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Toronto Tech Boom

TheKingEast said:
So wages will go down...companies benefit, workers (most) do not.
Click to expand...

As a manager of a business let me assure you that underpaid employees are bad for business because underpaid employees are unmotivated employees and unhappy employees and anxious employees. Only stupid and short-sighted greedy business owners think paying lower wages is a benefit.
 
SunriseChampion said:
As a manager of a business let me assure you that underpaid employees are bad for business because underpaid employees are unmotivated employees and unhappy employees and anxious employees. Only stupid and short-sighted greedy business owners think paying lower wages is a benefit.
Click to expand...

I agree, but I don't think companies really care... There is more than enough demand right now in tech and not many openings. Canadian companies do not pay enough for what they are asking for IMO. Companies love it here because you get educated workforce that will accept below market pay. High performing sales associates and execs may be paid accordingly but in general, salaries are mediocre.
 
TheKingEast said:
I agree, but I don't think companies really care... There is more than enough demand right now in tech and not many openings. Canadian companies do not pay enough for what they are asking for IMO. Companies love it here because you get educated workforce that will accept below market pay. High performing sales associates and execs may be paid accordingly but in general, salaries are mediocre.
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I essentially agree w/you..........except for the mediocre part.

Typical salary in 5-year averaged PPP dollars, in the sector is perhaps 1/3 lower here.

But...that's still 100k per year............

With more generous parental leave, more generous vacation, no deductibles or co-pays on core healthcare, in a safer society.

Its not a landslide difference, on balance.
 
SunriseChampion said:
As a manager of a business let me assure you that underpaid employees are bad for business because underpaid employees are unmotivated employees and unhappy employees and anxious employees. Only stupid and short-sighted greedy business owners think paying lower wages is a benefit.
Click to expand...

And yet wages have remained stagnant in real terms since the 70s, while productivity has grown strongly and consistently.
 
I was looking at the composition of the tsx and noticed that at beginning of 2018 the aggregate market cap of all tech company listings was around 100 billion versus 160 billion for Shopify alone today
 
Communitech is the latest Canadian tech player to see how it can take advantage of the H1B Visa move that Trump made.

It has put up billboards across the Bay area.

torontolife.com

This guy is plastering billboards in Silicon Valley to lure tech workers to Canada

Communitech spent $100,000 on the billboards, and plans to launch similar campaigns in Boston and Austin
torontolife.com torontolife.com

It did its job..........got local media attention:

1598393792318.png


From here: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Canada-to-Silicon-Valley-s-international-15470866.php

Their landing page traffic is up over 150% in 2 weeks.

Campaign heads to Austin and Boston next.
 
Shopify sheds Ottawa office space amid planned Toronto expansion

Sept 1, 2020

Shopify plans to vacate its Ottawa headquarters on 150 Elgin Street and move to an office tower on Laurier Avenue, amid reports that the e-commerce giant is set to expand its Toronto presence.

Shopify and CBRE Ottawa’s managing director Shawn Hamilton confirmed to BetaKit the company’s decision to sublease its Elgin Street office, a CBRE property, where Shopify has a lease deal until 2026.

Shopify currently occupies several floors at 150 Elgin Street, in Ottawa’s central business district. The location has housed Shopify’s headquarters since 2014. Pre-COVID-19 and prior to the company’s shift to permanent work from home, the 170,000 square foot space served over 850 Shopify employees.

---------

The changes to its Ottawa office space comes shortly after the publicly-traded company reportedly exercised an option to expand its space at The Well in downtown Toronto, where the company is set to open an additional office in the city in 2022. BetaKit has not independently verified the claim and a Shopify spokesperson declined to respond to questions about the decision. At the same time, Shopify has confirmed it is transitioning out of its old Toronto Spadina Avenue office, which the company opened as the first of its locations in the city in 2014 at 35,600 sq. ft. Last year, Shopify opened a King Street West office, in downtown Toronto, to house around 450 employees.

“Ottawa remains an important talent market for us, it’s where Shopify was founded, and our 234 Laurier office will be reimagined for our digital by default mindset,” the Shopify spokesperson told BetaKit. “As we move to a decentralized, remote way of working, the reality is that most people will be working from home versus coming into the office on a daily, recurring basis.”

betakit.com

Shopify sheds Ottawa office space amid planned Toronto expansion | BetaKit

Shopify will vacate its Ottawa HQ on 150 Elgin Street and move to an office tower on Laurier Avenue, amid reports it is set to expand in Toronto presence.
betakit.com betakit.com
 
Amazon is adding a modest 500 employees in Toronto (in corporate/tech). They will have 5 floors at 18 York.

More relevant news from this announcement really is a further, massive expansion in Vancouver, with 3,000+ jobs in corporate/tech.

The relevance of the latter for Toronto is real.

U.S. tech is shifting northwards in a big way.

In Amazon's case this will bring Vancouver to over 8,000 high paid staff.

www.theglobeandmail.com

Amazon to add another 3,500 employees to its Canadian work force

Vancouver towers to be site of 3,000 new jobs, with remaining in Toronto in divisions such as cloud services, Alexa voice assistance, advertising, retail and operations technology
www.theglobeandmail.com www.theglobeandmail.com
 
I'm curious if Amazon is eying even more space in the various proposed office towers that are rumoured to already have tenants? I definitely see big tech expanding more in the GTA in the next decade.

Both 18 York St. and The Post are owned by Vancouver’s QuadReal Property Group Ltd.
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This makes me think CC3 or 11 Bay.
 
I came across a visualization at the visualcapitalist.com website that showed the history of most visited websites on the internet.

Funny enough (assuming you find the subject funny) Montreal-based pornhub overtook Amazon in 2018 to become the 11th most-visited-site in the world.

We don’t talk a lot about that side of our tech but Canada actually has a lot of history in areas such as pornography, gambling, and dating websites.
 
TrickyRicky said:
I came across a visualization at the visualcapitalist.com website that showed the history of most visited websites on the internet.

Funny enough (assuming you find the subject funny) Montreal-based pornhub overtook Amazon in 2018 to become the 11th most-visited-site in the world.

We don’t talk a lot about that side of our tech but Canada actually has a lot of history in areas such as pornography, gambling, and dating websites.
Click to expand...
...especially given that Canada does not have vocal moral guardians unlike the United States or in the more deeply religious countries.
 
Announcement today that Roche, a giant in the pharma space will be creating a global tech site for new product development in Mississauga.

200 jobs by the end of this year, 500 by the end of 2023.

Total investment: 500M

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