yea I am curious ... what do the numbers (salary, take home, taxes, expenses etc.) look like, for say US vs. Canadian Residents ... are you actually better off working in the US?
The salary is large enough in Silicon Valley that you save significantly more. Of course those savings would not be enough to live and retire in the Bay Area unless you hit the jackpot with your stock options but they are more than enough to retire somewhere else and live very well.
Especially if your skills are both kind of a niche yet in demand and you’re good at what you do, your salary can jump surprisingly quickly here — enough that even while living well you’ll still come out on top compared to working in a midwestern city.
That’s not to mention job security. With some exceptions, in many low CoL areas you’re looking at a sizable gap between jobs simply because the market isn’t as big, and worse, you might end up having to settle for a less than great option or find yourself locked in somewhere for far longer than you’d prefer. Out here, if you’re decent at all this is not an issue... many of us here can easily walk from one job straight into the next, should that be necessary.
I might move somewhere more cheap and quiet eventually, but it’ll be once I’ve saved up enough that I’m not beholden to any particular company and I’ve found something that it wouldn’t bother me to be doing for many years. For now, the demand and pace of the SF Bay Area is just too much to give up.
It’s true, for people earning tech level salaries, the Bay Area is actually ‘affordable’ - see a comparison of earning and cost of living between SF and Kansas City here: https://ramenretirement.com/2018/05/14/cost-of-living/
You’ll save a higher percent and absolute amount of money working in the bay.
Of course, the issue is that not everyone earns $300K+ per year. Unless you make it into a senior role at a tech company by the time you want to have kids, living a ‘normal’ life in the Bay will be hard. Even doctors and dentists will struggle. I completely understand why people would want to leave. I expect they will. The Bay Area is great, but America is an amazing, beautiful place, and fine food / coffee / culture has spread far beyond the streets of SF these days.
There is good food and culture in almost any major metropolitan city in the US. Will you find a variety of Asian and Indian foods in other American cities? Probably not but the food is still good.
Seattle, Atlanta, Austin, Miami, etc. You really cannot got wrong with any of these cities.
The best markets for Canadian developers are Toronto and Vancouver, which are also notorious for their insane costs of living. Developer salaries in Toronto mostly cap out around ~150k CAD, with a lucky few able to make it into the low 200s. These are effectively starting salaries in the Bay Area.
Canadian friends work in US (SF/Seattle) for a few years, then come back to Canada to start a family.
In Canada, they get the benefit of "free healthcare / transit / education" + amazing house that can be paid almost cash thanks to the years in US banking up + back to their friends and family + "senior" level jobs thanks to their expertise learned at the top 5 tech company.
hmm .. I don't know. I feel differently. They may be nice people. But hiring and firing is a purely business decision. It might be that they needed a different skill set. Or had another candidate who was a lot cheaper. Investor money drying up, lots of things. Its a job at the end of the day and he was let go.
> But hiring and firing is a purely business decision. ... Its a job at the end of the day and he was let go.
I have a serious beef with this mode of thinking. Nothing that you do to another human being is a "purely business decision." And from a practical perspective it's better, in the long run, for you too to be remembered as having owned your mistakes and done right by the people you wronged.
Of course, there is the line of thinking that, hey, this guy won't ever help me later, so I can screw him and skate. And that is entirely too common in startupland. But that speaks to the poor humanity of its thinker more than anything else.
agreed, "just business" is a horrible cop out, and it's sad that so many people buy into it even when they are on the getting screwed end of the equation.
