Vancouverite here. When major tech companies started setting up satellite offices here, I assumed it'd be a temporary situation, and that we'd be at the mercy of any change in the U.S. immigration process. The longer there's an immigration bottleneck though, the more entrenched these companies become here. There are more senior roles opening up here all the time, and salaries are increasing in this competitive market.
From my experience on the media / marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn't consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.
Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There's real momentum here as well.
I've also lived in Toronto and Vancouver. Did the obligatory move to work as a software dev in California and now live in Australia. The fact is that tech salaries in Canada are still much lower than the US while the cost of living, especially housing, is still very high, for Vancouver and Toronto in particular. Not to mention the lousy winters.
Spend any time browsing /r/vancouver or /r/toronto and you'll quickly realize that the cost of living is a huge problem. The Vancouver housing market in particular has been absurdly inflated by out of control money laundering. Local salaries and house prices are totally out of whack.
Follow https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/ to see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market. https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/status/1221315000897163264 is a particularly amusing recent thread showing where a would-be landlord writes: "This home is in rough shape and needs painting, and TLC. Looking for long term tenant willing to put labour in while landlord covers all material costs." All this for only $5650/month!
> see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market.
It's inconclusive at best, and misidentifying the major causes in this complicated crisis could hurt any effort to alleviate housing pains.
Money laundering does happen in BC, and some of the proceeds do go into higher end housing. One can argue the restrictive zoning and ever-increasing costs and hurdles to new developments are orders of magnitude more influential on the market than the hot money. We have heavily left-leaning councilors in Vancouver that vote down any rental property project, solely to prevent private parties from making any profit.
I'm a tech worker in Canada and can agree that the tech salaries are nowhere close to the US. Housing is pretty high as well. The better paying jobs are in government.
More than anything I didn't get a tech vibe in Toronto. I was at UofT and the surroundings all the time, yet it felt like the town is mostly devoid of tech. Not the same vibe you get in Seattle or Redmond or SV for that matter.
May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.
I've heard this complaint -- that the property prices are high -- however, isn't there an opportunity to put a tech hub right on the border with Seattle? Make the commute even smaller and set up a whole border town? Just wondering why a developer doesn't make it a great place to live bring cafes, housing etc.
Saying that money laundering solely affected the Vancouver housing market is simplistic and the press is successful in pushing this narrative. How about other factors like lots of people want to move to Vancouver (only major Canadian city on the west coast) and the effect of major tech companies setting up shop here? Also the greed of condo developers and landlords?
Ya but nobody is renting at $5650. Living costs and scarcity are a real problem, but more likely to be around $1300 to $2800 depending on area and size.
This is how the film industry moved to California from New York. Back then it was far enough away not to worry about Edison patent lawsuits. By the time the rail improved and the patents expired, Hollywood (they tried Fremond and Tanforan first) was entrenched.
There's really nothing like working in the Valley but not everyone likes it and if there's a solid alternative I suspect that Vancouver and Toronto will continue to prosper no matter what the US policies end up being.
I went the opposite way. Native US, but moved to Europe, cause the living conditions are better. Pay is worse, and cost of living is higher, but my standard of living has gone way up. Funniest thing is, I still work for an American company anyways.
I'd echo this as a Vancouverite. People coming here from elsewhere are here for Vancouver itself. It's not a stopping point on the way south.
In fact in the last few years I've even been seeing young people coming up from the USA to live here for lifestyle reasons.
IMO the dominant thing propelling tech in Vancouver forward isn't the immigration law situation, but rather the low Canadian dollar makes our companies cheap to work with for SF giants.
I view Canada as mix of good things from US (spacious streets, houses, landscape, partly English-speaking) and Europe (universal healthcare, education). If only it had a better climate... :)
Well, the climate in the populated parts of Canada parallels the northern United States, i.e. Chicago (9.5m in metro area) and Toronto (6.4m in metro area) have similar climate, as well as Vancouver and Seattle.
There are huge populations in these areas who are used to northern climate and have no trouble with it. I live in Chicago and really love the four seasons, prefer the cold to the heat and would never move to anywhere south of say North Carolina.
Climate preferences can vary quite a bit, I would say.
Also better healthcare. My parents have friends that moved from the US to Canada due to this and the very competitive job market in the US with virtually no employee rights. They weren't working in tech but banking/services.
In some ways, perhaps. The fact we frequently have to pay for prescribed medication is mind-blowingly ridiculous. Even with medical insurance (through your employer or paying for the plan yourself), you're usually forced to use generic medications if you want coverage - even when your doctor signs a Special Authority[0] form to have your medication covered. And yes, there can be pretty substantial differences between name brand and generic.
Working for a Silicon Valley tech company, you typically have extremely good health insurance and a vastly higher salary than anything in Canada. Salaries north of the border are a pittance compared to what you could earn in even a mid-tiered US city. I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour. And a non-lead was paying $C25 per hour. Ridiculous. And Toronto isn’t a cheap city. I made triple that working remotely for a Kansas City company.
Canada is a nice place, live there if you want, but “competitive compensation” is definitely not a reason.
The really important thing would be if more Canadian founders were able to create massive companies successfully. The jobs are certainly welcome but I want to hear about more successful companies owned by Canadians
Owned by Canadians and registered in Canada are two different things. There's a lot more investment in US hence why a lot of the companies are registered there and you see them as "American".
Vancouverite also here. I am happy to see regular salary listings at much higher than they used to be, and if this is the reason, that's cool with me! I believe Microsoft and Amazon are opening huge secondary locations here soon.
Microsoft has long since had offices in Vancouver. It's only a few hours drive from headquarters down in Redmond. And another choice for employees that lose the H1B lottery.
This is a strange comment to read as a Vancouverite. Amazon’s has thousands of employees for years now, they had 600 jobs open last I checked. Microsoft’s main downtown office has one of the most prominent locations in the city, plus a huge sign. Those huge secondary locations are already here.
How's the housing policy in Vancouver and Toronto? If new tech companies and new tech workers keep coming, are the cities willing to allow for construction of lots of new homes? Or are there signs that the housing policies would turn as anti-growth and hostile to newcomers as happened in the Bay Area?
The demand outpaces supply currently in Toronto (where I live), Vancouver, and the prices are high. Everyone talks about affordability and so far it's been tackled by extending rent control and adding a foreign buyer tax.
Vancouver and Toronto both build quite a bit. Some will argue not enough, and there is the usual NIMBYism, but it's not comparable to the disfunction of SF.
It's cheaper and easier to build in SF than Vancouver BC and region now.
Hoping that to change - I moved to Saskatchewan to get away from that. (Alberta wasn't far enough - real estate there is effected too by the ease of international tax evaders and money launderers to buy property to "hold" their assets).
> the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene
Well, India and China have even fewer immigration restrictions on Indian and Chinese workers than Canada does... why would Vancouver take San Francisco’s place rather than Mumbai or Shanghai?
Shanghai is practically topped-out already, there's a huge amount of VC funding being spent and it's quite hard to emigrate there. Though I don't think it's about US policy so much as just good success at reproducing the Hong Kong business environment.
The drop from 92% to 75% isn’t the complete story, or even the more important story.
The real problem is all the other nonsense people have to deal with.
We have a really great employee who single handedly wrote most of the company’s build infrastructure, and was happy in the US on his H1B because while it requires renewal every 3 years, he was well paid and enjoying his life.
Until about a year and a half ago when he went back to renew his visa in India but didn’t get an approval for about 6 months. The approval process required the company to submit the salaries of the entire 15000+ global employees from the janitors to the CEO.
Once his visa was approved, he packed his bags and moved to Toronto within a couple of months. And our company has stopped hiring more tech workers in the US because they don’t want to have to deal with this anymore.
Green cards are a joke. For some countries they are effectively impossible to get in your lifetime. That's why we have this H1B nonsense in the first place.
Green card processes are also not without caveats these days. Every visa extensions with or without I140s can be subjected to "administrative reviews" that can take anywhere from a month to six months. That's what the original post refers to. Lot of folks around HN have no clue about how the Trump administration has wedged a bureaucratic block at every stage of the work visa process. I am also pretty well settled in the US but will be moving to Toronto to get rid of this visa nightmare.
It's almost as though having a US office contributes to the US economy regardless of whether there's foreign or domestic workers there. It's a net positive for the US regardless, even if 100% of workers at that office are foreigners if the alternative is moving the office to a country with a sane immigration program.
Folks in the office have to rent/buy property, buy food, supplies, etc, all from local workers too. Taxes are paid. You know, business.
I'm at somewhat of a cross-roads related to this matter.
Note that this mostly applies to immigrants from India or China. I'm from India. This applies irrespective of education level (I did my Bachelors in the US, just FYI)
Currently I'm in the US on a student visa (currently during a period of that visa that permits me to work) that expires in a couple years. I cannot renew it. If I want to continue working in the US. My only option is an H1-B (work) visa.
There is basically no other option to me.
Okay, so let's say I do get the H1-B visa. Then, I have to work for a few more years on that visa, before I'm eligible to apply for a green card - which grants permanent resident status. Now, once I file that application, I'll be on a waitlist. Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
Even if there's no possibility of me getting a green card, I can still work. I can still buy a house, get married, have kids, etc. A lot of Indians and Chinese in the US currently are in this limbo period, where they don't have a green card. So they still continue to work, start a family. Because no other country will pay as well.
But personally, I hate the uncertainty. While even getting a green card isn't a guarantee to get to stay in the country, not having a green card is much worse. A CBP officer has the authority to deny you entry at their discretion. If do deny entry, you are banned from entry for atleast 5 years.
That's it. You're life in the US has vanished into thin air.
While I love my current job, I trying to immigrate to Canada. You get a PR immediately if you quality based on a points system calculated using specific, meritocratic criteria. If I have a PR I feel I won't worry when I buy a house, plant roots, that my life won't be upended because I failed to follow my visa's restrictions.
Now is the time to leave. 18 years in the US with a kid born here. I missed the boat in getting my priority date around the time when my friends were getting theirs (my company was laying off people in other departments and my application got audited). Didn't think it was a big deal at that time. Now, my friends are getting their citizenships and I'm still stuck on a visa. I'm at the whim of the Consul officer and the CBP officer every time I renew my visa or come back into the country. Heavily vested here assuming I'll get a green card but planning to apply for Canadian PR just in case. There's an easy way to game the system if one is in the right situation and is willing to risk it. Leave the country and work for the same company for a year as a manager. Come back on a L1 visa and boom you can apply in the EB-1 category and get your green card in a couple of years. I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc. Meanwhile, with a Masters degree and 16 years of experience, I'm at the mercy of immigration officers.
I'm surprised at the amount of confidence you have in the USCIS that you might get a greed card. If you are still on a visa, I don't see how soon you believe you can get a green card in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not sure you can use the EB-1 category even with an L-1 - unless you're at a very high level in your company. Even for that category, the waitlist is currently about 5 years.
>>Come back on a L1 visa and boom you can apply in the EB-1 category and get your green card in a couple of years.
Those days are gone now. You go into EB-1 only if you get into the US on L1-A. They don't give L1-A's easily these days. For starters you need to be in director level positions to even qualify for L1-A's. Even then the waiting period for India EB-1 itself is growing and stands at 5+ years now. And it will only increase.
>>I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc.
Put the saddle on the right horse. People who come in from those companies often work for <$70K an year. Most are poor blokes who survive on ramen, and giving haircuts to each other so that they can save $8.
The real deal is Cgnzt which even until recently filed L1-A's and EB-1's for thousands/lacs of people by cooking up documents. Often promoting some one with a BCom degree to a director, granting them a GC and then rolling back the promotion. Thousands to lacs have made it to GC and Passports this way. When I worked for a short time in the US, it was painful to see PhD students in Stanford struggle for little extra stay, while some one with a basic 2 year diploma land GCs in like an year. In fact even until recently the biggest incentive to work at Cgnzt was this.
8.4 lac Indians got citizenship only last year. 5.8 lac got green cards. This is basically abuse max.
Add this to manager's pets who routinely get their documents cooked to be Nobel Prize worthy talent and land GC's. Literally the wrongest possible people occupy the numbers these days. Add to this a large number of body shopping firms.
There are several top level doctors, lawyers and scientists who don't even get B1's.
In short we Indians bought this upon ourselves. Like everything else. We abuse things so much, so far and so blatantly it makes things impossible for the real people when they arrive at the scene.
I'm one of those people who got burned badly due to all these politics at every level. I have largely given up, you just need to get very lucky early life to win at these things. Or cheat shamelessly.
Can't seem to edit although it's been <2h. Regret the typos.
For people looking for data backing what I'm talking about, here's[1] something that everyone looks at to track timelines. This data is released monthly. Search for "EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCES"
In that table you'll see China, India and Mexico specifically called out since they're the ones with such extreme wait times. EB-1 is extremely difficult to qualify for[2] so most people apply for EB-2. You can see currently applications from 2009 are being processed. That was more than a decade ago. Then consider the increase in applications each year since that year. That's where the 100 year figure comes from.
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
Not disputing how ridiculous your situation is, but you do have a couple other options.
The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.
The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
> The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.
I'm an early career engineer, and this is something that a few of my friends have looked into. The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save, cause there will be more people like me. Unless I become sufficiently senior and comparatively rich like a VP, I can't realistically beat the trend.
> The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
This is true. Your tradeoff point hits the nail on the head. I have heard some cases of people feeling like they were married to just for the GC, and some from the other side who stand some abuse. But your broad point stands.
> The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
Need to progress outside the US though. Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor, the logic of the law seems to suggest that if I could rise to this position here, then an American could too. That's why the EB-1 has an allocation for applicants who became managers outside the US and transferred in.
I have upvoted you and I feel you make some great points. I wanted to iron out some details in case a third person was reading this.
I see where you're coming from, but any of those options aren't realistic, especially when I compare them to Canada's system.
As I noted in my comment, I can stay here for a while hoping for some way of getting a green card. It's those 10-20 years that I don't want to endure, with which again I need extreme luck (I would consider me saving up $1MM within 10 years or becoming a EB-1 level 'multi-national manager' not a guarantee).
If I did go the Canada route, I can do these things there (making $1MM or becoming an C-suite executive) - however unlikely those goals are, while not risking having my life uprooted. Canada doesn't pay as high as US, but then again I don't have to worry about going back to India (where jobs don't pay as well as either US or Canada) and finding a job there without notice.
If you’re of Indian origin (i.e. parent or grandparent is from India) it’s relatively quick to get an OCI card, which will allow you to remain indefinitely in India as well as work there. You don’t get the right to vote under that status.
Full blown citizenship is another matter, you’d have to give up your US citizenship, which still has its benefits. I can say with a great amount of certainty the US government cares a lot more for its citizens than other governments of the world, whose governments are usually outright hostile to their own citizenry/populace.
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
So my entire family migrated from India (not H1B though, so no idea what that process is like), and some are still migrating, and this is just ridiculous. Green cards and citizenship are issued quite regularly. I'm not going to say its fast, but it's not literally 100 years (can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not). My uncle got his a few years back, and got his citizenship this year. The system works, as long as there're no discrepancies.
That's the current prediction because of the backlog. Family-based migration is different. On a H1B visa, if you get a priority date today, it'll take you a very long time to get your green card. Every year, the backlog moves by 1-2 months. i.e. in the last 6 months, I think the backlog went from processing applications from April 2009 to June 2009. Some months it doesn't move at all. I don't think you know how this system works. Of course, people exploit family-based migration which is more permissive and bring their extended family here but the situation is completely different for people on work-based visas.
My friend, there's a huge difference between family based green cards (FB categories) and employment based (EB). The wait times change from 1-10 years in the former [1] to 100 in the latter [2]. A normal indian cannot go through family, since they're not closely related to a citizen. I have close relatives who gave birth here (they're working on a H1-B). The mom and dad would make it quicker by waiting for the US citizen kid to become 18 and apply, than they applying.
Heck, they can wait for the kid to turn 18, go to Iceland/Sri Lanka, give birth to the grandkid, and that grandkid can apply for the citizenship and that would be faster. :(
[1] - friends and my roommate here in the bay
[2] - my application
That's what's called chain migration. Just because your "uncle got a greencard" doesn't mean skilled immigrants get a greencard unlike your unskilled uncle. This is the kind of immigration that Trump wants to stop. You should not comment on things that you have no idea about.
Staying at the same job, my salary will go from $180k usd to $128k usd ($170k cad). (Equity comp remains the same)
That's a pretty big cut, though at least for me it's worth it because of non-monetary reasons, like being closer to family, not dealing with immigration anymore, healthcare/education.
The money stuff isn't so bad. A downtown Toronto condo is a lot cheaper than San Francisco. That alone makes the pay cut easy enough to swallow. Either way I can comfortably live on a tech salary.
Starting prices for:
3 Bed SF condo: 1.2M usd
3 Bed TO condo: 0.7M usd (900k cad)
No rigorous comparison, just from me house hunting in both markets.
I moved to Toronto, then to SF. Thought I'd also share my anecdata here.
I used to make ~100k/yr CAD (75k/yr USD) when I was in TO around 6 years ago. I bought a house around 7 years ago for 550k. I did a remote stint for a Boulder company for a couple years (~120k/yr USD working from TO), then moved to SF (~200k/yr USD + ~100k/yr equity).
I'm a bit out of the loop w/ TO salaries nowadays, but your 170k CAD definitely seems to be on the very high end of the spectrum.
A few thoughts:
The biggest difference in pay comes from equity. ~100k/yr is pretty normal in SF big tech companies, whereas equity comp in TO is pretty much unheard of unless you're a partner in a company. Caveat: not all SF companies offer liquid equity, or even equity that is worth anything.
Taxes are higher for me working in SF (largely because salaries of comparable positions are higher in SF)
Living costs depend a lot on whether you have a spouse and/or kids. A bunkbed in SF goes for 1.6k/mo if you're single trying to save up. In TO, you can rent a cheap room for $600/mo. But for families: 2 bed condo is ~48k/yr USD, vs ~24k/yr in similar distance in TO. Another very important point: in SF, a foreigner spouse's ability to work can be extremely tricky (e.g. spouse in non-tech field would often not be able be get a work visa sponsorship at all). Canadians can get a TN visa relatively easily, but the H1B visa required for other foreigners isn't guaranteed. Green card timelines range from 2.5 years to virtually impossible to get. By comparison, getting a work visa in Canada is pretty straightforward, and the path to permanent residence is also relatively easy, regardless of country of origin.
Preschool costs ~28k/yr USD per kid in SF, vs ~18k/yr CAD (13k/yr USD)
Healthcare in SF costs me ~3.6k USD/yr base (plus copays/other fees depending on how frequently I actually use it) vs free in TO. Dental and vision costs are similar between SF and TO.
Goods generally cost less in SF. Milk costs ~$5/gallon USD in SF vs $10/4L CAD ($7 USD) in TO.
IMHO: SF is better for saving up while young, Toronto gets pretty attractive once you have a piggy bank to afford housing/build a family.
$170kCAD for an experienced engineer in Toronto is touching the upper ranges, but 5 years ago that number was at $120CAD. You are seeing higher than 170k at some companies and I know of people working remote for SV companies at very good salaries. You’re right about equity, though.
Something happened in the last 2 years in particular that has caused salaries to skyrocket (trump policies taking effect?).
If you have a family, the public schools are generally better in Toronto as well.
It's a problematic comparison because few people in Canada earns $170K CAD writing software unless they are contracting for the government. Even then.
There are a few people lucky enough to 'make the deal' that you have.
Also, there are very few 'great companies' in Canada to work for, that can leverage high end talent - Canada is 1/10th the size of the US and spends less than 1/2 on R&D per capita. This is because Canada doesn't generally have the kinds of companies that are R&D intensive. Unfortunately.
I think most Toronto devs would happily move to California for a huge pay increase and a chance to work for a 'great company' whereas I feel few wold do the reverse.
I'm really wary of reading NPR articles like this because I feel they are basically playing the facts into a narrative of their political viewpoint.
I acknowledge I'm not in a position many will find themselves in. The shortage of senior engineering positions that pay accordingly is real. There's much more selection of jobs in SF than TO.
> It's a problematic comparison because few people in Canada earns $170K CAD writing software unless they are contracting for the government. Even then.
In Toronto if you’re an experienced sr engineer you can get this in the tech scene. It’s a much smaller employment pool, it it’s there. And there is a lot of r&d happening within that scene. That’s nothing to say of remotely working for an SV company.
The tech scene has exploded here over the past 2-3 years.
It really depends on many factors. New grads? Sure, who wouldn't move to Cali from Canada. Married, kids, spouse working in non tech? Well, ya, staying in Canada is a lot better if one earner can get a high paying tech salary that's becoming more common now.
Can we just stop comparing cities? Everyone loves to complain about the cost of living in SF and always brags about how they could buy a mansion in the midwest.
No one cares. It's all about location. There is a reason why California is the most populous state in the union despite it being so expensive (weather and jobs). There is a reason the population in the midwest is so low (lack of jobs and weather mostly).
Right this moment, they are almost the same (46F in SF vs 37F in Toronto). Toronto winter usually goes between 5F and 40F, but summer is way warmer than SF (between 75F to 90F vs 60F to 70F in SF)
Let's not pretend that Canadian cities are a utopia for tech workers. Vancouver and Toronto are insanely expensive and salaries just don't compare to those a hundred kilometres to the south. Hopefully it steadily improves but I'm not hopeful with these tech companies having virtually an unlimited supply and no incentive to boost salaries.
Everyone here seems to assume that salaries are the biggest factor and ignoring that for many the goal is to gain citizenship in a developed country. For them getting paid well and Canada and becoming a citizen in ? (how many years does it take?) is better than being paid awesomely and waiting decades for the green card lottery.
That is because most of the people in Silicon Valley discussing Canada are Canadians who immigrated to the US. A Canadian can live in the US forever without worrying much about naturalization. They will always have their Canadian citizenship in their back pocket to fall back on.
For people looking to migrate from a developing country to a developed one, the situation is quite different.
Unfortunately Québec do not have a working skilled immigration system yet. Québec do not follow rest of Canada's immigration system. The CAQ govt. of Québec has completely messed up the immigration system of Québec. Québec focuses on knowledge of French rather than other merits for their immigration, so they get a huge chunk of unskilled immigrants who speaks only French with no employable skills.
As an anglophone who moved to Montreal last year, I'm kinda mixed on it. In my experience, French is both required for accurately ordering food (unless you're lucky and the person taking your order knows English) and for understanding what the métro audio bulk items say (I wish they would put those messages on Twitter too). People will generally be supportive to you trying to learn French, but in order to get permanent residency in Quebec you are required to know it to a decently high level of fluency. It's doable, but honestly a nuisance.
Unfortunately some people seem to be figuring this out... The rent has been blasting off over the past 3 years from 'low' to 'regular north american metropolis' :(
Toronto may be expensive but it's not SF-level expensive. Salaries may not compare but you don't have to worry about basic things like healthcare and high-powered weaponry in the streets.
Those are just the top two–there are many other reasons to move to Canada than just money.
As someone from a very red, very “high-powered weaponry” friendly area, I grinned ear to ear at your statement. Don’t let a few psychos scare you. Guns are neato.
I moved from SF to Canada. Traded a higher salary and basically 0 shot at green card for less money, a PR when I walk in and guaranteed citizenship.
Most importantly, you cannot do anything besides your job on an H1B. No start ups, no side projects. You can't even BE in the US without a job and just bum around for a year. Every interaction with the US border folks makes me feel like a criminal. The visa fundamentally restricts the shape of your life in a way thats hard for residents to really understand.
I already get paid enough to retire comfortably when I'm older and it's no fun retiring young! Retirement costs in Canada are also significantly lower if you can count on free healthcare. Not worth it. I do miss the weather though :)
I feel the same way, but from a different perspective since I have DACA. Fortunately I can hop around different jobs or be unemployed, but every couple of years I get to feel like a criminal, and there's the ever-pervasive paradoxical feeling of not being at home but feeling like I'm home in the US. I've been thinking about moving to Guadalajara so I can at least not worry about my immigration status but I'm super scared that I won't feel like I'm home there after being in the US my entire life, and I can't go back on that decision. I've been thinking a lot about Canada as well as Europe, because I think that'll get easier for me to acclimate to.
This whole thing is just super depressing. I feel like I've worked all my life for a great career in the US and it's for nothing if I have to leave everything behind at some point.
As unfortunate as this is, I think this only applies to Indians and Chinese. I was surprised to see Yoluk did not want to bother applying to jobs in the US.
I am a foreign person from ROW (Rest of the World) in the US studying with F1 visa and trying to immigrate here via employment based options.
I have friends who also immigrated to Germany and Britain. The process is definitely easier and guaranteed there but for us ROW, the process does not look so bad to me right now. Maybe I just don't know how it should be.
After I graduate with F1, I can work up to 3 years with my OPT, companies apply to H1-B in that period. Some start the H1-B process even before you graduate if you have a bachelor's degree already. You have 4 chances in H1-B in the end.
EB-2 green card is also an option for us, as far as I know I can get that in less than 2 years. I've read about people who applied to EB-2 directly without H1-B and got that in their STEM OPT extension duration.
Finally, even though it is a slim chance, there is also diversity visa lottery. I have friends who got picked from DV lottery while studying here with F1. Everything became easier for them.
The US is still attractive to people like me, I don't think how this article portrays the immigration is true.
I keep being head hunted to work on SF/SV. And my reply is basically automatic and always the same:
"Due to US external policy and cost of life I can't see it being financially practical to move. Although, I would gladly consider any remote position."
I think the immigration complexity is the lesser problem there. My research based on housing, school, transport and food tells me it looks like absurdly expensive. To be able to even consider to move there I would need a salary bump of 3x-5x. No way this will ever happen.
* Sunnyvale, CA
* Bentonville, AR
* Bangalore, India
We regularly will gossip about best/worst aspects of each of them. My mind is blown at how much they have to pay to live in the greater SF area. 3-4k for rent on an apartment for a small family. My mortgage is 800 a month. A mortgage with a yard big enough for gardens, a bee hive, compost, a couple of trees, basketball goal, fenced in yard, etc....
Of course they get to poke fun at how they cross two timezones and go back 3 decades culturally in time when they fly out to visit. ;-)
The Bangalore folk poke fun at the US based ones at how cold/wet/expensive/boring we all are. It's all in good fun but it really does hammer in how home is where you currently are.
It doesn’t happen via salary, it happens via stock. Work at a big co over the last decade or so and you’ve seen salary increase at 10% year or so and stock increase much faster. It’s very common for senior engineers in the Bay Area to be earning 175k salary, ~30k bonus, and another 150+ in stock vesting per year. High performers and/or workers at FAANGs do better than that. See levels.fyi for concrete examples.
The whole thing here is stock, which takes a couple years to really stack up, but once it does, you’re making a lot of money.
I am in a similar position.
Yes, you can work with OPT but apart from the very top companies and a few consulting shops, it has become much harder to get employment on it.
And from H-1B to greencard, you again need company sponsorship.
Canada looks good now because with Express Entry, you can become a PR relatively fast and from there within 5 years, you get citizenship. From there, getting work in the US as a tech worker can be much easier through a TN visa.
F1 makes things easier, but if you didn't come in as a student, things get much trickier. Most of the workflows you mention don't apply because it assumes you're already here to get your EB-2 or H1-B.
Even getting H1-B is challenging, especially as someone freshly graduated ("entry level positions do not qualify as skilled labour" is what the USCIS told me).
you seem to be naive. I'm actually on STEM OPT. you've read about people who got EB-2, but do you know those people ? EB-2 or O-1 visa usually require people with 10 years of experience and exceptional talent. e.g DHH shipping Ruby on Rails. But for the rest of us, your chances are with h1b, which is more luck than merit. And remember, with an H1B once a company sponsors you, you've difficulty transferring the h1b. It's almost as starting the whole process again. with h1b your salary is capped to pretty much what your company wants to pay you, not the market as you're pretty much their property. I'm one of the few people that has actually managed to get employed at 3 different places, while on STEM-OPT. And got my market rate pay, due to the fact I refused sponsorship. The US does have a point based immigration policy like Canada | Aus. they call it 'Marriage'. The government doesn't have to screen, you that much, their citizens do. That's why getting a green card via marriage is easiest out of everything. So yeah, my advise, find a gal | boy you want to marry while in college and get on with it. Otherwise, H1B is a non-starter.
> ____ salaries are less than half than in the US for software developer roles.
You can fill the blank with essentially any non-US location and it would remain correct. Nowhere in the world pays tech workers as much as US does, in absolute or relative terms. Most of the world, Canada included, has priced developer salaries close to engineer salaries. The US is the sole exception where developer salaries are priced close to doctor salaries. Let's not pretend Canada is the outlier—US is.
I am not saying US is wrong and the rest of the world is right or vice versa in figuring out the correct price for tech work. I am just saying that there are two schools of thought, one the US, the other the rest of the world, and I am sure both have good reasons for their approach.
There are no two schools of thought. There are no two "approaches". It's simple economics. Companies don't decide pay X, they have to pay X. In US, there are genuine software products company and software products happen to scale naturally and make a shit ton of money. In most other countries, software engineers are hired merely as IT guys for "main" businesses like insurance or government. They don't scale.
>The US is the sole exception where developer salaries are priced close to doctor salaries.
This is incorrect. Good software developers in Poland, and to some extent the Ukraine, are enjoying salaries comparable with doctors there, if not more.
To be fair you can rent a studio in a luxury condo (with doorman, pool, gym, curtain glass walls, etc.) for the price of a bunk bed in SF, around USD1600/mo. I know, I've done both.
Real estate is expensive to buy and salaries are low, though, that's for sure.
>With the high cost of living, I don't know how anyone can live there.
what's the cost of healthcare, childcare, and transportation like in Canada? I know this discussion personally because I've seen it play out between European and American tech jobs and I've seen a lot of difference in cost for raising children.
In Germany or the Netherlands good public education, kindergardens and so on set you back a few hundred bucks a month, I've seen Americans pay tens of thousands per year. Same for two cars that you don't need if you're an urban resident near a tech hub.
Rent control.
When you compare income vs rent that you see on sites like Kijiji or Padmapper it shows rent for a new tenancy, but that's not what the locals pay.
Readit News
From my experience on the media / marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn't consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.
Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There's real momentum here as well.
Spend any time browsing /r/vancouver or /r/toronto and you'll quickly realize that the cost of living is a huge problem. The Vancouver housing market in particular has been absurdly inflated by out of control money laundering. Local salaries and house prices are totally out of whack.
Follow https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/ to see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market. https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/status/1221315000897163264 is a particularly amusing recent thread showing where a would-be landlord writes: "This home is in rough shape and needs painting, and TLC. Looking for long term tenant willing to put labour in while landlord covers all material costs." All this for only $5650/month!
It's inconclusive at best, and misidentifying the major causes in this complicated crisis could hurt any effort to alleviate housing pains.
Money laundering does happen in BC, and some of the proceeds do go into higher end housing. One can argue the restrictive zoning and ever-increasing costs and hurdles to new developments are orders of magnitude more influential on the market than the hot money. We have heavily left-leaning councilors in Vancouver that vote down any rental property project, solely to prevent private parties from making any profit.
The winters of the few years I spent living in Vancouver were the best in my life. I still go back (from the UK) now and then to enjoy it.
May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.
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There's really nothing like working in the Valley but not everyone likes it and if there's a solid alternative I suspect that Vancouver and Toronto will continue to prosper no matter what the US policies end up being.
I would think the great weather for filming and access to many kinds of terrain would is benefit New York can’t offer.
http://nilesfilmmuseum.org
Edit: "Bay Curious" podcast https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious
In fact in the last few years I've even been seeing young people coming up from the USA to live here for lifestyle reasons.
IMO the dominant thing propelling tech in Vancouver forward isn't the immigration law situation, but rather the low Canadian dollar makes our companies cheap to work with for SF giants.
Well, the climate in the populated parts of Canada parallels the northern United States, i.e. Chicago (9.5m in metro area) and Toronto (6.4m in metro area) have similar climate, as well as Vancouver and Seattle.
There are huge populations in these areas who are used to northern climate and have no trouble with it. I live in Chicago and really love the four seasons, prefer the cold to the heat and would never move to anywhere south of say North Carolina.
Climate preferences can vary quite a bit, I would say.
[0] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/practitioner-profe...
Canada is a nice place, live there if you want, but “competitive compensation” is definitely not a reason.
Toronto has more construction towers (120) than any other city in North America (49 in SFO and LAX):
* https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/economic/2019/0...
It's still not keeping up with demand.
Well, India and China have even fewer immigration restrictions on Indian and Chinese workers than Canada does... why would Vancouver take San Francisco’s place rather than Mumbai or Shanghai?
The real problem is all the other nonsense people have to deal with.
We have a really great employee who single handedly wrote most of the company’s build infrastructure, and was happy in the US on his H1B because while it requires renewal every 3 years, he was well paid and enjoying his life.
Until about a year and a half ago when he went back to renew his visa in India but didn’t get an approval for about 6 months. The approval process required the company to submit the salaries of the entire 15000+ global employees from the janitors to the CEO.
Once his visa was approved, he packed his bags and moved to Toronto within a couple of months. And our company has stopped hiring more tech workers in the US because they don’t want to have to deal with this anymore.
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Folks in the office have to rent/buy property, buy food, supplies, etc, all from local workers too. Taxes are paid. You know, business.
Note that this mostly applies to immigrants from India or China. I'm from India. This applies irrespective of education level (I did my Bachelors in the US, just FYI)
Currently I'm in the US on a student visa (currently during a period of that visa that permits me to work) that expires in a couple years. I cannot renew it. If I want to continue working in the US. My only option is an H1-B (work) visa.
There is basically no other option to me.
Okay, so let's say I do get the H1-B visa. Then, I have to work for a few more years on that visa, before I'm eligible to apply for a green card - which grants permanent resident status. Now, once I file that application, I'll be on a waitlist. Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
Even if there's no possibility of me getting a green card, I can still work. I can still buy a house, get married, have kids, etc. A lot of Indians and Chinese in the US currently are in this limbo period, where they don't have a green card. So they still continue to work, start a family. Because no other country will pay as well.
But personally, I hate the uncertainty. While even getting a green card isn't a guarantee to get to stay in the country, not having a green card is much worse. A CBP officer has the authority to deny you entry at their discretion. If do deny entry, you are banned from entry for atleast 5 years.
That's it. You're life in the US has vanished into thin air.
While I love my current job, I trying to immigrate to Canada. You get a PR immediately if you quality based on a points system calculated using specific, meritocratic criteria. If I have a PR I feel I won't worry when I buy a house, plant roots, that my life won't be upended because I failed to follow my visa's restrictions.
If you wait long enough your US citizen kid can sponsor your green card as an "immediate relative" once they turn 18 :-)
The backlog for Indians and Chinese is truly ridiculous though.
I'm surprised at the amount of confidence you have in the USCIS that you might get a greed card. If you are still on a visa, I don't see how soon you believe you can get a green card in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not sure you can use the EB-1 category even with an L-1 - unless you're at a very high level in your company. Even for that category, the waitlist is currently about 5 years.
Those days are gone now. You go into EB-1 only if you get into the US on L1-A. They don't give L1-A's easily these days. For starters you need to be in director level positions to even qualify for L1-A's. Even then the waiting period for India EB-1 itself is growing and stands at 5+ years now. And it will only increase.
>>I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc.
Put the saddle on the right horse. People who come in from those companies often work for <$70K an year. Most are poor blokes who survive on ramen, and giving haircuts to each other so that they can save $8.
The real deal is Cgnzt which even until recently filed L1-A's and EB-1's for thousands/lacs of people by cooking up documents. Often promoting some one with a BCom degree to a director, granting them a GC and then rolling back the promotion. Thousands to lacs have made it to GC and Passports this way. When I worked for a short time in the US, it was painful to see PhD students in Stanford struggle for little extra stay, while some one with a basic 2 year diploma land GCs in like an year. In fact even until recently the biggest incentive to work at Cgnzt was this.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/...
8.4 lac Indians got citizenship only last year. 5.8 lac got green cards. This is basically abuse max.
Add this to manager's pets who routinely get their documents cooked to be Nobel Prize worthy talent and land GC's. Literally the wrongest possible people occupy the numbers these days. Add to this a large number of body shopping firms.
There are several top level doctors, lawyers and scientists who don't even get B1's.
In short we Indians bought this upon ourselves. Like everything else. We abuse things so much, so far and so blatantly it makes things impossible for the real people when they arrive at the scene.
I'm one of those people who got burned badly due to all these politics at every level. I have largely given up, you just need to get very lucky early life to win at these things. Or cheat shamelessly.
Please stop subverting our laws, you’re making it worse for people who don’t break the law.
For people looking for data backing what I'm talking about, here's[1] something that everyone looks at to track timelines. This data is released monthly. Search for "EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCES"
In that table you'll see China, India and Mexico specifically called out since they're the ones with such extreme wait times. EB-1 is extremely difficult to qualify for[2] so most people apply for EB-2. You can see currently applications from 2009 are being processed. That was more than a decade ago. Then consider the increase in applications each year since that year. That's where the 100 year figure comes from.
[1]: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/visa-law0/v...
[2]: https://www.uscis.gov/working-united-states/permanent-worker...
Not disputing how ridiculous your situation is, but you do have a couple other options.
The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.
The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
I'm an early career engineer, and this is something that a few of my friends have looked into. The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save, cause there will be more people like me. Unless I become sufficiently senior and comparatively rich like a VP, I can't realistically beat the trend.
> The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
This is true. Your tradeoff point hits the nail on the head. I have heard some cases of people feeling like they were married to just for the GC, and some from the other side who stand some abuse. But your broad point stands.
> The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
Need to progress outside the US though. Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor, the logic of the law seems to suggest that if I could rise to this position here, then an American could too. That's why the EB-1 has an allocation for applicants who became managers outside the US and transferred in.
I have upvoted you and I feel you make some great points. I wanted to iron out some details in case a third person was reading this.
As I noted in my comment, I can stay here for a while hoping for some way of getting a green card. It's those 10-20 years that I don't want to endure, with which again I need extreme luck (I would consider me saving up $1MM within 10 years or becoming a EB-1 level 'multi-national manager' not a guarantee).
If I did go the Canada route, I can do these things there (making $1MM or becoming an C-suite executive) - however unlikely those goals are, while not risking having my life uprooted. Canada doesn't pay as high as US, but then again I don't have to worry about going back to India (where jobs don't pay as well as either US or Canada) and finding a job there without notice.
Full blown citizenship is another matter, you’d have to give up your US citizenship, which still has its benefits. I can say with a great amount of certainty the US government cares a lot more for its citizens than other governments of the world, whose governments are usually outright hostile to their own citizenry/populace.
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So my entire family migrated from India (not H1B though, so no idea what that process is like), and some are still migrating, and this is just ridiculous. Green cards and citizenship are issued quite regularly. I'm not going to say its fast, but it's not literally 100 years (can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not). My uncle got his a few years back, and got his citizenship this year. The system works, as long as there're no discrepancies.
[1] - friends and my roommate here in the bay [2] - my application
Staying at the same job, my salary will go from $180k usd to $128k usd ($170k cad). (Equity comp remains the same)
That's a pretty big cut, though at least for me it's worth it because of non-monetary reasons, like being closer to family, not dealing with immigration anymore, healthcare/education.
The money stuff isn't so bad. A downtown Toronto condo is a lot cheaper than San Francisco. That alone makes the pay cut easy enough to swallow. Either way I can comfortably live on a tech salary.
Starting prices for:
3 Bed SF condo: 1.2M usd
3 Bed TO condo: 0.7M usd (900k cad)
No rigorous comparison, just from me house hunting in both markets.
I used to make ~100k/yr CAD (75k/yr USD) when I was in TO around 6 years ago. I bought a house around 7 years ago for 550k. I did a remote stint for a Boulder company for a couple years (~120k/yr USD working from TO), then moved to SF (~200k/yr USD + ~100k/yr equity).
I'm a bit out of the loop w/ TO salaries nowadays, but your 170k CAD definitely seems to be on the very high end of the spectrum.
A few thoughts:
The biggest difference in pay comes from equity. ~100k/yr is pretty normal in SF big tech companies, whereas equity comp in TO is pretty much unheard of unless you're a partner in a company. Caveat: not all SF companies offer liquid equity, or even equity that is worth anything.
Taxes are higher for me working in SF (largely because salaries of comparable positions are higher in SF)
Living costs depend a lot on whether you have a spouse and/or kids. A bunkbed in SF goes for 1.6k/mo if you're single trying to save up. In TO, you can rent a cheap room for $600/mo. But for families: 2 bed condo is ~48k/yr USD, vs ~24k/yr in similar distance in TO. Another very important point: in SF, a foreigner spouse's ability to work can be extremely tricky (e.g. spouse in non-tech field would often not be able be get a work visa sponsorship at all). Canadians can get a TN visa relatively easily, but the H1B visa required for other foreigners isn't guaranteed. Green card timelines range from 2.5 years to virtually impossible to get. By comparison, getting a work visa in Canada is pretty straightforward, and the path to permanent residence is also relatively easy, regardless of country of origin.
Preschool costs ~28k/yr USD per kid in SF, vs ~18k/yr CAD (13k/yr USD)
Healthcare in SF costs me ~3.6k USD/yr base (plus copays/other fees depending on how frequently I actually use it) vs free in TO. Dental and vision costs are similar between SF and TO.
Goods generally cost less in SF. Milk costs ~$5/gallon USD in SF vs $10/4L CAD ($7 USD) in TO.
IMHO: SF is better for saving up while young, Toronto gets pretty attractive once you have a piggy bank to afford housing/build a family.
Something happened in the last 2 years in particular that has caused salaries to skyrocket (trump policies taking effect?).
If you have a family, the public schools are generally better in Toronto as well.
I regularly pick up a 4 L bag of 1% for about CAD 4.25 (USD 3.00). Where the heck are you doing your grocery shopping, the food hall at Holt Renfrew?
But hey, everyone loves to knock expensive SF housing.
28k/yr for preschool in SF is on the high end. That is not the median.
Please re-do all your prices with the median, not your handpicked most expensive version.
There are a few people lucky enough to 'make the deal' that you have.
Also, there are very few 'great companies' in Canada to work for, that can leverage high end talent - Canada is 1/10th the size of the US and spends less than 1/2 on R&D per capita. This is because Canada doesn't generally have the kinds of companies that are R&D intensive. Unfortunately.
I think most Toronto devs would happily move to California for a huge pay increase and a chance to work for a 'great company' whereas I feel few wold do the reverse.
I'm really wary of reading NPR articles like this because I feel they are basically playing the facts into a narrative of their political viewpoint.
I acknowledge I'm not in a position many will find themselves in. The shortage of senior engineering positions that pay accordingly is real. There's much more selection of jobs in SF than TO.
In Toronto if you’re an experienced sr engineer you can get this in the tech scene. It’s a much smaller employment pool, it it’s there. And there is a lot of r&d happening within that scene. That’s nothing to say of remotely working for an SV company.
The tech scene has exploded here over the past 2-3 years.
Vancouver office had 2200 people, similar situation.
Can we just stop comparing cities? Everyone loves to complain about the cost of living in SF and always brags about how they could buy a mansion in the midwest.
No one cares. It's all about location. There is a reason why California is the most populous state in the union despite it being so expensive (weather and jobs). There is a reason the population in the midwest is so low (lack of jobs and weather mostly).
These days it’s been hard to peg a good day to go skating because it will suddenly warm up and render all the ice sluggish. It’s really disappointing.
In short: a lot of us like our weather for the variations in it...
In Toronto it is roughly comparable to Chicago or NYC. Vancouver would be similar to Seattle.
Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, etc, would be much colder.
Right this moment, they are almost the same (46F in SF vs 37F in Toronto). Toronto winter usually goes between 5F and 40F, but summer is way warmer than SF (between 75F to 90F vs 60F to 70F in SF)
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IF you can find a 3bd condo it will cost you WAY more than 900CAD.
For people looking to migrate from a developing country to a developed one, the situation is quite different.
Now Quebec City is entirely different. I could see language being more challenging there.
Honestly, Montreal is a hidden gem. Low cost housing, ton of culture and history.
The only drawbacks can be the Québécois anti-immigrant and anti-business climate, but it’s not stifling, just more noticeable than the rest of Canada.
There's a fair share of Anglo QCs that will keep speaking English and everything will still work (be workable) in English.
It's not hard to learn French to a day to day level though.
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Those are just the top two–there are many other reasons to move to Canada than just money.
Far harder to own a home in Toronto on a tech salary.
And if you get a tech job in SF, you’ve got great health insurance, so not a major obstacle.
Most importantly, you cannot do anything besides your job on an H1B. No start ups, no side projects. You can't even BE in the US without a job and just bum around for a year. Every interaction with the US border folks makes me feel like a criminal. The visa fundamentally restricts the shape of your life in a way thats hard for residents to really understand.
I already get paid enough to retire comfortably when I'm older and it's no fun retiring young! Retirement costs in Canada are also significantly lower if you can count on free healthcare. Not worth it. I do miss the weather though :)
This whole thing is just super depressing. I feel like I've worked all my life for a great career in the US and it's for nothing if I have to leave everything behind at some point.
I am a foreign person from ROW (Rest of the World) in the US studying with F1 visa and trying to immigrate here via employment based options.
I have friends who also immigrated to Germany and Britain. The process is definitely easier and guaranteed there but for us ROW, the process does not look so bad to me right now. Maybe I just don't know how it should be.
After I graduate with F1, I can work up to 3 years with my OPT, companies apply to H1-B in that period. Some start the H1-B process even before you graduate if you have a bachelor's degree already. You have 4 chances in H1-B in the end.
EB-2 green card is also an option for us, as far as I know I can get that in less than 2 years. I've read about people who applied to EB-2 directly without H1-B and got that in their STEM OPT extension duration.
Finally, even though it is a slim chance, there is also diversity visa lottery. I have friends who got picked from DV lottery while studying here with F1. Everything became easier for them.
The US is still attractive to people like me, I don't think how this article portrays the immigration is true.
"Due to US external policy and cost of life I can't see it being financially practical to move. Although, I would gladly consider any remote position."
I think the immigration complexity is the lesser problem there. My research based on housing, school, transport and food tells me it looks like absurdly expensive. To be able to even consider to move there I would need a salary bump of 3x-5x. No way this will ever happen.
Of course they get to poke fun at how they cross two timezones and go back 3 decades culturally in time when they fly out to visit. ;-)
The Bangalore folk poke fun at the US based ones at how cold/wet/expensive/boring we all are. It's all in good fun but it really does hammer in how home is where you currently are.
Edit - I
My colleges take their SV salaries and retreat to somewhere else when they want a family.
I think Canada is a better place to raise a family. Or, many other countries are probably comparable (or better).
The whole thing here is stock, which takes a couple years to really stack up, but once it does, you’re making a lot of money.
You'd be surprised. Granted it was over a period of 4 years, but I did hit that 5x.
And from H-1B to greencard, you again need company sponsorship.
Canada looks good now because with Express Entry, you can become a PR relatively fast and from there within 5 years, you get citizenship. From there, getting work in the US as a tech worker can be much easier through a TN visa.
Even getting H1-B is challenging, especially as someone freshly graduated ("entry level positions do not qualify as skilled labour" is what the USCIS told me).
You can fill the blank with essentially any non-US location and it would remain correct. Nowhere in the world pays tech workers as much as US does, in absolute or relative terms. Most of the world, Canada included, has priced developer salaries close to engineer salaries. The US is the sole exception where developer salaries are priced close to doctor salaries. Let's not pretend Canada is the outlier—US is.
I am not saying US is wrong and the rest of the world is right or vice versa in figuring out the correct price for tech work. I am just saying that there are two schools of thought, one the US, the other the rest of the world, and I am sure both have good reasons for their approach.
This is incorrect. Good software developers in Poland, and to some extent the Ukraine, are enjoying salaries comparable with doctors there, if not more.
Actually, in the U.S. it is common for a FANG worker's salary to surpass that of doctors'.
Real estate is expensive to buy and salaries are low, though, that's for sure.
what's the cost of healthcare, childcare, and transportation like in Canada? I know this discussion personally because I've seen it play out between European and American tech jobs and I've seen a lot of difference in cost for raising children.
In Germany or the Netherlands good public education, kindergardens and so on set you back a few hundred bucks a month, I've seen Americans pay tens of thousands per year. Same for two cars that you don't need if you're an urban resident near a tech hub.