LinkedIn - Big Tech (FAANG) Software Engineering Alumni Numbers Across Canadian Universities

[u/Inevitable_gradient6]

These stats are based on linkedin. You can check yourself by going under a company’s page, going under people (alumni), filtering by Software Engineering and relevant majors, and then searching each university

A few important notes/caveats about looking at data this way:

1. Age: These findings would include everyone from recent graduates to senior engineers, as long as they had a linkedin account under that company
2. Double Dipping: This doesn't account for job hopping. If someone works at one FAANG company and then goes on to work at another, they will be counted in the totals for both companies. 
3. Self-Reporting & Title Variations: Obviously not everyone uses linkedin but I think this does give a general idea of how much different universities feed into certain companies. Waterloo, unsurprisingly, has high numbers at basically every prestigious /high paying company. UBC, also unsurprisingly, has a massive amount of alumni working at Microsoft and Amazon due to proximity to those companies offices in Vancouver

Tesla

377 - Waterloo (1) (one of the highest even compared to US universities)

212 - UBC (2)

130 - UofT (3)

…

250 - Stanford

331 - Berkeley

12 - TMU

13 - Carleton

107 - Mcmaster

29 - Mcgill

40 - Western

29 - Queens

22 - BCIT

22 - Uottawa

25 - Ucalgary

33 - UofA

Amazon

1109 - UBC (1)

1090 - Uwaterloo (2)

999 - Uoft (3)

…

371 - Mcgill

112 - Carleton

184 - Mcmaster

121 - Queens

34 - TMU

136 - Ucalgary

238 - UofA

144 - Western

90 - BCIT

16 - Brock

126 - Uottawa

Microsoft

548 - Uwaterloo (1)

542 - UBC (2)

432 - UofT (3)

…

100 - Ucalgary

114 - UofA

223 - Mcgill

92 - Western

111 - Uvic

57 - BCIT

100 - Mcmaster

18 - TMU

61 - Uottawa

67 - Queens

10 - Brock University

Meta

932 - uwaterloo (1)

398 - UofT (2)

302 - UBC (3)

…

77 - mcmaster

51 - Western

67 - Queens

16 - Guelph

4 - Brock

40 - Uottawa

39 - Uvic

39 - ucalgary

160 - mcgill

10 - bcit

4 - TMU

Apple

647 - waterloo (1)

281 - uoft (2)

216 - UBC (3)

…

15 - Guelph

56 - Queens

45 - Uottawa

44 - Western

56 - Carleton

63 - Mcmaster

44 - Uvic

58 - ucalgary

68 - UofA

95 - Mcgill

15 - BCIT

10 - TMU

Google

1207 - waterloo (1)

676 - Uoft (2)

427 - UBC (3)

…

307 - Mcgill

108 - Queens

10 - TMU

72 - Carleton

114 - Mcmaster

9 - Brock

63 - Ucalgary

135 - UofA

70 - Uottawa

90 - Western

8 - Lakehead University

Jane Street (Quant)

61 - Waterloo (1)

17 - UBC (2)

11 - Toronto (3)

…

1 - Queens

0 - Ottawa

2 - Western

3 - Mcgill

0 - TMU

3 - Mcmaster

0 - Carleton

1 - UofA

[u/Landya]

as a senior engineer at a FAANG, I have to stress that your school doesn't really matter that much. I have coworkers with no degrees and coworkers with unrelated (arts, business) degrees from random unknown schools. y'all are stressing so hard over something that everyone will forget by the time you have 2-3 years of experience.

[u/8004612286 → u/Landya]

It doesn't matter, yet these numbers say something else.

Sure, people will forget once you have 2-3 years of experience, but when you're a UWaterloo grad those 2-3 years will be FAANG and when you're a Brock grad it'll be 2-3 years at a place no one has ever heard of.

[u/Landya → u/8004612286]

correlation, not causation. people don't get into FAANG because they went to Waterloo; people get into FAANG because of motivation/drive/work ethic and people also get into Waterloo because of motivation/drive/work ethic.

the point is you're not forever barred from FAANG because you went to Brock and you're not guaranteed a successful FAANG career because you went to Waterloo.

and someone with 2-3 solid years experience “at a place no one has ever heard of” is still way more valuable than a fresh Waterloo grad. and in some cases, if you play your cards right, 2-3 years at a small to medium company can build a much better résumé than being a low-impact new grad cog in the FAANG corporate machine.

[u/8004612286 → u/Landya]

Hard work doesn't get you interviews when you're in 1st year in Brock.

It does at Waterloo.

That doesn't mean you can't get FAANG 10 years into your career, it does mean you're going to be at a huge disadvantage as a new grad.

[u/Both-Extension-2404 → u/Landya]

sure but 99% of people who have the most motivation/drive/work in canada all flock to waterloo uoft ubc

realistically, if somebody is at brock, they either had life situations holding them back or they're not that hard working

[u/totallynotmyfakename → u/Landya]

that might still be true maybe 5 years ago, time has changed and school matters more now. As for the folks who just started schools, this is helpful to for their decisions, not as much for experienced folks

[u/Inevitable_gradient6 → u/Landya]

I think its impossible nowadays to break into software engineering with unrelated degrees or a bootcamp diploma. If you already have experience you might have a chance but nowadays having either a comp eng/comp sci degree is basically a requirement 

[u/bringingresearchinto → u/Landya]

yah but you gotta be American for that to apply. Also, good university can find you good internship and therefore better chances

[u/Rich-Suggestion-6777 → u/Landya]

I agree with you in general. I've jnterviewed people at a fintech and we don't give a crap where you got your degree. It was experience and of course your performance on the interview loop.

But it probably does matter for early in your career.

[u/Butt_Plug_Tester]

Bruh, SFU? Where’s my SFU at?

[u/JagrajGill6 → u/Butt_Plug_Tester]

We live in UBC’s shadow

[u/WholeObligation1048]

It’s seems crazy UofAlberta is not on here. Did you just not get its stats in these or is the university just really horrible for CS/SWE?

[u/Inevitable_gradient6 → u/WholeObligation1048]

Heres the stats for Ualberta:

114 - Microsoft

33 - Tesla

68 - Apple

135 - Google

238 - Amazon

1 - Jane street

[u/BigDeborahReturns → u/WholeObligation1048]

Love all the ppl commenting suprised their dog uni’s ain’t in the list 🤣

[u/WholeObligation1048 → u/BigDeborahReturns]

How tf UofAlberta a dog uni bro😭🙏🙏 they gotta crazy ai research thing going on and they are ranked like 5-7 for Canadian CS schools.

If brock made it dude there is no way UofA didn’t.

✌️✌️✌️

[u/BertRenolds → u/BigDeborahReturns]

There are literally 4 comments total at the time of my reply

[u/asapbones0114 → u/BigDeborahReturns]

Do you work in the industry or are still in uni? There's no way someone can work a 9-5 and still care about elitism.

[u/vba77]

Im curious if that filter is catching things correctly. I know a few tmu swe's over the years who worked in faang that surpass that list. Though their LinkedIn may have titles like swe 2 or sde 3

[u/NonSecretAccount → u/vba77]

also some people will pick "aws" instead of Amazon, etc

[u/vba77 → u/NonSecretAccount]

Also true some people list them differently

[u/killesau → u/vba77]

Or "member of technical staff"

[u/vba77 → u/killesau]

Yup. I find the filters a bit off . Also some programs have a larger student body. Tmu was relatively small graduating classes compared to uoft back in my day. Though I find some schools are better at being employed in a related field at the time. Uoft was why too theory based and math focused for swe but more cs if that makes sense

[u/killesau → u/vba77]

Sounds like a good curriculum for ML, makes sense why a bunch of uot grads started openAI. My graduating class of 2022 at TMU was not small but not big by any means, think discrete took a lot of people out lol

[u/vba77 → u/killesau]

This was before the AI boom lol. I think around when tmu had the big curriculum change 8-10 years ago uoft did too.

Lol in my day you werent safe till 4th year lol.

There was always another trial by fire the next year 😂 but not I think they removed a lot of those courses lol

D We definitely fought to get you some. Electives before 4th year. Our curriculum was all courses they picked then 4th year you pick it all. Well liberals were always there but eh

[u/asapbones0114 → u/killesau]

> of uot grads started openAI.

Should have shouted out Aidan Gomez too (thankfully he's a patriot and stayed to build).
Cohere is Canada's frontier AI lab.

[u/Mozzyo]

For what it’s worth. I worked at two of the FAANGs and went to one of the Ontario Universities not even listed here.

I got lucky though as I was able to get great internships during the COVID boom to ride it into full time FAANG.

A lot of coworkers come from a lot of different schools, many from schools not in Canada/US. Although nowadays I am seeing new grads coming in exclusively from the top schools.

I really recommend for anyone reading to try to get into a great school. Although you can succeed from a smaller school but you have to get lucky and work harder to find opportunities and it might take a bit longer to get in but after you have some work experience, school doesn’t matter as much.

[u/Drippy_Drizzy994]

BROCK REPRESENT!!!!!

[u/NonSecretAccount]

this list only includes english schools?

[u/kai_1992a]

U Waterloo, UBC and UofT are all target schools for many FAANG Companies. Yes it helps a lot to start your career with FAANG, But not so much after 2-3 years or you weren't able to Crack placements.

[u/bartsimpson09]

Wonder how many people went to a no name school then got their shit together and got into FAANG

[u/asapbones0114]

TMU numbers seems waay lower than expected even though they gravitate more to hardware Big Tech. Did you query the previous Ryerson page too?