I'm a Canadian software that moved from Victoria, BC to San Francisco, CA to begin my career two years ago. My top earning friends in Canada of the same experience level earn 2 - 4 times less than me and my peers here. I'm saving significantly more here than them too even after a much higher cost of living. The quality of life here is worse though in some ways. Most of all I miss the politeness and generally less hostile demeanor of Canadians.
> The quality of life here is worse though in some ways
So what you need to think about is this: if you would be putting away, say, $50k less a year in Vancouver, it's essentially like you're paying $50k more to live there. Is it worth it to you?
Compared to San Fran, it has a more hospitable and interesting climate, the culture is perhaps less vivacious but definitely safer and more genteel, the outdoors and recreation opportunities nearby blow away anything in California, and the fact that the local institutions and governments are still relatively well-run has a positive impact on the long term stability of the place.
The question is: are you looking for somewhere to _live_, to settle, to raise a family, to put down roots? Are you looking for somewhere to be _from_? Or are you a member of the globetrotting class, working wherever you feel like, being _from_ nowhere?
If the latter, then you may as well follow the money for as long as you can. If the former, then it may well be worth some numeric financial sacrifices in order to actually have a better life. There's probably plenty of equivalents in "flyover" states and the like, where you can live for cheap and be safe and stable relative to the major cities.
These words would be fine if we were talking about a 20% pay difference. But we are talking about a 100-200% pay difference. And if you save half your pay in Vancouver, moving to SF increases your savings rate by 4-6x. This gets significantly better with lower savings rates. That is absolutely crazy. It would be so deeply irrational to have these options and choose Vancouver early in your career. Even just a single four year contract in the bay will completely change your financial situation. Do one or two contracts _then_ move to Vancouver.
> It would be so deeply irrational to have these options and choose Vancouver early in your career.
That is, if your only consideration is financial; which is an equally irrational way to live your life. You have to consider the social cost of uprooting yourself and moving around - there is huge value in building not just a "network" but an actual group of friends, other families, etc. to form community. This of course is something often missed by the sort of small-souled bugmen that are attracted to working at high-value Silicon Valley jobs, "changing the world" by "disrupting" the way people deliver pizza or call a cab. (Imagine pouring out your best years slaving away at something so meaningless!)
If you spend the early years of your career living in an $2000/mo room in some bunkhouse, not developing real connections with anyone, and then drop out of the sky in another city as you approach 30, don't be surprised if you've missed out on many of the other things that actually make life worth living, and don't be surprised if you've paid other opportunity costs. Maybe you miss out on finding the love of your life, or don't find them until you're too old to start a family. Maybe you find yourself permanently rootless, unable to form a cohesive friend group, perhaps even skeptical that they actually exist.
Or just notice all the human shit on the street in SF and realize that you could actually live somewhere you honestly liked to be. It's that simple.
This seems to be a sensitive topic for you. Too much vitriol and straw-men. 'Only financial' is naive. Your life is heavily structured by the need to earn a living. You focus on how awful life is in SF and how nice it could be elsewhere yet you will only get to enjoy this life on evenings and weekends because you are working full time. A lot of people I know don't have time / energy for hobbies or friends outside of chores, family stuff, and decompressing from work. Most people are forced to play this game but if you have enough money you can start changing the rules. With enough money you can regularly take years off work to do... anything you want. Travel, meet people, write a book, deeply pursue hobbies, etc. With enough money you can work part time for the rest of your life and actually have the time and energy to enjoy it. And with enough money you can retire early, as early as in your 30s, to get unlimited freedom. It's not 'only financial,' it's paradigm shifting. It's 'only financial' if you are resigned to working until you are 65 or whatever and assume everybody else is too.
> My top earning friends in Canada of the same experience level earn 2 - 4 times less than me and my peers here
2 is possible, 4 seems like a big stretch. Are you really comparing apples to apples? Or are you working for Google and comparing against someone working for a random consultancy firm in Victoria?
In Montréal, top software developers salaries are around 200K CAD, a bit more if you go at Google, and Montreal pays less than other cities.
200K CAD is basically unheard in Montreal for the IC. I know only one person with total compensation like that and she is kind of tech manager. 135K Cad is very high in Montreal for IC, median for the senior developer is around 90k, 100K considered very good.
To OP, or another curious reader, I think you need to take these kinds of posts with a grain of salt. That salary is rare in montreal, but it is also an extremely affordable city to live in. If you are seeking a comfortable life, I personally don’t think you need to be sweating whether you’re earning 120k or 200k CAD in a city like that.
It's high but not unheard of (I am talking about total comp, not base salary). I know plenty of IC making that and more. Of course I am biased, since I work for an employer that does pay that kind of salary, so of course I know a lot of my colleagues. This might only be achievable if you work for one the top AI companies in the city however (Google Brain, Facebook Lab, Microsoft etc.). I don't really know how it's like outside of my bubble.
And I agree that this is not common at all but OP was talking about "top earning" friends.
However, even taking your median figure of 100k, I doubt the median salary in the bay for a senior software engineer is 300K USD (4 times more).
At the risk of sounding like I'm boasting, I'll share concrete figures. I earn about $285k USD (~$380k CAD) as an L4 SWE at a FANG company. My top earning friends in BC work at companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Juul and earn about $60-$120k CAD.
I wonder if this is a BC-specific problem, because Amazon and Shopify appear to be paying seniors in Toronto around $150-200k CAD/year+RSUs. With Google opening an office, and Snap already here, and Yelp already here, and Square already here, and others, I think the market in Toronto has already started changing.
Even if they were making $250k CAD total compensation in Toronto, as a senior engineer at top companies in the Bay Area, Seattle, NYC, etc. you can make $350-$400k USD ($470-530k CAD). We're talking about earning $150-$200k more. Working just 5-10 years with savings like this would be life changing.
I wasn't arguing that at all, only that things appear to be much better for SEs in Toronto than Vancouver for some reason.
And I've said elsewhere in thread, I'd happily move my family down (I'm a US citizen) if I thought it was possible to buy health insurance that would guarantee coverage for all issues. I've heard too many stories of insurance companies refusing to pay for emergency treatments because the hospital happened to be out of network.
Damn man.. I really need to just suck it up and try and get a job in the US when COVID wraps up and we can get across the border again. I don't really want to work there and be so far away from family but it just doesn't make financial sense to keep doing what I'm doing.
I make really good money for my 3 years of experience (compared to others in my city with my level of experience) but it's just such a hilariously large gap at this point that it'd be dumb for me not to at least try and get a job.
I'd visit first and see if you want to live there more than Canada. I generally quite like Vancouver, and although I don't have the visa requirements for the states, I have no interest in moving on-location there despite the financial gap. I'd focus on what your interests are outside of work and then work to accommodate that.
Thanks for sharing this. People don't realize, and often refuse to believe, how large this gap has gotten. (Patio11 has written about that quite a bit.) It's...crazy.
Sure, but not every software engineer in California is a FAANG engineer; and even among FAANG engineers that stated salary is rather high.
It's not particularly useful to make claims that one can earn enormous amounts by changing region without also acknowledging that such an opportunity is only available to a small minority.
You're right that this is achievable only by a small percentage of people at the upper end of incomes, but I am comparing the same category of companies across both regions. Microsoft in Seattle vs Microsoft in Vancouver can be a 1.5-2x difference for example.
I'm saving over $100k USD per year after rent, food, phone, entertainment, etc. at age 24. This is impossible in Canada or most other parts of the world. My situation is not unique either, I know dozens of young engineers working at mid to high compensation companies earning around the same. Contrast this with new grads and mid level engineers in Canada earning < $75k USD and it's a no brainer to work here.
> Contrast this with new grads and mid level engineers in Canada earning < $75k USD and it's a no brainer to work here.
You're comparing SF to the whole Canada. If you zoom in to just Vancouver and Toronto, less than 75k is definitely smaller local companies. Similar to some no-name companies in SF in general won't net you close 200k TC.
SAP new grads TC can hit $100k and this company is considered to pay the least among Salesforce (and Tableau), Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify, Splunk, etc around Vancouver.
Senior Devs (outside the list above) avg base pay in Vancouver is around 130-140k at entry (newly minted Sr. Dev) before bonuses (10-20%), RRSP matching, and stock if the company is public.
Toronto have more tech companies that pay similar avg I believe.
Definitely it's not $285k for intermediate dev (SDE2) for SF Bay but Vancouver and Toronto have established themselves as tech hotspot in Canada leaving the rest.
On the other hand, I agree with you on the point of your saving rate provided that you are young without family. With Family, I believe you have to pay extra health-insurance out of your own pocket. You might have to pay extra for education as well (or pay extra to live in better neighborhood).
There's a significant amount of startups / medium companies / consultancies but no "heavy hitter" offices like FAMGA, which is probably a driver behind the state of salaries. There is some Amazon presence through an acquisition they made on ABE books. Though there's also lots of remote workers here too for big companies like Github / etc.
I moved to Canada from the US and stayed when I got married and had children.
I think about moving us to the Bay Area, but I'm now so terrified of what happens if one of us gets sick and insurance decides not to cover it for whatever reason.
Also, at least outside of Toronto, I feel like I can pick any decent-sized city in Canada and not be in danger of putting my kids in an underfunded school district. Violent crime rates here are lower, property crime rates are lower.
But yeah, I'm giving up probably $200k/year for it. We're doing okay, though.
Vancouver and Toronto are developing rather robust local economies. Vancouvers is more satellite offices for large American companies like Amazon (15k). Shopify announced prior to Covid that they were opening an office with 1000 people. A large portion of the jobs here have traditionally been as a visa clearing house prior to having people move to the main campus but there are lots of locals.
The biggest challenge in tech in Canada is salaries. Youre paid less and then youre paid in CAD which is around 70% of USD. Then you factor in high house prices in both Toronto and Vancouver and things arent so great.
If youre willing to live outside these areas then there are lots of opportunities. Canada as a country in general is great, but it has its own set of issues. Namely a lame resource extraction based economy and a hyper willingness to sell all its assets - information economy and otherwise - at discount prices to boost jobs.
The biggest issue in Canada is a lack of imagination and risk taking by the capitalist class. They would rather stick to what they know, digging rocks and sand out of the ground.
That's harsh and put in a flamebaity rather than interest-furthering way (which, please don't on HN!) but I think it's true that Canada is more risk-averse than the US. If you think about it, that can be traced straight back to the founding of the two countries. The two populations even self-selected for risk tolerance to some extent. (I'm talking about English-speaking Canada.)
Canadian salaries are quite a bit lower, but I’ll be honest in saying I was happier with the quality of life in Vancouver than in the Bay, despite earning twice as much here.
There is a growing tech community in Vancouver.
There are more traditional tech companies like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple.
There’s also film and games companies like Industrial Light and Magic, Sony Pictures Imageworks and more...
It’s definitely no Bay Area in terms of number of gigs or pay, and the cost of living is almost as high, but again, I felt much happier there. It’s obviously subjective and unquantifiable, but something to research and consider too.
Salaries are a different story in Canada compared to the USA.
They are far less in Canada, a $200K CAD ($150K USD) tech job is rare, actually, $150K CAD ($112K USD) are also uncommon.
Best job opportunities are in high COL locations (Vancouver, Toronto), followed by Montreal. But unlike the USA the compensation (for MOST employees) in those markets is only moderately higher than lower COL locations. (Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg...etc).
Exactly - don’t expect hundreds of thousands of dollars of option grants. The equities markets are really very different here and without good exits, there won’t be good options and equities grants.
Name checks out. I'm from Winnipeg as well and moved to Van 5 years ago. Salaries, diversification of market, proximity to other cities, and proximity to the kinds of nature I like, and better climate are the obvious benefits. Have you stayed? I find that I actually ssave money by living in Van than Winnipeg, with a higher potential salary and better options.
I'm Canadian that works in QA, specially in Alberta. If the US is an option, go to work in the US or for a US based company remotely.
Base salary is much higher in the US. To give you an idea: at year 8 of my career my salary is technically $52,000 Canadian per year. I've had people in the Seattle telling me that number should be nearer to $100,000 USD. And my $51,000 Canadian translates to $34,000 USD when the conversation rate is considered. The difference grows when you consider that the US typically has a lower tax rate then Canada and that many US employers are usually willing to provides benefits that would cover services that normally the government would be paying for.
That said, I'm only speaking as someone that works in QA and the city I live in does not have as strong a tech industry as those in British Columbia, Ontario, or Quebec.
Lots of Canadians here will suggest to move to the United States for higher pay and better opportunitites.
But if you are from a developing country, then moving to the USA is very convulted and not an easy option for you like it is for Canadians.
So, If you that is your situation, then Canada is an exciting option and you might be able to work for a lot of US companies that have Canadian options.
Been working here for a decade and the tech economy is the best it's ever been.
Big cos like Amazon, Microsoft have set up shop in Vancouver and are here to stay. They provide a nice fallback option to any sort of smaller startups that don't pan out.
The games industry has bounced back in a big way too. The multi thousand capacity EA Games studio in Burnaby is full and they've had to get off site offices.
Add on the standard benefits of Canada:
* free universal healthcare means being an entrepeneur is easy.
* reasonable gun regulations (no concealed carry nonsense)
* generally more progressive governments than USA.
I work in Victoria, BC earning $200k+ CAD working remote for a big US tech company. It's the best of both, live in a wonderful place and get paid well.
Apart from the fact that Canada has closed its border with the US because of COVID, of course.
Pay on average is lower, but comes with a higher degree of social security and stability. Of course, Canada is not without its own racist past or present, but it's not quite as "on display" as the US. Our previous prime minister tried to have a "barbaric cultural practices" hotline which was essentially a dogwhistle to more Islamophobic elements of the Conservative party base.
That being said, I'm thankful that our police aren't tear gassing protesters in Ottawa so that Trudeau can have a photoshoot.
The tech industry in general isn't as large as the US, but does carry a lot of talent. Places to note are Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, Montreal and...maybe Calgary? I'm not so sure about the data science field myself, but I do know that most large tech firms around here do carry an analytics team.
Edit to add: like others have noted, COL is high in Toronto and Vancouver. That being said, I absolutely loved living in Vancouver and would move back there from Waterloo in a heartbeat. If you're able to land a job and afford living there (or more likely in another Lower Mainland city), I would recommend it.
I think you'll find it is closed, unless you have an urgent need to cross (e.g., sick parent). If you do cross, you will have to self quarantine for 2 weeks (which kind of defeats the purpose of trying to help your sick relative). Last we heard, it will be June 21 before we can visit our parents in Vancouver.
I am from India - getting a US visa/green card is too much trouble. I started at a tech company in Canada at 70K Cad annually in 2008. The salary went up to 120k by 2016.
In these 8 years - I went from a work permit to Canadian citizen. Also started a family with kids.
I moved to Bay Area in 2016 for a non-Faang company at 200K USD annual total compensation. Moved to Faang in 2018 and comp is 400k USD.
Will move back to Canada by 2020/21 and am counting on my company allowing remote due to covid. Yes it will be a salary cut but that’s fine. I want to raise my kids in Canada.
Bay Area experience is worth it - financially and technical too
If you're considering Montréal, do your research before. French language is not a requirement to get by day-to-day in the city (though elsewhere in the province is another story). We have a decent tech sector with some big companies like CAE, Mindgeek, and Hopper. There is also a respectable AI research scene and an incresing amount of startups in the city. If you're open to learning French (a good chunk of jobs require it) and have any data centre credibility, you might be on a good trajectory. Québec has super low electricity costs and data centres are interested for that reason.
The city has a low cost of living, high provincial taxes, but a top notch cultural scene, bar scene, festival scene, etc.
If not Montréal, Toronto or Vancouver have their callings but most tech folks I studied with headed off to the states for higher wages - but I imagine many of them will return with stacked savings accounts at some point. As someone else pointed out, Waterloo is a special case and might be worth looking at, too.
This. However I would say the reason why you really need to learn French is if you want to stay more than just a couple of year. Getting your permanent residency in Québec requires a certain level of proficiency in French.
For jobs you can find plenty of them that won't require it.
What would you say are the wages for different types of tech roles and seniority in Montreal? And how accessible are those to non-native French speakers?
Your salary is probably going to be lower in Montreal, but it's much cheaper city to live in than Vancouver or Toronto. There are high paying jobs if you know where to find them, but it seems to me like a lot of the software engineers I've come across here are a little less "ambitious" and don't mind settling for a smaller salary if it means more stability. It's also very taboo here to talk about your salary (sometimes even to your SO?) but that's changing and I think it's not unique to Quebec at all.
In my experience, and purely anecdotally, I've really witnessed a 2 speeds system where some people are very highly paid (120k+, keep in mind you can buy a condo in the middle of downtown for 300k) and some are getting very (40-50k) low salaries for the same amount of experience, same alma matter and probably even the same skill . How you sell yourself is always a huge factor in how much you get paid, sure, but the difference is particularly striking in Montreal imo.
As for seniority, most of the teams I've seen are very young with very dynamic leads. The industry is booming right now ( or was booming before march, I'm not sure now).
I lived in Montreal for 4 years in the early 2000s and although I had no trouble with day-to-day living, I felt that social life as an English speaker was limiting. I enjoyed the cultural and restaurant scenes (Mtl Jazz Festival, Just For Laughs), but meeting like-minded people was hard.
And although it's possible to get used to, there are tiny frictions everywhere -- e.g. signage is generally not bilingual (you learn how to guess from context and from the Latin roots of words). This is not a big deal in real life because there's usually small print in English available separately as printed materials. That said, most cities in Europe, South America and Asia (the ones I’ve visited) have far more bilingual public signage than Montreal.
Not everyone is bilingual (only downtown and certain suburbs like NDG/West Island) so exchanging little pleasantries becomes more difficult, and there's always a guessing game going on as to whether someone looks like Anglophone or Francophone, even just east of St Urbain in downtown MTL. STCUM announcements are French-only so if there's an emergency on the tracks or a train schedule change, you have to ask around to see if someone can translate.
The tech scene was very underdeveloped when I was there. Big events/conferences/exhibitions were always happening elsewhere, e.g. Toronto, even Vancouver, but no one was coming to Montreal -- the biggest conference I remember was the grassroots Perl's YAPC. (although PyCon would eventually come to be hosted there in 2014-2015). Things are different now with the existence of many more startups, but the ecosystem is still much smaller than in many cities in English Canada.
You also have to understand that English-language culture in Montreal is an afterthought due the English-language market being smaller -- most big international productions (say musicals/concerts/talks... in fact, almost anything) will often skip over Montreal but will have a show in Toronto, and even smaller cities like Ottawa. I felt I was constantly missing out on stuff that was happening in the U.S. and ROC (rest of Canada).
I could've tried to learn more French, and though it would have eased things significantly, I suspect I would still have not been able to sufficiently integrate into society -- there truly are two solitudes (as Hugh Maclennan once put it) in Quebec society.
There's also a certain feeling you get in Montreal: it's a little bohemian (so a little gritty in parts) and eschews change (lacks a forward momentum and go-getter spirit in terms of embracing new things -- infrastructure is not as well kept up as in other Canadian cities, heritage building laws are very strict which is good, but it also means new developments are very restricted). I went back to visit a little more than a year ago, and nothing has changed.
I don't mean dissuade anyone from considering Montreal -- everybody wants different things in life -- but just wanted to provide a data point from someone who tried to live there unhappily. YMMV.
If I were doing data science, I would be in Toronto, Ottawa, or Waterloo. Given the customers with enough data for that in Canada are almost all institutional, and that's where they are. You could go to Victoria, which is the capital city of BC where it's mainly government driven work, but there isn't going to be a big growth story there.
You can make a living and have a comfortable lifestyle in Canada, but it is not the best place to create or build wealth. It's where to be if you bring it with you.
Given the small and dispersed distribution of the population, startup level growth mainly comes from access to the US market. Access to the US market tends to mean being HQ'd there, so you get quite a few "offshored," engineering and development shops to take advantage of the currency, SRED tax credits, COL and salary differences, where the US HQ handles the revenue, product management, marketing, equity, M&A and other business decisions.
The two main markets for enterprise products and dev are Toronto and Ottawa. There are only five notable banks with offices across the country and around the world, who share a largely homogeneous enterprise tech culture. Health care is a public sector business, and there is lots of opportunity to make a living in health care tech, but it is managed as a sprawling enterprise centralized economy that acts as a ceiling on growth. There are some notable examples, but they use Canada as a proving ground before going to market in the US.
The way most entrepreneurial money appears to be made in Canada is by operating "recruiting and consulting firms," which provide institutions with arms length contractors that they can add and remove at will instead of dealing with the challenges of employees.
Quality of life compared to american cities in decline is incomparably better. The hard part is affording it. Owning a an actual house near a metropolitan area is out of reach for first time home buyers, and places with affordable housing are outside commuting distance from anywhere that does software development. Short term rentals have sent rents skyrocketing everywhere within a 90-minute drive to Toronto.
If you are already on the property ladder where you are, using that as leverage to buy a place here is the best way to do it. If you are not, it's smarter to get the capital from selling your first house as a downpayment to get you into something in Canada, as real estate is basically the only way for working people to build wealth.
Tons of opportunities in Vancouver and Toronto at both small companies and large multinationals. But salaries are low (compared to the US) and cost of living is high.
The quality of life in Canada is wonderful if you can make the numbers work. Vancouver and Toronto offer different things so I'd research which one suits you better. They're both amazing in their own way.
I can't speak for Montreal which has its own unique culture unfamiliar to me, but I believe it's comparable to Vancouver and Toronto, and cost of living is better. It's a very distinct place.
Smaller, more affordable cities you could consider are Ottawa, Waterloo, and Victoria. They each come with their own trade-offs but have decent tech industries. Victoria is only really affordable compared to Vancouver/Toronto but it's a very idyllic small city if that's what you're after.
Is now a good time for anything? If you go through temp work permit or immigration route, these things were not fast before, they sure are even slower now.
If you do move, Toronto, Waterloo, Vancouver, Ottawa are good places in that order. Do not know much about Montreal, but outside of those you will be having a hard time finding anything.
Data science - I cannot speak much about it, but if you want to do that, governement and healthcare is probably your best bet.
Depends where you’re moving from. Seems like most of the comments are comparing to the USA tech scene in a FAANG company and only the financial aspect ... nothing will compare to it if it is what you’re looking for.
However not everyone is looking to work in a FAANG or to live in the USA.
Canadá has a thriving tech scene and you will have a better quality of life and pay than about everywhere else in the world that isn’t a FAANG in the USA
My impression as a citizen of the US is that the social welfare in Canada is more robust, but salaries are lower on average. For some folks the peace of mind of knowing your healthcare isn't tethered to your job is worth the reduction in income; for others, they can make so much in the states that they feel it's worth it to try to build a career there. Just my highly anecdotal 2 cents.
- Director and above level PM can earn above: $140K CAD and beyond in major cities like Toronto.
- Sr. PM can earn: above $100K CAD easily but harder to be above $150K CAD.
- Bay Area - based on the current conversations I have:
- Sr. PM or PM in a FAANG type company or startup: around $170K USD
- Director level PM can be above $200K USD
Compensation is lower, but if you have a family it's probably worth it. It's education, health care, and access to parks and such are generally easy to come by, cheap/free and good; particularly in Metro Vancouver. Those things make a world of difference when raising kids.
Metro Vancouver isn't just the CoV; I know folks who live in Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, and Mission who commute into the CoV to work. The West Coast Express makes this a pleasant, painless and relatively swift commute.
Can someone knowledgeable about this issue comment about legal / tax feasibility of getting a remote job with a US company and living in Canada or elsewhere abroad?
I work for an American company and live in Metro Vancouver. In fact, around half the team lives here.
We own shares in the American company and are paid through a Canadian subsidiary. That compensation scheme avoids burdening the employees with the difficulty of declaring foreign earnings come tax time.
So for the most part it's the same as working for a Canadian company, but the pay is better.
Awesome! That's like the ideal situation right there. I'm an American that moved to Canada back in 2002 and worked as a contractor for my US employer for more than 4 years. The yearly tax stuff drove me insane.
It's not so much ideal as a nice compromise. I'm still earning much less than I would with similar experience doing similar work in _Seattle_, but I get to stay in Canada and earn more than I could easily manage working for a local company.
I used to work for a US company as a remote employee (contractor). I'm a canadian citizen, so it will be different if you dont have the right to work here, but for me its pretty easy. You're basically considered self-employeed and have to declare your income. You also have to register for a GST number (you don't have to charge gst, but you do have to report charging $0. Its weird). The tax forms are easy enough you can definitely just print them out and fill out yourself, or hire a tax person to do them for you. (Disclaimer: not an accountant, hire a real one if you want real tax advice).
I have no idea how it works if your not a citizen. In general i think work visas are fairly easy to get if you are a skilled worker like a software engineer, especially coming from a NAFTA country.
Do you have any specific questions? I am a Canadian, living in Canada, working remotely for a bay area company.
Non-us based employees at the company are technically contractors where I work.
It's pretty easy come tax time. You need to pay the full cpp amount, as opposed to half if you were working for a Canadian company, and I find the tax writeoffs to be quite meager, but I don't have any complaints in general.
As many others said salary is about 1.5x-2x lower. Taxes are about 7-10% higher. Cost of living in metro Toronto or Vancouver is pretty high, around the same as Seattle or DC. Housing prices are outrageous in both the metro areas. Vancouver over 1.5M for detached and Toronto around 1M.
Past how robust the tech scene is in your desired location, you also have to ask how the pandemic will affect your time outside of work. ie: Montréal will be just as boring as Ottawa in terms of the nightlife scene for a while.
Toronto without question. There are some company's in Waterloo as well, Google has a presence there for example, because of the University of Waterloo. But it is not as bustling as it was when RIM was still a big thing.
Not just a presence - it is their Canadian head office with more employees than they have in the rest of the country combined.
K-W is easily 2-3x more bustling today than it was when RIM was booming. RIM sucked talent to the suburbs where it diffused outward and failed to seed any amenity concentration. That talent is all in the core now and has led to a massive resurgence including dozens of bars and restaurants and other amenities.
I am currently looking for a job opening, FullStack, or Mobile(Flutter or Ionic) in Canada or the US... I really don't mind the location.. any suggestions/recommendations?
I’m considering moving to Toronto or Vancouver through FSW, and my company’s fully remote so hopefully I avoid the salary cliff. You might look into a similar setup.
It could be a good place where you can network a find a way to transfer to the US. But staying in Canada permanently working in Tech is a bad idea salary wise.
I'd personally wait 8-12 months and assess the situation then.
The reason I say this is because Canada's tech scene is largely comprised of US companies near-shoring operations for cost reductions and with remote work on the rise my view is that Canada's tech scene is now in a super fragile state.
There's a significant incentive for Canadian tech workers to work remotely for US companies and similarly there's a massive incentive for US companies to hire Canadians on Canadian salaries remotely.
Uber, Facebook, Google, Amazon etc. had expansion in Canada planned but I wouldn't be surprised if this changes radically in the coming months. Shopify already announced it was going fully remote and then offered what were previously Canadian-only jobs out to the Americas entirely. It's not unfathomable that other Canadian companies will do the same.
If remote succeeds, I cannot see what incentive would drive the further expansion of the local tech scene in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal etc. Meetups and similar only worked because people were forced to be in the city, they were held directly after work and usually offered some sort of food/beverages as a substitute to having to sort out dinner. If the requirement to be in the city falls or is removed entirely, I cannot see what will incentivize locals to get together in a common location at anywhere near the same frequency as before.
I'd recommend seeing how the rest of the year / start of next year plays out before planning anything concrete.
Expect the pay to be half or less, but you get better overall benefits, a higher standard of living, in exchange for long winters and a mostly car-based society.
How walkable cities are are going to vary by city. Vancouver is very walkable. Also if you live somewhere up north, its not going to be that walkable even with a great bus system, because waiting for the bus in -30 sucks.
Eh, it's a dry cold. I've a good friend working in Nunavut right now and she walks to work. The trick is that her rental is nestled in the center of town; and the town is so small that there's no need for a car.
Honest, if you're willing to live and work in Calgary or Toronto then I don't see why you shouldn't move south and get paid more to live in similar cities.
My business partner for one of his other ventures, hired a kid who finished a degree from University of Waterloo in NANO Technology Eng as a lab tech for a starting salary of 48k.
It seems like his prospects were very limited. I'm not sure if it's his career choice or if it's related to the high levels of underemployment in the Toronto tech industry in general.
Traditional engineering, especially academic, is not very well paid compared to software engineering jobs.
Source: I skipped out on a Mechanical engineering PhD to join industry for better $$, I then skipped out on Mechanical engineering industry for better w/l balance and $$ working from home in a tech role.
Salaries working domestically in Canada are quite a bit lower, but CoL can also be good. Shopify for instance pays ~150 for senior devs but in Ottawa or Waterloo houses are pretty affordable.
I've had some luck working remotely in Canada for US companies - tax treatment of stock options is worse and they typically have few or no benefits for Canadians. On the other hand, you can have a significantly higher take home if you find the right employer.
