As detailed in the execrable Toronto Star, the Mayor of Toronto managed to use the loss of the Amazon HQ2 contest as an excuse to brag about his increasingly overpopulated and crime ridden city:
“Our city is booming and this process has allowed us to tell that success story — the story of our tech industry and our ability to foster that industry — around the world,” Toronto Mayor John Tory said in a statement. “There is no other place in North America which can boast all in one location the same talent, the same quality of life, the same vibrancy and economic strength.”
The idea that Toronto has the same technical 'talent' as Silicon Valley or New York is laughable. I would even put it far behind Chicago, which is stocked with high speed trading firms.
Toronto has very little in terms of elite software development firms. There's a noteworthy but small A.I. research group called the "Vector Institute", but most of Toronto's offices for companies like Facebook and Google are staffed with sales and account management types, not engineers or scientists.
(Contrast that with Waterloo, which has actual engineering offices).
Silicon Valley clearly has better quality of life (e.g., weather, disposable income for tech workers).
The term 'vibrancy' is a nonsense term thrown in there to make his comparison less ridiculous.
- Is Toronto more 'vibrant' than New York?
- What does that term mean anyhow? It is a stand in for 'diversity'?
As for economic strength, the idea that Toronto is 'stronger' than NY or Silicon Valley is laughable.
Note that all of these regions have relatively high taxation. Toronto's main advantage on Chicago is less violent crime (for now), and weather. Toronto has zero advantages on New York or Silicon Valley, as far as I can tell. Tech workers have health care provided by their employer, so the mediocre Canadian health care system is not a huge advantage for people working at Amazon or similar companies.
No comments:
Post a Comment