Tapping tech talent
Software engineer helps tech workers move to Canada
Former LinkedIn engineer helps workers move to Canada
KITCHENER — Vikrim Rangnekar might be the best ambassador and talent scout that tech companies in the Toronto Waterloo Corridor never met.
“I think Canada is super undermarketed,” says the founder of Mov North, a website that connects companies with skilled workers looking for a new job. “Traditionally, the U.S. has been the destination for tech talent, but I see that changing.”
Rangnekar was living the techie dream in Silicon Valley with a house in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains, and driving to his job as a senior software engineer at LinkedIn in Mountain View.
He worked at LinkedIn for seven years. He was born in India, carries an Indian passport and had an American work visa known as the H1B. He did not have a Green Card, and figured it would take another seven or eight years to secure one. Meanwhile, anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise south of the border.
“Putting all that together it was a perfect political storm, and I did not want to be in the middle of that or be a pawn,” he says.
“At that point I wanted more permanence, and just the chance to put down roots and know where my future stands, and not be in this immigration limbo.”
He filled out the Canadian government’s online application for a Global Talent Stream work permit. It has a point system for education, career experience and skills. About two weeks later, his work permit was approved, and within a month of arriving in Toronto he was granted permanent resident status. After three years, Rangnekar can apply for citizenship, if he wants it.
“The Canadian process was refreshing,” says Rangnekar.
He moved to Toronto about 18 months ago, and fell in love with the city that boasts the biggest tech cluster in Canada.
When he started working at LinkedIn in 2010 the social media platform had 100 employees. When he left it had about 6,000. Rangnekar wanted to work for himself again and had a couple of ideas for startups. But everything changed after he wrote a post on his LinkedIn account about how much he liked Toronto. About 20,000 people viewed it within two days.
“That one post really exploded,” says Rangnekar. “I sensed there was this unease in the immigrant tech community in the U.S, and they are looking for options.”
So he created Mov North. The site uses machine learning to match job vacancies with candidates interested in moving to Canada.
The website has had more than one million visits. While it is free for individuals, tech companies pay to be on it.
Rangnekar bought a house in Toronto’s Leslieville neighbourhood and his website pays the bills.
“Our neighbourhood is great, our kids are playing outside, they have so many friends, everyone seems to have a much more laid back life than in Silicon Valley,” he says.
“The costs are definitely lower. If you think Toronto is expensive try California.”
He is coming to Kitchener on Thursday for a tech talk at Terminal, a company that provides software talent and teams to other firms. Rangnekar will talk about the lessons he learned while helping to grow LinkedIn’s user base from about 100 million to 450 million. Microsoft bought LinkedIn for US$26.2 billion in 2016.
Companies that want to scale like that must keep investing in engineering even as sales and marketing are expanded, Rangnekar says. And they must keep all of their data to help build products that appeal to current and future users, he says.
“So it is building products from data, the value of data and managing all of that,” he says. “That was a big take-away.”
Before moving here Rangnekar knew almost nothing about Canada, but he was familiar with the University of Waterloo.
“I interviewed so many kids from Waterloo, and I think almost all of them got jobs,” he says. “They were coming down for co-ops.”