FSW WORLDWIDE

[abhiram.kumar]

That was before immigration numbers got increased. I will give you an example. My really good friend was a senior engineer at Zynga. In 2017, they had about 200-300 people per position and only 50-60 good ones. In 2022 September, they had 3000 people for a position with roughly 400 really good ones. What they did? They increased the difficulty of interviews.

One of the problems with people like you is that you feed false hopes. "Come, work hard for couple of years, you will make it big. I promise you. My friend, Curious George, is a millionaire and has 5 cars and 7 girlfriends". People listen to you and think: "Oh, ok. I will work hard. I will sacrifice everything. I will become millionaire". And then they come. They face the same situation that @imransyed and @nns14 faced.

But you keep telling people about your friend millionaire. I heard those stories when I was at Applyboard. Bogus agents feeding the same stories to prospective students back in India. "Come to Conestoga. It's Harvard of North. My cousin graduated from there. He drives BMW now"

The problems new immigrants face in Canada during their initial years is not anything new. It’s been going on for decades. What a lot of new immigrants expect is that Canada is sort of a get rich quick scheme where there are high paying jobs waiting for them once they land. That’s not the impression I’m giving. The ones who expect this are the ones who get disappointed the most. The ones who have struggled during their initial years and made it through have always prospered in this country. It’s not a country for those who aren’t up for challenges. I can say that for sure. You don’t have to take my word for it. You can ask the immigrants who have made it big in Canada. Ask them about their story.

 

[imransyed]

That was before immigration numbers got increased. I will give you an example. My really good friend was a senior engineer at Zynga. In 2017, they had about 200-300 people per position and only 50-60 good ones. In 2022 September, they had 3000 people for a position with roughly 400 really good ones. What they did? They increased the difficulty of interviews.

One of the problems with people like you is that you feed false hopes. "Come, work hard for couple of years, you will make it big. I promise you. My friend, Curious George, is a millionaire and has 5 cars and 7 girlfriends". People listen to you and think: "Oh, ok. I will work hard. I will sacrifice everything. I will become millionaire". And then they come. They face the same situation that @imransyed and @nns14 faced.

But you keep telling people about your friend millionaire. I heard those stories when I was at Applyboard. Bogus agents feeding the same stories to prospective students back in India. "Come to Conestoga. It's Harvard of North. My cousin graduated from there. He drives BMW now"

100% agreed! Although I never had anyone telling me about millionaires or stupid enticing make-believe shit, I am still shocked and horrified at how things are here. I knew rents will be high, business opportunities/salaries low and I came here only for the passport. I knew I will be living a crappy life and once I have what I want, I will immediately go back, like the very next day if that will be possible.

Turns out, I am miserable and broke with a full time job that pays above the median pay in Canada.
I expected the cold to make me feel miserable, honestly even with today's -30 temp, the cold is rather easily manageable and not that bad.

 

[GandiBaat]

I am in Big Data and AI. Most of the companies over here move big impact projects to the USA. Tesla didn't even bother opening an office here. Netflix was thinking about coming, changed his mind. Very few companies open their offices here and thus, the competition gets more and more fierce.

Typically, anyone who gets recruited in Canada has an option of moving to USA because of their passport. Its benefitial for them as they get higher pay and lower taxes, so they do it. Now immigrants typically have limited mobility, so they have to make do with other options like remote work -- provided they are good in the first place.

That being said, in vancouver, Amazon has a decent presence. Microsoft also has a decent presence. Samsung also has a sizeable presence. Slack is HQ'ed in Vancouver, last I checked.

Sure its not Seattle by any stretch of imagination. But its decent.

Again, I will stress, for a lot of these companies (listed above), the recruitment process is standard. The questions asked in India, Canada or USA are standard. So difficulty tends to be constant, yet high enough. Even in India, where number of workers is phenomenally high (Canada can only dream of that many people), I have seen this same phenomenon. MASSIVE number of people, very less hireable ones.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

In vancouver, Amazon has a decent presence. Microsoft also has a decent presence. Samsung also has a sizeable presence. Slack is HQ'ed in Vancouver, last I checked.

Sure its not Seattle by any stretch of imagination. But its decent.

Presence != high-impact projects. Most of the high-impact projects are done in the states. Even EU kind of sucks in that sense. The exception is Germany, England, Ireland (lately).

Of course, Amazon, MSFT, Samsung, Slack are great companies to work for. Don't get me wrong. My main point is mostly about coming to this forum and talking about "suffer now and you will make it big" is feeding false hopes.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

You can ask the immigrants who have made it big in Canada. Ask them about their story.

You conveniently skipped the part when I asked you when they immigrated. When I moved in 2017, I rented a small room from a guy. He was from Turkey. Came as a refugee and bought a house when he was making 120K. I know crap ton of people in Toronto making 150K+ and they cannot afford to buy a home. Times are changed. I won't be asking anybody for anyone's story as I am not the person who is influenced by some teary motivational tale.

What a lot of new immigrants expect is that Canada is sort of a get rich quick scheme where there are high paying jobs waiting for them once they land.

Not really. No one expects high-paying jobs. Immigrants expect jobs (skilled) that will allow them to live a decent life. What they get? A job at Timmies and a basement studio.

The ones who have struggled during their initial years and made it through have always prospered in this country.

False hopes once again. You say that if they struggle in the initial years, they will make it big. That's feeding false hopes.

 

[Arod]

You conveniently skipped the part when I asked you when they immigrated. When I moved in 2017, I rented a small room from a guy. He was from Turkey. Came as a refugee and bought a house when he was making 120K. I know crap ton of people in Toronto making 150K+ and they cannot afford to buy a home.

What kind of home are they looking for? A condo, townhouse or a two million dollar house with a pool?

And where?

Downtown Toronto or the suburbs?

What's their credit score?

What other expenses do they have? Do they send money to their families back in their countries?How organized are they with their money? Do they have small children?

There are many factors involved in a decision to buy a home. Just because someone is making over 100k doesn't mean they will qualify for a mortgage.

You also need to be realistic and understand that you can't expect your first home to be the house of your dreams, especially in a hot market like Toronto.

I highly doubt that someone with a 150k income and a good credit score can't get a mortgage for a condo or townhouse somewhere in the GTA.

 

[GandiBaat]

Presence != high-impact projects. Most of the high-impact projects are done in the states. Even EU kind of sucks in that sense. The exception is Germany, England, Ireland (lately).

High Impact Projects... I will disagree, but... disagreement will be hard to prove as it will need information that is proprietary and somewhat currentish. Lets circle around it from a different direction.

"High Impact Projects" are no guarentee for jobs. Lets look at India for instance, because thats one place that is also far away from US and Silicon Valley and all the "High Impact" action in these firms to be honest. Let me give you one concrete example.

Windows, the highest impact work in MS has always been developed in Redmond mainly. That being said, ALL the service packs of windows from Windows XP SP2 onwards have been developed out of Microsoft's India Development Centre in Hyderabad. Outside of Redmond it is perhaps the largest development centre for Microsoft. I do not know presently what (if any) high impact projects are ongoing there but it has been a source of quality tech jobs. This is why I doubt you need high impact projects for having a plethora of quality jobs.


Secondly, a lot of projects are not planned in a top down manner these days. It is very much possible if your team has talent and leadership is ready to listen, you can start a high impact project right where you are. It happened in my team when I came here in Vancouver. We saw our sister team doing what they thought was "image search" in a rather "curious" manner. We had a phd among us and we prepared a small demo with a CNN and it was a hit. We became a full fledged Comp Vision team from there. Best part? ALL of us were on Work Permit. Go immigrants!

The industry is changing so fast and so often that centres of excellence is no longer viable. Good businesses know this and thats why they grab value where ever they see it and double down on it. Those who are still working in older mold will need to adapt at one point or the other.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

What kind of home are they looking for? A condo, townhouse or a two million dollar house with a pool?

And where?

Downtown Toronto or the suburbs?

What's their credit score?

What other expenses do they have? Do they send money to their families back in their countries?How organized are they with their money? Do they have small children?

There are many factors involved in a decision to buy a home. Just because someone is making over 100k doesn't mean they will qualify for a mortgage.

You also need to be realistic and understand that you can't expect your first home to be the house of your dreams, especially in a hot market like Toronto.

I highly doubt that someone with a 150k income and a good credit score can't get a mortgage for a condo or townhouse somewhere in the GTA.

... Are you seriously asking me credit score of my colleagues and friends?

I know they want to buy a place in GTA. Condo: 2 bdr. That's all I know.

I am so happy you talked about expenses. It is hard to save money for a place when your rent is 2500 CAD/month.

Nah, 150K won't help you when you don't have downpayment large enough.

 

[Deleted member 1083629]

"High Impact Projects" are no guarentee for jobs

At Yandex, we need roughly 400 people to build Yandex Taxi. That's a lot of jobs created.

Windows, the highest impact work in MS has always been developed in Redmond mainly. That being said, ALL the service packs of windows from Windows XP SP2 onwards have been developed out of Microsoft's India Development Centre in Hyderabad. Outside of Redmond it is perhaps the largest development centre for Microsoft. I do not know presently what (if any) high impact projects are ongoing there but it has been a source of quality tech jobs. This is why I doubt you need high impact projects for having a plethora of quality jobs.

I am not at Microsoft and I am not from India so I def cannot argue this statement. However, Docker and Google K8s projects needed quite a lot of people; and they were internal projects. There is one project going on at GCP that if released will be super cool. They moved some people around and hired roughly 200 people for that project alone. It's in SV. They will def. release it; will it be successful that''s a different question.

 

[GandiBaat]

At Yandex, we need roughly 400 people to build Yandex Taxi. That's a lot of jobs created.

I am not at Microsoft and I am not from India so I def cannot argue this statement. However, Docker and Google K8s projects needed quite a lot of people; and they were internal projects. There is one project going on at GCP that if released will be super cool. They moved some people around and hired roughly 200 people for that project alone. It's in SV. They will def. release it; will it be successful that''s a different question.

Microsoft alone has about 8000 folks employed in India in 2020, before the tech boom of 2021 which I discount (it blew up to 18000). About 3000-4000 of them are engineers or managers or professional services (solution architect and pre-sales) folks. I doubt most of them work on "high impact" projects like K8s.

All I am saying is, it is possible to provide a number of high quality tech jobs without having the next ios shipped out of your country.

Source : https://www.microsoft.com/en-in/about/contact-us.aspx

 

[Arod]

... Are you seriously asking me credit score of my colleagues and friends?

Nah, 150K won't help you when you don't have downpayment large enough.

I couldn't care less about the credit score of your friends, I'm trying to explain to you that you can't categorically say that you can't afford a home with a $150k without knowing all the facts.

People come to this forum for guidance, and you are not doing them any favours by saying things that can easily be refuted by people who are already here.

 

[GandiBaat]

I couldn't care less about the credit score of your friends, I'm trying to explain to you that you can't categorically say that you can't afford a home with a $150k without knowing all the facts.

People come to this forum for guidance, and you are not doing them any favours by saying things that can easily be refuted by people who are already here.

Look, its hard to be a guide. Most of us try to share what we have seen and leave it at that. @MajorGrom is among few of folks who has experience of being a student, a job seeker and a PR applicant in Canada. So his observation have been very useful.

Now coming to buying a house, I bought one recently. As in November 2022 in Victoria (Not toronto level crazy but crazy enough in Canada) and what @MajorGrom has said is RIGHT. Had I been here in 2013 or 12, I would have bought a decent sized house with 5000+ sqft lot or may be two. I had to select an attached house with lesser land because of the expenses involved. Wages have NOT kept pace with house prices and I am earning decently (much more than 160K) and yet I feel a major pinch and insecurity. Why? Because the employers who can give that kind of income are limited and very homogenous. Something which impacts one of them is likely to impact all of them. In that sense my job is NOT a commodity. And thats BAD! Commodity is always easy to replace. And you want a job that you can replace easily. And you want a commodity income that can support your lifestyle. Then you are likely to be secure.

Another consideration, one must ensure what part of his networth is blocked in house. If it is more than 30-40%, one must reconsider their choices in life. Just because you can afford downpayment and perhaps interest rate right now, does not mean you should jump on it. If most of your networth is in form of equity in your house, you will miss a lot of opportunities to earn by investment. Also you are exposed to one single event which can wipe out your most of the networth.

 

[kaashi14]

They should really create a buffer of say 50-100 profiles to substitute with the declined invitations… It is unfair to lose out on tie break only for some folks to decline the invitations for whatever reasons.

this is so true

 

[kaashi14]

Tie breaking rule means the profile created upto that date? My CRS is 489 and created profile in April 2022 and didn't get an ITA. Tie breaker was March 2022 something I think.

Also, once you get NOI from a province, you can't get it again if you don't go through with it? I got tech draw NOI in December but didn't get one now 2 days from OINP ago even though CRS was again met.

 

[ImpatientDragon]

From the recent article - https://www.cicnews.com/2023/02/the-most-in-demand-occupations-in-canada-currently-0232818.html

• Technical Program Manager—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA—Remote job availability: 29.3%;
• User Experience Writer—Top hiring regions: GTA—Remote job availability: 44.7%;
• Information Technology Associate—Top hiring regions: GTA, GMMA—Remote job availability: 3.3%;
• Site Reliability Engineer—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA, GMMA—Remote job availability: 44.7%;
• Customer Success Associate—Top hiring regions: GTA—Remote job availability: 12.7%;
• Security Engineer—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA, GMMA—Remote job availability: 57.9%;
• Data Engineer—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA, GMMA—Remote job availability: 35.6%;
• Technical Product Manager—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA—Remote job availability: 33.1%;
• Cyber Security Specialist—Top hiring regions: GTA, GVMA, Greater Calgary Metropolitan Area (GCMA)—Remote job availability: 13.4%;

Is it safe to assume that when Bill C-19 Draw starts then IT professionals will be invited separately?