skilled workers popping up to fill the now empty slots.
The high unemployment rate for unskilled labor is mainly caused by the lack of skilled workers.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
I'm a software developer. I see agencies trying to offer me jobs that match some of the work I've done in the past, but the work I do now is my life ambition and what I always dreamt of doing. No amount of money, no relocation package, no free four week hotel stay or even an offer of living in the wealthiest country in the center of Europe would make me compromise on my goals. So it isn't just money.
There's are risks involved with changing jobs. These include being bait-and-switched, the hassle factor of relocation, staying in hotels, putting and taking things into and out of storage. Things put into storage tend to "disappear". Employers tend to try and make jobs sound sexy by adding keywords; "Oh, we just add those to winkle out the post-docs from their research labs". Or you find that guru software developer position they wanted to fill, simply involves training up your foreign replacements rather than getting to do the work yourself. Or you find that the employer has a little deal with all the other local employers, and you can't simply change jobs when you want to. I'll avoid one company towns simply for the fact that there are no tech Meetup groups.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
How is that any different than someone going in for an interview, and demanding $10 million as the salary. The company refuses. Are they now allowed to claim that they can't find anyone?
The company should never be allowed to claim they can't find anyone. If they can't pay the market price, they simply can't afford the service, and their business is not viable. One guy asking for $10M is not indicative of the market price BTW, but if all the similarly-qualified candidates are already working for nearly that much, then it is.
That is not a definition of labor shortage that any practical person applies to anything, or is even useful in any way.
There is no such thing as a labor shortage, no matter how much you want to believe there is. You just don't want to pay what it takes to get qualified people to work for you. Stop being intellectually dishonest.
If you increase the price, you get more people interested in making themselves qualified for the job. Offer
And in case of a software developer that takes about 5 years to get one from highschool to a university degree.
You start to understand now?
Qualified workers don't spring up out of nothing just because the wages increase.
Seriously, go take an economics course; this stuff isn't that hard.
Seriously, get a damn clue perhaps?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Qualified workers need to be attracted to the industry by higher wages. So if there seems to be a shortage, the industry only has itself to blame. They need to be raising salaries, just like in any market where supply-and-demand works, and let the market work.
Maybe you should get a fucking clue. Take an economics class like I told you before. Until then, shut the fuck up.
That's bullshit, you are not the arbiter of what the market price is or should be. (Apart from following all the laws of the land like minimum wage, etc) Consumers will shop around and buy their stuff from whoever sells it to them the cheapest. If someone is willing to do the same work for a lower price, its completely their right to determine what they think their own labor is worth.
Stop being intellectually dishonest.
LOL
What is so hard in grasping that you either have to treat workers like goods and ship them in (then your economics would be correct) or that it takes a lot of time to educate them?
Money/wages does not change anything, as people usually don't pick an education because of money but because of what they like to do in the future.
Stop the stupid economics class bullshit.
Supply and demand works on oil prices, not on workforce.
And also not on grain prices or rents for houses or dozens of other things, like phone bills.
To make the stupid american 'supply and demand makes the market work' idea workable you need (minimum) two conditions: 1) the resource in question may not be life critical, 2) the supply must be close to the demand.
As soon as you are out of that box you have hundreds of more factors, like boarders, taxes, tolls, language barriers, regulations etc. p.p
Back to the original topic, education will always trail years behind market demands if you have no central planned education system. There might be exceptions for low skilled tradesmen, who get an education in a company and later become workers there, as it is often the case in Germany.
If you believe otherwise, sorry to word it like this: you simply are an idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.