Not sure what you mean by non-Indian green cards exactly, but just to clarify, the waiting time for EB2/EB3 green cards for those in India is really dramatically behind everywhere else (final action dates are a rough proxy for "waiting time" but actually understate the problem): https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
Because as someone from the EU, why would I go to California? I have been there countless times because of my job and was always happy getting back to Europe (where in most parts no old people fill bags, receptionists do not need to work with broken arms and not a myriad of poor Mexicans are treated like the reenact "Gone with the wind").
I had to suppress a laugh flash whenever an ICE agent wanted hard to find out if I wanted to illegally stay in the country. Why on earth would I?
Chinook Therapeutics
Element AI
Repare Therapeutics
Enerkem
DalCor Pharmaceuticals
Verafin
Fusion Pharmaceuticals
Stormfiser Biogas
Hootsuite
North
Element AI was acquired by ServiceNow, North was acquired by Google. Both were widely seen to be overhyped underperformers. Element was acquired for roughly the $200M it raised in financing. North also raised about $200M over its lifetime and was reportedly acquired for around $180M. Not really value creation.
Chinook Therapeutics merged with Aduro Biotech and is now headquartered in Seattle. It's publicly traded as KDNY and is worth ~831M CAD.
Hootsuite is kind of stagnant. It has been on and off being close to being worth $1B since 2014, hardly a growth story.
Verafin was purchased by NASDAQ for $2.75B. A good exit, though it took nearly 20 years to get there and now it's just another Canadian office of a US tech company.
I don't know enough about the cleantech/pharmaceutical angle, but if this list is the best we can come up with, it's far from cause for the software industry to celebrate. My feeling on articles like the one you posted is they're mostly superficial cheerleading.
Despite investing the second most into venture capital amongst all OECD countries, Canada is producing the least amount of unicorns. Not only that, of the unicorns it produces, valuation are also the lowest amongst the group (to be fair, the sample size is tiny. Plus, Canada’s unicorns are generally really new compared to that of other countries, which may have opted to stay private for a variety of reasons). For an ecosystem that is by most metrics, really well funded and really strong, the number of narwhals and unicorns that it produces is disappointing. In terms of creating billion dollars startups, Canada is ruthlessly inefficient compared to the likes of Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Yes. Absolutely. It so much more than makes up for lost government benefits.
Health insurance working for a decent US tech company generally requires some out of pocket, but the amounts are really quite modest. Premiums are typically mostly paid by the employer and not considered part of your compensation. If you're single you'll probably pay nothing for insurance premiums and potentially up to a few thousand out of pocket if you're a heavy user of health care, and maybe $5k in the absolute worst case (and the out of pocket is often tax free). If you've got a family, you might pay a couple thousand per year in premiums and $10k in out of pocket maximum. These numbers are honestly chump change for people who are earning $50k-250k more, with better career prospects and more high paying employers to choose from if a particular job doesn't work out.
Quite frankly the "all your money will go to healthcare" meme doesn't really apply to the kind of person who's leaving Canada for a much high-paying US tech job. A person like that will in all likelihood be working for an employer that offers access to equal or _better_ health insurance than they would have access to in Canada. If it's a big tech company the employer will pay virtually all of the premiums beyond some token amount, and out-of-pocket maximums are dramatically lower than the incremental pay raise. And even if the employer didn't pay that, the premiums would still be dwarfed by the pay raise.
Rent is certainly higher in the Bay Area, though less higher now vs. a year ago, and even so, at the income levels we're talking here (especially if going to FAANG or a unicorn), there is very little chance you'll end up with less disposable income after rent and health care.
If you want to buy a property, you have your work cut out for you since real estate is insanely expensive, though. It's not too hard if you're a dual-income high earner couple but very hard otherwise and will take a number of years of savings. This is worse than the Vancouver/Toronto housing markets, but it's less worse than you think given how crazy they are now.
This may be true in parts of Europe, but it's not so clear cut in Canada. We have a decent tech job market in our 3 major cities (Montreal/Vancouver/Toronto), but it's mostly bad elsewhere. There are a few lower-tier Canadian cities which are OK (Waterloo, Ottawa), but as cities they're grossly limited compared to where you can live in Europe.
Of the 3 major Canadian cities, only Montreal could be considered affordable to software engineer. Vancouver/Toronto are extremely expensive vs. local pay. Unless you want to sign yourself up for a punishing daily commute or bought your house a long time ago, it's hard to describe the standard of living as "very comfortable" other than compared to lower earners in the local market.
Tellingly, when you look at the data more than 100% of Toronto's population growth comes from international migration. Which makes sense, it's a very welcoming place. But without immigration, the city would have shrunk by 50k people last year (~1.5% of population).
If you've been following Toronto politics for long, you'll realize this move from Tory is just another in his (and Toronto's) long history of poorly-delivered half-measures which come well after other major cities have already turned the corner.
I would not laud the city for "making some real changes" as much as I would criticize the mayor for being a stale, retrograde leader who is clearly in the business of delivering the barest possible minimum solution only after made to look like a fool.
Wake me up when he applies any pressure whatsoever to Toronto Police over their alarming lack of traffic enforcement and takes less than a year to support like the Bloor bike lane.
I wasn't singing the man's praises, I'm just hopeful that something will actually happen.
They did point to SF, Portland, and other cities as the inspiration for actually making the step—even though citizens and newspapers have basically been crying out for this very thing for weeks.
I'm just glad they're finally moving to do it. I was glad with how they stood strong on the King St traffic project. Hopefully many of these items will persist.
I've enjoyed the sweeter air due to the lessened traffic so, so much.
