from Hacker News

Canada’s new tech talent strategy

by faramarz on 6/29/23, 4:17 AM with 317 comments

  • by babuloseo on 6/29/23, 5:42 AM

    But where will these new people stay? There is not enough housing being built for people, you are going to see people come here only to leave when they realize that they can't afford the housing for their families there.

    Net migration is probably pretty high in Canada right now and will increase once people figure out that there is not enough density or proper housing for them.

    Check out these two top threads thread at canadahousing subreddit:

    [1]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/13jl3gf/came...

    [2]https://www.reddit.com/r/canadahousing/comments/147p0tx/onta...

    I am waiting to see what the cabinet shuffle looks like, but we are probably going to run some billboard campaigns or do some fundraising soon to address the housing crisis if the government is not tackling this properly. If you are Canadian or have interest in this space on addressing these social issues, hit me up.

  • by hackpelican on 6/29/23, 6:12 AM

    I have tried to get into Canada as a FAANG engineer through internal transfer from within the company. The pay was hilarious compared to what I would have gotten in the US, but I had personal reasons to choose Canada instead.

    It has been a total shitshow. I started the process in June of 2022, eventually the team I was moving to got bored of waiting for the work permit in March 2023.

    Factoring out the (ridiculous) 3 months it took for the relocation agency to prepare and submit my work permit application, it was six months of waiting with no feedback at all from the IRCC about where the process is stuck. All inquiries went unanswered.

    Once I lost the position, I emailed the local Canadian embassy to let them know my thoughts, I was (expectedly) greeted back with an automated email saying that emails about immigration will not be looked at.

    All in all, the processes in Canada are very immature and if you value predictability and stability in your life, do not attempt to get a job there.

  • by GrigoriyMikh on 6/29/23, 6:16 AM

    I'm currently trying to migrate from Germany to Canada. It appears to me that the job market in Canada is horrible at the moment.

    I have 8YoE in Cloud and quite in demand in Germany(recently got a good offer, which i'm considering, from a German company purely because of my open source contributions, also passed HC in one of FAANGs, but stuck in team match phase due to layoffs). I sent 10s of applications(it's hard to send 100s as i'm highly specialized) and didn't get a single interview from that.

  • by hackermeows on 6/29/23, 5:24 AM

    One of the main problems people have with this is “housing costs “, what’s causing the housing problem there. Surely its not just the immigrants that are to blame . Canada has swaths of land, it definitely does not have a space issue. It has plenty of resources (major economic driver is natural resources) , no resource issues either . What exactly is causing the housing price to stay so high compared to income .

  • by fwungy on 6/29/23, 6:04 AM

    Aggressive immigration without proper planning raises rents and lowers wages. It is exploitation under the guise of benevolence.

  • by latenightcoding on 6/29/23, 5:17 AM

    "unveiled at North America’s top tech conference" ... Collision. Give me a break, Collision is Grifter Olympics.

  • by radq on 6/29/23, 4:56 AM

    I don't expect a lot of people to take this up. Express Entry was already an option for these folks and you get permanent residency from the start under that program.

  • by dang on 6/29/23, 5:27 AM

    Recent and related:

    Canada plans brain drain of H-1B visa holders, with no-job, no-worries permits - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36505152 - June 2023 (583 comments)

    Canada's new tech talent strategy - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36506854 - June 2023 (78 comments)

  • by aborsy on 6/29/23, 9:26 AM

    People compare Canada with US. But don’t forget the situation is worse in Europe, and many parts of the world (low salaries, high taxes, expensive housing, inflation and unemployment, bureaucracy and inefficiency, crime and safety problems, general dysfunction etc). Canada is great in many respects.

  • by MrDresden on 6/29/23, 8:20 AM

    Good for them.

    I tried to immigrate to Canada, from Europe, some 8 years ago. Degree in CS, many years of experience under my belt. Even had a remote senior developer job and was looking into using a dual taxation law that my country has with them, so that I could pay my taxes in Canada.

    Took the language tests and got a ~95%. Then just hit a wall. Needed points (in their point based application process) to progress my application. And I would have gotten plenty of those if I had quit my high paying tech job to become a store clerk.

    At that point I decided this was just silly, packed my suitcases and went back home.

  • by 111111IIIIIII on 6/29/23, 4:46 AM

    The limit is 10,000 people. If those spots weren't already filled before the announcement was made, they are now.

  • by Shank on 6/29/23, 4:30 AM

    > This measure will remain in effect for one year, or until Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) receives 10,000 applications. Only principal applicants, and not their accompanying family members, will count toward the application cap.

    Only 10,000 people? Sounds like a good, but quickly fading opportunity.

  • by gxt on 6/29/23, 7:26 AM

    Usual incompetence from Ottawa again and again. There hasn't been a shortage of applicants since at least 2019. Recently had to fill two roles and out of more than 70 candidates we hired none and transferred two people from other teams. Lots of people pretending to have the required skills who can't answer basic questions and people with unrealistic salary expectations.

  • by CSMastermind on 6/29/23, 5:20 AM

    As someone who has hired software developers in Canada and looked into opening an office there in a previous role, I'll tell you that taxes are prohibitive both for employers and employees. With the US this close it's often cheaper and easier for everyone involved to deal with the US immigration process and pay and employee's moving expenses than it is to try and set up a Canadian headquarters or hire workers there.

    This is true on a state by state basis in the US as well. Hawaii is a nightmare to hire workers in, so much so that our HR put their foot down and told me they're not supporting it anymore. Meanwhile hiring someone in Washington, Texas, or Florida is a breeze.

    I pulled out of Mexico in my current role and moved those jobs to Chile, Brazil, and the Balkans. The reason had nothing to do with the talent of the engineers in Mexico and everything to do with how painful it is to deal with their government.

    If Canada wants high paying tech jobs there is a very straight-forward way for them to get them: make their government bureaucracy more efficient and pass those savings on to your citizens.

  • by Jemm on 6/29/23, 1:29 PM

    Canada is crumbing and desperately trying to solve the problem with immigration.

    Do yourself a favour and don't fall for it.

  • by Ralo on 6/29/23, 4:54 AM

    I'm a Canadian that's been trying to get into this field. There is no "talent" issue. Any job that pops up is flooded with applicants.

    It's night and day compared to America. All the companies are in America, while we find only a handful of start ups or some branch's of corporations in Canada.

    Give a read to the /r/cscareerquestionscad subreddit

    There's countless stories of "I have CS degree, intern experience, and portfolio of projects but after 500+ applications I can't land a job".

    Articles like this make me want to quit everything. I try so hard to get into these field then the government claims no one can fill these roles and we need to import more people instead.

  • by semilattice on 6/30/23, 1:11 AM

    Countries that export to US [1] or to EU, and US itself will have an unreasbly (un-deservedly) high standardard of living.

    That will always attract both talent and con-artists to US, Canada etc.

    Because for the same amount of effort (or same amount of risk for the con-artists) -- the rewards are much higher.

    This will only change if US currency will stop being the reserve currency of the world.

    When (or if) US will stop being reserve currency of the world, it will cause a cascading effect that will likely cause a temporary collapse of the socio-economic, judicial, and political pillars of Western economies and Canada, Australia.

    Then all these talent acquisition strategies will stop working.

    All the policies will turn towards reducing chances of civil wars that will be breaking inside these countries.

    Until then, it is hard to blame immigrants for seeking higher standard of living for the same amount of effort.

    And governments will not really care what will benefit the locals. Because the political systems in Canada, US, UK are not really representative of the people, they are representative of the lobbyist and powerful interests.

    [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading_pa...

  • by hn_throwaway_99 on 6/29/23, 4:34 AM

  • by kazinator on 6/30/23, 5:03 PM

    It used to be that Canada brought in more and more immigrants in order to have de facto slaves to work in service jobs like retail, delivery and what not: you know, to help uphold the standard of living for the previous immigrants who upgraded their education and skills and became mega consumers. People who drive their SUV to a "U pick" farm, and just buy a box of washed and sorted blueberries in the parking lot, ... rather than working in such a place.

    Unfortunately, those service-job immigrants are now priced out of housing due to all the previous immigration.

    So in order that residential properties continue to inflate, we now need to bring in "tech talent": immigrants who have some ghost of a chance of actually affording to live here.

    In some ten years, Immigration Canada will be all about attracting "CEO talent", "chief of hospital talent" and such.

  • by belval on 6/29/23, 4:30 AM

    I'm happy I just closed on a house because something tells me affordability will keep being an issue in the coming years.

  • by Eumenes on 6/29/23, 12:04 PM

    If I wanna visit Canada, I can spend a few weeks/months in the places I wanna see (Quebec, BC, Alberta), work remotely for a US company and make 2-3x the money w/o spending half my income on taxes/insane rents.

  • by happyjack on 6/29/23, 12:45 PM

    There's two sides to the immigration issue. On one hand, you can bring some very great people who are in terrible situations and will work their damndest to contribute and create a life for their family.

    On the other hand, Western countries are very indebted and the only way out is growth. Immigrants tend to have more kids, and work harder, longer hours for less money.

    There's a reason white millennials in north america aren't having kids and growing the economy: it just simply doesn't make sense. It's not obtainable.

  • by bagels on 6/29/23, 8:42 AM

    Is the strategy to offer enough pay to attract talent? If not, good luck with the pitiful pay and snow.

  • by kderbyma on 6/29/23, 7:06 PM

    This policy is terrible unless you want to inflate the housing market and deflate the salaries....

  • by txcan on 6/29/23, 4:37 AM

    Anyone interested in this should also check out Canadian home prices, rental prices, the broken healthcare system and the peanuts that Canadian tech companies pay. You will be glad you did before jumping ship.

  • by idiotsecant on 6/29/23, 4:30 AM

    A person might be forgiven for viewing this cynically as a way for large corporations to reduce the wages they need to pay by hijacking and bypassing the regular immigration system to import indentured tech servants that they can exploit ruthlessly and underpay.

  • by seydor on 6/29/23, 5:09 AM

    in a free world where capital and goods move freely, but not people

  • by tyiz on 6/29/23, 4:58 AM

    Since 2020, not a beautiful country anymore.