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  I’m not sure why you’re upset with the CBC over this
Not just the CBC, but they do it a lot. There is this cloying "we've finally made it!" back-slapping the press reliably produces every time a well-known company announces an expansion, no matter how big or small, and really any time some positive PR comes out of the Canadian tech sector. The energy we spend congratulating ourselves for a job well done unintentionally lays bare how provincial we really are.

The reason this is so infuriating is the congratulatory rhetoric rings hollow for many Canadians with US work experience who realize how much better it is, in so many (but not all) ways, to be a tech worker in the US vs. in Canada.

To produce articles with the tone of the OP, you would need to be either myopic or disingenuous.

This is especially so in the context of a company like Google. If you're a Canadian engineer who can get a job at Google, your take-home pay after housing will be dramatically higher in the US than in Canada (if you don't like the lifestyle sacrifices that requires in the Bay Area or NYC, you can do better in umpteen smaller cities). All the while you will have access to better health care, lower wait times, and easy immigration status (TN).

  we’ve been a branch plant economy since the 1960s. A lot of
  this has to do with Canadian temperament and mindset, which
  isn’t particularly entrepreneurial due a dearth of
  leadership from its investor class.
No argument there. Those in Canada who really control the money are overwhelmingly complacent, more interested in maintaining what they have than taking real risks. Much of it isn't self-made, it's just inherited from early 20th century industrialists. Not that many modern self-made wealth stories other than a bunch of people speculating on real estate, literally collecting rent rather than adding productive capacity or consumer surplus.



Being a tech worker in the US isn’t all that great once you’re building a family and need to consider the education, housing, healthcare impacts of the US system. There is more to life than comp. In particular , having experienced both systems quite intensively, I really don’t agree the healthcare is better in the US.

I certainly encourage young Canadian tech workers to move to the US for a while (as I did) to make some money and see what it’s like.

However, many of us eventually moved back. One of the better deals is to work remotely for US tech while in Canada, to get some of the comp benefits while living in a much better overall country (in terms of many factors - happiness, quality of life, life expectancy, inclusiveness, etc). This will be subjective of course. But I don’t think it’s disingenuous or myopic to be happy that these tech giants are growing in Canada. It keeps people here. Being here makes a difference.




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