Toronto-Waterloo Tech Workforce Expected To Surpass Silicon Valley In 2023 (therecord.com) 61
Thanks in part to Canada's immigration policies, the tech sector in the Toronto Waterloo Corridor will soon have more workers than the San Francisco Bay area. The Record reports: During 2021, the San Francisco Bay area added 14,000 jobs, increasing total tech employment there to 378,870. During 2021, the Toronto Waterloo Corridor added 88,000 jobs, increasing total tech employment to 313,700. "We are on a tear," said Chris Albinson, the chief executive officer at Communitech. "Canada admitted 400,000 newcomers during the last 12 months, half of them with STEM degrees."
"We are growing 350 per cent faster than Silicon Valley, and sometime in early 2023 there will be more tech workers in the Waterloo Toronto corridor," said Albinson. Communitech will announce a new strategy in mid-January, backed by the federal government, that will help push the size of the tech workforce in the corridor ahead of the Silicon Valley, he added.
"We are growing 350 per cent faster than Silicon Valley, and sometime in early 2023 there will be more tech workers in the Waterloo Toronto corridor," said Albinson. Communitech will announce a new strategy in mid-January, backed by the federal government, that will help push the size of the tech workforce in the corridor ahead of the Silicon Valley, he added.
They can have it (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:They can have it (Score:5, Informative)
Toronto is a much bigger city than San Francisco with a very diversified economy. It'll be fine. Toronto also has a vibrant downtown where people actually live, and a reasonably-decent (by North American standards) transit system.
Waterloo is smallish, but has always had a large university and high-tech sector, so don't think that much will change.
There are many structural differences between San Francisco and Toronto; I don't think the population of high-tech workers significantly explains any differences between the cities.
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Silicon Valley is way more than just San Francisco. San Jose (around 1M people by itself) is really the spiritual center, and the whole Bay Area is pretty much wall-to-wall cities.
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The Golden Horseshoe in Canada is similarly densely populated. I looked it up; the Golden Horseshoe region has about 9.8M people and the Bay area about 9.5M, so the regions are roughly comparable. Metro Toronto itself, however, at 6.2M is larger than metro SF at about 4.6M. The City of Toronto is about 2.8M as opposed to the City of SF's 815K.
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San Francisco isn't part of the Silicon Valley. Never has been.
Re: They can have it (Score:2)
The only thing missing is a good public transit system. Maybe time to invest in a local high frequency rail service, that serves more than just commuters.
Re: They can have it (Score:1)
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Housing speculation destroys cities. Those low interest rates allowed developers to basically have free money to build housing at crazy prices, and allowed people to qualify for mortgages at those crazy prices.
Housing prices aren't too bad (Score:3)
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A small advantage in the Bay Area is that geography limits outward growth. Otherwise Northern California would resemble Los Angeles in sprawl. It's why San Francisco remains small, it literally cannot grow. The problem with this though is that the area refuses to grow upwards; SF has high rises only in downtown, and much of the residential areas are 2 or 3 stories. The geography really makes traffic a nightmare too.
In the past, having housing near mass transit would lower the prices. But it seems to ha
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It was downmodded for false information. San Francisco has a lower homicide rate than most cities. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: They can have it (Score:2)
What the hell prompted you decide to cherry pick that figure? Nobody said anything about homicide. But now that you mentioned anything to do with crime, San Francisco is #7 overall, and Oakland is #5. Look at your own link.
"Hey guys, the OP is false because, even though it's covered in feces and used syringes and your car will get broken into at least once a week, its homicide rate isn't as bad as Oakland's!"
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Except it's not covered in feces and used syringes. Where's your once-a-week car break-in stats coming from? Are you just repeating the propaganda from Faux News?
Re: They can have it (Score:2)
Dude, look at the stats he linked to. And yes the feces and syringes is exaggerated for comedic effect, but there's a ring of truth to it as SF is likely worse than any other US city in both categories.
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Just love how this was downmodded as if those irritated by your comment have any real fucking retort.
I can't believe I have to explain this again and again. The post was NOT downmodded. It started at -1, based on the user's karma status. In fact, at the time of this posting, the only mod applied has been +1 Insightful.
A neutral or informative comment from a user with a -1 karma will look like it has been downmodded, bu this isn't always the case.
If you want to see what mods were applied to a post to reach the current value, then just click on the word "Score" to see the mod history. If you're reading S
Re: They can have it (Score:2, Interesting)
It's the real estate developers who destroy cities. Not tech workers. Tech workers aren't generally the ones keeping cities from building an appropriate level of housing for the community.
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It's market forces which make non shithole cities uncomfortable to live in on a normal wage.
They are allowed to grow too large, they shouldn't be.
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My suggestion would be to limit permits for business establishment.
Re: They can have it (Score:1)
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Limit business establishment, not housing development.
Distributing industry was all he rage in the 60s and 70s, but then globalization made the comfort of people secondary to economic efficiency ... and economic efficiency would really prefer for us all to live in boxes, because even with bad traffic there's a lot of economic efficiency to be had from huge cities.
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It's market forces which make non shithole cities uncomfortable to live in on a normal wage.
They are allowed to grow too large, they shouldn't be.
No - it's that they're PREVENTED from growing that means the free market bids up housing costs and dumps those on normal wages into dire housing. If a city expands upwards and outwards, in density of population and with decent public transport, it can sustain sustain massive population growth. Tokyo has a massive population and works, generally, pretty well. SF's resistance to new and denser housing has caused its boom to start to harvest its present disaster.
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Market forces means workers want to live there. This all sounds like classic English style classism; upper classes are bad people because they make too much money and don't have to work in the mines. Only it's American style; high wage people are bad because they don't have calluses on their hands from hard work.
And living in the area, these are not shithole cities. You want shithole cities then I've run across a few in the deep south that looked like literal dumps.
Re: They can have it (Score:4, Informative)
It's the real estate developers who destroy cities.
It is the lack of real estate developers.
95% of building permit applications are denied in SF, and getting a permit is so difficult that most potential builders don't even bother to apply.
Tech workers aren't generally the ones keeping cities from building an appropriate level of housing for the community.
Yes, they are. They do so through a mechanism known as "democracy". People in SF vote for no-growth politicians who promise to tighten the market, push housing prices higher, and push new growth into exurban sprawl.
I live in the SF Bay Area, bought my house 25 years ago, and have benefited very, very much from these no-growth policies. So I understand why people vote the way they do. But it is not in the best interest of economic growth or environmental sustainability.
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All real estate is local.
Housing in Canada suffers from some lack of permitting, but there's a huge problem with lack of regulation and lack of enforcement of regulation in Ontario in general. You're not wrong that NIMBYism is the death of reasonable cities, but Toronto suffers from lack of vision married with incompetent/corrupt politicians.
Really, there are so many problems in Toronto. Rents are insanely high, home purchase prices are some of the highest in the world.
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Montreal does much better.
High-density quadplexes are common. Rents are more affordable, and average commutes are much shorter than in Toronto.
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I just moved out of Montreal after 15 years living there. The 3-storey walkup that makes up most of Montreal's older, denser neighbourhoods really is lovely. My walk score was 100; I lived in the single most walkable neighbourhood in Canada.
The main reason why rents are more affordable is that tenants rights are taken more seriously.
I lived in the same apartment for 15 years (on the Plateau, since you seem to know the city a little), and my rent started in the $700 range, and we never got higher than $950 a
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Montreal does better because every ten years or so the electorate/government loses its mind and goes on a holy language crusade. It's actually a great investment opportunity, if you can handle the craziness of owning anything big enough for the Quebec government to take an interest in.
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San Francisco is fine. It has a much lower homicide rate than say Florida cities like Orlando or Miami. Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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S.F. is not a tech city, and it is not Silicon Valley. And the majority of "tech" in the area is becoming low-to-middling tech, web sites, social media. If using computers makes it take, then your payroll processor is a high tech business too...
9 women, 1 baby (Score:1)
9 women cannot make a baby in month. Fill yer boots all you want, 313700 canucks won't make a Sillycon Valley in 2023 or any time soon. People seem to miss that hippies, drugs, counter culture, and high education all contribute(d) to what makes the Bay Area, and by extension SV, unique. Every city seems to want to be the next Bay Area/SV but none of them want the culture that brings it, they only want the current state not realizing that it mostly looks like failure with a few noteworthy exceptions.
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They don't want to be the next SV, they want to replace it. SV grew on highly intelligent entrepreneurs attracted to the nice surroundings creating a fluke, a self amplifying concentration of tech jobs.
The SV competitors on the other hand simply want to steal the lower ability jobs from SV first. Don't need culture to attract low effort code monkeys, only jobs and appropriate immigration law. Then the rest of the tech sector will follow, culture be damned. It's more economically efficient to concentrate the
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even the rockstars can't dictate where the companies they work for settle
Unless it's the rock stars that make the company (and its product) what it is.
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Canadian business is dominated by a handful of cartels. Between that and insane taxes, Canada will never replace SV.
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"insane taxes" lol
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Corporate taxes in Canada are comparable to or lower than in the US. Personal taxes are higher, but OTOH we and our employers don't need to spend thousands of dollars per month on private medical insurance. In fact, the lack of necessity for companies to pay huge medical insurance premiums gives them a competitive advantage over US companies.
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They don't want to be the next SV, they want to replace it. SV grew on highly intelligent entrepreneurs attracted to the nice surroundings creating a fluke, a self amplifying concentration of tech jobs.
There are a few other things going for Silicon Valley. First, the weather is nice, on average the most moderate in North America. Second, proximity to East Asia makes it a preferred location for East Asians for travel times. Third, the existing concentration of East and South Asians makes it a preferred location for East and South Asians for cultural reasons. Fourth, although the stress level in Silicon Valley is palpably higher due to financial concerns, many workers calmly do the spreadsheet calculati
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SV started because the entrepreneurs were already living there. The influx of people were those wanting to work for the new companies, and that growth fed on itself. The history is interesting. WWII brought in lots of workers, and defense industries needed high tech people. Some of those branched off to other things. Ampex was an early high tech company basically inventing the video recorder and used/funded by Bing Crosby. Plus it's very heavy with top renown universities, research labs, and intitutio
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You've never been to Toronto, clearly. It is probably the most multicultural city in the world and has culture and higher education in spades.
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It is. But I can back it up [studyabroa...dation.org].
Oh Wonderful (Score:2)
Bob & Doug Mackenzie meet Tech Support !
TAKE OFF EH !
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Toss me a Molson's, you hoser.
Suckers (Score:2)
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Lol. You take cherrypicking to a whole new level.
Tech workers donâ(TM)t destroy cities (Score:2)
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It's also been happening since the 70s. It's always been "you're a few years too late to buy a house." But it kept going. Mostly with dual-income families, longer commutes, etc.
Obligatory (Score:2)
There will be no follow up article in a year (Score:3)
Of course no one ever follows up, and you never hear anything ever again about the new technology XYZ center of the universe.
I didn't read the article because I don't waste time on that kind of drivel. These craptastic exercises in non-journalism result from two factors. One is pure hype, where someone finds some meaningless number, or just makes something up, in order to promote their fantasy of taking over the world. The other is the cynical hunt for clicks. Some attention craving journalist figures out that if they rile up some group of pro and anti fanboys the can drive a bunch of viewers to their site. In both cases it's about profiting from misinformation.
Do the world a favor and don't ever follow up on this kind of nonsense. You're only feeding the trolls.
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Toronto? (Score:1)
What's the appeal? (Score:2)
They have the same politics and worse weather (in the winter) and the same technical draw, so what's the appeal?
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Actually, our politics (so far) are much less dumpster-fiery than in the US. The appeal of Toronto? Vibrant, multi-cultural city. Decent transit. Decent and affordable healthcare. Somewhat sane politics. Relatively low crime rate compared to most places in the US. A liveable (and actually lived-in) downtown. Lots to do. Green space pretty close by.
The downside of Toronto is crazy housing prices. And yeah, winter sucks.
Duplicating SV Takes Billions $$$ (Score:2)
How many times have we heard this, "With this government initiative we will build another Silicon Valley!" ???
Many cities have attempted to replicate the Silicon Valley success story, but they forget that there were billions of dollars of secret Silicon Valley funding during the Cold War, and an ongoing government demand for products that started in WW2.
Steve Blank has a great talk about this and the accompanying slides can be downloaded.
https://steveblank.com/secret-... [steveblank.com]
Youtube "Secret History of Silicon Va