What companies are University of Waterloo technology graduates working for? A look at talent migration and the Canadian tech scene.
By: Rob Darling
Tags: Canada, Talent, University Of Waterloo, Recent Graduates, Startup

In this article we will look at the companies that the 2017–2019 UW tech graduates work for. We will also see if this provides any clues as to why UW Software Engineering graduates show an opposite trend to all other UW tech graduates.

Note: If a graduate did not update their profile after their last co-op/intern position then they get put in the “unknown” employer bucket. While it is possible that they have moved to a permanent role at the same company, I don’t make that assumption.

There are over 845 companies that employ these 2,674 UW tech graduates.

FAAMA

While the top 25 employers of these 2017–2019 UW tech graduates includes the group of companies that JP Morgan calls FAAMA (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet (Google)), which interestingly also means “king” in the Mandinka language, there are another 840+ companies that employ these 2,674 graduates. While each of the FAAMA companies have offices in Canada, Google (Alphabet), Amazon and Microsoft are the only 3 that currently have these 2017–2019 UW tech graduates working in their Canadian offices.

FAAMA companies have hired 21% of the 2,674 UW tech graduates from graduating years 2017–2019

If we take all the 2017–2019 UW tech graduates who live in the USA, 41% of them work for a FAAMA company.

If we take all the 2017–2019 UW tech graduates who live in Canada, 9% of them work for a FAAMA company.

Computer Science

There are 456+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Computer Science graduates. The top 25 employers employ 33% of all 2017–2019 Computer Science graduates.

Computer Engineering

There are 178+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Computer Engineering graduates. The top 25 employers employ 44% of all 2017–2019 Computer Engineering graduates.

Software Engineering

There are 105+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Software Engineering graduates. The top 25 employers employ 52% of all 2017–2019 Software Engineering graduates.

As my last article showed, the percentage of UW Software Engineering graduates working in the USA has increased by ~4% for each graduating class over the past 3 years as per this chart.

Let’s dig deeper on what may be going on here.

One hypothesis that we had for other programs, in the previous article, was that maybe an uptick in International Student graduates would be correlated with an uptick in graduates working in the USA. While this turned out to be false — maybe it is true here? Or maybe the inverse of this could be true? Let’s see.

In looking for correlation one would expect a three year consistent upward trend of 4% for either Canadian Citizens or International Student graduates — this is not the case, so it is safe to say that there is no correlation between the graduate mix and the rising trend of UW Software Engineering graduates going to the USA.

2. If we look at the Software Engineering graduates being hired by FAAMA companies, there was a decrease overall in 2019 with the biggest drop being in FAAMA offices in Canada. Overall, Facebook is the lead employer of UW Software Engineering graduates in this time period, hiring 15% of them. Since Facebook is only hiring these graduates for their USA offices, this one company has the highest impact on the percentage split between USA and Canada.

Let’s take a step back for a second.

3. Across the three years for UW Software Engineering graduates on LinkedIn there were 72 in 2017, 117 in 2018 and 81 in 2019. For simplicity let’s say that each year has around 100 graduates. This means that a 4% increase year over year is only 4 people per year. Given the small size of this cohort I don’t think we need to declare that the sky is falling.

Systems Design Engineering

There are 117+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Systems Design Engineering graduates. The top 25 employers employ 38% of all 2017–2019 Systems Design Engineering graduates.

Electrical Engineering

There are 138+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Electrical Engineering graduates. The top 25 employers employ 37% of all 2017–2019 Electrical Engineering graduates.

Mechatronics

There are 160+ companies that employ UW 2017–2019 Mechatronics graduates. The top 25 employers employ 40% of all 2017–2019 Mechatronics graduates.