Canada is in a really tough spot here. I've always admired Canadian culture/values, and in the abstract, would love to live in Canada one day. However, as a Software developer, the compensation and opportunities that one can find in SF/Seattle/NYC dwarf anything in Canada. Until this changes, Canada is always going to lose its brightest engineers, which will in turn worsen the problem even further.
Some solutions I can think of, which might help:
- Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions.
- Offer very lucrative perks to the major software companies, to expand their engineering presence in Canada. Yes, it stinks having to offer tax-breaks, but at least it will help build initial momentum.
- Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.
Canadian here (who lives outside of Canada but recently did a stint there for a bit) and this will sound negative but f-it. Canadian culture sucks when it comes to trying new things. Canada has some extra safety net but the culture is puritanical and conservative and nobody wants to go out on a limb and try something new and crazy. Not like Americans. Those that do are constantly questioned by everybody. The idea of being an entrepreneur, in the GTA especially, is buying a second house in the suburbs and hoping the housing market continues rising.
The problem of trying to get Canadian tech up to par with the US is much deeper than pulling some tax/incentive levers, I think. There are some really deep cultural issues that I don't think can be solved for a few generations.
Canadian here who worked in the Valley for ~7 years, and currently works for a US-based startup remotely.
You're absolutely right that the culture of respecting changemakers is not as present in Canada. But the SFBA is the world leader here. There probably isn't any place on earth that's more optimistic about innovators.
I don't think this is a culture thing, exactly. It's just that everyone who became rich in the SFBA did so by exploiting trends or innovating – since like, the 1890s. And the USA plowed zillions of dollars into the tech ecosystem in the Bay Area since World War II. Once you have that tech investor class, culture bends a lot towards their way of thinking.
Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with. Or, they made their money in an old-school industry, like resource extraction, and they flip out at the risk levels in tech startups.
In terms of prevailing national norms, I'd say Canada is slightly more change-friendly than the USA. Think about all the ways that the USA tries to kill immigration, stifle innovation in favor of incumbents, and put regulatory barriers in the way for entrepreneurs.
In contrast, Canada has lots of official policies to support tech entrepreneurship and skilled immigration. Plus, socialized medicine really does make it easier to be an entrepreneur. Politically and culturally, Canada isn't that into retro stuff, or trying to revive earlier, more conservative eras. People think their best days are ahead of them.
It's true that the people in Canada are not super interested in overturning anyone's applecart, for its own sake or just to get rich. That's not as respected here. People are more likely to be interested in innovations that improve the general social welfare. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
The liberalness of Canada is overhyped. The reality is Canada is deeply conservative. It's possible to have universal health care and be conservative, that's only a oxymoron in the US.
To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too."
I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. Dogmatic adherence to the way it's done, because change is dangerous is the default state of many Canadians. For those who it's not, well, you know them, they're already living in the US.
The idea of being an entrepreneur, in the GTA especially, is buying a second house in the suburbs and hoping the housing market continues rising.
That had me LOL because I think it’s so true. If you were to suggest perhaps to start a business that innovates you’d be considered crazy. Although of course the new tech out of the USA will be adopted by all immediately.
> Those that do are constantly questioned by everybody.
My exposure is more western Canada than eastern Canada, but I find that your statements couldn't be further from the truth. People here are constantly trying new things and exploring and experimenting with new business ideas. I see great optimism and people who see potential.
And in terms of being constantly questioned, I just don't see that where I am, but I also don't view being questioned as a bad thing. When it comes to launching any new idea, it seems that being questioned is the very least of the difficulty you need to put up with.
I believe you are comparing your Canadian upbringing, which reflected an adolescent perspective on a broad spectrum of society, to your adult experiences in a tech bubble. This is a pretty obvious fallacy (the tech bubble is a highly self-selected population of intelligent, well-educated people who like to build things).
I grew up in suburban Minnesota. It's not exactly ambition central, but it's miles ahead of small town America. You're talking about a country that elected Trump here. It's afraid of immigrants, "foreign" religions (as though American Christianity weren't a shambling syncretic nightmare), doesn't believe in evolution, and believes overwhelmingly in hell. We incarcerate more of our citizens per capita than any other developed country. We're not exactly free-wheeling dream seekers, at the median. We ridicule weird people, we spit on people who fail, and we hate anyone who is ugly, awkward, old, or otherwise socially disadvantaged.
Getting ahead is seen as fine - be ambitious! - but only because we think our friends are "winners" and won't be hurt by the risks they take, which is nonsense. We also don't prize reflectiveness as a culture, so when people gain sufficient experience to learn that this perspective is idiotic, they don't internalize it.
I'm not a giant fan of American culture, and I'm sad to see that anyone from Canada (I watch your Supreme Court proceedings for entertainment, full disclosure!) would idolize anything about they way Americans do things.
Agree completely. Born and raised in Toronto. Canadians are nice and the diversity is great. But San Francisco was a breath of fresh air I didn't even know I needed until I came here. Toronto feels so rigid in comparison. I don't want to ever leave California.
"""The idea of being an entrepreneur, in the GTA especially, is buying a second house in the suburbs and hoping the housing market continues rising."""
... or a condo to put on Airbnb.
You are definitely onto something when you say that there are some deep cultural issues within Canada; Look at RIM, the company believed that its central business customers cared more about security and efficient communication and that the iPhone presented no threat to them. The iPhone was just a crazy idea to them, who would want to use that clunker with a horrible battery life and browse the net on it?
Canada has talent, without a doubt, but it also keeps people subdued as you stated because they are constantly questioned by everyone else. Canadians are a lot like accountants, they want to buy that fancy Harley and take it out on the road and live a little, but only on the weekends. :)
They tried that a few times. I know because I was an advisor to one of the biggest incubators in Canada. The government even gives cash grants to startups.
But as soon as the company gets big, they either 1) open an engineering office in the Bay Area or 2) Sell, and the move to the Bay Area because they were just acquired by a Bay Area company who is making them move (or they just want to move now that they can afford it).
The startup scene in Canada has huge demand from Canadian engineers who want to start startups there, but they have a really hard time attracting local capital. Most of their capital comes from SV VCs who like the fact that it is cheaper to start a company there because of the low salaries, and a lot of the successful exits leave.
> They tried that a few times. I know because I was an advisor to one of the biggest incubators in Canada. The government even gives cash grants to startups.
This is news to me. I tried have tried talking to an incubator several times and every time they tell me to come back when I have $10k/mo in revenue. Sorry but I have a full time job and I can't grow a business to 10k/mo without some help. Seems to me like they didn't try very hard.
FTA: 'A lack of successful “scale-up” tech firms in Canada has been cited as one of the reasons research development spending and productivity here have lagged other developed countries.'
> but they have a really hard time attracting local capital.
So is the problem, then, that "trying" has, so far, involved running incubators and grants and what's necessary, in addition, is incentivizing local capital to invest?
Other commenters have suggested tax breaks, which I personally believe is a state's greatest incentive "lever". Perhaps a lower (maybe even zero) capital gains tax rate on startup investments?
Otherwise, it doesn't seem like there's been any aggressive encouragement/funding/facilitation, as proposed by the parent comment.
This resonates with me. In a recent stint with a Canadian startup, an exorbitant amount of attention was paid to strengthening and increasing the number of ties we had to Silicon Valley. It seems so often that the end goal is to be able to move to California.
- Canada is already pursuing non-American engineers, even advertising along the 101 [1], and it's working [2].
- Canada does offer some tax breaks [3] and grants to startups, but more is also welcome.
- Agreed that there should be a bigger focus on startups. I wonder if having provinces create VC funds (like Investissment Quebec [4]) tailored specifically to startups would help here.
While I agree that the efforts are working, this is very much like using a tea spoon to bail water out of the Titanic. You also have to consider that given a choice between the US and Canada, very few people would pick Canada so many of the people that arrive would leave the minute an opportunity in the US opens up.
> - Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions.
This is an interesting point. I feel like Canada does do this, but it sort of backfires on itself. Something my wife once pointed out is that a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers, whose cultures are heavily conservative cultures that tend to celebrate social status over risk-taking innovativeness
"Twenty five percent of the nation’s startups and 52% of those in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. Indian immigrants were the leading company founding group. They founded 13.4% of Silicon Valley’s startups and 6.5% of those nationwide."
Regardless of cultural differences, I recall reading that immigrants as a whole are far more entrepreneurial than similarly positioned natives. A lot of this is through self-selection: saying goodbye to all your friends and moving to a whole other country/continent is extremely "scary". Hence by definition, the average immigrant is far more comfortable heading off into the unknown and taking the plunge.
No Canadian companies need to pay more. I suspect that Canada has inherited from the UK the attitude that STEM (apart from the Medical profession) is basically for greasy engineers who shouldn't be allowed to get to above themselves.
Working for the government one can get that feeling that tech is a waste but there is an unlimited desire for phd's in unrelated fields getting hired in positions that sound great title wise but involve more technical skills. They wonder why these people keep leaving.
Warning that your first sentence means the opposite of what you probably intended. I'm not trying to nit-pick grammar, but that's a kind of mistake that people wouldn't know was a mistake without the following context and you'd be completely misunderstood.
I see trouble with pursuing non-american engineers. They might move south anyways later if the opportunity comes up because the salary difference is still huge.
Lucrative perks sticks because of tax breaks like you mentioned.
I would be going all-out on #3. Having local businesses has benefits beyond just avoiding brain drain as well.
This is why it blows my mind at how little funding there is for early stage companies in Canada. I personally tried twice now already, as have several friends, and we didn't get anywhere because local investors here want you to already have a finished product with a validated business model and 10k/month in revenue. I'm sorry but the only way you stop a promising new grad from turning down a huge salary is by giving them the chance to work on their passion.
Expecting them to already have a 10k/mo business is just a big F-you. Might as well go to the states where I can at least make enough money to take some time off. And heck, while I'm there someone might even fund my idea anyways.
It will be hard to get startups to be based in a Canada if their target market is the US. We’re talking a difference of 36 million people vs 300 million. When it comes down to it Canada looks big but is a really tiny country.
35 million but whatever. (edit: this was in response to it having 25 million people, not 36 million)
It's kind of like saying that California is a really tiny state.
I'm left wondering how important a company like Facebook really is to the US though.
I mean really, it creates about 10k high-paying tech jobs, okay... but Walmart employs 1 million. A lot of the support staff, e.g. in moderation, are distributed around the world.
Then it generates tons of revenues and profits for its shareholders, but FB is a public company, it could in theory be completely owned by non-Americans who profit off of the American company.
Then it provides a service to people around the world.
And then it has strategic value, but it appears it was misused by foreign powers to manipulate domestic elections, rather than furthering American interests.
FB does pay quite substantial federal taxes, far greater than it does in the rest of the world, you can't easily disregard that. The rest of the world is missing out on that, but that's also a question of the rest of the world not using its tax mandate fully.
It doesn't appear like Facebook is tremendously more important to the US than it is to the rest of the world. Of course brain drain is always an issue we should be concerned about, but one feature of publicly-owned digital companies is that their benefits aren't as restricted to their locality as traditional companies are.
Given the current H1B lottery, even someone with excellent credentials will most likely be denied the visa, purely due to random chance.
Also, even if you get the H1B and apply for Permanent Residency, the wait time can be obscenely long depending on where you were born. If you were born in China, you'll have to wait for 6+ years. If you were born in India, you'll have to wait for 12+ years.
Ironically enough, if you're a not-very-qualified applicant, you'll likely have a easier time applying here in USA. The Canadian system might be more stringent, but rolls out the red carpet for those who are truly qualified, and in greater numbers too. The American system is the exact opposite.
My wife and I both have PhDs in electronics (her’s was 50% neuroscience) I have run a successful business for 7 years and she works for a high end car manufacturer in electrical design as a manager, both are native UK.
We can get a permenant residency Canada visa straight off the bat without a job offer (quicker with a job offer though granted).
We can’t work out how to get a US visa for love nor money and have basically given up thinking about it.
I am an European that has immigrated to both countries at different points, and my experience couldn't be farther from what you describe. And my stint in the USA was 20 years ago, which was the wild west compared to today. What do you mean by stricter here?
Kinda unrelated to immigration, but I've heard Canadian border patrol is actually more harsh than American border control. Anyone with experience that can verify?
Most countries do. But the groupthink is that the USA is hostile to immigrants. Which doesn't explain all the immigrants (legal and otherwise).
There's also the cliche (spread by the internet and political groups) that conservative/Republicans/etc... are against all immigration. This is 90% incorrect.
I worked as support staff during a conference in Seattle of conservative business leaders around 2010. Their #1 topic of discussion was how to get more people into the country because they couldn't find enough workers with the right skills domestically. And no, it wasn't the tech sector that was hurting the most.
Apparently the problem the conservatives have isn't immigration as an umbrella policy. It's legal versus illegal methods (though some of the speakers advocated for both). Kind of eye-opening. I no longer believe the regurgitated talking points from either party.
Canada is importing talent from Hong Kong and Shanghai to work for American and Canadian companies, at salaries that are below market in US tech hubs, but appealing enough for those who wish to move to North America. At the same time, Canada is exporting talent to the US because of those same good-but-not-good-enough salaries.
Those are reasonable ideas, but they'll involve a lot of effort to move policy makers around. A simpler solution may be to rely on media sources that report a preferred reality. For instance:
4/20/18 Bloomberg: Engineers Are Leaving Trump’s America for the Canadian Dream
The is anecdotal, but it has happened often for me to meet people in Canada doing non-engineering work even tho they have an engineering degree from their home country, something about their education not being recognized in Canada, thus they end up being cab drivers.
Sorry, your strategy by asymmetry of the monetary forces involved can not work out for Canada.
What really prevents braindrain on a large scale is stationary opportunity's.
Take Shenzhen for example, it is one ocean away from California and should be constantly bleeding out towards it. The contrary is the case, due to the relatively cheap and flexible factories of hardware- being opportunities for which California cant or wont any longer compete.
But shouldn't all these Chinese hardware founders create fab-less hw-design companies and mass-migrate? No, because connections and opportunities would not migrate with them.
Such opportunities are usually created by long-term protectionism and clever industrial policies.
What is canadian culture? What are canadian values? I've never heard anyone mention canadian culture or values before.
> would love to live in Canada one day.
You are one of the rare individuals. Most canadians I've met want to live in the US. Especially those with money or skills to make money. Better food, weather, culture, history, life, etc.
> - Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.
But they can't compete because of scale. Canada isn't large enough and it certainly has too little internal talent to compete with the US. California by itself can out compete canada by itself. Thrown in the other 49 states.
Even if canada retained all its "brains", it wouldn't matter. We outnumber canada 10 to 1 and outrank canada in every economic facet from resources, ports, infrastructure and foreign talent.
Foreigners with skills, from china to india to the middle east to eastern europe, all want to come to the US to study and work.
It's almost impossible for canada to compete with the US. They have nothing going for them vis a vis the US and their internal market isn't large enough to compete with the US.
It's because of the pay and type of opportunities.
You either take below market rate (like myself) or you work in something like one of the 300 ad-tech or we'll-build-your-website/app dev mills (more often than not it's both).
There are a limited number of opportunities for truly interesting or innovative work if you don't want to work for "we're changing the world by creating the next uber/airbnb/cryptocurrency/coupon app!"
There are some seriously good and interesting companies here, but many exist out of the popular eye and/or usually located in the suburbs. (at least around Toronto)
But mainly I suspect it's the pay and career trajectory. Get a gig at FAANG? You can write your ticket after that. Work at a major Canadian company? You won't get a call back from other Canadian companies at a pay cut...
> You either take below market rate (like myself) or you work in something like one of the 300 ad-tech or we'll-build-your-website/app dev mills (more often than not it's both).
This is probably feeding the problem. You need good engineers to create high-value products in order to afford to pay high salaries for good engineers. Economies can't get ahead when they waste engineering talent developing trivial software that doesn't build long-term growth.
Canada should probably have a massive advanced military project that aims to produce state of the art technology. Pay qualified people great salaries and let them use their inventions in the private sector after some period of time.
That sounds good. I'll take it. Then send me to astronaut training and I'll do systems. Then I'll move to Vancouver Island, semi retire, tinker and teach the kids.
But otherwise, I'm trying to figure out how I can possibly save or make some more money on the side without running myself ragged or ruining my relationship—and feel human all the while.
I don't want to exaggerate but something is definitely off. I've seen companies resist hiring engineers at almost all cost (except for at 35-60k) but will pay "Technology Procurement Managers" 300k+. Don't get me started on some of the outcome of those practices...
Canadian tech worker here. Base salary is 120k CAD in Calgary which is far above market rate but I am educated, experienced etc. That is 93k USD.
I am looking to move to the USA because of higher salaries, but I am not 22 years old anymore and moving a family (with 2 earners) is no easy task.
It falls on deaf ears though, 120k CAD is a good income, I can afford a house, cars, no debts etc so there is very little understanding from others how I could not be satisfied with pay.
I do remote work for this reason. Although I did manage to recently find a contractor position that pays competitively here in Canada, I find that very rarely. If you do remote contract work, mostly for US or Swiss companies, you can make 2-3x a top Canadian salary. Just throwing that out there as an alternative to moving to the US.
Based on my own experience of finding remote work for US companies.
I usually get lowballed on the offers because I am based in Canada.
In other words, US companies pay average salaries calculated based on my local salary rates.
In fact I just had a phone interview with a SF startup for a remote position and they were shocked to hear that I was asking for an AVG salary rate in SF instead of Canada.
A lot of the tech industry is about burning through investors' money in search of new profitable ideas. I'm guessing there's much less investor money in Canada.
You can replace "Canadian" with almost every other country on earth and the question stays the same.
I live in Germany, which has similar wages for software engineers as Canada. And in a 2 hours train ride I can be in Poland, where software engineers earn 1/3 their German counterparts.
Engineer/technical/science-type people tend to have this belief that wanting to reap the value they create makes them "bad people" or at the very least not a "good engineer/scientist/etc."
Apparently, only business and finance people are allowed to want money because they provide a useful service or just because they want money.
I personally believe that in a capitalistic society, it is imperative that everyone tries their best to extract as much of the value that they create. Otherwise we end up with massive inequality.
I left Toronto Canada 25 years ago. Earned more in the first 10 years than I could have earned in my entire life in Toronto, Canada. The USA is the Land of Milk and Honey.
Definitely be aware of the current value/cost of CPP and OAS and the difference typical medical expenditures (both the normal ones things that contribute to out-of-pocket maximums, and catastrophic care risks). Not to discourage you, the pay difference might cover it and then some. Sounds like you know what you're doing, but just in case.
As a Canadian in Vancouver who owns a home, the sad state of Vancouver is even the suburbs are ridiculously expensive.
If I want to sell my downtown townhouse and buy a detached home or upgrade in any way I'm looking at a 1.5 hour commute easily and still not getting much. And once you're outside downtown , entertainment etc rapidly drops off.
Alternatively in the bay area, where I may soon be moving, the suburbs have a strong drop off in cost from the hotspots while still maintaining a reasonable commute and quality of life.
The issue is, Vancouver's infrastructure drops off so dramatically as you get further from downtown.
Sunnyvale (current ground zero of Apple) median is close to 2M - that is only 5x of $400K which a lot of FANG and other engineers pull yearly (and that is the main reason for current SV home prices as, during such low mortgage rates, the market is naturally self-adjusting to 5-6x of prevalent salaries. In 2008 those houses were $700-800K+ - the 5-6x of those $120K-150K salaries back then).
My insurance costs me personally about $250 per month covering a family of 6. My employer pays the rest — AND I make 2-3x a Canadian salary excluding stock.
The health argument is completely invalid when it comes to Canadian salary comparisons because the Canadian employer doesn’t have to pay health insurance costs — so they should have more money available for salaries.
Health care is not that expensive for upper middle class earners. We are a family of five and insurance costs us $11k/year in premiums and, worst case, another $16k/year in out of pocket maximum. And you’re also forgetting that stuff costs less in the US. Groceries, gas, etc. are all much cheaper down here.
But the differences in taxes reflect not covering health care. If you include that 20,000 a year spent on health care doesn't feel like a great deal anymore
Canadian here. I get $65,000 USD from my remote American job. That's low enough that people on this forum snicker at me, and high enough that companies in the "tech town" that I live in physically wince when I tell them my salary expectation. I'd rather work locally, but what can I do?
I hope you just mean that metaphorically, but if it's actually happening, please let us know so we can scold them. Putting others down that pettily is a breach of civility.
I've seen what the OP describes on HN many times in discussions of engineer salaries. It's usually not really a personal snickering as much as a stern warning that the person is "being taken advantage of" and they should leave immediately.
I see it all the time, but don't have any examples specifically bookmarked.
I think he just didn't get the right words dang. No one is snickering at him for $65k. Probably the opposite. I, a relatively selfish person, get upset when I see a person being taken advantage of.
$65,000 isn't peanuts. It all depends on the cost of living. Where I am, my cost of living adjustment for SF or NY is double my pay. Where I'll be renting, instead of owning a house. I live 5 minutes from the office, everywhere is easily accessible within 15 minutes, plenty of parking, the food and cocktail scene is huge here, and lots of outdoors, lakes etc.
I'm curious, though, what professions are being able to avoid all these high cost areas in Canada?
Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria - while not SF or NYC cost of living, they are still really expensive and their programming salaries appear to be 50% at best of comparable salaries in major US tech centers. Are other professions in Canada doing better? Are the only people who can afford the real estate people that just owned real estate previously and rich foreigners?
Exactly. I'm making more than my father did when he retired, yet I'll be stretched to afford the cheapest one-bedroom condo. Renting is cheaper, but there are no rentals available.
I really don't understand that. There's so many places across the U.S. where that's very decent money. Anyone who says otherwise is living in some kind of bubble. Exceptions would be if you're living in cities.
I too am in Victoria. I used to be a hiring manager and had people turn down 6 figure (CAD) offers due to receiving a better one. Although there is admittedly a huge gap between the local companies, and the satellite offices of American companies. Look at KIXEYE, Change.org, Workday, Abe Books (Amazon subsidiary). They typically pay up to 50% more than the local companies, but also typically have higher expectations around skills and availability.
You're doing better than me and I'm at one of the largest communications/media companies in the country— and I'm at the head office in Toronto.
I was in Victoria last week. Arriving back here I immediately regretted coming back. :| Except for, of course, the need for the pay, and a few of my things. I love it out there.
I have the same problem. Even for US standards low paid remote work for the US from outside the US pays more than a senior software engineer in most Western countries. There are some nice career options that I might need to skip because the difference in pay is huge.
How much is the rent where you live? I hope it is within expectation of your salary. Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, have low salaries and high rents, which makes working there really hard.
I used to be an ECE professor at UBC, the #2 school in Canada. At that school, ECE is part of applied sciences. And do you know what else is part? Yeah, nursing. The nurses earned the same pay scale as the ECE professors. And the bus drivers also earned the same pay scale at age 30 but had been working 10 years by that time and had no student loans to pay off.
When I left my pay raise was 133%. There is no word in the Canadian language to describe my salary level, it still beats every professor in every department, 20 years later ...
What kind of challenges did I leave behind when I left UBC? Research into forestry robotic Feller-Bunchers (giant tree snippers); Optical Systems for cutting Lumber in Sawmills. Computer architecture? No. VLSI? No. Compilers, Operating systems, CAD tools? No. Nothing core to these fields was ever done in Canada ....
My wife went to Berkeley and I am profoundly jealous of the quality of her education. UBC is fine but it has a local view and doesn’t deserve to be called world class imo. It doesn’t develop a worldly viewpoint in its students. And why would it? It’s mission is to educate British Columbians.
This is a hard topic for me because I was forced to move to Seattle in 2001 right after I graduated. Initially I was only semi willing, but the job market in Vancouver for new grads just didn’t exist then. It’s hard to find fellow Canadians who share similar viewpoints.
I’d love to chat more about this with you, somehow!
Former postdoc in Ontario, in a very similar field. I confirm that fundamental is ignored culturally. By the end, I mostly saw it as a place of business, and not a very good one at that either. Time past since has only solidified my view.
I was a postdoc in EE/CS trying to make my way into academia in Montreal. Now I work remotely for an American company and make more than most professors at the University I left.. It's unfortunate really..
Me and most of my engineering friends faced this decision 5 years ago. We all had to decide between offers from one of the big 5, or remaining in the Toronto-Waterloo region. I'm the only one who stayed. And that's only because I was presented with a really interesting opportunity not available to most.
I can only speak to the University of Waterloo, but there was this idea that the only goal worth perusing was a cali job. 'Cali or Bust' was one of those sayings that was said jokingly, but you know, people were also kind of serious about it. Even really great paying jobs in Toronto or Waterloo are not as desirable as the exact same position out west.
It's not so much that people are paid better in the bay area, but the jobs are plentiful, more interesting, more opportunities. Endless opportunities in fact.
Bay area best case scenario is top of the world. Founder of a world-wide renowned company.
Best case scenario for being in waterloo: Founder of a huge telcom handset manufacturer until shifting markets cause massive failure written about in economics textbooks as "what not to do"
>
Best case scenario for being in waterloo: Founder of a huge telcom handset manufacturer until shifting markets cause massive failure written about in economics textbooks as "what not to do"
I'm sorry, but this is absolutely not true. Not only did the company you're talking about pay out incredibly well for its founders, but Waterloo is dramatically different today.
Honestly, best case for being in Waterloo is come work for Google Waterloo. If you can get through the interview you won't find a better opportunity anywhere. Working for the FANG in the Valley sucks compared to working for the FANG while having Kitchener-Waterloo living costs.
Or go work for Google in SV and then transfer back here after a few years.
Canadian living in London for about 4 years now - of course people are leaving. The pay is incredibly low in major Canadian cities like Vancouver & Toronto; I was looking at 50-60k/yr there, ~150k in the US, or about 60-70k GPB in London.
Now, London isn't exactly cheap, and my overall buying power here is probably only mildly superior to what it would be in Canada, but I get to live in a great city with all the amenities of a major European hub.
Canada is great and I love many things about it, and I do consider it my proper home, but there's not much to attract me back at this point in my life & career. It's just truly a bad place to be if you're in tech.
I've been encouraging my friends back home to go explore other options like the US or Europe, and so far 3 more people I know have left - and it doesn't take much convincing once they see what's abroad.
As a Brit living in Vancouver I have the opposite perception, there's things I miss about the UK but all things considered I can't see myself moving back there. I know plenty of other Brits in tech jobs here who feel the same.
I guess it's partly what people value and partly a novelty effect of appreciating differences when you move overseas but I often see that Brits and other immigrants like Vancouver better than the people who grew up here (though there's an obvious selection effect there) and the same seems to be true in reverse for many Canadians who go to live in the UK.
What industries pay better in Canada? What industry is Canada a good place for? At least, better than tech. Or is it just that tech workers have so much opportunity and mobility that there's too much incentive for them to leave their domestic labor markets.
Coming from Western Canada, the oil and gas industry pays pretty well, or at least it did when I last talked to folks. The O&G industry in Canada is on-par with that in the US.
I moved from Canada to London for a few months and I did appreciate the tech culture compared to silicon valley because it's not the #1 industry so you get a lot of balance. However the drinking culture is absurd and unhealthy overall.
It goes without saying that SV pays dramatically more than London, and certainly more than mainland EU (Paris, Frankfurt, etc).
My point is more that as a Canadian you can go pretty much anywhere else and be better paid (even if only a little bit relative to cost of living), and sometimes there are substantial other advantages too, such as proximity to desirable locations, cultural stuff, and so on.
If Canadian companies were willing to offer a competitive salary, maybe Canadian grads would stay. It doesn't even have to be 1:1 with the US, even 75% would be nice.
As it is, there is little incentive to stay here. I know a new grad who was faced with the choice of staying in Canada to earn $40-50k CAD per year starting, or heading to the US where he had a job offer with one of the big five for $120k USD plus signing bonus. Guess which option he chose?
Canadian tech companies love to complain about lack of talent, but they're not willing to pay for it, and they seem oblivious to the fact that we have a professional worker mobility agreement with our southern neighbors that makes it very easy to get a visa.
Lower salary could be acceptable if the cost of living was lower, unfortunately it's often the same as in the US. Vancouver might even be more expensive. Maybe if provincial/federal governments tackled that first more people would stay, as it would be a better environment to raise a family.
Definitely not my experience (Toronto -> SF). My rent for a 2-bed apartment in SF is twice as much as my mortgage for a 3-bed detached in Toronto (both with similar commute times)
With that said, signing bonuses are definitely something that you don't ever get in Canada, raises and yearly bonuses are also categorically lower, and housing prices have been outpacing salary increases significantly.
However, there are definitely very good reasons to be in Canada instead of the US/Bay area. Healthcare, for one thing, isn't an opaque insurance clusterfuck. It's also much safer (both macroscopically, in terms of things like shootings, and microscopically, in terms of side effects of widespread homelessness).
Another thing to consider is that work visas are far easier to get in Canada, and the path to citizenship is also much less draconian.
This comes up in every thread about Canada, but it seems a lapse of logic to anthropomorphize a market like this. The market doesn't "will" anything, and people's willingness to offer/accept a salary is more a consequence of local conditions than a cause. Those conditions include the option of getting paid more if you're willing to leave the country, which some are. Presumably that affects the market for those who choose to remain, but it would be interesting to know by how much. It's not obvious.
Canadian companies complain about lack of talent about as much as their employees complain about lack of salary. Isn't it a sign of a market reaching its level when both sides complain about the price but nevertheless accept it?
Yes, using personalized anthropomorphic terms is silly.
Except that behind the Great Toronto tech market there are real people, making decisions. At the government, at the investment, and at the management level.
And by and large those people have made decisions which see engineering talent here as a resource that they have to push the cost down on even if it means losing domestic talent to the US.
Part of this is accomplished by importing talent from abroad or exporting the work abroad, or underpaying when they can get away with it. It's not a surprise that locally developed talent leaves after graduation, when the industry is actively recruiting from abroad.
And part of this is relying on the percentage of talent hat simply will not or cannot consider moving abroad (people like myself).
> Canadian tech companies love to complain about lack of talent, but they're not willing to pay for it [...]
They most likely to a large extent can't. It's just a different model both as comapnies and country. In general you can rarely win by being a lesser version of something else. Canada can, hopefully, do a lot of things the US can't. Those are the things it should do to attract people.
I think it's more a case of VCs not being calibrated to the real cost of doing business. Canada is a first world country with a GDP per capita not much less than the states. There is plenty of wealth available that could be invested in tech. It's just Bay Street generally doesn't want to, because they don't understand the tech business.
Name one prominent Canadian VC firm - I can't think of any, and I'm Canadian. But ask me about US firms, and I can name firms like Sequioa, a16z, and BVP. We don't have that here.
Canada's main attraction is the social services and basicaly guaranteed citizenship. The US's main attraction is money and technical opportunities and also some vague promise of a green card.
> staying in Canada to earn $40-50k CAD per year starting
Amazon Toronto starts new grads at like $80-100k last I heard. It's not as good as you can get in Silicon Valley, but rent in Toronto (while still high) is much lower than in the Valley.
For another data point: I'm an Amazon SDE2 in Ottawa making CA$225k total compensation this year (about 2/3 of that is salary). That's very good pay locally. I'm not sure I can match that anywhere else in the city.
I might be able to get better in the States, even after cost-of-living increases, but what quality of life gain would there be? Would it be worthwhile to have to deal with all the crazy shit with the education and healthcare systems and the politics down there?
So I'm sticking here in Canada. I just don't see the point in moving south.
Developers in Toronto are getting a raw deal. The cost of living is orders of magnitude higher than the rest of the country and devs aren't making the difference up with higher wages.
So glad I made the decision to move from Toronto to Atlantic Canada this past year. I'm actually making more money in New Brunswick than I did in Toronto and can afford to own a 4 bedroom house instead of renting a 600 square foot condo.
What are rents like in Toronto? Are they $700 - $1300 per month lower (the difference of $20k - $40k net of taxes is about that)? If not, it doesn't make sense to work in Toronto.
The same situation exists across the US. For example I can get a mortgage on a nice place in the Midwest that is half my current rent in SV. That amounts to about $24k/year. However I'd have take a pay cut of about $40k gross (or more) for a job with identical responsibilities and to live in a region with far fewer opportunities. It's a net loss.
I'm wondering how that salary difference really is when comparing the cost of living of many Canadian cities vs Silicon Valley, the taxation rate and the social services provided (universal healthcare, etc).
Born/raised in Toronto, been in SF for ~4 years. It's not even close. Yes, my rent in SF is high, but my total comp is six figures higher than what I could earn in Toronto. Wages are considerably higher, even when you factor in cost of living, services, and everything else.
The cost of living in the major Canadian tech cities (Vancouver, Toronto, Ottawa) is lower than Silicon Valley, sure, but Vancouver is still one of the most expensive cities to live in the world. The drop in salary is way too low when compared to the cost of living.
The cost of living between Vancouver and Seattle is very comparable, especially when you account for your biggest input costs, housing, food & transportation. The Salaries most definitely are not. The biggies south of the border set the baseline salary for everyone; when they move north they match the existing, much lower rates.
If I was a new-ish grad and wanted to stay in the PNW there's not a chance I'd pick Vancouver. Seattle has all the same electric cars, dog bakeries and yarn stores that you'll find in the lower mainland, and heading to Whistler for the weekend with more US greenbacks in your pocket would be a lot more fun...
The big tech hubs in CA (Toronto, Vancouver) are expensive and traffic is absolutely awful. A quick glance online shows average apartment prices are nearly $2000/mo. So it's almost like you're living in Seattle anyway.
I don't think CA has many technical equivalents to Ohama or Columbus that combine high salaries from numerous F500 companies with Midwestern COL.
Is Canadian healthcare any good? Where I live, you pay for this privilege quite a lot of tax at still you have to go privately, because the quality is just not worth your health. I really wish "universal healthcare" was scrapped, so I could afford better services privately.
Oh they're willing to pay for the talent. They just bring it in from the PRC or Eastern Europe, or India. And they can pay far less for that.
I'm not opposed to immigration at all. But prior to coming to Google Canada most of the people I worked with in Toronto were not holders of Canadian degrees. They were recent immigrants, permanent residents and not citizens and therefore themselves unable to go to the US. Many of these people were underpaid significantly, and a lot of them mistreated, in my opinion.
The homegrown talent from Waterloo, etc. had mostly left for the U.S.
Some come back after a few years, but many never do.
Add to that the dynamic of many American companies opening offices here as a 'nearshore' lower cost shop, where all the important and interesting decisions are made in the US and the Canadian shop's job is to just execute it.... crappy.
Readit News
Some solutions I can think of, which might help:
- Aggressively pursue the brightest non-American engineers, who are hesitant to move to USA because of immigration restrictions.
- Offer very lucrative perks to the major software companies, to expand their engineering presence in Canada. Yes, it stinks having to offer tax-breaks, but at least it will help build initial momentum.
- Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.
The problem of trying to get Canadian tech up to par with the US is much deeper than pulling some tax/incentive levers, I think. There are some really deep cultural issues that I don't think can be solved for a few generations.
You're absolutely right that the culture of respecting changemakers is not as present in Canada. But the SFBA is the world leader here. There probably isn't any place on earth that's more optimistic about innovators.
I don't think this is a culture thing, exactly. It's just that everyone who became rich in the SFBA did so by exploiting trends or innovating – since like, the 1890s. And the USA plowed zillions of dollars into the tech ecosystem in the Bay Area since World War II. Once you have that tech investor class, culture bends a lot towards their way of thinking.
Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with. Or, they made their money in an old-school industry, like resource extraction, and they flip out at the risk levels in tech startups.
In terms of prevailing national norms, I'd say Canada is slightly more change-friendly than the USA. Think about all the ways that the USA tries to kill immigration, stifle innovation in favor of incumbents, and put regulatory barriers in the way for entrepreneurs.
In contrast, Canada has lots of official policies to support tech entrepreneurship and skilled immigration. Plus, socialized medicine really does make it easier to be an entrepreneur. Politically and culturally, Canada isn't that into retro stuff, or trying to revive earlier, more conservative eras. People think their best days are ahead of them.
It's true that the people in Canada are not super interested in overturning anyone's applecart, for its own sake or just to get rich. That's not as respected here. People are more likely to be interested in innovations that improve the general social welfare. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
To quote this excellent article[1]: "the default setting of the Canadian male: a dull but stern dad, who, under a facade of apparent normalcy and common sense, conceals a reserve of barely contained hostility toward anyone who might rock the boat. To these types, those who make a fuss are bothersome and ignorant at best, and probably dangerous and destructive too."
I was born in Canada. I went to school in Canada. Only once I moved to the US did I feel like I could express and be myself. That I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value. Dogmatic adherence to the way it's done, because change is dangerous is the default state of many Canadians. For those who it's not, well, you know them, they're already living in the US.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/06/opinion/jordan-peterson-c...
That had me LOL because I think it’s so true. If you were to suggest perhaps to start a business that innovates you’d be considered crazy. Although of course the new tech out of the USA will be adopted by all immediately.
My exposure is more western Canada than eastern Canada, but I find that your statements couldn't be further from the truth. People here are constantly trying new things and exploring and experimenting with new business ideas. I see great optimism and people who see potential.
And in terms of being constantly questioned, I just don't see that where I am, but I also don't view being questioned as a bad thing. When it comes to launching any new idea, it seems that being questioned is the very least of the difficulty you need to put up with.
I grew up in suburban Minnesota. It's not exactly ambition central, but it's miles ahead of small town America. You're talking about a country that elected Trump here. It's afraid of immigrants, "foreign" religions (as though American Christianity weren't a shambling syncretic nightmare), doesn't believe in evolution, and believes overwhelmingly in hell. We incarcerate more of our citizens per capita than any other developed country. We're not exactly free-wheeling dream seekers, at the median. We ridicule weird people, we spit on people who fail, and we hate anyone who is ugly, awkward, old, or otherwise socially disadvantaged.
Getting ahead is seen as fine - be ambitious! - but only because we think our friends are "winners" and won't be hurt by the risks they take, which is nonsense. We also don't prize reflectiveness as a culture, so when people gain sufficient experience to learn that this perspective is idiotic, they don't internalize it.
I'm not a giant fan of American culture, and I'm sad to see that anyone from Canada (I watch your Supreme Court proceedings for entertainment, full disclosure!) would idolize anything about they way Americans do things.
... or a condo to put on Airbnb.
You are definitely onto something when you say that there are some deep cultural issues within Canada; Look at RIM, the company believed that its central business customers cared more about security and efficient communication and that the iPhone presented no threat to them. The iPhone was just a crazy idea to them, who would want to use that clunker with a horrible battery life and browse the net on it?
Canada has talent, without a doubt, but it also keeps people subdued as you stated because they are constantly questioned by everyone else. Canadians are a lot like accountants, they want to buy that fancy Harley and take it out on the road and live a little, but only on the weekends. :)
They tried that a few times. I know because I was an advisor to one of the biggest incubators in Canada. The government even gives cash grants to startups.
But as soon as the company gets big, they either 1) open an engineering office in the Bay Area or 2) Sell, and the move to the Bay Area because they were just acquired by a Bay Area company who is making them move (or they just want to move now that they can afford it).
The startup scene in Canada has huge demand from Canadian engineers who want to start startups there, but they have a really hard time attracting local capital. Most of their capital comes from SV VCs who like the fact that it is cheaper to start a company there because of the low salaries, and a lot of the successful exits leave.
This is news to me. I tried have tried talking to an incubator several times and every time they tell me to come back when I have $10k/mo in revenue. Sorry but I have a full time job and I can't grow a business to 10k/mo without some help. Seems to me like they didn't try very hard.
FTA: 'A lack of successful “scale-up” tech firms in Canada has been cited as one of the reasons research development spending and productivity here have lagged other developed countries.'
> but they have a really hard time attracting local capital.
So is the problem, then, that "trying" has, so far, involved running incubators and grants and what's necessary, in addition, is incentivizing local capital to invest?
Other commenters have suggested tax breaks, which I personally believe is a state's greatest incentive "lever". Perhaps a lower (maybe even zero) capital gains tax rate on startup investments?
Otherwise, it doesn't seem like there's been any aggressive encouragement/funding/facilitation, as proposed by the parent comment.
- Canada does offer some tax breaks [3] and grants to startups, but more is also welcome.
- Agreed that there should be a bigger focus on startups. I wonder if having provinces create VC funds (like Investissment Quebec [4]) tailored specifically to startups would help here.
[1] http://mgalligan.com/post/52327738889/canada-h1b
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-20/h-1b-work...
[3] https://www.investinontario.com/incentive-programs-and-servi...
[4] http://www.investquebec.com/international/en
While I agree that the efforts are working, this is very much like using a tea spoon to bail water out of the Titanic. You also have to consider that given a choice between the US and Canada, very few people would pick Canada so many of the people that arrive would leave the minute an opportunity in the US opens up.
This is an interesting point. I feel like Canada does do this, but it sort of backfires on itself. Something my wife once pointed out is that a lot of immigrant tech talent in Canada is inherently risk averse by virtue of being primarily chinese and indian tech workers, whose cultures are heavily conservative cultures that tend to celebrate social status over risk-taking innovativeness
https://venturebeat.com/2012/10/15/how-indians-defied-gravit...
"Twenty five percent of the nation’s startups and 52% of those in Silicon Valley were founded by immigrants. Indian immigrants were the leading company founding group. They founded 13.4% of Silicon Valley’s startups and 6.5% of those nationwide."
Regardless of cultural differences, I recall reading that immigrants as a whole are far more entrepreneurial than similarly positioned natives. A lot of this is through self-selection: saying goodbye to all your friends and moving to a whole other country/continent is extremely "scary". Hence by definition, the average immigrant is far more comfortable heading off into the unknown and taking the plunge.
Aren't a lot of immigrant tech talent in Silicon Valley Chinese and Indian too? Or maybe even the majority?
Besides, China has a very vibrant VC culture, second only to the US. Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.
Lucrative perks sticks because of tax breaks like you mentioned.
I would be going all-out on #3. Having local businesses has benefits beyond just avoiding brain drain as well.
This is why it blows my mind at how little funding there is for early stage companies in Canada. I personally tried twice now already, as have several friends, and we didn't get anywhere because local investors here want you to already have a finished product with a validated business model and 10k/month in revenue. I'm sorry but the only way you stop a promising new grad from turning down a huge salary is by giving them the chance to work on their passion.
Expecting them to already have a 10k/mo business is just a big F-you. Might as well go to the states where I can at least make enough money to take some time off. And heck, while I'm there someone might even fund my idea anyways.
I mean really, it creates about 10k high-paying tech jobs, okay... but Walmart employs 1 million. A lot of the support staff, e.g. in moderation, are distributed around the world.
Then it generates tons of revenues and profits for its shareholders, but FB is a public company, it could in theory be completely owned by non-Americans who profit off of the American company.
Then it provides a service to people around the world.
And then it has strategic value, but it appears it was misused by foreign powers to manipulate domestic elections, rather than furthering American interests.
FB does pay quite substantial federal taxes, far greater than it does in the rest of the world, you can't easily disregard that. The rest of the world is missing out on that, but that's also a question of the rest of the world not using its tax mandate fully.
It doesn't appear like Facebook is tremendously more important to the US than it is to the rest of the world. Of course brain drain is always an issue we should be concerned about, but one feature of publicly-owned digital companies is that their benefits aren't as restricted to their locality as traditional companies are.
Where does this perception come from? Canada has stricter immigration rules than the USA.
EDIT: Specifically what I'm talking about is that Canada only allows in immigrants who are economically desirable and speak English or French.
Also, even if you get the H1B and apply for Permanent Residency, the wait time can be obscenely long depending on where you were born. If you were born in China, you'll have to wait for 6+ years. If you were born in India, you'll have to wait for 12+ years.
Ironically enough, if you're a not-very-qualified applicant, you'll likely have a easier time applying here in USA. The Canadian system might be more stringent, but rolls out the red carpet for those who are truly qualified, and in greater numbers too. The American system is the exact opposite.
We can get a permenant residency Canada visa straight off the bat without a job offer (quicker with a job offer though granted).
We can’t work out how to get a US visa for love nor money and have basically given up thinking about it.
Canada certainly seems easier from where we are.
There's also the cliche (spread by the internet and political groups) that conservative/Republicans/etc... are against all immigration. This is 90% incorrect.
I worked as support staff during a conference in Seattle of conservative business leaders around 2010. Their #1 topic of discussion was how to get more people into the country because they couldn't find enough workers with the right skills domestically. And no, it wasn't the tech sector that was hurting the most.
Apparently the problem the conservatives have isn't immigration as an umbrella policy. It's legal versus illegal methods (though some of the speakers advocated for both). Kind of eye-opening. I no longer believe the regurgitated talking points from either party.
difficult to plan for the future where this is a possibility
Canada is importing talent from Hong Kong and Shanghai to work for American and Canadian companies, at salaries that are below market in US tech hubs, but appealing enough for those who wish to move to North America. At the same time, Canada is exporting talent to the US because of those same good-but-not-good-enough salaries.
4/20/18 Bloomberg: Engineers Are Leaving Trump’s America for the Canadian Dream
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-04-20/h-1b-work...
What really prevents braindrain on a large scale is stationary opportunity's.
Take Shenzhen for example, it is one ocean away from California and should be constantly bleeding out towards it. The contrary is the case, due to the relatively cheap and flexible factories of hardware- being opportunities for which California cant or wont any longer compete.
But shouldn't all these Chinese hardware founders create fab-less hw-design companies and mass-migrate? No, because connections and opportunities would not migrate with them.
Such opportunities are usually created by long-term protectionism and clever industrial policies.
Dead Comment
What is canadian culture? What are canadian values? I've never heard anyone mention canadian culture or values before.
> would love to live in Canada one day.
You are one of the rare individuals. Most canadians I've met want to live in the US. Especially those with money or skills to make money. Better food, weather, culture, history, life, etc.
> - Aggressively encourage/fund/facilitate startups. Unlike salaried employees, startups aren't turned off by the low-engineering-wages. Once Canada can grow 5-10 startups into major established companies with Canadian HQs, that will really boost the local engineering ecosystem and job market.
But they can't compete because of scale. Canada isn't large enough and it certainly has too little internal talent to compete with the US. California by itself can out compete canada by itself. Thrown in the other 49 states.
Even if canada retained all its "brains", it wouldn't matter. We outnumber canada 10 to 1 and outrank canada in every economic facet from resources, ports, infrastructure and foreign talent.
Foreigners with skills, from china to india to the middle east to eastern europe, all want to come to the US to study and work.
It's almost impossible for canada to compete with the US. They have nothing going for them vis a vis the US and their internal market isn't large enough to compete with the US.
You either take below market rate (like myself) or you work in something like one of the 300 ad-tech or we'll-build-your-website/app dev mills (more often than not it's both).
There are a limited number of opportunities for truly interesting or innovative work if you don't want to work for "we're changing the world by creating the next uber/airbnb/cryptocurrency/coupon app!"
There are some seriously good and interesting companies here, but many exist out of the popular eye and/or usually located in the suburbs. (at least around Toronto)
But mainly I suspect it's the pay and career trajectory. Get a gig at FAANG? You can write your ticket after that. Work at a major Canadian company? You won't get a call back from other Canadian companies at a pay cut...
This is probably feeding the problem. You need good engineers to create high-value products in order to afford to pay high salaries for good engineers. Economies can't get ahead when they waste engineering talent developing trivial software that doesn't build long-term growth.
Canada should probably have a massive advanced military project that aims to produce state of the art technology. Pay qualified people great salaries and let them use their inventions in the private sector after some period of time.
But otherwise, I'm trying to figure out how I can possibly save or make some more money on the side without running myself ragged or ruining my relationship—and feel human all the while.
I don't want to exaggerate but something is definitely off. I've seen companies resist hiring engineers at almost all cost (except for at 35-60k) but will pay "Technology Procurement Managers" 300k+. Don't get me started on some of the outcome of those practices...
I am looking to move to the USA because of higher salaries, but I am not 22 years old anymore and moving a family (with 2 earners) is no easy task.
It falls on deaf ears though, 120k CAD is a good income, I can afford a house, cars, no debts etc so there is very little understanding from others how I could not be satisfied with pay.
Based on my own experience of finding remote work for US companies.
I usually get lowballed on the offers because I am based in Canada.
In other words, US companies pay average salaries calculated based on my local salary rates.
In fact I just had a phone interview with a SF startup for a remote position and they were shocked to hear that I was asking for an AVG salary rate in SF instead of Canada.
Not sure if this is the norm for everyone.
I live in Germany, which has similar wages for software engineers as Canada. And in a 2 hours train ride I can be in Poland, where software engineers earn 1/3 their German counterparts.
Apparently, only business and finance people are allowed to want money because they provide a useful service or just because they want money.
I personally believe that in a capitalistic society, it is imperative that everyone tries their best to extract as much of the value that they create. Otherwise we end up with massive inequality.
Have you calculated what salary you'd have to earn to afford an equivalent configuration of {house, cars, debt, schools, commute, sanity} in the BA?
That may be where the lack of understanding comes from.
I really do get tired of this "but the cost of living!" argument being tossed out. People get it. It's not complicated.
https://www.ssa.gov/international/Agreement_Pamphlets/canada...
The spot with the best balance seems to be Seattle. High salaries and housing relatively affordable when compared to Vancouver or SF.
If I want to sell my downtown townhouse and buy a detached home or upgrade in any way I'm looking at a 1.5 hour commute easily and still not getting much. And once you're outside downtown , entertainment etc rapidly drops off.
Alternatively in the bay area, where I may soon be moving, the suburbs have a strong drop off in cost from the hotspots while still maintaining a reasonable commute and quality of life.
The issue is, Vancouver's infrastructure drops off so dramatically as you get further from downtown.
The health argument is completely invalid when it comes to Canadian salary comparisons because the Canadian employer doesn’t have to pay health insurance costs — so they should have more money available for salaries.
I hope you just mean that metaphorically, but if it's actually happening, please let us know so we can scold them. Putting others down that pettily is a breach of civility.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I see it all the time, but don't have any examples specifically bookmarked.
That companies think you're paid highly for your area is kind of this entire problem in a nutshell.
Vancouver, Toronto, Victoria - while not SF or NYC cost of living, they are still really expensive and their programming salaries appear to be 50% at best of comparable salaries in major US tech centers. Are other professions in Canada doing better? Are the only people who can afford the real estate people that just owned real estate previously and rich foreigners?
I was in Victoria last week. Arriving back here I immediately regretted coming back. :| Except for, of course, the need for the pay, and a few of my things. I love it out there.
When I left my pay raise was 133%. There is no word in the Canadian language to describe my salary level, it still beats every professor in every department, 20 years later ...
What kind of challenges did I leave behind when I left UBC? Research into forestry robotic Feller-Bunchers (giant tree snippers); Optical Systems for cutting Lumber in Sawmills. Computer architecture? No. VLSI? No. Compilers, Operating systems, CAD tools? No. Nothing core to these fields was ever done in Canada ....
My wife went to Berkeley and I am profoundly jealous of the quality of her education. UBC is fine but it has a local view and doesn’t deserve to be called world class imo. It doesn’t develop a worldly viewpoint in its students. And why would it? It’s mission is to educate British Columbians.
This is a hard topic for me because I was forced to move to Seattle in 2001 right after I graduated. Initially I was only semi willing, but the job market in Vancouver for new grads just didn’t exist then. It’s hard to find fellow Canadians who share similar viewpoints.
I’d love to chat more about this with you, somehow!
We have to make do with Deep Learning.
I can only speak to the University of Waterloo, but there was this idea that the only goal worth perusing was a cali job. 'Cali or Bust' was one of those sayings that was said jokingly, but you know, people were also kind of serious about it. Even really great paying jobs in Toronto or Waterloo are not as desirable as the exact same position out west.
Bay area best case scenario is top of the world. Founder of a world-wide renowned company.
Best case scenario for being in waterloo: Founder of a huge telcom handset manufacturer until shifting markets cause massive failure written about in economics textbooks as "what not to do"
I'm sorry, but this is absolutely not true. Not only did the company you're talking about pay out incredibly well for its founders, but Waterloo is dramatically different today.
Or go work for Google in SV and then transfer back here after a few years.
Now, London isn't exactly cheap, and my overall buying power here is probably only mildly superior to what it would be in Canada, but I get to live in a great city with all the amenities of a major European hub.
Canada is great and I love many things about it, and I do consider it my proper home, but there's not much to attract me back at this point in my life & career. It's just truly a bad place to be if you're in tech.
I've been encouraging my friends back home to go explore other options like the US or Europe, and so far 3 more people I know have left - and it doesn't take much convincing once they see what's abroad.
I guess it's partly what people value and partly a novelty effect of appreciating differences when you move overseas but I often see that Brits and other immigrants like Vancouver better than the people who grew up here (though there's an obvious selection effect there) and the same seems to be true in reverse for many Canadians who go to live in the UK.
My point is more that as a Canadian you can go pretty much anywhere else and be better paid (even if only a little bit relative to cost of living), and sometimes there are substantial other advantages too, such as proximity to desirable locations, cultural stuff, and so on.
As it is, there is little incentive to stay here. I know a new grad who was faced with the choice of staying in Canada to earn $40-50k CAD per year starting, or heading to the US where he had a job offer with one of the big five for $120k USD plus signing bonus. Guess which option he chose?
Canadian tech companies love to complain about lack of talent, but they're not willing to pay for it, and they seem oblivious to the fact that we have a professional worker mobility agreement with our southern neighbors that makes it very easy to get a visa.
Something's gotta change.
Definitely not my experience (Toronto -> SF). My rent for a 2-bed apartment in SF is twice as much as my mortgage for a 3-bed detached in Toronto (both with similar commute times)
With that said, signing bonuses are definitely something that you don't ever get in Canada, raises and yearly bonuses are also categorically lower, and housing prices have been outpacing salary increases significantly.
However, there are definitely very good reasons to be in Canada instead of the US/Bay area. Healthcare, for one thing, isn't an opaque insurance clusterfuck. It's also much safer (both macroscopically, in terms of things like shootings, and microscopically, in terms of side effects of widespread homelessness).
Another thing to consider is that work visas are far easier to get in Canada, and the path to citizenship is also much less draconian.
This comes up in every thread about Canada, but it seems a lapse of logic to anthropomorphize a market like this. The market doesn't "will" anything, and people's willingness to offer/accept a salary is more a consequence of local conditions than a cause. Those conditions include the option of getting paid more if you're willing to leave the country, which some are. Presumably that affects the market for those who choose to remain, but it would be interesting to know by how much. It's not obvious.
Canadian companies complain about lack of talent about as much as their employees complain about lack of salary. Isn't it a sign of a market reaching its level when both sides complain about the price but nevertheless accept it?
Except that behind the Great Toronto tech market there are real people, making decisions. At the government, at the investment, and at the management level.
And by and large those people have made decisions which see engineering talent here as a resource that they have to push the cost down on even if it means losing domestic talent to the US.
Part of this is accomplished by importing talent from abroad or exporting the work abroad, or underpaying when they can get away with it. It's not a surprise that locally developed talent leaves after graduation, when the industry is actively recruiting from abroad.
And part of this is relying on the percentage of talent hat simply will not or cannot consider moving abroad (people like myself).
They most likely to a large extent can't. It's just a different model both as comapnies and country. In general you can rarely win by being a lesser version of something else. Canada can, hopefully, do a lot of things the US can't. Those are the things it should do to attract people.
Name one prominent Canadian VC firm - I can't think of any, and I'm Canadian. But ask me about US firms, and I can name firms like Sequioa, a16z, and BVP. We don't have that here.
Amazon Toronto starts new grads at like $80-100k last I heard. It's not as good as you can get in Silicon Valley, but rent in Toronto (while still high) is much lower than in the Valley.
I might be able to get better in the States, even after cost-of-living increases, but what quality of life gain would there be? Would it be worthwhile to have to deal with all the crazy shit with the education and healthcare systems and the politics down there?
So I'm sticking here in Canada. I just don't see the point in moving south.
So glad I made the decision to move from Toronto to Atlantic Canada this past year. I'm actually making more money in New Brunswick than I did in Toronto and can afford to own a 4 bedroom house instead of renting a 600 square foot condo.
The same situation exists across the US. For example I can get a mortgage on a nice place in the Midwest that is half my current rent in SV. That amounts to about $24k/year. However I'd have take a pay cut of about $40k gross (or more) for a job with identical responsibilities and to live in a region with far fewer opportunities. It's a net loss.
I think the individual value of most social services is pretty low to people in this demographic (recent graduates taking software jobs in the US).
Sure, universal healthcare is great, but US companies also provide health insurance.
If I was a new-ish grad and wanted to stay in the PNW there's not a chance I'd pick Vancouver. Seattle has all the same electric cars, dog bakeries and yarn stores that you'll find in the lower mainland, and heading to Whistler for the weekend with more US greenbacks in your pocket would be a lot more fun...
I don't think CA has many technical equivalents to Ohama or Columbus that combine high salaries from numerous F500 companies with Midwestern COL.
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I'm not opposed to immigration at all. But prior to coming to Google Canada most of the people I worked with in Toronto were not holders of Canadian degrees. They were recent immigrants, permanent residents and not citizens and therefore themselves unable to go to the US. Many of these people were underpaid significantly, and a lot of them mistreated, in my opinion.
The homegrown talent from Waterloo, etc. had mostly left for the U.S.
Some come back after a few years, but many never do.
Add to that the dynamic of many American companies opening offices here as a 'nearshore' lower cost shop, where all the important and interesting decisions are made in the US and the Canadian shop's job is to just execute it.... crappy.
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I agree about your main point though. It's time to put up (salaries in this case) or shut up.
Flat out wrong. FAANG will absolutely give you similar salaries in metro areas like Seattle, NYC, Austin. Where are you getting your data?