The cheap labour pool as a consequence of the weak Canadian dollar certainly helps, alongside having identical time zones and nearly identical culture to the United States. Lots of Canadian consultancies butter their bread with USD.
For way too long Canada has had this weird artificial market capture problem. The easier it is for us to break down those fake barriers, the better it is for everyone.
Salaries are about to go up way more for the average employee. Simultaneously, any companies that were making money on labor price arbitrage are about to have a real tough time; Good riddance.
If you get into a senior role at one of the big tech firms, pay matches the valley. For lesser roles, Canada is cheaper, but the gap is closing rapidly as talent runs dry.
Potential ambiguity here. Yes, “staff” engineers at google earn very high salaries, but people unfamiliar with titles might think this term means a competent but otherwise unremarkable member of the technical staff.
At google a Staff engineer is a title notably higher than senior swe, and many talented people will not reach this title or pay grade.
The point I'm making in my comment is that "Senior Software Engineers" are not making >600K in SF.
"Senior Software Engineer" is a role you can reach in 3-8 years of experience.
"Staff" is a whole different ordeal, a role many never reach. And even then compensation is closer to 450K; you might find some around 600K but those are outliers (whereas OP made it sound that >600K is something common)
The above was referring to total comp. From what I have read, annual stock/RSU compensation is equivalent to salary. I have read that a $300,000 salary is not unheard of for a senior FAANG engineering role.
It's rather rare, from what I can tell. Esp. in the context of immigration, h1bdata can be useful. Google llc has precisely 1 software engineer certified at a salary above 300k. 250k, more achievable, with very senior status.
What really happens though is RSU appreciation. GOOG has more than doubled in the past 4 years. You are awarded X dollars of stock on hire and every annual review period, but that is converted into shares awarded every Y months. If you achieved a 1:1 salary:RSU vesting ratio, today that would probably be 1:2, a 50 percent pay raise.
I think the RSUs and bonuses aren’t included in those H1B data reports. Anyone L5 and higher (as well as many L4s) at Google is pulling in at least 300k in total liquid compensation per year.
Just to be clear, that salary is prevailing wage which is usually lower than the actual salary you're getting (does not include RSUs or stock on top of that). In my case the difference was about 30 to 40% lower.
The PERM / H1B figures only show base salary and exclude RSUs which for most big tech companies is the larger factor at senior and above levels. Netflix pay all cash so their PERM figures are much more representative and match the levels.fyi numbers pretty well, giving me confidence that those self reported figures are broadly accurate.
(When comparing keep in mind Netflix hire only at senior software engineer level and above and have a single level title so staff/principal levels are collapsed to senior just with higher salaries.)
This is why a simplifying assumption was made with the 1:1 ratio of salary:RSUs. Obviously it matters when comparing two companies, but in this case the question was simply "who makes 600k" and the answer is 'probably nobody unless the stock did real gud'
The salary:stock ratio increases the higher Your level. 600k would likely be an L7 offer, though you could reach that at a lower level through stock appreciation.
I know people who joined post IPO and make more than that at Shopify as Senior Developers. Is primarily equity though. Salaries do lag in Canada vs USA.
So who in Toronto is paying senior or staff developers with 10 years of experience the local equivalent of >$400k USD (in lower cost cities than NYC/SF)?
I left Toronto immediately after my Master's, but have multiple extremely talented friends who feel they've topped out at well under half that.
No, $600k in SF is better than $200k in Canada in probably all circumstances. As long as your housing costs don’t scale with your income, you are already winning with an extra $100k of comp per year. That isn’t even considering that lots of things are more expensive in Canada, taxes are a bit higher, and Vancouver and Toronto aren’t cheap.
Google's announcement was 1000 Montreal, 1000 Toronto, 3000 Kitchener-Waterloo. Montreal and KW being the engineering locations. Both Montreal and KW have much more reasonable housing, and are far cheaper than Toronto/Vancouver.
Yep; I have friends in the 250k to 500k USD bracket who pine away at the notion of moving back home to Canada, but there's no way in hell they'd maintain that level of compensation.
The pool of technical talent is also pretty great.
If you're in a non-primary market in the U.S. (non NYC/SF/Boston), my experience has been that you can hire comparable or better talent in Canadian cities for less the local U.S. median salary, especially in talent-starved markets within the U.S. It's an open secret that many Americans are somehow unaware of.
Also with easier immigration, Canada’s talent pool will only get better. Already the US is losing people to Canada due to overly restrictive immigration laws. I’ve even heard immigration offices offering to help with Canadian immigration on the radio in the SF Bay
I think Canada is losing far more people to the US than the other way around, at least at the higher end of the market. Canadian salaries just aren't competitive at that level.
The US is the NBA, the stars definitely do go there. A pretty good life strategy is to work in the states from 30-45 while you're young and healthy, then come back to Canada for peace and safety to raise your family. I've seen a few people do that. I'm not sure it ends up being that bad for Canada. On the one hand they lose stars during their productive years, on the other hand they come back during their spending years with more money/knowledge/sophistication than they would have had.
Create a business != create jobs.
A large infusion of outside capital will boost a local economy. They will own homes and buy things from local merchants which will create jobs.
That is still lesser than the impact of entrepreneurs abroad. Ask the Canadian govt what they would prefer and it won't be suburban families. Canada will always be 2nd in technology.
The immigration process itself has gotten appreciably worse though.
A few years ago, it took me fifteen minutes to renew a Work Permit at the border. Last year, it was an intentionally unpleasant all-day affair. The online system is horrifically backlogged, far beyond the 100 or so days it says on the website.
Yes, Canada's bet on skilled immigration is really smart of them, and it's a neat way of side-stepping the usual social tensions that we hear about wrt. "anti-immigrant" sentiment from socially marginalized or low-income natives.
So while there certainly is a skilled worker immigration path, if you are accepted by the board as a refugee, you will be met with help and kindness. And even while waiting, we do not separate kids from you and put them in cages. And we accept the most refugees in the world: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48696974
How is that different than the U.S.? Are refugees not met with help and kindness in America?
> And even while waiting, we do not separate kids from you and put them in cages
While I do not agree with this tactic, I also think that this paints an unfair picture, since Canada has never experienced immigration issues to the degree that the U.S. has. Maybe the U.S. should do what Mexico did and let caravans of migrants show up at the border in Vancouver?
"According to the US-based Pew Research Center, which looked the the UNHCR data, 2018 was the first time the US did not lead the world in refugee resettlement since 1980."
I guess congratulations? I don't necessarily view "accepting the most refugees" as a moral calculation, nor something that should be a competition. But if you want to keep score I guess the U.S. is now 28-1 since 1980. Go America!
"The US is the world's major recipient of new asylum applications, registering 254,300 applications in 2018.
Canada was ninth on the list of new asylum claims with 55,400 registered in 2018, behind the US, Peru, Germany, France, Turkey, Brazil, Greece and Spain."
Jeez only 9th? Worse than Peru?
"An influx of asylum seekers crossing at the US-Canada border has become a political issue after approximately 40,000 people "irregularly" crossed into Canada between 2017 and 2018."
Why is this an issue for Canadians?
"
Canada currently is struggling with a backlog of almost 74,000 asylum claims with applicants waiting almost two years for a hearing."
Other relevant facts from your article.
But hey, the U.S. is bad because that's what the news says.
America historically greeted refugees with kindness. This changed significantly with the new administration in 2017.
The US Asylum backlog jumped to 340,000 - up 10x since 2014. Certainly some of that is due to heightened applications, but a lot is due to antiquated systems in USCIS and political changes.
I’d also note in the Syrian refugee crisis, that Canada punched high above its weight in resettlement, far beyond the numbers the USA accepted, for a country 10x smaller.
With global warming and conflict on the rise, we are about to see over a billion people displaced over the next 50 years. In prior eras, the US would have led global efforts to manage this in a structured, humane way. But lately the US has preferred dismantling the global order and institutions it created after WW2.
> we are about to see over a billion people displaced over the next 50 years
Yes. And this is worrisome because stable countries won't be able to "let them all in" (sorry not sure the best way to put that). Long-term it's going to be more sensible to stabilize unstable countries.
Canada also runs separate refugee immigration program. Also: the advantage of not having too many illegal immigrants coming through the border and having to make decisions when they and their children put roots in the country.
The US has so much land and so much economic capacity to add people (most of those people are already in the economic system so the US will have more trouble removing them than legalizing them) that the current illegal immigrants are not an issue at all. The US obviously needs to get better control of the borders (which it has for the past decade) but the only sensible, economically effective and not to mention humane way to deal with people already here is to provide them with legal status so they don’t remain an unprotected and therefore cheaper competitor for jobs.
Lol. Maybe a similar culture to some parts of California or Washington, and that is a stretch, but Vancouver is very very different than "the United States". Live in both for a while and all the little difference (the guns, health care, government, police, civil-military relations, the environment, land use, education etc) add up to markedly different approaches to life.
I think anyone who had spent time living outside of North America will recognize that the cultures of Canada and the US are indeed nearly identical. Especially in the context of this thread, which is about the workplace.
Whoa definitely can't agree. For example, Canadians are much less likely to be rah rah about something they know doesn't work. And they don't have anywhere near the level of 'just world' philosophy. As a foreigner to both, I see massive differences.
Strongly disagree. The difference between somewhere like Vancouver and Seattle is much smaller than the difference between somewhere like San Francisco and Tulsa. Statement is plenty accurate.
I'm an American living in Canada and I'd agree with this.
San Diego was far more different than Austin, TX, and considerably different than Ithaca, NY.
I'm still legally a WA resident, and having done a lot of time around Seattle, Everett, Bellingham, and Vancouver, I can tell you there are a lot of similarities. Seattle doesn't have the Aberdeen Mall, but in terms of attitude there isn't anything you can't find in Seattle.
Once you get out of the city, guns, religion, and skepticism of the urbanites is just as common as in the US -- standard Urban-Rural divide. Hell, even the "fly-over" provinces are conservative, just like in the US.
It seems you're insinuating that Alberta is somehow more (U.S.) 'American' than the rest of Canada.
I have lived in Alberta for over ten years, and though culturally distinct from the rest of Canada (as is every other province I've spent time in) Alberta's brand of rugged individualist / conservatism is still very Canadian.
And though we may look very different to the urbanites of GVRD (Vancouver and surrounding) and the GTA (Toronto and surrounding), you'll find many more similarities between us and those living in rural Canada with resource-based economies, like the people living in B.C.'s forestry-dependent areas, the northern prairies or NorthWest Ontario. The difference for us is that we have very vocal, oil-industry-controlled politicians and a population that is immediately suspicious of any time an easterner tries to tell us what to do.
Sometimes the easiest way to see our distinctiveness is by contrast - immediately evident when crossing over to even the closest border states.
I love Montana and its people, but boy do you know you're not in Canada anymore - roadways lined with advertisements; cops everywhere you look; huge rich/poor divides; razor wire, visible drug problems and ghettos in even the smallest cities; and a love of all things military.
All that to say, there's far more to being Albertan than oil, guns and god, and those three things don't make us a 'murican.
Agreed. I lived in the us for five years, it was a shock. The big thing for me was the guns, the constant militarism. Albertans might own lots of guns but they don't take them to pizza hut. And cops everywhere. I was in seattle recently and counted 8 different TYPES of police car on a quick 4-block walk between buildings. Not car paint jobs, different types of police. ICE, fed, state, local, atf... America seems to have more police than not. Canada, all of canada, doesn't feel like that.
No I'm insinuating that the values the commenter encountered in vancouver vis a vis guns, police, armed conflict, etc are not representative of canada as a whole and change from province to province and even between say vancouver and the surrounding rural areas.
Vancouver is especially different from the rest of canada than most canadian cities. Its like using Portland to characterize the entirety of America.
Yes. I have lived/worked in Alberta many years, and am scheduled to go back soon. But i didnt say Canada /= the united states. I said Vancouver /= the United states.
I, too, would accept "similar culture," but it is far from "nearly identical." I say this as a Canadian who lived in the United States for several years.
