This is an excerpt of the tech chapter in our ebook, The Atila Schools and Jobs Guide | The Best Canadian Universities for the Best Jobs

Remember how we said that Waterloo does an excellent job at placing students in technical roles at these engineering companies? Unfortunately, that sort of performance doesn’t seem to extend to leadership roles at these companies. 

For example, Waterloo placed 302 Software engineers at Facebook and beat Stanford (Stanford!), which “only” had 275. Yet there are a grand total of 0 Vice Presidents at Facebook from Waterloo while Stanford had 13.

At Google, there are 684 Software engineers and only 2 vice presidents from Waterloo. Stanford has 1,162 software engineers and 22 vice presidents.

This means that for every 342 software engineers at Google from Waterloo, there is 1 Vice President. While for Stanford, there are 53 software engineers for every Vice President. Harvard has 30 software engineers for every Vice President.

One More example, Toronto, UBC, and McGill combined have 101 software engineers at Apple, however, between all 3 schools there is only one vice president. Compare this with Harvard which only has 18 software engineers at Apple, but 9 vice presidents.

Update: After writing the previous paragraph, a friend who works as a software engineer at Google pointed out that while this might seem surprising, it’s important to note that a lot of Stanford Software Engineers have chosen to join startups such as Stripe and Palantir which are typically seen as more prestigious in the tech industry. Some have also chosen to pursue research positions, where the acceptance criteria is higher. 

 

Now, to be fair, there are two ways to look at this data:

  1. Waterloo is known for its STEM programs (specifically, Engineering, Computer Science, and Math) and so maybe it’s not fair to rate a technical school on the basis of its ability to place students in management positions. Also, Stanford and Harvard both have MBA programs which might also cause some bias for upper-level positions like Vice President.

     

But bear in mind that, the way we collected our data (see methodology), if someone did their undergrad in software engineering at Waterloo but went to Harvard to get an MBA, they would still be counted in both Waterloo and Harvard. So even with that, Waterloo, Toronto, UBC, Mcgill, etc. are not being represented in upper-level management.

  1. The other way of looking at this is: 300 engineers is a lot of engineers from one school, and the fact that not a single person from that school is a Vice President is concerning. I think we Canadians need to do some serious self-reflection on if Canadian schools are doing a good enough job of teaching students to be well-rounded leaders on a global scale. I mean, the current CEO of Google and Microsoft are both engineers from technical schools in India. I believe that we can do the same thing with our graduates.

The methodology is not perfect, and you can definitely quibble with the nuances of the data. But I don’t think you can refute the central thesis: Top Canadian schools do a good job of getting students jobs at top tech companies. Canadian schools do not do a good job of getting students into top management positions. Why?

After writing this chapter, many of our friends who went to Canadian schools and now work at Facebook and Google in California, had some very interesting thoughts:

Facebook and Google were founded by Harvard and Stanford alumni respectively and both started their early days near and in the Stanford campus. This means that when they first started these companies hired their friends, and those friends hired their friends, and so forth. Those early hires are now vice presidents and other senior executives. In the early days of these companies, there was a lot less Canadian presence in Silicon Valley. In 10-15 years from now, the large number of Canadians who have recently entered these companies might begin to rise up the management ladder and we will see more of them in management and senior positions.

 

It's also important to measure by cohorts. For example, how would the class of 2016 Stanford vs. Waterloo grads compare? Likely no one in this cohort is in a VP role yet but you might find a large number of Waterloo grads in that cohort working at Facebook or Google. However, if you compared the Stanford vs Waterloo 2006 class, there are likely to be a large number of Stanford students from that cohort now working in senior-level management roles. Yet you would find very few Waterloo students in that class.

 

Another theory is that most Canadians who go to the States for their career often tend to come back to Canada after a few years to raise a family and take on a more leadership role in Canadian firms. It would be interesting to have included more Canadian tech companies to see for example, what is the percentage composition of Canadian universities in senior level management at Shopify.

 

While this is not something we have been able to measure with data, it’s interesting anecdotal evidence we have heard from friends in a multitude of industries.

The Atila staff know many people from Waterloo, UToronto, and McGill and in addition to being very smart in technical fields, they are also very sociable and charismatic people. So we are a bit shocked to see their school underperform in upper-level positions. 

Perhaps it’s just a matter of time as Waterloo’s reputation in tech companies) is still being established (bear in mind the tech companies themselves are relatively young). Come on Waterloo/UBC/Toronto. Make our country proud! Atila believes in you!