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.
stifle innovation in favor of incumbents, and put regulatory barriers in the way for entrepreneurs
As a Canadian I'm a little shock by this description. Stifle innovation? The gov't ran the phone system in Alberta until the 1990's (or so). There was no innovation because it was determined "that's the job for the gov't, not private businesses" and they did it terribly.
Look at the cellular phone networks in Canada. Nothing changes unless the CRTC OKs it. Those companies would be eaten for lunch without the gov't backing them.
My own experience in the US is that things change much quicker when it comes to innovation. Are their stupid regulations? Sure, but they seem to change pretty quickly down here when people get pissed.
> Look at the cellular phone networks in Canada. Nothing changes unless the CRTC OKs it. Those companies would be eaten for lunch without the gov't backing them.
Not to defend the cellular oligopoly in Canada (because it's one of the worst in the world) but things aren't perfect in the US either.
T-Mobile and Sprint just agreed to merge, which means the US will have only 3 major wireless providers: AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint/T-Mobile.
> My own experience in the US is that things change much quicker when it comes to innovation. Are their stupid regulations? Sure, but they seem to change pretty quickly down here when people get pissed.
The US government just defacto banned (or outright, I can't recall) using ZTE/Huawei equipment in their mobile networks.
Say what you want about the Chinese, and I have no doubt they have ambitions of an NSA-like agency, but the rest of the world is fine to use their equipment and it smacks of protectionism for America to block their use.
I totally agree though that the Canadian government doesn't do nearly enough to encourage competition, and is usually quite content to let an oligopoly remain if it means avoiding foreign ownership.
The US has a fairly high tolerance for weirdness and novelty in general because of its extreme fixation on individualism. Especially so when you compare it to most other high income countries like Japan, Germany, Norway, Switzerland, etc.
People say that a lot but I'm not so sure. Half of my American friends had to move to the SFBA not just for a job, but because nobody understood them back home, or they'd be literally persecuted for being who they were. And these aren't always tiny rural towns.
The coastal cities embrace some kinds of individualism for sure.
And similarly - the reason people don't move back (despite the high housing costs) is usually fear of persecution, or a perceived inability to be their true self, or a perception that they'll be a pariah without any true friends.
That's also why when people do tend to leave the Bay Area, they go to other liberal areas like Seattle/Portland/Boulder/Asheville/Austin/Boston/NYC, even though those areas also have housing crises and the cost of living is rapidly approaching the Bay, rather than places like Mississippi, West Virginia, or Detroit, where their dollars would stretch a lot farther.
I actually really enjoyed living in Ithaca personally, and it had the advantage of being only a 2 hour drive from where I grew up in upstate New York. I moved there after college to try to find a good balance between cost of living and economic opportunity, basically using it as a stepping stone to move to NYC (although I'd consider moving back if I were going to raise a family or wanted to retire).
It was definitely a world of difference from where I grew up, even though it wasn't that far away. My experience in my hometown (Utica) was that it was a constant uphill battle fighting with idiots to try to get sensible policies in place to make the quality of life there better (context: It's a rust belt city with 0 industry or jobs, but a sizable amount of the population there actively makes things worse for themselves). For me, moving to a liberal area wasn't just a tolerance thing, it was a "I want to be around like-minded folks who actually care about improving their city and have the competence to do so". I don't want to come across the wrong way here- there were some people in Utica who really did try to make it a nice place to live, but I always felt like they were drowned out by fools.
Yep. That's why I moved away, although I'd imagine it would be nice for remote work. That said, I'd argue that it's not really that expensive compared to New York, especially if you consider living in less popular parts of the city like West Hill or surrounding towns like Lansing/Dryden.
>That's also why when people do tend to leave the Bay Area, they go to other liberal areas like Seattle/Portland/Boulder/Asheville/Austin/Boston/NYC, even though those areas also have housing crises and the cost of living is rapidly approaching the Bay
Wow, that's true for all those cities? I might have guessed it for Boston and NYC, maybe Seattle too, not so much about the others. But don't know a lot about this area.
It's not a "crisis" in the way the Bay Area is, where there is barely any inventory even if you're a double-Googler household, 3BR homes on 1/4 acre go for $2.5M, and if you're a teacher or other non-tech job you're either living with roommates or have an hour and a half commute. However, Portland/Boulder/Denver/Austin have all seen large increases in house prices, driven largely by Californian housing wealth finding cheaper pastures.
1/4 acre is a large amount for a 3 bedroom house - where I live in the UK a typical plot size in a semi-rural area, from the 70s is about 1/10th acre, for new houses it's about half that.
The best solution to high demand is a land value tax. That applies not just to houses, but to offices, shops, parking lots, etc. This means that land owners have to use their land efficently. If parking triples in cost, so be it. If road tolling is required, c'est la vie.
The proceeds of those tax must then be pumped into the local economy - funding services and improvements, like new bridges, or metro lines, or higher wages for central services (like schools and police)
1/4 acre is pretty normal for middle-class neighborhoods in much of the US. A land tax would have to be pretty drastic to force people to knock down houses, split/combine plots, and build new houses repositioned to be more dense than they are now.
I think a better solution would be relaxing zoning/making new development easier in areas of high scarcity.
A land value tax would make it easier to convince people to do zoning differently.
It's also a feature that it would have a larger impact in areas where land value is high and less impact in areas where land value isn't high (so "most of the US" doesn't really matter).
It would also ensure users of land like wide roads (with on street parking), parking lots, etc, pay their way
The money goes to the local administration, who then can spend it on truly public places like parks, offering tax breaks to businesses they want to attract, subsidising housing, etc, which everyone benefits from.
The value of land is the opportunity cost of not putting it to its best use withing existing planning regulations/zoning.
Its is also the loss of opportunity suffered by those excluded with left uncompensated leads to a net transfer of incomes, capitalised into rental incomes and selling prices, and a misallocation of resources. Housing issues are purely a symptom of this economic injustice.
A Land Value Tax ends that net transfer, which is why the selling price of land falls to zero.
Towards zero, but would never reach zero unless the land was worthless.
If you can make an acre of land in SF generate $1m profit a year, even with a 10,000% LVT it would still be worth $10k. With a more realistic 2% LVT, it would be worth $980k.
However if your acre of land makes $15k a year in profit as a parking lot, a 2% LVT means that you'll sell it to someone who can utilise the space in a better way, rather than make a $5k loss.
That person may build a house, and pay $20k a year in tax, setting a rental value of $1700pcm. Or they may build a 5 home building and pay $4k a year in tax per home, setting a rental value on each home at $350pcm.
If they want a $36k a year profit, then those prices mean renting out a single home for $4700pcm, or 5 homes for $850pcm each.
Zoning laws vary the value of the land of course. Land zoned as 'a park' is pretty much worthless (but not valueless). Land zoned as 'single story house' is worth at least $8m an acre ($2.5m for a house on a 1/4 acre plot). Land zoned as 'multi story' may be worth say $20m an acre.
However at 2% LVT, the single story home will be paying $160k per acre per year. The multi story with 40 homes will pay $10k a year per acre per home. Far cheaper, thus able to attract more buyers.
On top of that, there's a large incentive for residents in single story homes to rezone their area to multi story -- land price increases 150%, they sell up their (current) $2.5m home for $5.5m, making a cool 3M in profit.
If you allow a 1% LVT to accrue as a charge on the value of the home, that's only paid on disposal, there's no affordability problem either. Own a $2m piece of land at age 18, each year 1% of the value gets added as a charge. Die age 108 and 80% of the land value is then taken to pay the back-charges, leaving 20% for the estate.
Proposing it as a sales tax might avoid Prop 13, but continues the problem where new buyers fund the state budget and homeowners/Baby Boomers get everything for free.
Also, schools and local services might not get funded every year, I assume the rate of sales isn't constant.
> Investors in Canada just don't have that kind of money to play with.
The ecosystem [1] that provides dollars to high-risk investments (like tech startups) just doesn't exist on the same scale in Canada. The only players with that kind of money are the federal and provincial governments, which are by nature very conservative.
[1] For example, one source of funding is large pensions and endowments, who take a tiny percentage of their overall portfolio and put it into "high-risk" investments. The funds are so large that the tiny percentage amounts to millions and millions of dollars.
There is the new Canadian SBIR analog (Innovative Solutions Canada [1]) which looks like a big step in the right direction.
It's having some issues getting off the ground though, it just kicked off a few months ago and I think they are way behind handing out funding. There's only been a handful of challenges and not many applicants (I submitted a proposal, which was serialized as a submission number just over 300). They are supposed to be distributing about $100M/yr, or 1% of the federal R&D budget.
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.
Honestly I gotta agree with you here, bud. When I was growing up in Canada I had to keep my dreams a secret. If you had any grand goals people thought you were an egomaniacal weirdo. It wasn't until I seriously dated someone here in the US that I realized the difference: as part of the "delving into each others' inner lives" phase of the early relationship, I sheepishly admitted I had dreams of doing some pretty big things. I was greeted with an eye-roll and her saying "everyone wants to do something like that".
Here in the USA it's normal for everyone to have big dreams, and weird if they don't. I think I like it.
As a Canadian who has lived in the US for 1 year (in SF) I have a totally different take away. I noticed that people here are very hard working, almost as they are desperate for success, like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less.
I found that people in Canada were much more focused on happiness and were more willing to make sacrifices to improve their quality of live, though in Vancouver the housing crisis was a gut check for anyone who's goals include owning a home, or starting a family.
There is money to be made here in the valley, especially in tech, but it is not where I intend to be permanently. I want to retire one day, and I probably can't do that here. I definitely couldn't do that in Vancouver with a local salary.
>> like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less
Because they could be very easily if they don't have a family safety net. I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.
> I think that ultimately puts a damper on peoples' productive and creative ability as they tend to then focus more on keeping their job rather than being the most productive they can be for their employer.
You could also look at it the other way. The lack of a safety net is like burning the bridges: it encourages you to be more productive and creative precisely because if you're not, then you've got nothing to fall back on.
I think that works when looking for employment, because there is a wide open field in which creativity is more likely to find a good match. Once people get hired they tend to focus solely, right or wrong, on getting on with the people within their organization which is going to place a limit on their creative output.
> like if they fail or lost their job they would just die, poor and homeless and healthcare-less
Poor people get free healthcare in the US. I'm not sure how you could not know that after decades of that being the case. Medicaid has existed since 1965. Not only has it broadened out considerably, today there is also CHIP and SS disability to further supplement that along with countless smaller programs.
Just Medicaid + CHIP covers 70 million people, about 22% of the US, or twice the entire population of Canada.
The US also has vast housing subsidization programs for poor people.
Before Medicaid expansion, Medicaid was strictly for disabled populations under the age of 65 and below a certain income.
After Medicaid expansion, Medicaid is offered to those with an income of below ~130% of the federal poverty line: roughly $16k a year for an individual. I think we'd both agree that $16k/yr is abjectly poor, and those making even 50% more than that are still very poor.
However, only 33 states have expanded Medicaid. Some of the poorest states in the Union have not expanded Medicaid. Therefore, Medicaid is still strictly for disabled population under a certain income in those states.
To say poor people get free healthcare in the US isn't a true statement. Some very poor people in the US have access to Medicaid, depending on their location and income. Some poor people in states that have expanded Medicaid will still not get free healthcare because, while they are objectively poor, they do not meet the income requirements for Medicaid.
For those with a low income, and without access to Medicaid, health insurance premiums are very high and have deductibles that people would need to take a car loan out to pay.
West coast has always been about experiment wheareas east coast is more conservative. I've always wondered if it was because the Europeans took hold of the East coast first and it was only the more brave who would take on the Westword journey. Perhaps that mentality is still engrained in the culture?
I think Dragons Den vs Shark Tank is a clear example of how much stronger the US is (population is 10x too though).
My dad has a good saying: "what takes three hundred years to accomplish in western Europe takes 3 generations on the east coast, takes 30 years on the west coast".
Not surprisingly they moved out west soon after school and I've been forever poisoned to the east!
Yeah, that's why Germany has maglevs and high speed rail and California can barely get it's own HSR off the ground.
That's a truly awful saying that's emblematic of the stupid prejudices brought about by American exceptionalism and the even more obnoxious (to me) West Coast exceptionalism.
As much as I nodded along with your exasperation at the parent poster's (father's) demonstration of bias, you can't compare long-distance public transportation infrastructure in places with the population densities and growth rates of Germany and California, two extremes in that sense. California has 1/5 more area, with half the population, and that population has almost doubled over the last 35 years, versus a few % growth in Germany.
>you can't compare long-distance public transportation infrastructure in places with the population densities and growth rates of Germany and California
You very much can. Parent didn't ask Californians to build infrastructure in Yosemite or the Death Valley. Heck, not even in Bakersfield.
How's that L.A, San Diego, and San Francisco public transportation infrastructure? Places that, if anything, have more population density than the most populus German cities?
The US mostly relies on air travel, and it's not too inconvenient if you can avoid major hubs like SFO and LAX. The population of those metropolitan areas isn't the problem; it's the distance, as well as the lower demand for travel between them. California is also more seismically active. You can build a passenger HSR system in California, but the cost/benefit is going to be worse than somewhere like Germany.
Distance wouldn't be much of a problem. It isn't much longer than Paris - Frankfurt. Chinese trains cover the distance in 2 hours. It would work from a European perspective, but Europe built most of its networks decades ago. The Chinese aren't just building train lines, they are building entire regions.
Everyone complains how few things can be built in SF or LA, but suddenly having a lot of space available is something negative? Californians have a dream scenario on their hands as the high cost of construction can relatively soon be offset by the huge gains in capturing the global tech market. Something that will pay off for a century. And they should have the money to do it. It is probably one of the best infrastructure investments available anywhere.
I hear this explanation floated around a lot, but I have extreme doubts that it has any bearing in reality. I live in NYC, and it's not that we're adverse to experimentation. Far from it; we mix and match cultures obsessively until the most bizarre "only in New York" moments come about.
Instead, New Yorkers are more likely to call bullshit on an idea when it isn't good or at a minimum challenge it to be better. You don't have nearly the same survival of the fittest attitude in the Bay Area from my impressions, and as a result tons of crackpot ideas end up funded. Admittedly, crackpot ideas in NYC also get funded (Juicero, oy) so I'm not sure if the difference can totally be attributed to New York's adversarial nature.
Mostly what it boils down to here I suspect is that start-ups just aren't as visible because all of the software devs and engineers realized that they could go work in finance rather than a "tech company" and make millions of dollars more. In this sense, lots of New York's innovative spirit gets channeled into problems relating to designing custom ASICs for HFT and trying to outwit the market.
As another point, who claim that the East Coast is averse to experimentation have a marked tendency to ignore counterfactual examples like BBN and Bell Labs. Even Xerox (in Rochester) and Kodak were pretty deep into R&D before they fucked themselves.
I have lived on both coasts and the biggest difference I have noticed is the strength of the elite university caste system in the East. It felt like if you didn't go to a top ten school you had a glass ceiling.
It exists out West too but in my experience so far is less prevalent and is given less weight. People out East often start a presentation, pitch, or interview with where they went to school. Out West I have done a dozen VC meetings and have only been asked once or twice and I didn't get the impression it was a major data point for them.
I've never lived outside of the East Coast / mid-West, but what you're saying sounds feasible. That said, I'd guess that the "who are you? What is your background?" question is more of a Boston thing than a New York thing, since New York doesn't have the Puritan / Boston Brahman caste system. I've known of a number of people who went to state schools or random unknown schools in New Jersey who've done reasonably well here.
I also wonder if the weather has anything to do with the mentality.
Winters in the East Coast are harsh so it forces people to be more 'realistic'. Whereas the sub tropical West Coast gives people an environment to think in more imaginitive ways.
Juicero may have headquartered in San Fran because it was the "cool thing to do", but the founder lives in Brooklyn. I suspect that the San Fran HQ was HQ in name only.
Weather certainly does have an effect on culture. That said, the East Coast vs. West Coast, U.S. vs the World rivalry is mostly contrived, and claims that one area is more innovative than another are dubious. It's reasonable to claim that the Bay Area has more of an engineering-centric culture, but that is likely due to a) Intel and b) the presence of multiple well-funded National Labs within close proximity.
If you look at the case of Leland Stanford, for instance, you'll notice that he maintained pretty deep personal and economic ties with his hometown of Albany up until his death- a lot of his success wouldn't have been possible if he hadn't been able to rely upon his extended family in the East Coast for support.
Stanford University was actually originally supposed to be in Albany, but was the location was switched to Palo Alto- allegedly because people got greedy. Instead Albany got a children's orphanage sponsored by Stanford's wife, which didn't last past the 30s. [1]
So true. I'll give you a poignant example... I was a Canadian exchange student at a California University. I was walking from one class to another when I noticed somebody on a skateboard coming my way on the path.
Just as he was passing I realize it was one of my professors. That surprised me and I turned my head as he went by to take it in. But what surprised me more was that I was the only person who gave a shit that a 50-year-old guy in dress pants and a sweater just road past on a skateboard. That's when I first realized people were much more open-minded.
It took me about 10 years after University to move back to California and I can't imagine I'll ever move away.
I live in the US now, and don't disagree that Americans as a people are more...well, I like the word 'ambitious'.
But I think your characterization of Canada is overly harsh: in Toronto and Montreal I know (and love) misfits just as individual, wild, and free as anyone I met during my years in Brooklyn.
Also Canadian (Vancouver / Victoria), spend a lot of time in SF. This has also been my experience but I'm wondering if its just a big city thing in CAD.
I’m a New Yorker, grew up there and now living in SF. Brooklyn was cool, but it didn’t “get” the kind of experimental intellectualism that’s needed in a tech startup scene. Not ripping on my old hometown. They have the intellectualism but haven’t applied it to tech. If I were to go back to New York, I wouldn’t go into tech, I’d go into finance because that’s where the nerds would be.
If I may, when I visited Vancouver (several times), I couldn’t find a coffee shop culture there. For some reason this seems like a big deal. In Manhattan and in San Francisco, people write in coffee shops and it’s kind of a thing. This seems like a big deal too. There’s more startups that started in a coffee shop than you’d think. Again, it goes towards a certain kind of intellectual experimentation.
I remember this Ted Talk titled “Where Good Ideas Come From” [1] where the speaker suggests that coffee or the combination of coffee and stimulating conversation catalyzed the generation of ideas and the rest is history up to the birth of Enlightenment. It seems like it’s still happening around coffee shops.
When I graduated and tried to find work in Canada multiple firms told me I was "too weird" and "should move to California", so I did and I'm super happy that it worked out the way it did -- but I still feel sad about having to leave my home country to be my authentic self.
My experience in here in the 'States exemplifies your comments "that I am surrounded by people who think like I do and value the things I value".
But this does not lead to healthy social communities. We as a country are drunk on the idea that our friends are people who think and act like us, when this is only part -- IMO, a very small part -- of group chemistry that this outlook overlooks. Group interaction is so much more complicated and beautiful than that. At least in my case, my best friendships are with people very much unlike me.
If you look at the current political situation here we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...
I hate to use the word diversity but it's as important in life as water, now more than ever.
> we are all banding together along lines of common interests and beliefs, and not things like proximity, or economic need, or other factors. And one wonders why we are so divided, when nobody wants to find common ground...
I believe you are reversing the cause and effect. It is never easy to find common ground. In the bad old days when people could not band together along lines of common interests and beliefs easily, common ground were found by the powerful suppressing the opinion of the powerless, and other times by resolution of war.
I think the appropriate term here is "diversity of thought" which is sort of opposite to the unqualified "diversity" which usually means diversity of genetics and uniformity of thought.
A lot of Canada's GDP seems to come from mining, and some of it seems to come from places that could be disrupted by technology or ecological concerns, so I'm not surprised at resistance to disruption.
Mining is a bit of a paradox. Historically mining companies were the "start-ups" of their day.
When you discovered a deposit you'd stake a claim (e.g. patent) and then seek investors to exploit it (e.g. venture funding). If the discovery turned out to be genuine and the mine was successful the returns would often be extraordinary.
Thing is, a lot of mines fail. Maybe there's resources there but extracting them isn't practical or profitable. Maybe there wasn't as much there as theorized. Maybe it was all a lie.
The paradox is that once you have a successful mining industry built up, people think of those as the conservative play, the safe bet, and are reluctant to go through that process all over again with a new industry.
But can one really count that, at least in the context of how the people understand where their money really comes from? Consider the adage, "Buy land: they don't make it any more."
A growth in the value of land isn't, in and of itself, an actual product, though I do agree the construction is. However, how much of that construction is actually in service of a different industry (i.e. would never have happened but for, say, mining and oil)? Similarly, how much of that real estate value would drop to approximately zero if the industries supporting it disappeared?
I'm sure there's some construction, especially residential, that must be happening just due to population growth, but I'm skeptical if that accounts for even a majority of that number.
My point is that a chart like that doesn't even hint at how much of that "real estate" activity is a direct result of the needs of "conservative" industries. It certainly stands to reason that something like resource extraction is not just land-intensive but is intensive in changes to land ownership/tenancy.
I'm pretty confident that someone who, according to that chart, is in the "real estate" industry who works selling houses in newly-built mining towns knows full well what industry really supplies his income.
I'm pretty confident that residential real-estate activity (people selling houses to each other) in major urban centres (eg: YVR, GTA) eclipses that of mining towns.
If that's accurate, it suggests that Manitoba, which, though known as more agricultural and manufacturing rather than mining, has the same pattern of "real estate" accounting for individual income. Of course, the significant majority of the population is in Winnipeg, but I don't think that qualifies it as a major, on the same scale as Vancouver or Toronto.
Again, I think that even real estate "industry" workers in Winnipeg know their money really comes from manufacturing, just as the ones in Edmonton know their money really comes from oil.
Maybe in the major cities you mention it's not so obvious, but "real estate" still fails to eclipse the sum of all the industries that actually produce something (manufacturing, resource extraction, construction).
I think you're conflating the value of the real estate property itself with the GDP from the "industry", which has to do with property changing hands or tenancy.
(Those charts also fail to show how much of that income is from residential transactions/management versus commercial ones.)
It just doesn't stand to reason that if people entirely stop paying other people to buy and sell each other houses (even if it does account for the vast majority of that 13% of the GDP) that the economy would collapse completely.
However, if housing values collapse due to questionable (or worse) lending practices, as happened in the US around 2008, could collapse the financial system and thereby the economy. It might even increase the GDP of the real estate category, especially as a percentage, at the expense of the finance category.
More importantly, though, I don't think there are any voters that buy the notion that they could, for example, do away with their real industry, such as mining or manufacturing, and replace it entirely with selling each other their houses. Because of that, whatever conservatism they may hold would remain from that real industry, regardless of what category the statisticians put their income in.
Hmmm that is an interesting observation. I wonder if and when more of the GDP comes from Services/Software, it will impact the culture of the country as well?
>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.
So to escape the uniformity of Canada you left and went to find a place were people think like you and value the things you do?
Isn't that what those Canadians are all about as well? Seeking the company of other similar thinking people?
The really open mind thing would be to recognize that some cultures like to experiment, others not, and both are fine.
This thread and it's comments have been super enlightening. Living in California my whole life has skewed my perception of what is normal with respect to ambition. Ambition is not inherently good, but Eve as a small child we are inundated with messages about success, "hard work" (whatever that means), and reaching
Socially liberal in some ways, but not in everything. 4 states decriminalized and/or legalized marijuana before any Canadian provinces. 2 of them did it years before Canada was even planning to do it. That is very telling of the two cultures.
Marijuana is illegal in every state, because it's illegal under federal law. No province could decriminalize marijuana because no province had criminalized marijuana in the first place. We never had the redundant laws that the US states had.
Summarizing the social liberal aspect of Canada by the legalization of marijuana seems very narrow minded. There are far more important social aspects than marijuana legalization.
Agreed, like I said, "in some ways". Of course, there are more important social aspects, and it's not an in-depth analysis of the two cultures and it wasn't meant to be -- it simply highlights just how open-minded Americans can be and how conservative Canadians can be and that's all it was meant to be.
Toronto too. I've been "caught" smoking weed by the police in Toronto and they literally don't give a shit. That said, not everyone is willing to accept that -- there's a huge portion of very conservative Canadians who think "drugs" are for dropouts and losers (and don't realize the opposite is true too -- nearly half of the most successful people are doing "drugs" too).
I think the conservativeness of Canada is a bit different from conservatives in the USA though. It's less focused on "morality" and religion and more an aversion to change. Which is why I think it's possible for the culture to be simultaneously conservative and OK with things like gay marriage and legal cannabis, neither of which would be conservative positions in the US.
In the political sense, Germany is more liberal than the US (especially economically), but there's this sort personal conservatism that manifests in paranoia about data/privacy, aversion/skepticism around change and technology and risk, less acceptance of weirdness. German culture just feels...rigid. It's stable and very functional, but also inflexible.
Don't forget the incremental perfectionism, which wont allow for a product to ship, unless its polished to a mirror-shine, and at least a year behind any competitor.
And the constant skepticism to anything that is not a physical product. Writing Software in the eye of the layman is something between boring and con-artistry.
To be fair the polished product for physical goods is the better choice. If you buy the rushed appliance with design flaws you will just have to spend money again to replace it, or time to get it returned and fixed.
Software is different in that problems can be fixed instantly (since online updates) and the first to build the user base is often the winner.
The real problems occur when the "software startup" model is applied to a product that it does not fit.
We're insulated because provinces cannot pass laws on gay marriage or legal cannabis.
Canadian federalism is incomplete in that regard.
However Ford could pull a Mike Harris and start firing nurses. His economic plan promises a balanced budget with no job cuts and no tax rises. He claims there are efficiencies to be had whatever that means.
And Diane Feinstein opposed California’s 2016 legalization.
It’s ridiculous to suggest Democrats are more likely to legalize than Republicans because the facts don’t really support that. It’s much less of an obvious partisan issue. Remember, Democrats controlled the house, senate and White House in 2009-2011 and not a single legalization bill even made it to the floor.
To be fair, Doug Ford winning would be partially the liberals' fault. Kathleen Wynne is hated, and they for some reason had her lead again. They've got some great plans, but the way elections work makes it really easy for Doug Ford to pander hard to suburbites who only give a shit about lower taxes and real estate.
Frankly, as a Toronto area dev Doug Ford winning the election would definitely cause me to consider looking for work in the US. Toronto's in a pretty crucial moment right now wrt growth and infrastructure, and I don't really see the point staying if the party of stagnation wins - whatever tax cut they may introduce is dwarfed by higher salary + lower CoL in the US anyways.
Awesome article, and should be required reading for anyone who has only heard of Jordan Peterson through his fans.
I'll say that there's a huge difference in values between the big cities, the suburbs, and Alberta.
Alberta is much more socially conservative than most of the states (if you ever see a Canuck unironically call someone a "cuck", 9/10 times they're Albertan).
Montreal/QC are cool but still hosts an extremely ethnonationalist element that's all but crippled their local economy (remember that a little over a year ago, we had a terror attack where some altright guy shot up a mosque in QC).
Toronto is incredibly progressive (I'd argue it's the most diverse city on the planet), but is surrounded by some of the worst, overtly racist, politicians you'll ever meet. Because of a first-past-the-post voting system, even though they're in the minority, the vote among reasonable people is split among reasonable candidates, and hateful buffoons get a consistent voting bloc. (The late) Rob Ford was mayor, in spite of making violent rants, being repeatedly publicly drunk, using every racial epitaph in the book, smoking crack (sometimes on video), and smoking crack with his KKK-member sister. His brother, reported former drug dealer Doug Ford, now stands a real chance of being Ontario's next premier.
Vancouver is a great city, but somewhat isolated from the rest of Canada. Toronto's pretty expensive, but Vancouver is even worse. Unlike Toronto, though, there aren't a lot of options for anyone but the most wealthy who want to live there. While the Conservative party is very weak there (they didn't even have a location there hosting the federal leadership convention, when even people in PEI had one in driving distance), BC's influence federally is minimal. You could argue they're becoming something of an oligarchy due to the huge influence of corporate money. You either need to have a high-paying job, or be very old, to live there.
>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."
Just being a conservative or a right-winger is bothersome and ignorant and dangerous and destructive and lots of bad things. What a way of seeing the world. :-)
The usual phrase is "psychologically conservative." Sticking to the comfort zone. Therefore, a psychological conservative who grows up in a politically Marxist household will remain Marxist, and of the same stripe of Marxist. They'll never consider political Conservatism seriously as a worldview, or switch to that.
What does this description have to do with being a "right-winger"? Looks like you are the one bringing a preconceived worldview into the discussion. You are not a victim.
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.
You'd be considered crazy, because you can't throw a brick, and hit a VC that will give you money for a no team, no product, no idea startup.
You'd also be considered crazy if you expressed those ideas in Chicago or San Diego, or Charleston, but that doesn't mean that we stereotypes about America not respecting 'changemakers' are accurate.
> 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.
Originally from Calgary and I concur with the poster above. Canadians tend to think small. For venture the culture has been so burned by pump and dump penny stocks that there is no patient capital. Canada needs an enormous influx of venture capital. The problem is, is that the crown corporations who can make those bets are limited to investing in Canadian funds. If they could invest 10% into a US fund and the US fund agreed to invest 10% of the portfolio into Canada it could really open up the market.
Are we talking about entrepreneurs or investors? I was talking about entrepreneurs, myself, and I think my point stands. I agree that the market for capital and venture investing is far different in Canada than in the US. But as far as that is concerned, couldn't it be argued that the market for venture capital and investing is far different in Silicon Valley than in most other places in the U.S., even?
Both. If I am talented and I’m confident that money is available I’ll start a business. If money is scarce I’ll work at BigCo or move to SV and start a company. That leaves you with less than stellar talent. I’ve seen the same thing happen in the agrifood tech space. As more money has come into the sector we’ve seen more high quality entrepreneurs.
I have to say, Brandon, in spite of all of my criticisms in other comments under this larger thread, that I agree with you.
Ambition toward innovation is not tightly coupled with remuneration here, but it does not mean that Canada is averse to innovation. America has loved that myth since the Avro Arrow and has sought to suppress it after that, or at least it can seem that way.
It's not just western Canada, though western Canada is no small contributor (after having lived in Alberta, and loving and longing for return to BC but originating from rural Ontario and now living in the "center of the universe"/Toronto).
I grew up with farmers, and they were/are consistently more liberal in all regards than what I hear in American news and forums. Those were the first places I saw solar panels and wind farms popping up to contribute to the larger energy grid as well as supplement extraneous local power consumption by isolating supplies to certain devices. They never seemed to care so much about asserting their opinions about how society should run except that people should generally treat each other with decency no matter who you are. I liked that. I could go on for hours. It's not to say conservative types (as expressed in this thread—against change) exist, nor other groups of social conservatives, but they don't occupy the majority. That's another subject altogether...
I also agree that being questioned isn't a problem. It can reach a severely challenging point, but most decent people will hear you out as well. It's a challenge— it challenges you to be better. Just as you've said.
Refining an idea isn't a problem, nor is it censorship, nor is it an aversion to innovation. It's fundamental to science.
I only wanted to speak up because of the majority comments opposing your own.
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.
stay there for long enough and you will start to see the cons also.
There is a lot of pros for moving fast and getting things done, jobwise. Weather also is amazing.
Now for personal life, the older you become, the more I realize that this place (the bay area) is really not the best quality of life you can get. People all think the same way, diversity is only visual, and there is not that much diversity of thought. Everything gravitates around work and tech. People are happy to work a crazy amount of hours and feel cool for doing so.
I loved it for a couple years then started to become bored.
I'm not really in the tech bubble tho. I work in tech but it's just a job. Most of my friends are not in tech and most of them have never met anyone else working in tech other than myself.
The tech industry only makes up a small percentage of the bay area population.
"""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.
Unfortunately that is the nature of the Canadian beast which fears risk hence why we have the brain drain problem.
It's also very telling when you see American incubators/investors tie directly into universities to get people funded; They clearly see the talent and opportunities and want to get into it very early on while the Canadian incubators and governments want to be risk averse and then cry foul when people move south. Sadly I don't think this will change anytime soon.
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.
Actually was coming from the perspective of staying on top of all the regulatory agencies and bureaucracy, all of whom are very aggressive relative to ither states to take their pounds of flesh
> - 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.
There's definitely a significant difference in cultural strength between chinese immigrants in SF and in Toronto. Basically what I think it boils down to is that the Toronto chinese community is extremely self-sufficient - insular, even.
My chinese in-laws can comfortably live there without speaking a word of English because there's that much chinese cultural infrastructure - from church groups to supermarkets to gardeners, handymen, doctors and real estate agents whose _entire clientele_ is 1st-gen chinese. Chatting with the neighbor in chinese about so-and-so's grandson is a fairly normal thing.
In contrast, my wife would consider the chinese community in SF heavily "americanised" - Similar to how Sao Paulo has "nihongakkous" (immersion schools for 2nd/3rd gen japanese), some schools in SF have "immersion" programs. These basically indicate that the community as a whole doesn't have cultural momentum to imprint onto new generations. By contrast, at my kid's kindergarten in Toronto, the teacher would at times actively have to discourage kids from speaking chinese in class (when it would be disruptive/exclusionary to the minorities - caucasians - of the class)!
WRT VC culture, my understanding is that in China, there's a great deal of literal politics (IIRC, Didi and many other prominent startups were owned by family members of prominent politicians), but that culturally speaking, "success" tends to be narrowly defined as doing well in school and getting a socially desirable job after that. I'm told that indians have similar cultural pressure to raise to management positions. (Women have it even worse, with pressure to get married in their 20s, give their parents grandchildren, etc). I feel like in SF, tech workers are heavily immersed in liberal ideas (e.g. risk taking, individualism) and tend to "detach" from their birth culture to a much higher degree than in Toronto.
That isn’t true. A friend of mine told me that Kai Fu (the Paul Graham of China) said something to the effect that Chinese VCs for a long time had focused on copying because they were much more risk averse than western VCs (copying an existing business model was a more sure bet than doing something new). It has only been in the last few years that they have been breaking away from that.
As for Chinese taking risks, I think you have to look at the alternative safer investments that basically don’t exist, you have no choice but to take risks in China, or in most other developing econonies for that matter.
> Therefore being Chinese and being risk taking are definitely not in conflict.
I think the author is pointing out that being a Chinese/Indian immigrant is in conflict with risk taking.
You don't have to look too hard for this. Most Chinese/Indian immigrants gravitate to low-risk jobs, specifically at larger companies, usually for visa/immigration related issues.
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.
You beat me to that comment! I grew up in California (and still live here), and I believe it because I've seen it in almost every season. To be fair, I do prefer things a bit cooler than most, but not necessarily "real" freezing winter. Of course, for those who want snow, the skiing mountains are closer than they are here in the Bay Area.
Unfortunately, this is offset by very high housing prices relative to salaries, inadequate or absent freeways, and significantly higher fuel prices, making even a "drive 'til you qualify" strategy for housing unattractive.
Is there adequate apartment stock near public transit? That could make it attractive enough for workers of a certain age, but, at least in the US, suburbs are remarkably popular for raising kids.
Quality of life definitely seems terrible in Vancouver, but only because of housing costs. Everything else seems amazing.
I live in Portland, Oregon, which has weather that is essentially identical to Vancouver. It is amazing here. Winters are gray, which I have actually grown to enjoy, but not cold. And it snows a couple of times of year, which is the perfect amount of snow. But spring, summer, and autumn are so much better than what I grew up with in California.
I grew up in Los Angeles. IMO, Pacific NW weather is so much better. One season is arguably worse (Winter), but the other three are so, so much better.
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.
That's a weird comparison, I guess you say that because California's population (39 million) is close to that of Canada's (36.3 million)? No doubt California is diverse, and by no means homogenous, but Canada... is physically huge, and relatively speaking, very sparsely populated. This naturally leads to more diversity within an already "small" population. To develop a business with a target market of "all of California" would be much easier than to develop one with a target market of "all of Canada."
Not really. The vast majority of those 35 million live in 3 really small areas. Just like the vast majority of california lives on the coast. California is a physically huge state by the way, that is fairly sparsely populated in big swaths of the state.
Unlike Canada, California benefits from a pool of ~290 million other people who self-select to move there with 0 barriers other than having a few dollars to buy a gray hound ticket.
If you're asking this seriously... yes it is a barrier, but not as great as Immigration/moving to a completely new country.
Which is not to discount California's tremendous housing crunch. I am merely pointing out that its a much lower risk for a young single US citizen to just move to CA, try it out for a few months, if they can't get a job or make it, then just drive back. It is much harder for people from outside the country to do the same.
Not really.
The cost of housing is huge and a barrier if you are not in tech, But if you move for tech you can definitely find a place and pay the crazy rent with your new salary.
Yeah, I guess (I was curious, and you're right, about 1/3 live in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montréal metro areas), but (to me) the culture varies a lot more between Toronto and Montréal than between SF and, I don't know, some of the more rural parts of California. Thinking like a business, the difference in regulations is much more significant as well.
California is similar in population but is part of the US. So if you base your company in California you have easy access to the rest of the US, whereas if you're in Canada you do not have the same easily addressable market.
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.
To add to the above post. For people born in India the wait time is estimated to be more than 20+ years, since the queue is going to get longer and longer, and there are only fixed number of people who leave the queue every year. Unless you are on EB1, it is better to basically forget about getting a green card. Talking to my friends from India, the options are:
1) Do a PhD and hope to produce original, well cited research that qualifies you for EB1.
2)Similar to above, but if you are in a research team and can get good papers out that qualify you for EB1.
3)Wait and hope for promotions that qualify you for EB1.
4)Move back to India after a couple of years.
5)Try to move to Europe or Canada. Everyone is kinda fuzzy on this since no one really has clear idea of immigration laws in other countries.
6)Get enough money from some IPO to pay for investment based green card and hope for the best.
This is if you currently qualify for EB2 i.e 5 or more years experience or a Masters from US. I don't even know what is the condition for people in EB3. As one of my friend put it memorably, there is a person whose parent's haven't even met, that will get a green card faster than me, if born anywhere but India, China, Mexico and Philippines.
I know, barring a recession, I'll be in US for the next couple of years, but after getting a family, I think my tolerance for having my residence in the country coupled with my job would drop and I'll look and see if one of the above option works for me. Plus ageism in tech is something I fear as well.
I would love to settle here, but barring a law change, it is right now impossible for me.
EDIT: Separate line numbers for the numbers points.
The legal immigration system is long overdue for some reform. Especially w.r.t the long waiting times for people from India. I expect it to change in the next couple of years but who knows.
I don’t understand what you mean by this. Every company that hired H1Bs also (usually) sponsors their Permanent Residency as well ( well, at least the ones that don’t abuse the system, like FAANGs). They absolutely want to keep these workers on for a long term basis.
I guess citizens of all other countries fall under a single category? I could only find dates for the countries you mentioned. There is no delay for Canadians or say Australian citizens?
There is no delay for other countries, at least for Employment based green cards.
There is some fixed number of employment based green cards that are awarded per category(EB1,2,3) with rollover between categories. The reason why there is a delay is that there is a country-wide cap on a percentage of total green cards awarded that year. So countries with higher number of people immigrating have a queue. If there were thousands of Australians immigrating, there can be a queue there too.
I am not sure about Canada though, as there maybe some other category for it.
> H1B isn’t an immigrant visa, so of course the wait times are long — it’s the wrong visa for immigration.
The wait times referenced are the wait times for an immigrant visa, whether you are applying for it as an already-resident H-1B holder (as permitted by it's dual-intent nature) or as someone who is not yet resident in the US.
The wait times have nothing to do with the H-1B not being an immigrant visa.
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.
Yeah, that's the point. If you're wealthy, highly employable, and culturally compatible it's easy. Everyone else gets a big fat "no". Trump's gotten flack for suggesting the USA do the same.
In the US work-related visas have no cultural or language requirements. In addition, the USA has an immigration lottery which has no education, wealth, or employability requirements, especially for people coming from under-represented countries.
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?
If it was easy for you it's because you're economically desirable and culturally compatible. Canada only accepts immigrants who have a high probability of financial success and "integration", along with a limited number of refugees who have sponsors.
The USA on the other hand has a relatively open employer-backed system in addition to the wealth/education-agnostic quota system.
I don't know, one of my euro immigrant friends in Vancouver was a window cleaner. IIRC she basically showed up at the border with some education certificate (some non-fancy arts degree), her intent to make a living and proof she could sustain herself for a few months; definitely not sponsored by a tech company or anything like that. A few years later she was a citizen. OTOH I know two very capable (although not "rockstar" level) tech people who have lost the H1B lottery several years in a row.
In that sense the USA seems more random, but not more open. But I guess we're just using different criteria.
I'm pretty sure there are some important details missed in your story, because you either don't know them, or don't understand why they are important. My European, but non-EU, friend is a software engineer with certified knowledge of both En, and Fr, clean records, and all that stuff, decided to go to Canada for some not particularly economically rational reasons (like love of northern nature). This year it's going to be the 5th year since he applied to Can immigration service, and he still waits for a decision. Meanwhile, a number of his coworkers landed in US with quite poor English, and worse qualifications.
The window cleaner probably got the working holiday visa. You have to be under 35. After a year of experience at a job requiring a degree or a job in management, you can get permanent residence with CEC. Even managing at a coffee shop would qualify.
Funnily enough, your post is also missing some important details. The Canadian system is very transparent with its scoring. Unless you're from a natively English/French speaking country, you need test scores to validate your proficiency in English/French. Certified doesn't mean much. Also, you need degrees from accredited/verifiable institutions to really rack up points - if your friend is self-taught, it may be no good. Which does speak to the original point of Canadian conservatism.
I'm not sure if he's self-taught (most likely not), but as for languages he did exactly exams required by Canadian immigration service. In any case, my point is that it is observably easier for a CS professional to move to California than to Canada. I don't blame anyone/anything, because frankly I have no first-hand knowledge. Probably, the system is transparent but inefficient.
> my point is that it is observably easier for a CS professional to move to California than to Canada
Pretty sure you are missing some key details, you can get a Canadian permanent residency if you the required number of points which are based on your education, language, work experience etc.
For majority of the cases if you have the points you will get the PR visa. Once you get the visa you can move to Canada and look for jobs you cannot do that with the US.
You missed the moment when I mentioned the guy has been waiting for reply for 5 years. It is inefficient if the goal is to attract more qualified professionals. It would be easier for him to find a job offer from US, or Swiss, or German-based company, and settle in one of these countries in about a year. I'm not talking about getting citizenship, of course, but live&work permissions. Maybe, it's getting harder in US now as political moods are changing, but five years ago it was exactly so.
> You missed the moment when I mentioned the guy has been waiting for reply for 5 years.
As I said you are missing some details, people get a resident visa in 1 year even if they are outside Canada, so either you dont know the full story or your friend is probably misleading you.
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?
I've always faced much tougher scrutiny coming back across to the American side. Had lots of friends and family in Quebec, and we went fishing and hunting up there multiple trips a year, usually with a truck loaded for a week or two of being out in the woods. Even bringing firearms across, you just step inside the office and fill out the paperwork. Usually when we told them that we only had the legal limit of one case of beer or bottle of wine per adult, they'd joke and ask us if we were going to get thirsty while we were fishing...
The one thing that is a little sticky is that you can't get across the border if you have had a DUI within so many years. An issue for some of my dad's hunting buddies.
The US side coming back was always a bigger pain in the neck. Part of that is because of the way Border Patrol rotates their agents. You could always tell the ones that had recently rotated from the Mexican border because they were twitchy and kept a hand on their holster at all times. I'm sure it's a hard habit to break, but not really appropriate at a backwater crossing in Northern Maine where 95% of the traffic is log trucks and local Canadians coming over to fill up their gas tanks or pick up things they've ordered online.
Dual citizen, crossed the border probably 50+ times both by air and land.
The only two times I've been aggressively grilled including accusations of smuggling and personal questions that were intrusive were coming back into Canada.
Even when I only had a green card, most of the time the US CBP just said "welcome home" and waved me on.
During my years in Vancouver last decade, crossing the border to visit my brother in Seattle was such a stark contrast... Entering the USA I always felt like I was this close to being kicked back. From the faces, tones of voice, type of questions to the general atmosphere, all seemed intended to make me feel dominated. Crossing back to Canada was always fast and efficient, half the times the guards would even joke in good taste.
I don't think it was the difference between being a visitor (to the USA) vs a resident (in Canada), because the couple of times I went abroad while I was a resident in the USA were very similar.
Straightforward business trips for both countries for me, but Canada is a little more casual than average, but otherwise uninteresting. The officials smile, ask a straightforward question ("where are you staying?"), and stamp the passport ("enjoy your stay in Canada").
In the US, I feel like I'm being interrogated. "You don't look like a software developer" "who is paying for this trip?" and lots of scowling.
I have found this to be the case with the customs. This is mostly because Canada’s custom thresholds are absurdly low in comparison to other countries. Both when entering the country but also when posting something in, see: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/rob-comme...
Back when you only needed a drivers license to cross the border, the Canadian border person looked at my Texas driver's license and said, "Texas, huh. Where are your guns?"
That would be considered unacceptable and unprofessional at U.S. border control.
I am constantly hopping back and forth between Chicago and Toronto to be with my boyfriend. I have never been seriously questioned on either side, though I think I get a slight bit more side eye on the U.S. side when I mention the same-sex partner thing. But I could be projecting.
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.
> But the groupthink is that the USA is hostile to immigrants. Which doesn't explain all the immigrants (legal and otherwise).
I don't know what groupthink you are talking about, but there is a wife perception that the US has recently become hostile toward immigrants. Which is reflected not only in fuzzy attitudes, but concrete policy, and it does explain changes in immigration, both 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
It would be more accurate to say that there is a wide (and accurate) perception that conservatives are generally more negatively inclined to immigration, and that this is generally correct on balance (though obviously not a reliable guide to individual attitudes.)
> Apparently the problem the conservatives have isn't immigration as an umbrella policy. It's legal versus illegal methods
That's what they usually say, but they also usually oppose policy which would make legal immigration easier and relieve pressure that creates illegal immigration, and frequently support policies to restrict legal immigration. And it's not just 10% of conservatives supporting this kind of policy.
This reveals that the rhetoric that it it is only illegal immigration that is the concern is not reflective of the actual concerns.
> That's what they usually say, but they also usually oppose policy which would make legal immigration easier and relieve pressure that creates illegal immigration, and frequently support policies to restrict legal immigration. And it's not just 10% of conservatives supporting this kind of policy.
Look, I'm a liberal but I will call out the Dems when I need to. Most of the reforms to legal immigration have always been a sort of addendum, or a two-part deal with relief for the illegal immigrants included in them. Democrats haven't proposed a bill which purely targets legal immigration. So its a little unfair to say that conservatives are opposed to all kinds of Immigration.
> Democrats haven't proposed a bill which purely targets legal immigration.
Perhaps, but conservatives have frequently put forward bills (or, when in the executive, instituted executive policy without Congressional action) that further restrict currently-legal immigration and non-immigrant entry and privileges, which is more significant sign of opposition to legal immigration than merely voting against expansions to legal immigration, whether pure or not.
I agree with what you're saying and I don't think what I say next matters as much because the outcomes seem similar. But I think it needs to be pointed out.
Maybe it is just posturing and lies, but the conservative viewpoint has been to have a merit-based system for permitting immigrants into the country, as opposed to immigration based on familial relations. Every country gets to decide what kind of people that they want coming into their country and I think its perfectly fine for conservatives to feel that way (it is a different matter that I don't agree with that idea). My perception (again, which might be wrong) is that that is essentially what Republicans have been getting at for the past couple of decades (perhaps more).
Now, that being said: these are the same folks who were about Family Values, Fiscal Purity etc. So, like I said before, I don't think the arguments are being made in good faith. But the argument does have merit.
They have also frequently put forward bills that would relax restictions, and allow more HIGH SKILLED labor to come into the country.
Go look up the stuff that Orin Hatch and Rubio sponsored with regards to H1B visas. The stuff that they sponsored would double the number of H1Bs and was majority sponsored by republicans.
The policies I am referring to include the executive policies of the current administration on visa processing and the proposal of the current administration and it's legislative allies to reduce total legal immigration by cutting total visa alotments focussing on reductions in permitted family-based immigration, among others. These are either additional administrative barriers to or outright reductions in currently legal immigration.
This has nothing to do with debates over executive authority to choose how to prioritize enforcement and to make transparent commitments regarding that (which the executive clearly has in some cases, outside the obvious pardon power, since literally every grant of immunity from prosecution, or plea bargain to reduced charges, is an enforceable commitment by the executive not to enforce some law in some well-defined circumstance based on policy priorities.)
I don't know why you are being downvotes, but it is the truth. Trump admin has raised the hostility towards high skill immigration towards a different level
Trump's actual rhetoric revolves around tougher controls on immigrant backgrounds and cracking down on those who immigrate illegally, neither of which policies are any less strict in Canada.
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.
Yes that happens. I explicitly exclude any US company with a presence in Canada - as that implies an HR department in Canada with Canadian salary guides. I got an offer from IBM that made me laugh. On top of that they wanted to own anything I did on my own time. Stay away from IBM.
Without really planning it or advertising myself much. I don't have a website even. So I'm not the right person to ask. All I can say is just be persistent, don't sell yourself short, and most importantly always do an excellent job that wows your client. Work harder than your peers. I've always worked 6-7 days a week (always working challenging side projects after work), and after 15 years of doing that I'm better than most of my peers - it's like making a slowly compounding investment in yourself.
I haven't enjoyed life as much as my peers perhaps, although I do have a good time and I love what I do. But I'll retire early in my fourties and spend the rest of my life working on whatever I find interesting, traveling, or whatever else catches my fancy.
Not the person you're responding to, but C++ for me. I make a normal Seattle salary while living in Toronto. Which after conversion seems to put me higher than people with 3x my experience in much better paying sectors than I'm in... It's stupid, and it sucks, I wish my company was local, I don't prefer remote. I do much prefer making literally double than I'd make locally though. :/
I hear you, I don't really like remote either. I go to local programming meetups to get some of the socializing I miss out on with colleagues. But at the difference in income, I can't justify doing it any other way.
I do full-stack but focus mostly on backend. I work in any language, platform, or framework the job requires. There aren't that many remote jobs, so being flexible on the technology side helps me get the best. I find Go to be very much in demand right now. C++ is making something of a comeback ever since C++11.
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.
"Burning through investors money in search of profitable ideas" has nothing to do with it. There's this huge misconception on HN about the size of the venture capital market. Start-ups are a miniscule portion of the tech economy by any measure of value.
The reason engineers make so much money in the US is the public market giants like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc. The combined market cap of FAANG is fluctuating around $3 trillion right now. That's about 2X the entire GDP of Canada...in just 5 American companies.
No large-ish tech company in Canada is near that level of profitability or size. Combine that with currency fluctuations and with the greater tax/regulatory burden of having a full-time employee in Canada, and you will never have a Canadian company that can afford to pay engineers $250K+ en masse like FAANG can.
> The reason engineers make so much money in the US is the public market giants like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google, etc
The reason engineers in the US make so much, is because four to five decades ago US tech companies combined with globalization and scaled out into the entire planet as a market. That premise has remained intact, while the global economy has gotten a lot larger and richer. That's something most other nations have failed to do at a large scale (S.Korea has Samsung but not many other companies that have gone hyper global for example).
Go all the way back to Fairchild, Intel, HP, IBM in the 1950-1980 era. Nobody has done globalized tech like the US, probably only Japan got close (and they've largely missed out on the huge margins in software).
Without the ability to tap into the rest of the planet, Netflix wouldn't be able to pay what it does. The rest of the planet is half their market now, and will be 2/3 or 3/4 of it in the near future.
Europe only has three or four major tech companies that managed to go substantially global (eg SAP, ARM, Spotify, or Booking.com which got swallowed by Priceline). ARM & Booking got taken out, Spotify will be acquired next. The same kind of problem Canada often faces with its tech companies (Shopify is very likely to end up in the belly of a US tech or retail company, especially once their valuation normalizes).
I have a hard time understanding the comparison of aggregate market cap (a valuation) to GDP (an annual output). These seem like two very different quantities, with different units. How do you intend for us to interpret that comparison? Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the aggregate revenues of those companies? (I'm not an economist, so I'm not sure those two quantities are comparable either, but they seem closer at least.)
FAANG can only hire so many engineers, the positions tend to be highly competitive, they pull them from all over the world, and the drop-off in compensation at the next level is pretty significant.
Lots less, but the big problem is a lack of competition. We don't have the big companies sucking up devs at an insane rate, or startups doing the same.
So they just pay what it takes to fill the spot.
Of course they are also incredibly resistant to changing this, preferring to complain about how we need to fix brain drain and/or make immigration easier.
> Lots less, but the big problem is a lack of competition. We don't have the big companies sucking up devs at an insane rate, or startups doing the same.
So it seems like they're not losing devs at a fast enough pace to warrant increasing dev salaries? Or perhaps there are just enough developers for the Canadian market, to not have to increase compensation to attract better talent?
From what I've seen, American based companies with offices in Canada do seem to pay very well, but Canadian companies are unabashedly poorly compensating. I talked with a few hiring managers at some Canadian startups and what they were offering would be less than what I made right out of college. It left me wondering how talented folks can continue to work for Canadian firms?
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.
Yeah, it's a knee-jerk response that's been trained into people to help them rationalize staying in Canada. I explain to friends/family/etc.: "I was offered 3x my salary to move to Seattle [from Vancouver]" and every goddamn time I hear "Oh, but I've heard Seattle is very expensive these days, so it probably cancels out!" Yes, Seattle is more expensive than Vancouver! About 25% more. And I make 3x as much money. I put literally 10x as much money into savings every year than I did when I lived in Vancouver.
I think people don't understand how their cost of living can be different then someone else's. Your COL calculation will be very different based on what standard of livings you want to preserve (house vs renting, downtown SF vs commute, sending kids to private school). So the COL delta is different for everyone.
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.
Seattle's housing market is going up really quickly, though. Last time I moved, I definitely noticed higher rents and more expensive purchase prices compared to a few years ago. It's not yet at the level of Vancouver, and far from SF/NY levels, but its trajectory isn't great.
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).
i'm yet to see a high-rise development resulting in cheaper housing, at least in US. No that i'm against it - i like it, when it is done right, for different reasons though.
The housing prices are rising across the globe - one has to put somewhere all this money sloshing around. So, even to just stabilize the prices, one has to build faster than the money are printed - like Alice in Wonderland where you have to run fast just to stay at the same place.
Basically all that NIMBY vs. YIMBY fights is just 2 poor hobos fighting for a penny and completely distracted with that fight while a nice rich gentleman sells them both to slavery and makes away with the money and all the rest of their possessions.
> i'm yet to see a high-rise development resulting in cheaper housing, at least in US. No that i'm against it - i like it, when it is done right, for different reasons though.
It definitely won't be one or 2 developments; there has to be a systematic increase in the housing stock. Which is why the latest California plan (which was shot down in committee) to increase the density around mass transit by default was so amazing.
SF is NYC in the making. I know SF folks don't want to change the character of the city but something has to give; its attracting way too many people and we still need affordable housing for middle class folks.
Replacing large swaths on single story single family houses with multiparty rentals does not necessarily involve any high rise buildings. Paris and Barcelona have proven that very high density can be achieved with four to six stories or less.
are you suggesting that Paris is [more] affordable for software engineers? Quick check shows that the prices in Paris are about E10K per square meter - basically SV prices while salaries as far as i know are significantly lower there.
I have only vague idea about Barcelona - quick check shows like it may be on the scale of E5K per square meter (it was $100K per 2-3 bdrm 20 years ago, so 3x-4x today seems reasonable) So you need to have like at least $60K salary - do they have that there?
Again, i'm not against high[er] density. I'm against it being suggested as the panacea for housing affordability crisis - as far as i see it looks like it may even worsen the crisis (at least for some less fortunate people - like relatively affordable low income communities being displaced by upscale new construction like we have happening everywhere in SV).
Please just show where higher density did help to alleviate the affordability crisis. I think even the massively empty apartments in all these massively constructed ghost towers in China aren't falling in prices.
What evidence exactly are you looking for? If you compare two different cities with different housing densities, you're not only changing the housing density but (likely) also the value of the housing (since it increases availability of services and so on). It's not possible to magically adjust one variable while not touching the others.
However, if the prices in silicon valley were, say, 30% lower than they are now due to zoning which allowed more housing, would that constitute as evidence? You could still say that the "prices are high, higher density housing doesn't work!" - even if the higher density housing would've decreased prices by non-trivial amounts.
In any case, it's weird to see people objecting to basic supply and demand when it comes to housing.
The vast majority of engineers in the valley do not get FANG levels of compensation. Non-engineers earn even less. FANG employs a small fraction of all engineers, also. Using their salary as a baseline to analyze affordability introduces a strong bias towards one extreme of the tail. If one wishes to analyze affordability in general starting that bias makes the analysis not fit for purpose.
I agree.
The thing with salaries is that you have a minority that is extremely well paid at FANG companies, and love to brag about it, given a false feeling that everybody is in that range.
A good reminder that nobody brags about being paid 100k in tech,
all the Netflix engineer salaries i know about are larger than $400K. And it may give you nightmares when/if you hear what Netflix offers when it gets into an offer bidding war with a compensation-comparable company :)
To GP questions - there is a lot of info available around about FANG compensation. Wrt. other companies - several guys around have recently landed new jobs - between 250K by a junior guy with 12 years experience and 0.5M by the guy with 20+. Only one went to FANG, a junior with about 10years and he got close to 300K.
This may be true, but again these are outliers - most people here are not cranking down 400K. Netflix hires the best of the best so these people are the top 10% of engineers probably... Not the avg joe
Its not true. Most engineers are in the 150-200K range at the most. It is true that some companies like Netflix do pay much more, but Netflix goes for the best of the best. This is the not the majority of engineers. So realistically if you are talking 80% of engineers, then no, they are not making 400K (so they can easily buy a 2million dollar house in SV) they are making about a 1/3 of that.
The Sunnyvale housing market may be "ground zero" for Apple due to supply, but Apple's "Spaceship" HQ is in Cupertino. Homestead is the border, except for a small chunk just west of Wolfe.
>And ... guess what... Bank uses Base (no bonus, no RSUs) to calculate your mortgage.
you have obviously never taken a mortgage in US. What bank typically uses is 2 last W-2s. In case if you don't know what W-2 is - it includes base + bonus + FMV of the vested RSUs as of the vest date.
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?
It's getting that way. We never had the housing price crash that the US had in the late 2000s. Things have continued to climb, and it's getting ridiculous.
I make a Google employee salary + RSUs. It is really good. I have no complaints about my compensation at all. I live on a 6 acre hobby farm, own two vehicles, am doing really well.
But I bought 6 years ago. I could not afford to buy this now.
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.
That's 80-85k CAD. The market for local jobs in Victoria is easily competitive with that.
There's opportunities to make six (Canadian) figures in Victoria if you have enough buzzwords on your resume to convince a recruiter or HR person you're "full-stack" (I hate the term but you have to play the game if you want to get hired).
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.
This is really strange. It seems obvious that a landlord would be more willing to risk a bit more vacancy in order to get a higher rate. Is there something that prevents raising rates? If so, then that would also explain why there aren't more units being built.
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.
Are you talking about Nortel, Blackberry, QNX, or some other failed lake Ontario company? I'm afraid the original poster was spot-on, you just need to realize the long history of Canadian tech self-destructing ...
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).
I didn't say they were paying "good" wages, but that they are paying market wages. The argument that Canadian software salaries aren't a market, but rather a stubborn choice by companies not to do the right thing, is curiously magical.
The question is, what would change the situation? Not some change of heart by companies to finally do the right thing, or come to their senses about what their self-interest really is. Those aren't real things. To change it would require some change in the fundamentals, such as if the government made it harder for people to leave.
> The question is, what would change the situation? Not some change of heart by companies to finally do the right thing, or come to their senses about what their self-interest really is. Those aren't real things.
This is a horrible false dichotomy. It takes time for companies to decide on and implement changes. Do you think that companies magically always make optimal decisions at all times? You claim that other people are anthropomorphizing companies, but that’s precisely what you’re doing here, on top of a healthy dose of failure to make the is-ought distinction.
I‘m also not sure why you are misinterpreting “good wages.” I’m not talking about “deserved wages” or anything like that. Again, read TFA.
Lastly, your suggestion that the Canadian government make it harder for people to leave is horrific, inhumane, and quite frankly the most regressive possible “solution” to this problem. I’m astounded that anyone would even suggest it.
I didn't any say of those things! From my perspective, you've put my words through a really intense filter and then gotten angry at your filter.
For example, I didn't suggest that the government should do such a thing. It's a hideous idea, besides being an obvious legal and political impossibility. What I said was that if they did, it might affect the software salary market in Canada, in contrast to other things people commonly bring up, which seem oddly imaginary.
It may be politically impossible, but it isn't legally impossible.
Laws, including constitutions, can be changed. This works for both sides of the border. Killing NAFTA is an easy start. Canada can have a wall to keep people in without even building it: simply lobby US politicians to have one built.
I meant impossible under the Charter of Rights, which could change, but isn't going to. You're right that that's for political and not legal reasons, so "politically and legally impossible" is in a way redundant. In another way it isn't, though, since constitutions do constrain politicians.
I get what you’re saying about feeling that other people are putting your words through a filter, but if you are concerned about that you seriously need to look at how you are reading other people’s comments. You wrote a whole comment based on making fun of my use of the word “good” as “magical,” which is the least charitable interpretation of an admittedly ambiguous word and not at all what I meant. It’s also clear from context (again from the article) that I didn’t mean “good” in a moral sense but good as in “these are good wages if you want employees.”
Conversely I don’t see where I’ve attributed to you anything you haven’t said.
To conclude by returning to something of substance, calling the market “oddly imaginary” and companies trying to make rational decisions as “not a real thing” is incredibly naive. You seem to think that the only thing that can affect the “fundamentals” of the situation is government intervention. I’m far from a libertarian, and even to me that does not at all resemble this situation. This is a simple case of companies in an area paying too low wages, employees leaving, and companies having to catch up.
You seem to be misinterpreting everyone else’s arguments as anthropomorphizing companies, which is not at all what people are doing when they are talking about a market. I think this derived from your fundamental understanding of how a market economy might work in the real world.
Companies and workers both take time to adjust to changing situations, and more importantly, situations can change, and the government shouldn’t always intervene to bring things back to the way they were. Otherwise we would still be a nation of farmers.
I’m not sure what else to say, and I seriously don’t want to sound mean or trite (like “just read a book!”), but I really think you should try and learn a little about economics. I think this is where your misunderstanding about anthropomorphization stems from. I tried to find a good introductory article, but I haven’t had much luck; here is one: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/labor-market.asp
> 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.
It's been suggested to me that because of Canada's long history of a resource-based economy, Canadian investors are far more accustomed to the long, slow model of: let's research a site for several years, make sure it'll be profitable, build a town, and get to work. The higher risk, fail-fast nature of VC investing is just too foreign to their business model.
One of the problems is the public demands a lower risk investment. A single Theranos would knee cap the entire VC industry in Canada. "How could this be allowed to happen?!" The stories of LPs losing their $50k investments would lead the newspapers for months.
In Silicon Valley its a, 'Oh that sucks, but the smart money stayed away, that should have been a tell for the other investors".
That already happened, to a degree. Canada's dot-com darling was Nortel, which at peak accounted for 1/3 of the total valuation on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Then the bubble burst and Nortel collapsed. A lot of institutional investors swore off tech after that, and it hasn't really rebounded.
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.
If you were not born in China or India, then getting a green card isn't a vague promise. Go work at google, try to get an H1B or L1 ASAP and then get your green card in 1-2 years after that.
Given that much more Chinese and Indians still prefer US to Canada, further and further elongating the lines for green card, it seems the Canadian advantage is not so enticing after all.
> 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.
I have been weighing making a move from Saskatchewan to New Brunswick. When I compare Regina to Fredericton (as an example) though, it seems like I must be missing something. On the surface, pay is generally better, the stacks/companies are more interesting, the location seems amazing, and comparable real estate is less than half.
I know that Regina->NB is dramatically different from Toronto->NB, but is there anything you wish you would have known??
Might be obvious, but the biggest thing you'll give up in this market compared to cities like Toronto or Montréal is selection. There's some larger companies with satellite offices here (IBM, Salesforce, etc), but not too many startups.
One word of caution about real estate in the Fredericton area; don't buy any property too close to the river. There's usually flooding in the spring from the snow melt up stream and this year was especially bad. I was lucky enough not to be affected, but there's lots of homes taking flood damage right now.
First, I apologize. I know that the river is flooding right now and I asked you 'should I move' questions when you could have been facing a tragedy. That was very selfish of me and I'm sorry.
I'm very glad you weren't affected by the flooding, and thanks for being kind, despite my gaffe!
It finally feels to me like things are on the cusp of getting interesting in Regina. Saskatoon's recent acquisitions (Solido bought by Mentor/Siemens, SkipTheDishes) seems to have raised a lot of eyebrows in Regina and there's at least some momentum building to get investors/business folks/tech folks together to start building things. Co-Labs in Saskatoon seems to have been a huge inspiration/wake-up call for parts of the Regina business community.
That being said... I've always had a bit of a longing for Atlantic Canada, and if the jobs are out there... that's pretty interesting!
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.
The equivalent of $1750 Toronto condo (modern high rise with all the amenities) is going to be very hard to find in SV except some of the newer constructions at $3500~4000.
A friend has a one bedroom in San Mateo in the sub $3000 range. The building is very old, no amenities or views to speak of, and not even in-suite laundry.
Your friend is getting hosed. I have a 3 bed, 2.5 ba 1600 sq ft duplex with a yard near downtown for $4k/mo. It's older, but there's nothing wrong with it, it has a garage and a W/D, driveway, etc.
I'm kind of in the same boat.
Vancouver making 135k approximately (based on 40hr week, since wage is hourly)
Have an offer at a FAANG company that when converted to CAD is the same as what my wife and I make combined.
Unfortunately we'd still lose a big chunk of our household income till she can find work there. Fortunately she's American but still in a relatively niche field so might take some time.
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).
That demographic you're referring to is no less likely to be involved in traffic accidents that can send you to the closest available hospital. In the US that means an ambulance bill and very likely a hospital bill that your insurance might not cover, and the high possibility of chronic pain that's not necessarily covered by your health insurance. And that's even before having to deal with lawyers in order to obtain compensation back from the driver's insurance company in order to repay the out of pocket expenses. (The system, at least in California is set up in such a way that the car insurance has to pay 3X the costs to divide in thirds for 1) your lawyer, 2) your insurance provider and 3) yourself.)
Give me a break. Healthcare in the US is a joke, but if you're on an engineer's salary and benefits plan, you're probably paying nothing for any of these things.
Protip: "treble damages" is not a thing California invented in order to pay legal fees
> if you're on an engineer's salary and benefits plan, you're probably paying nothing for any of these things.
My wife was hit by a driver while cycling. She was taken to an in-network hospital as it happened to be the closest one. A 10 block ride on an ambulance yielded bill for a few thousand dollars. On the day of the event, the only out of pocket expense was <100 USD, but since then we've incurred several thousand dollars in expenses to treat the consequences of that event.
You're right that as somebody with an engineer's salary who's been diligent in making sure we had savings for unforeseen events, we've been able to pay all of the required fees as they came, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be taken into account when talking about compensation across different countries, or that being young and healthy precludes needing health care.
> "treble damages" is not a thing California invented in order to pay legal fees
I prefaced with "at least in California" because it's the place where I've had to find this out. I'm more familiar with systems in other countries.
All lawyers that we had to contact (which was already a shocking thing to do for me) had the same payment structure and explained it the same way: there would be a settlement, to be divided equally by HC provider, lawyer's fees and victim. I mentioned this because I can assure you that most people that don't know the American system would be surprised about it.
I could tell you had a specific story, as you alluded to the details in your original comment, but again, these are the exceptions rather than the norm. I get it; my wife was in a car accident that sent her to the hospital for a week, almost exactly a year ago. I've gotten the $200k 'denied' explanation of benefits paperwork from the insurance company (and no doubt the total bill ran over $500k), I've been threatened with collections over a $3500 ambulance bill and had to sign up for the payment plan while I spend all the free time i can muster faxing paperwork to and fro with various insurance companies. It sucks, it's inefficient, and it's simply setting money and productivity on fire.. but ultimately, there's a chain of responsibility. It's the at-fault party's responsibility, whether you have to chase after their car insurance company or your own health insurance company.. eventually it can and should be covered if you're at a good job, but good god it's a nightmare to actually deal with.
In the end, though, I don't consider health insurance to be a cost an in-demand professional would factory into a decision to move from Canada to the US.
Yes, but most companies in this space provide some sort of healthcare, which covers a lot of that, and accidents are a small percentage of total healthcare outlays anyway. Much more healthcare spending goes to older people, for a much broader array of more common conditions than "got into a bad car accident".
Health insurance is much more expensive at 55 than at 25.
Younger people do have fewer needs to treat chronic illnesses. That doesn't mean that healthcare can never be a significant financial burden regardless.
- I've met people that have had terminal cancer in their very early 30s (didn't leave a giant bill to their state as this happened in the UK)
- I've had a friend that needed an ambulance for his pregnant wife from an airport (>10K USD in out of pocket expenses)
- I've been stabbed in an attempted robbery (again, no expense as this was in Argentina)
I think it's pretty clear from context that I was talking about average medical expenses by age, for which older people do pay much, much more.
Also, $10K is a low figure for medical expenses compared to how much one can spend. End of life care for the elderly can easily run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. My grandfather has been in and out of the hospital a lot this year with a broken hip, complications thereof, and fairly advanced dementia, and his covered medical expenses have been astronomical. He gets full-time care every waking moment, 7 days a week -- so that's several full-time salaries on top of medical expenses. $10K doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of how much it can cost to treat someone.
I believe that the disagreement we're having is born of what I'm possibly failing to do, which is getting the point across that talking about averages when the distribution is not anywhere close to normal is not useful and can be disastrous. If the average cost is maybe a few hundred dollars a month, but you have a low probability of having to pay several thousand dollars in an unlikely event, different people with different thresholds for risk will make different decisions. I'm just trying to make explicit to foreigners some things that are implicit to Americans so that they can make decide for themselves if it is worth it. I've clearly decided it was worth it, given I'm in the US now, but there's plenty I learned only once I was here that I would have appreciated knowing beforehands.
As an aside, the 10K figure was just he ambulance ride. I'm supplying that as a lower bound for the cost on an accident, which people in other countries would not believe.
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...
I can't believe how much Vancouver has changed (as far as attractiveness for recent grads) over the last twenty years.
When I turned 20 in 1997, Vancouver seemed like a personal version of heaven. Rents were more expensive than where I'm from, but that increase was easily offset by the ability to easily double my salary. Real estate was heavy, but not so heavy that it seemed unobtainable. Add in what I perceived to be real opportunity to work in an interesting field, a highly educated workforce and the natural beauty and I was completely sold.
Today, even if I were twenty again, I can't think of a single legitimate reason why I would choose Vancouver over Seattle.
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.
Other than Montreal's cheap cost of living and good public transportation, everything else is not so great. Talented engineers graduating from McGill and Concordia are leaving the province in droves because of Quebec's weird language laws [1], high taxes and obsolete immigration system. (Eg: KFC was renamed to PFK to comply with the language laws)
MIDI, the immigration department of Quebec which has fully autonomy for selecting immigrants to Quebec fails to attract or retain the foreign talents. A highly skilled worker is not given any kind of priority in their immigration application.
On the other hand, if you only have a school diploma, but can speak fluent French, you get the top priority in Quebec immigration.
If you are highly skilled, but do not know a word of French, it will take a minimum of 4 years to immigrate to Quebec [2]. Montreal is just riding on their old inertia. There is a huge shortage of talent in Quebec. The policies of immigration dept. of Quebec and Quebec's language policies will drive Quebec down the drain. Some politicians have even announced that if they get elected, they will deport all the non French speaking immigrants out of Quebec.
So any startups looking to start their business in Quebec, you have been warned. Montreal is a great tourist city, no contest. But not so great to live or work for tech. If you immigrate to Quebec, your kids should go to French school only.[4]
I'm a US-citizen immigrant to Canada, selected by Quebec and living in Montreal. Many of these assertions, though commonly believed, are half true.
The Global Skills Strategy that the federal government here is running includes tech workers, and yes it includes Quebec. MIDI has facilitated processing for many of those. For kids of people here on temporary work permits, including that type, English schools are allowed.
For permanent immigration, MIDI currently gives more points for an applicant with a bachelor's degree in computer science from anywhere in the world - regardless of language knowledge - than it does for a high school-educated applicant who is fluent in French. There are lots of factors that affect the score. While they do value French ability more than English, it's not as overwhelming as that suggests.
Their autonomy in selecting temporary workers (including tech workers) is not full, btw - there are many cases where a Labour Market Impact Assessment is not needed, and then Quebec doesn't have veto power on those workers. Quebec will still give them a leg up based on that experience if they later apply for permanent residence - yes, even without French knowledge.
Last, KFC did rename themselves to PFK due to the language politics, but that was a business decision, not legally required. Subway, Banana Republic, Canadian Tire, and many other Anglo-named companies are still using their Anglo names as their brands here. It was similarly voluntary that Shopper's Drug Mart goes by Pharmaprix here.
As for taxes: it doesn't seem higher overall than NYC, a major US tech hub, and it includes a lot more for the money.
The Global Skills Strategy is only for a certain category of employers, mainly large ones. A startup cannot use that to hire a worker. [1]
> more points for an applicant with a bachelor's degree in computer science from anywhere in the world
Quebec's immigration system is not point based as of now. Its FCFS. Though they say its points based, there is no indication from statistics that MIDI selects workers based on points. In fact, MIDI is a blackbox when it comes to revealing the strategy that they use to select workers while Federal Express Entry is fully transparent. Bachelor's degree holders in Comp. Sc are waiting for more than 5 years for a CSQ from Quebec, while they can immigrate to other provinces within months !
There are reports of systematic discrimination by MIDI regarding the selection of applicants based on their citizenship. As a US citizen, its no wonder you are given priority than applicants from third world countries. There are two class action suites against MIDI currently regarding systematic discrimination in selecting applicants. [2] [5] [7]
Ombudsman's Annual Report About MIDI says there are 31,378 applications pending as of March 31, 2017. [3]
> Quebec will still give them a leg up based on that experience if they later apply for permanent residence
That has been on hold with no explanation from MIDI since 2017. [4]
MIDI systematically discriminates applicants even in French priority category (PEQ) if they are from China or India [5]
A forum where applicants discuss about delays from MIDI [6]
I'm going to have to defer a substantive reply due to weekend plans, but if I have time Sunday night or Monday and this topic is still receiving enough attention that it would be broadly useful, I'll do so then. (No point in a delayed reply if it's just two strangers arguing at each other in isolation from the community discussion.)
But again, many of these statements rely on inaccurate assumptions, overlook important nuances or past/present/near-future changes on each system, are not supported by the linked cites, or are otherwise inaccurate or leave the wrong impression.
I have no reason to doubt that you're discussing in good faith with good motives. But if you're learning conclusions like those in these comments from media pundits or social network posts, you may want to prefer primary sources, pay close attention to details when examining or discussing any source, and give targeted cites corresponding precisely to each point you want to support.
Have a good weekend, and see you here Sunday night or Monday if this post's conversation activity is still going.
I have no further interest in taking this conversation forward. I immigrated to Canada on Express Entry in which I got points based on my skills and that too within 3 months.
I feel for my colleagues in Quebec whose applications are on hold in Quebec with no explanation from MIDI for the past one year. If you start asking cites for all these from official source which is MIDI, I can't give you because MIDI don't have it either.
If MIDI publishes those numbers, it will reveal their discriminatory practices. Don't bother about replying. Have a great weekend.
If you meant me, I'll give a high-level reply now since the thread has mostly died down but you were still interested. If you want me to dig into the nitty-gritty nuances I was disagreeing with, and provide cites, I still can, but that feels less useful than it would have been on Friday or Saturday.
First, I actually agree with the other poster that the processing times for Quebec are too long and too slow. I didn't get any special priority as a US citizen, despite what he may have thought - it took me almost the same 32 months he found to get Quebec's approval and around the same 15 months for Canada's. This should get fixed.
However, the same was true for the federal system until 2015's switch to Express Entry. It was heavily slow and heavily backlogged. Quebec's similar switch is happening... this year. Quebec's block on most new regular skilled worker applications is to allow that. I say "most" since several types of applications are still allowed, especially from students and workers currently here temporarily.
Once that switch happens, I hope the Quebec and federal governments can work together to minimize processing time. The federal government will have to dedicate more resources if they want to reduce the 15 month part of the process - that's purely in their hands and not up to Quebec. They do the same admissibility checks much faster for federal Express Entry applicants.
Quebec's system generally lags behind the federal one. Right now, that's bad due to the slow processing times. It was however good during the time when Harper was restricting access to the older federal skilled worker system, since Quebec's was then more open. I think overall it's good to have these two different systems with different politicians making changes on different time scales, since it provides more ways into the country.
The main other important point: Quebec's system is only first-come-first-serve to decide whose applications to consider and when. The actual decision, once they've decided to consider you, is already points-based with the types of merit systems desired by the other poster. The Publications Quebec website has their legally binding regulations with the full points system, and the Immigration Quebec website has (in French) their internal administrative procedures guide which is far from a black box. Similarly, the federal government's Express Entry system is only used to decide who can apply when - a different system is used to make the actual decision on the merits, and their skilled worker program has a very similar points system to Quebec's (with different weightings).
The slowness of the current system, while it's very worth fixing, doesn't have quite the same impact as it does in the US because the options while waiting are better. Quebec graduates have the same access to post-graduate open work permits as other graduates in Canada, as do their spouses. As one pursues the permanent residence paperwork, there are ways to get work permits, temporary stay permits, and so forth without the same kind of crappy restrictions and lotteries that the US imposes on H-1B applicants and their families. The bureaucracy gets looser once you get Quebec's approval but is overall much more manageable.
In that case here are official links. Please note that Canadian permanent residency thru Quebec is a long two stage process. First obtain a CSQ document from Quebec and then apply to Federal (in paper format) which will grant you permanent residency.
* Processing delays as per MIDI's site for obtaining a CSQ:
* MIDI currently follows FCFS to issue CSQ, not point based merit system, which they are planning to implement soon.
" With the introduction of the new immigration system based on the declaration of interest, only candidates that meet the needs of Québec will be invited to submit an application for a selection certificate. This new system will make it possible to put an end to the principle of first come first serve, currently in effect for processing applications, and to considerably reduced average processing times. "
* To summarize, an immigration application thru Regular Skilled worker stream will take 15 + 32 months to complete if it goes without any glitches, but MIDI is plagued with operational issues such as loss of applicant documents, huge technical problems with Mon Projet and the recent refugee situation.
Now if anyone applies in PEQ category, you will still be delayed by 15 months in Federal stage.
So which graduate or skilled worker worth their salt will try to immigrate or stay in Quebec after graduation ? They can easily get their permanent residency within months if they move to any other province other than Quebec through the Express Entry system and other provincial nomination programs.
Why do I say all this ? Because Quebec's immigration system is so obsolete that it doesn't give importance for merit. I was a victim of the broken H1B visa system and I immigrated to Canada thru Express Entry which gave importance to my skills. How I did it might be interesting too -> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15452647
The language laws thing is not a big deal. People just get on with it.
Montreal is great. I'm here, and if my kids don't go into IT they will work in another sector and will be able to afford to live.
I'd consider SV a death sentence. Who wants to work when you will never achieve financial independence because you'll never own your own land? And if you have a huge mortgage you are your boss's bitch forever.
Yeah I find the language laws thing funny. I've worked with a crapton of people who never had to learn a word of French, and if they ever have to, then so what? French is the language here. That's like complaining about Italian in Italy.
I'm a second-generation immigrant born and raised in Montreal.
Quebec's language is French and historically speaking it has every reason to attempt to protect it. Should immigration be more accommodating towards people willing to learn French? Probably. In my lifetime though I've mostly encountered anglophones who chose Quebec out of all provinces but then refused to speak the language, so shrug.
And yeah there are stupid politicians who say stupid things, just like in the States where some promise to throw out Mexicans and Muslims.
Yes having witnessed it myself, it's tragic the self inflicted wounds Montreal takes, while peoplr still pretend it's a tech hub (only in the tiniest of sense)
For AI and ML, it now has R&D centers for Google, Facebook, and MS. It also has McGill University which is quite well regarded for AI. In that niche it's becoming a hub, though this trend is recent enough that I have to use the present progressive tense.
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.
Canadian living in the US: in my experience Canadian health care is as good or better than in the US. Waiting times are probably somewhat longer for non-emergencies because of triaging, but (again, my experience, subjective, etc) I've often felt doctors are more interested in providing care and less interested in unnecessary upselling.
I've only ever lived in the GTA, though. It's my understanding that in many places away from major cities there can be a shortage of doctors.
Canadian living in the US: in my experience Canadian health care is as good or better than in the US.
Canadian living in US as well. The one thing I've noticed is the choice of healthcare in the US (for those with good insurance). Have cancer? Pick the best hospital you can find in the area. In Canada, you might live next to a world-class institute or it might just be a regular hospital. That's where you go.
But yes, healthcare in Canada is very good. The other thing I would call out is that experimental/cutting edge technology is often available in the US before Canada.
Yup, Canadian healthcare is generally excellent. The main complaints thar hit the news are generally long wait times for elective surgeries like knee fixes.
For anything other than that I've had effectively zero wait time and excellent care. There are even free health lines you can call for basic info.
Canadian services are typically good especially for urgent care things, I only have gone private on one occasion and that was for an MRI years ago when there were fewer of them available. I had a tear in my MCL and they wanted to see the degree (relatively low priority, it wasn't a full tear and I didnt need surgery). The wait for the MRI was ~6 weeks but so just paid out of pocket privately and had the results sent to my doctor. Took 2 days and he got what he needed.
Canada has good Healthcare up to the level of US medtech about 20 years ago. Anything invented in the last 20 years is not available through Canada Health Care. They will have an occasional crock of s* like one or two radiation machines for cancer for an entire province of 5 million people.
I think the thing that improves country wide healthcare outcomes in Canada is that everyone can go to a doctor. However, outcomes for complex cases are not as good.
Here the problem is that specialists aren't that great, and combined with long wait time that leads you nowhere you potentially put your life at risk. Complaint procedures are as bureaucratic as possible so you get no redress.
Income taxes BC <> CA are pretty similar, but other taxes aren't. Gas is the equivalent of $6/gal in Canada right now (due to taxes), sales tax is 12% and a lot of products (electronics, etc) are just generally more expensive in Canada.
This is something I've been comparing. I'd pay a little less in income tax in California actually for my brackets, but even though rents etc in SV are higher, I also would be paying less for gas, groceries and any entertainment and tech purchases.
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.
I'm talking specifically about new grad salaries. It's not public information, but perusing glassdoor, H1B, acquaintances, that type of thing. I thought FAANG all adjust for location, with Bay Area being at the top. Is there any evidence that starting salaries are the same regardless of location?
It isn't in London compared to the Bay Area, nor was it in Chicago when I lived there, based on people I knew at some of those companies. This is the first time I've heard that starting salaries are identical regardless of location. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
I recently moved back from the US (SF then Detroit) to Toronto to start a new startup. I was shocked when some entrepreneurs were upset that an Amazon HQ2 may raise the prices on engineering talent in Toronto. That may be true but is extremely short-sighted (and probably means those startups aren't VC-ambitious). The Toronto area really needs Amazon, Google or another large tech company to create a signifiant engineering presence and foster a deep engineering pool.
I believe that the SFBay has nearly 500K Canadians. That's crazy.
*For now - as you say, that's a NAFTA visa and some professions are already having issues crossing the border (nurses and medical professionals lately).
It's very unclear what will happen if talks don't lead to another deal, and I don't think most small start-ups could handle the fallout if they all of the sudden need to convert their Canadian staff to another entry mechanism.
Not sure why you got downvoted there, you raise a good point about TN and NAFTA (though your assertion about nurses having issues at the border cries for a citation). I don't think you're wrong that people should be concerned about the current NAFTA negotiations, especially if they are Canadian (or Mexican) on TN or employ any Canadians or Mexicans on TN.
It is short sighted having one big player leads to spin offs to give a non tech examples from the UK.
Games workshop set up in Nottingham years ago there is now large number of spin off companies in the metal and plastic moulding - its even called the lead belt.
US salaries are much higher, the tech industry is booming in the states, and it's very simple to apply for a visa or start a consulting company to work remotely from home.
If you're a student graduating out of a Canadian college/university and are looking for ways to advance your career (while making a lot more money on the side), what's not to love about moving or working remote?
I did exactly this, and have been working remotely for a Californian company as of two months ago. All I had to do was open a sole proprietorship (a trivial errand) and a USD bank account (technically optional), and report in via email on my first day.
As a self-employed contractor, my costs are lower (working from home), I get myriad tax breaks, and my salary is not even comparable to what I could expect locally, even with having to pay for my own health and dental. I can't see myself ever going back to working locally. Hell, I have been thinking about moving into the mountains recently, just for the scenery.
I'm curious what percentage of that salary goes to pay for housing. I don't think a higher salary makes sense if the other expenses are proportionally higher.
So here's the thing, yes your percentage might be higher. But what's left over is in absolute terms huge. For example, if you have an extra $3000 a month after paying for housing, that's pretty powerful even if you are paying 40% for housing. Sure in a different place you might be at 30% but your post-pay is like $1000. So net wise you're 3x better even with a "worse" rent percentage.
Canadian working in SV for almost a decade here. Yeah sure, it was about the technology, job, but a lot of it has to do with lifestyle (which the article fails to mention, and can't really be measured).
Since I've been here, I've learned how to drive stick shift, sky dived, and been on way more adventure than what I could have if I stayed at home. It's about adventure and taking a risk. Not necessarily about the money, but being paid more doesn't hurt ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I follow what you're getting at, but don't you think a large part of that is due to your own attitudes/perception? It's not like there aren't people in Canada who are doing exciting things like sky diving, let alone driving stick.
When I looked at relocating from Vancouver/Victoria a decade ago, my wife's #1 requirement was "it has to have 4 seasons". I love the mountains so that means some winter/snow. Winters out east are not a lot of fun and the lower mainland/PNW is just so depressing.
Tech + Opportunities + Seasons = a pretty short list (especially in Canada)
I grew up in the PNW, and I absolutely agree, I hated nothing more than feeling like I could never do anything outside because you can't count on the weather being acceptable unless it's between July 5 and September 5. It's not that it's bad that often, it's just so unreliable.
I think PNW winters are tricky. I'd actually rather spend the winter in a city like Toronto. I grew up in a similar city climate-wise and having a real winter made it easier to get outside & skate or snowshoe or something. The fewer hours of sunlight were worse than the cold/snow.
True, a lot of things is due in how a person's attitude and perception. I think somewhat has to do with freedom and positive cash flow and another user commented.
It's a well known fact that the amazing opportunity of learning to drive stick shift is something you can't do in Canada. Luckily the US are there for that!
No, you haven't driven stick shift until you have driven stick shift in Bangalore. Not to mention you'll have a new found appreciation for gears 1-3 (of the 5 or 6 possible levels you can go up to).
I think a big part of what the parent is talking about is how the community attracts like-minded people?
I moved to Calgary, AB in 2002 and a lot of people I'd meet grew up somewhere else and where economic migrants. It's a big deal to leave home, even for a good job, and lots cant/won't do it. It seems the further east you come from the stronger the pull of tradition/family/regionalism.
So, yes you can do any of the things mentioned pretty much anywhere, but the sentiment of more adventurous people => more willing to relocate for work seems to ring true.
Was it the opportunities that are available in SV that make it possible to go on these adventures or something else like increased cash flow combined with more free time? Despite the higher salaries how are you coping with the high cost of living and high tax rates?
edit: Think I misread your comment at first, but I'll leave this here anyway for some added perspective— comparing to Toronto.
Average rent in SV ~$3500
Average rent in TO ~$2000
Rent 1yr TO ~$24000
Take home after income tax before other deductions and expenses at $55000/yr is ~ $44000. Count on another couple grand in standard deductions before medical insurance.
Then add gov. or bank student loans payments (if you have them), groceries, transit, etc. Let me just say that you won't be buying a car. Maybe a dog if you're lucky— but if you work full time from an office and commute 30 mins to 1 hr each way that probably means ~$450/mo in dog-walker payments. So maybe not.
You won't end up on the street and you can save if you don't really do anything but go sit in a park, but it does make saving difficult.
To purchase a house here it's estimated that you'll need to be making at least $100,000/yr before the bank will even look at you. So there's that.
Right, it's a bit of everything. Kind of like "the world is your oyster" feeling. I'm not speaking for everyone, but when I was in my early 20s, I think as long as cash was a net positive (ie. have savings), it was enough so didn't think too much about cost of living and high tax rates. Ofc, we're talking about late 2000s, so living was a bit cheaper.
I mean sure, I had a studio at Post and Leavenworth to myself, newly renovated for $1200 in 2010. That same place went for $1900 in 2012. Now it's $2649 -- I just looked. I think it's fair to say the cost living has changed from the late 2000s.
I don't think there is one area specifically. I've actually lived all over the Bay Area. It's more of a sense that you'll be given a lot of opportunities and it's up to you to make the most of it.
I'm also from Canada, but I have a very different experience from the other posts. I live in Quebec and speaking french as a primary language. I am still a CS student, but from what I have seen (I am involved a lot with other universities) the retention rate in Quebec is much higher. Only a minority is leaving Quebec for internships or jobs later on. Even if most of us speak perfectly fine english the culture is very different. I see very good people accepting 40-50k salaries for junior positions. Making a lot of money in Quebec is kind of taboo, so seeking a high salary is not well seen.
Last thing, our education system is basically free (1600 CAD per semester). After 3 years of university most of people in CS have at least 10-12k in their savings already.
If someone has numbers for Quebec only, I would not be surprised too see the emigration isn't really an issue.
I can definitely see people wanting to stay in an area and accept lower wages because they identify strongly with the area (in the US and Canada, I’m betting Quebec ranks near the top in terms of this) or because they identify looking for a high salary as taboo.
At the same time, it’s a sure-fire recipe for a brain drain, as undoubtedly some very smart people will emigrate for 2x-3x higher wages (based on your numbers), and just as importantly very few people will want to immigrate and accept lower wages. On the time scale of decades this definitely creates a big issue.
I'm in QC as well and was lucky enough to land a 65k job right out of school, so it was awkward to see my classmates not only accepting 45-50k salaries but also trying to rationalize them. I think you might be right about the taboo.
But otherwise I love Montreal. My salary today is definitely peanuts compared to SV but I live comfortably here and I saved way more than 12k during school thanks to internships and the low tuition costs you mentioned. The city is very culturally rich and I just really enjoy it here.
Maybe it's not only the money. In Silicon Valley, engineers are treated like stars, not sent to the basement with the worst office. In most cities, the business leaders run the show, and treat engineers as a commodity, to be added or disposed of when needed: "let's go faster by adding more engineers, who cares about the talent level, what's the difference".
This is very true but I think it might be slowly changing as the older generations age out. I think it has to do with the old management styles/structures still hanging on, where IT is still treated as it was 20, 30, more years ago.
Let's face it, today we are hard pressed to find almost any organization where IT/IS is not a critical part of the organization.
I think as organizations change to more modern, organic, less hierarchical structures, the importance of IT is changing. It is going from being a "separate concern" to an "integrated concern". New students are being taught technology at younger and younger ages, which means they can combine it with other fields of study, and thus "business" and "IT" are finally closer to being the same exact thing.
Right now, people are flocking to Silicon Valley with the currently somewhat true but somewhat misguided belief (IMHO) that "that is where all the smart people and opportunities are". It is not the ONLY place the smart people and opportunities are.
There are smart people and opportunities everywhere. Sure, if they cluster in one place, that's entirely possible and makes that place valuable. However, when the cost of living exceeds some natural limit, I suspect that it will be infeasible to continue to grow Silicon Valley further - and when that happens, the desire to save money and shave off expenses will naturally drive businesses, organizations and people to other areas.
No, because absent taxes, your disposable income has increased by the same percentage as the increase in salary. Taxes make the increase in disposable income even more pronounced.
This math mistake is the key to the fallacy that a cost-of-living increase zeroes out an increase in salary.
I'm surprised at the lack of answers that suggest a positive opinion about working in Canada. I personally love the health care and other social benefits, the winters, the multi-cultural city (Toronto), the people, and the lack of gun ownership, among many other things. SV strikes me as a monoculture. I don't want to live at my workplace. The opportunities are fewer but there's also higher demand. My workplace has been struggling to find senior talent with very competitive salaries and perks.
Tech workers in Silicon Valley generally have very good health care. Winters in the Toronto area are horrible (I grew up in Western NY and would never dream of returning) and the climate in California is much more hospitable. San Francisco is a very diverse city if you stray outside the tech bubble. California isn't very gun friendly either, and gun control isn't exactly an issue that has a huge impact on where most people decide to live, either.
I've loved every visit to Canada that I've ever made, but when you factor in the weather and lower pay, I would never live there.
That's what's competitive in the Bay Area or Seattle for senior talent. While there are benefits to Canada as you mentioned, for a lot of people they don't make up a 50% pay cut.
How many jobs are actually paying that? The salaries posted on the "Who Is Hiring?" threads don't corroborate that, nor does my experience in NYC (which is supposed to be on par with those areas).
Google has at least 1000 employees in the Bay area in the $300k+ income bracket. The entry-level job at Google pays like a staff engineer at a mortal company.
I eye roll at the "SV is a monoculture" as if somehow you could summarize 5 million people in a highly multicultural and dynamic region as a monoculture, but Toronto is so awesome.
If you are finding your experience in the bay area is a monoculture, then it's only your own fault.
If you think Silicon Valley (and increasingly, parts of San Francisco) is not a monoculture, it's because you're a card-carrying member of the monocoluture and you don't know it.
And better weather and the cachet of being in a world city.
The brain drain has been going on for decades now...
But lately, the general Canadian media has claimed there is a reversal.
One case in point is Montreal being proclaimed an "AI Hub". It's considered an "AI hub" mainly because of one of the fathers of AI is from there (and one his students coming up with the concept of Adversial networks) and a few companies opening satellite AI branches such as Google and Microsoft. Nonetheless, that likely amounts to a few hundred jobs at best, involved in cutting-hedge AI/ML/DL. Toronto also has a few well-known AI research centers. And these centers haven't seemed to have produced noticeable concrete results. But only time will tell if these pan out, and more importantly produce enough jobs to keep local talent, which in my mind is still very doubtful.
Better weather, definitely. But is anyone claiming San Franciso or Seattle are more 'world city' than Toronto or Montreal? By almost any definition of world city, they would be very wrong.
I'm from Toronto and San Francisco is a world class city. Last time I visited it felt like a city from the future. It felt alive even the homeless have evolved trying to get you to buy poetry instead of just begging.
There is a peculiar cultural issue where many Canadians think of work as being granted a job as a reward for their virtuousness instead of being part of a market. You can hear it every time someone complains how qualified they are but unhappy with their lot. As though business were some great paternal force that gave out jobs and higher salaries for good behavior.
When you view this ostensible sense of fairness as entitlement to rewards for having merely complied with social norms, in addition to a general suspicion of deal making, it becomes clear why they will work for less.
There is also a structural problem in Canadian tech where much of the real money is made by "consulting," companies who exist as the result of it being difficult to fire and lay off employees, and the delta of high marginal income vs. corporate tax rates. These companies take a %50 or more cut of a contractor's pay to insulate employers from the regulatory and tax risks of keeping and firing real employees. That is, to maintain public entitlements instead of private ones. Companies still pay top dollar for talent, just not to the talent.
So long as you aren't a busybody about what the Jones's are up to, Canada has a great quality of life. Unfortunately for Globe writers, that temptation appears to be too great.
Same deal in Norway, consulting is huge because businesses want the convenience of firing at will but are not allowed due to employment law. Example scanario:
Salary for an experienced engineer (employed) is $80k.
Salary for a consultant (employed) is $80k. This consultant is hired out to a company that wants his services for $230k usd per year, but the company can now terminate this contract at will.
The consulting company has to pay the employee's salary regardless of whether they have a contract or not. The consulting company sets aside a portion of the $150k/year/employee profit to pay their employees if it's hard to get a new contract, but of course they will lay off their surplus workforce if there is ever an economic crisis. It' a super profitable business when talent is in demand. If demand is unusually high, the consulting companies compete to provide slightly higher salaries, so they do push the median wages up. So at least that's good.
The consulting companies love hiring new grads, because then they get away with paying a $50k salary, but earn the same profit. The clients can't tell the difference!
If you're smart, senior and well-connected, you'll get your own consulting contracts without the middleman, and make $230k/year directly. You do take some more risk; if the market tanks, you'll be laid off immediately instead of with 3-12 months notice. You'll also be the first to go.
As a freelancer, it can be hard to get contracts with the best clients, because they don't want to spend effort hiring recruiters that recognize talent, and hence pick exclusively from the top 10 consulting companies.
So to answer your question: If this setup looks suspiciously like a shady wage fixing scheme, it's because countries with a predomimantly Protestant work ethic like Norway and Canada don't think that's such a big deal. People were born equal, they're supposed to make equal money. (Company owners notwithstanding, now as during the Industrial Revolution). Market efficiencies don't factor into it at all, and you're a right-wing conservative if you suggest otherwise.
I'm in this situation, that is I'm graduating next year and I already have a job lined up in SV.
Personally, there just isn't anything for me here. I hate winter (depression for 7 months, anyone?). Everything is far. Entertainment is sparse unless it involves 1) hockey or 2) drinking, or both. Pay is shit. Prices are shit. Selection is shit (have you tried using Amazon CA?). Food, at least where I am, is good but no seafood.
Above else, thought, in SV I just feel like I belong. On the train here, an old man snapped at me for reading a maths text with some anti-intellectual line.
Well.. grabbing the light rail in the Bay Area and changing at Santa Clara around 9pm was an eye opening experience. Let’s just say an old man snapping at my geeky reading would’ve been the least of my concerns.
I had one guy pushing a cart trying to sell me drugs, a bunch of school kids leering at everyone and making a nuisance of themselves and just a general feeling that everyone with any sort of reasonable level of income was not using public transit.
I’m from London, where you’ll be on the tube train with everyone from cleaners to financiers. It’s pretty democratic. Not so in San Jose at all. Very depressing in fact.
See, that's the difference with much of Europe, including London.
Those financiers probably don't use the bus that often, as they have a home just a couple of minutes walk from the station. But they won't have a prejudice against using the bus.
But why isn’t it used by professionals? It seemed clean enough, punctual and conveniently located as well as being reasonably priced. Is there an alternative (besides owning a car) that I’m missing for travelling around the conurbation of Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, San Jose et al.
There isn't an issue with VTA itself (aside from maybe the expectation that it companies would move their offices to locations accessed by VTA rather than vice versa).
The South Bay is just really suburban and car-friendly, and the VTA was a failure as a result because most people in the South Bay are happy travelling by car don't need to use the VTA. In contrast, Caltrain is used to travel to SF, which isn't car friendly, so a lot more professionals use it.
Not that I advocate Vancouver in its entirety, but Vancouver has good food, good pay, and loads of outdoors activities and weekend adventure possibilities along with a shit-ton of tech jobs that need filling. The weather is pretty normal too, not far off of SF.
Problem with Vancouver is it's kind of dull entertainment-wise. Lacks vibrancy of some US cities. It's more or less as expensive to live as SF is, and obviously has less of a startup culture.
But overall I'd agree Canada is not all that appealing to people who have choices. Had I been able to choose when I was younger I'd have not ended up in Vancouver, but it sure beats out (IMO) London, UK which was my alternative.
I went to Toronto last summer for a couple of days, the area by the water was fairly nice, but aside from that it felt very oppressive - lots of roads, flyovers, and cars with priority.
I know Canadians like to think of themselves as "different", but I could see more difference between the three cities I'd visited in the previous couple of weeks - NY, DC and LA than I could between Toronto and anywhere else in the US
Perhaps I didn't stay long enough, but if I compare with other cities, like Berlin, Rome, Lisbon, London, Singapore, Nairobi, Sydney, Delhi, Tokyo, etc, Toronto just felt like a typical North American city.
Edmonton is my home town. There's better options here in the Toronto area and our winter is not so long. Forget what people out west say about it. It's mostly pretty good here, depending on what you're looking for. Vibrant city.
I have very similar feelings in Calgary although it's improving slowly.
But I have spent a lot of time in silicon valley and it has recently felt a lot worse, dangerous and gross. I hope my next trip brightens my spirits but it's getting harder for me to love the bay area.
I think something even stronger would be true if you asked about non-CA US states. Why would Canada, at 1/10th the US population, have more of an independent tech locus than does Texas (which has a population comparable to Canada)? Is this just a difference of nations re-distributing wealth internally but not between nations?
Austin is a huge tech town, and rapidly growing. I get a lot of recruiter emails to go there. Same with KC, but to a lessor extent.
I was just in Montreal - the difference in prices with the US was staggering. You forget how wealthy we are, sometimes, even compared to the rest of the developed world. (Had an incredible French meal with 2 bottles of wine over 3 hours and it came out to ~$90 a head American)
I don't think you're disagreeing? There will be reasons to have some local tech workers and entrepreneurs in all large cities, including Austin, Dallas, Toronto, and Montreal. But there will also be global nexuses of them in places like SV, and the higher wages in SV vs. Dallas/Toronto reflects the value of the nexuses (and is the economic mechanisms that induces workers to move there).
I'm not clear what you're saying here, possibly because I don't often have 3 hour French meals. $90 sounds neither outlandishly expensive for a fine meal, nor cheap.
Agreed. And I'd say different countries have different "adoption curves" relating to technology. Think x-axis as being how developed an idea/technology is and the y-axis as how much the country bets on it.
Canada is more "courageous" in some senses, but very conservative in others. I'd describe its adoption curve as flat in the beginning and then bending upwards.
Canada's diversifying its job investment portfolio around jobs in high-tech and pulling that funding out of natural resources. You're starting to see that across the country. Calgary's starting to become a mini tech center for example.
Calgarian who works remotely for Mozilla here: If I were to stay in Calgary and work for somebody else, I'd probably have to accept at least a 40% cut in total comp.
I am effectively priced out of the local dev market at this point.
Texas (Austin, Dallas, Houston) has successfully attracted a huge amount of company headquarters and regional offices. There's a great cost of living, an existing talent pool, and great local entertainment culture, plus no income tax and great weather. Canada has none of this.
I'm a Canadian software engineer working in Seattle. One time on a flight back to the homeland I sat next to a Canadian tech VC. We spoke about the tech scene in Canada, and eventually she started complaining about how all the good engineers leave for the States. I mentioned my experience with the massive 50% pay gap in software engineer salaries, and she said something about how it was the fault of the exchange rate and couldn't be helped. It was a ridiculous excuse and the conversation died pretty quickly after that. If VCs want tech talent, they better pony up the money.
Funny times we live in, people think as if this was something like hunting or riding a horse.
I wonder if in the history there was a moment where people organised "hour of making baskets" or "everyone should write books"
In times past, skilled professionals were more sensible and had guilds and trade unions to protect their value. It's funny to see how tech megacorps are easily able to subvert programmers' "passion" and "hacker attitude" to promote programs that devalue their labor.
Reading HN you'd expect people shunning US because of Trump, but reality seems to be different. Which isn't surprising since economy is booming and unemployment is in all time low.
Yeah, that article focuses on H-1B workers, which is a much different dynamic. H-1Bs are available for 2 calendar days in April, cost $6-10,000 all in, and you wind up with a 33% chance of starting your job in October -- and a 67% chance of being told to try again next year. Then if you move to another job you often lose your place in the very long green card line most of these people are in.
Canadians (via NAFTA) are in a much different visa situation. Access to the same jobs, but the TN-1 status costs $50USD, is adjudicated at the border with no caps or quotas, and is valid for 3 years, indefinitely renewable (so long as you promise not to renew it indefinitely).
It makes sense to me that people tired of the total lack of security and reason in the H-1 line head to Canada after a few years job experience in the bay to make them extra desirable. And Express Entry [1] means they can have permanent residency in 6 months or less. Whereas Canadians in the NAFTA line go south for the 3X pay. I'm really curious how many of us (I'm in that boat) end up coming home after lining their pockets.
Is it really that easy though for the rest of the world? As an european developer AFIAK there a basically two visas
* H-1B: Hard to get the quota as some big companies abuse it for cheap work
* L-1: Requires 1 year of working at the european branch of the company
H-1B seems really difficult to get, is the L1 easier? At the end of my studies at the moment and considered Silicon Valley, but dismissed the idea due to visa issues and the high cost of living.
I'd like to see quotas based on population for various countries- China and India would still get the lions share, but that would allow Europe and other geographies to get a fair number in to, so the big Indian body shops don't snap everything up.
* Your spouse will not be able to work on your visa (TN / H1B)
* "Full insurance coverage" does not mean for your spouse. Be prepared to pay for a delivery if you want to have children
* Your child will have much higher post-secondary student loans
* Crime, Firearms et al.
IMO coming to SV is a young/single person's game (hence braindrain from grads). But a bad idea for established people or people who want a family / social safety.
I disagree. The income disparity increases at senior levels. I hit a ceiling in Toronto where I hard trouble growing my career and making more than $180,000 CAD TC. Moving to silicon valley my experience was able to fetch over $500,00 USD TC. Sure it meant that for a year and a half my spouse can't work but that's not a big deal.
As someone who works/hires in the field, the salary reports are all wrong. I have not seen a single one yet that was close to accurate. In software a 90th percentile engineer can easily make 2-3x what a 50th percentile engineer makes. (And it can get even crazier as you move higher up the tail.) This is not true in virtually any other industry, which seems to cause problems for the salary reports.
> Sure it meant that for a year and a half my spouse can't work
Where does the year and a half come from? Green card processing delay? That can be 10+ years for approximately 50% of the world population (Indians + Chinese)
If you're working at a software company in the US, the odds are good you make enough that you're not living near any significant crime unless by choice (for instance, for "city life"). Crime is seriously pocketed in the US. And (perhaps fortunately) the number of people I've known who've ever seen an illegally owned or used gun is vanishingly small.
You forgot being able to buy a house. If you're content with renting forever it's not an issue, but if you ever want to buy you'd better hope that both you and your partner work in tech.
Vancouver has changed a lot in the past 5 years. There are now two tiers of tech pay: the smaller companies that pay from low to ok and then a handful of SV companies that have moved in and are paying top tier money.
The dollar numbers are almost on par with the top SV salaries, albeit not with the current exchange rate. That fluctuates though.
Amazon opening up a new HQ in Vancouver will just strengthen this. The downside is that right now it is just a half dozen or so companies paying in this top range.
Very similar situation in Montréal. Handful of SV companies with offices here, a few success stories, and everything else far far below in terms of compensation.
>There is a cost to such a heavy brain drain: governments spend billions subsidizing the cost of university education, while students who go on to work for foreign companies help fuel the economic growth of those countries
there's a pretty simple fix for that: have the government bill/charge you the subsidy when you're in university. it's not a student loan, and it doesn't appear on your credit report. you pay it back when you start working (every dollar you pay in taxes pays back $x that debt. you don't get charged intrest or are obligated to pay it as long as you stay in canada, but if you move to the US (or any other country), you start accumulating intrest and have to work out a payment plan.
Firstly, many Waterloo STEM students already do this based on the school's curriculum of interweaving work and study terms. Fortunately and unfortunately, these are exactly the students being lured away into the US.
Secondly the Ontario Government (i.e. Wynne Government and potentially NDPs), has lowered tuition costs for families making under 160k by 30% with the intention of further lowering the costs to (eventually) free in the future. In other words, they fully intend to increase government debt to fund tuition costs for all Ontario students (except if you're middle class and higher). But guess what? Will this really have an impact on Waterloo STEM grads? Unlikely. Increasing payback doesn't affect the students who CAN afford it.
That would work to make it so that tax money doesn't get used on brai drain but when you are facing double the income to move to the states it is still economically viable to move. I only see your solution solving cost of subsidies not the larger issue.
The real fix is to provide appropriate incentives to build a technology industry. Unfortunately, programs to date have been rife for abuse and mainly only benefit those who know how to game the system (see the scandals around IRAP/SRED consultants).
The new government has introduced a Canadian equivalent to SBIR, called Innovative Solutions Canada [1], which seems very promising. It's basically a carbon copy of the American SBIR program, which had had a remarkable impact in the US for bootstrapping small high tech firms that are too risky for VCs to the point where they can seek investment.
The other piece of the puzzle is the VC environment. Canada simply does not have a cadre of experienced venture capitalists with access to funds and willingness to take risks. Until that changes, Canadian tech companies will continue to hop the border after reaching a certain size, because it's in their best interest to leave for the US where funding is better.
Question - now that Amazon is bringing "3000 jobs" to Vancouver, are they going to be paying wages consistent with their US employees, or with (or just above) the local market rate?
Typically companies that want to open a remote office pay people based on the local market conditions (although Amazon might set their pay to be try to be towards the top of the market, so they could still end up paying better than other companies in the area).
I guess the more interesting question (as one of the people mentioned in the article) is how many of us go back after a few years, and how many stay in the US?
I've seen a lot of my friends and coworkers returning home to their respective countries in the last couple of years -- especially under the Trump administration. Repatriating the experience gained from working at some of the most successful businesses worldwide could be a huge benefit to Canada.
The financial success of the titans of the tech industry is driven by monopolies and heavy use of tax havens. The salaries are generous for these reasons. Canada - and indeed any country - could easily do something about this if it had the political will to do so. Strengthening and enforcing anti trust laws would be one example; cracking down on aggressive tax avoidance would be another. Then you'd at least have a level playing field for Canadian companies.
Your tax premise is wrong. The proof is right there in the actual tax numbers.
Average world-wide statutory corporate tax rate: ~22%
National statutory rates: Netherlands 25%; Italy 24%; Norway 23%; Sweden 22%; Portugal 21%; Russia 20%; Estonia 20%; Finland 20%; UK 19%; Czech 19%; Poland 19%; Belarus 18%; Lithuania 15%; Bulgaria 10%; Hungary 9%
Europe statutory average: ~19%
The effective rates are that much lower. I'll be sure to hold my breath until Russia's 20% statutory rate starts producing vast tech giants.
Effective tax rates for 2016 (pre-tax changes):
Amazon 36%; Intuit 33%; Netflix 28%; TI 27%; Apple 25%; Oracle 22%; Priceline 21%; Intel 20%; Google 19%; VMWare 19%; Adobe 18%; Facebook 18%; Cisco 17%; Qualcomm 16%; Microsoft 15%
So your premise is that the tech giants having effective rates comparable to Europe, is what produced their extraordinary successes. Be sure to let Europe in on the secret.
I'd choose a longer period than 1 year - the are always ups and downs from one year to the next. Let's take Amazon as an example: their effective tax rate from 2012 for 5 years is 12%. They can only pay that because they have armies of tax accountants looking for loopholes. Small local businesses - the ones who might compete with Amazon - can't afford those accountants so they pay the statutory tax rates.
I experienced this myself as a dual citizen that considered working in Canada. I received an offer in the US that was $60k higher than offers I received from Canadian startups.
Does anyone know what factors (cultural, political or other) contribute to Canadian companies paying so much less than the American ones? You'd think competitive businesses would notice this affect and adjust?
There simply are no large native top-tier tech companies like Amazon or Google in Canada that need large amounts of top-tier talent. The local players are much smaller and are competing for local talent with banks and insurance companies. Less competition means lower wages. Because of permissive immigration laws, there has also been a lot of immigration of software developers from Asia and eastern Europe, which is great for the employers, but exacerbates the problem for local talent.
There's been a few matters that bugged me in Canada. When I finally figured out the root cause, they always were high-level policies. From poor-decision making? Perhaps.
Canada is a cold country. It must incentivize the best more than the states to move to here. Let's assume that's not a factor!
Canada admits anyone as an immigrant. It is not a merit-based system. It is a point-based system.
Lets consider ad-hoc tech jobs first: The Canadian companies have access to a large pool of people with 10 years of experience in SQL from a new immigrant, willing to accept low-pay because he is just starting out. So the entry level jobs don't exist for new grads. The brilliant new grads never make it up the ad hoc ladder. The move away at a young age.
High-tech jobs require a community willing to hold foot in Toronto geographically. The VC's appear to not be interested. Why do they think they can't compete with the States? Because the VC must trust the high-tech community first. Those in spotlight are not the types of people I trust. Not the UofT researchers, at least not all of them. But why would they lie? The universities in Ontario is a place of business first, then whatever research means, then science and facts. We researchers notice it. Those who are capable, and have clear conscious move. They never move up the spotlight ladder here.
Why is it a place of business? Let's assume all north american universities are. To the rest of the world, are led to believe that Canada is effectively United States. So a degree from a Canadian University is worth a lot in the far east, for example. They will also learn English. They pay less, and you know, Canada has successfully marketed itseld as the friendly country as opposed to United states. So they come here to study. For a master's degree from top ten American schools, you have to apply and get in. You can walk into a master's in Canadian school if paying out of pocket. Now their homeland psychology replaces Canada with America on their degree. The universities here are filled with incapable students, and professors who have to deal with them. Still, this doesn't explain why we can't trust the researchers.
The Universities need grad student TAs to be able to keep their international students. The university will not pay the TAs properly, because it is a business. The TAs went on strike three years ago. The university of Toronto blinks its public relation powers to make it look like TAs are being paid 50$/hour, because that's how they worded their contract. All gimmicks, facts are that it is common for international grad students to make the bare minimum. See if you can find the actual number of their website. I'm not willing go browse it. At some point it was less than 14000$/year, from all sources of income combined.
Now here's the stupidity? part. The question mark is not there by accident. The grad students are not allowed legally to work other jobs. If they do, they can be fired. This law is set by the ontario university presidents, sitting in a room deciding it together back in 80s or 90s, and it has been in effect since. Here's the next stupid part. No one can setup an part-time job/internship system that works for graduate students, because it is illegal.
They actually allow grad students to work 10hours per week in other jobs. You'd say that's great, but TA counts as a part of it. So let's say the grads go to the media to create a public outcry. The university can respond with facts that they can work 10hours per week. The grads have to explain a whole complicated thing to the media. But why would the public really care? These are international grad students, from third world countries, making a lot of money, living in downtown Toronto. For all the public cares, they think the grad students have it good. The companies interested in these talent pools cannot hire them.
Onto why the researchers can not be trusted: Canadian grad students who have it much better and have access to better funding, view these international grad students as friends. These students didn't come here for money, they came to study, to do research, to hopefully meet other same-minded individuals. But they are being mistreated. What's the cultural problem here? Many major american companies grew out of universities. You need trust and a community to do that. I never saw that here, particularly among internationals. Another major factor is that networking requires money, very little money, exposable, maybe 10$? and of all the random networking incidents, 1 in 60 has a chance of great success? That's 600$. Why would they get on the subway and go to a meeting they don't know who is there, to just pay for a drink? Or worst! Dinner. Money is a major barrier between the poor and the affluent. Our society is designed to be that way. And when international grads have no money to network, they must amp up their work to be heard.
So the quality of their work falls. The student accidentally writes up what he's done, or maybe makes up data because he isn't paying attention, or because he is mistreated and doesn't care, etc etc etc. He just wants to finish the degree requirements. The professor has no way to know. Specially where theory falls short, or even worse, where the professor gradually gets more misled about what is going on in their lab. So now the professor fails to get new funding, because nothing really works in their lab. But they need funding, and the new child is on the way. One last paper for tenure.
So the VC's learn via their own ways to be much more skeptic of what the researchers say. The Ontario system makes its education money. The grad students never get together to create the next Apple, they never remain here and never truely feel at home. They will move somewhere else if they intend to start a company. Those who remain and build a tech company, can identify other good tech people, it is mt expectation that they keep their companies out of spotlight.
That is why there is no high-tech well paying jobs in Canada. If there is, it is rare, or it is not advertised. If if is advertised, it is even more rare, imagine how many apply. There is no system that allows for a tech career here. Either you are a bright person who can make your own flow, or you are an outsider. There is zero shortage of talent here, despite the poor pay. The problem is stupidity?.
The point-based immigration, the fact that Canadians are portrayed as friendly Americans, is the problem. I sometimes have this possibly wrong impression that Canadians remained conservative because of the immigration laws. Some immigrants learn that people in toronto are nice, but it is only the surface, even with each other. Perhaps it's just me? I have not experience this level of distance with any other culture I've come in contact with.
In other industries, if workers are paid so cheaply in a city, this would incentivize more companies to move there, as their labor costs are much lower. But, for software engineering, companies aren't price sensitive. This is why the bay area is so popular: most software companies here don't mind paying x2 to x3 the salary.
Well this is scary, I am thinking of immigrating to Canada and get myself a Tech job (Mobile Dev), its between Canada & Germany right now and I think I have a better chance in Canada because I dont need to learn German to thrive and the permanent residence has much more reasonable maintanance terms once you get it.
You should be fine. This article is saying you'd earn even more in the US. But, Canadian tech workers do quite well compared to the median canadian. It's just compared to US tech salaries that a large gap exists.
So all you people making $100K+ salary, how much are you actually saving per month?
I make half that, live in Vancouver, own a car, and still invest $1,000 a month. I already have more money saved than 99% of Canadians and I'm only 27.
I imagine you Americans with six figure salaries are saving 3-5K per month? Crazy.
It’s not that hard to save at least half of your net salary, (4-6k a month) and still live well & travel etc. On top of the base salary companies usually offer stock options or shares than can be $100k-250k a year and bonuses. If the company does well the value of the stock can increase or multiply.
I work in Atlantic Canada remotely for a US company. It's great pay for where I live.
I was offered three jobs at the same time. One, local, paid half of my current job. Another, remote for a company in Vancouver, paid 71.5% of my current job.
Average house in Toronto or Vancouver costs about the same as in the valley. Senior devs rarely make more then 100-110k USD. No wonder people, myself included, at least consider moving.
> Average house in Toronto or Vancouver costs about the same as in the valley.
I don't think that's accurate. I was just in Vancouver last week and took a peek at the real estate listings. I could sell my 1734 sq ft house here in the Bay Area, get one twice as big in Vancouver, and still have quite a lot left over.
GVRD (Greater Vancouver) in general uses larger land size for detached house (unfortunately, otherwise more properties can be built).
Anywhere else in Canada (Alberta, Ontario), detached houses tend to be smaller.
In Burnaby (not Vancouver proper)
For CAD$1.7m, you'll get a new-ish duplex (4BR, 3BA).
For CAD $1m, you'll get a townhouse (3BR, 2.5BA).
Vancouver prices tend to hover around 10-30% more than the numbers I listed above.
1BR Apartment in Vancouver probably cost $650-700k.
I think it's tricky to compare Apple to Apple (house X sqft vs same house Y sqft) because it won't be. The comparison has to be generalized a little bit with "Detached House vs Detached House in Desirable Location 'Y' ".
I think most Canadians (mostly Toronto and Vancouver) that are having hard times when it comes to housing price are the ones who didn't jump to the market before 2009, which is hard to do even back then because there aren't many hi-tech companies paying high salary.
Salesforce hadn't opened an office until 2010. Amazon didn't explode the compensation scene until 2016.
I'm an American but hate the US tech/SF/NYC scene (sorry), and I don't care much for money above reasonable living wage. Would it be easy for me to relocate to Canada? I've always scratched off moving abroad for concern over the complexity, but if there is a demand for me in Canada and it is easy it is definitely something I would likely do. I'm not willing to go through 10 years of legal craziness though which it what I have always imagined it to be.
Where I live, this is a great salary and quality of life is very high. Life is great for the family too. Hard to complain about any of that.
The tech scene, however is lacking. Opportunities lack. I wonder if I am doing my career a disservice at times.
I'm considering looking for remote work with a U.S. company expand options, but remote work is harder to come by for sure and that also limits options.
$73K to $130 - $140 is an enormous difference. Like it or not, they need to pay more if they want top talent.
Not sure what they can do to change that, I'm seeing a lot of interesting ideas in these comments. But, harsh truth, if you're paying that far below market rates in the states, I would expect almost all of Canada's talented software devs to look abroad, it's just not nearly enough money.
I have heard the compensation is a big drag for tech jobs in CA. But I don't really understand why that is. If tech hiring is so brutal, why wouldn't the wages be more in line with what their neighbors just south in the USA are paying? After all, if there is a brain drain and tech works from CA are leaving (in part due to comp, presumably), then why not pay more?
Artifical market capture. We used to be a cheaper alternative because of the dollar, now its a business model. But we havent come to terms with the fact that changing jobs is almost frictionless. Switch github and slack and youre mostly on your way.
I really wish canadian companies would pay more, but its like game theory. Why pay more when you dont “have to”?
That study means nothing. Canadians will move to Silicon Valley, or work on Silicon Valley projects from here. Governments have little policy leverage on borderless tech companies these days.
(Disclosure: I'm a one man Canadian company - geocode.xyz - happily working in Canada although most of my clients are outside of Canada.)
Something I didn't know until recently is how much better the wages are for Canadians that work as contractors to large companies/banks that bill to their own companies. I understand that this is probably out of reach to younger folks with no experience but finally realized the appeal of a contractor here.
Yes, if you are okay with forgoing benefits and vacation and know the hiring manager, then you can often double your take home (if they really need you, or you have a special skill set can ask for more obviously). Often contractors are hired through recruiters and I've heard of at least one recruiter taking an additional 50% on top of what was being paid to the contractor, which would result in the salary you can negotiate being much less, so not going through a recruiter makes this easier.
In my small town I'm trying to find a junior sysadmin/network admin job but 99.8% of the jobs are developers. I say nay to the news people leaving in fact they seem to be hiring!
And anytime I see news about Canada it seems Waterloo is mentioned making amazing things, quantum radar was the last story I read about.
Oh I understand that but from my perspective my small city of 70,000 seems to have a really vibrant developer scene. Each year it seems to grow more it's nice to see such a different industry do so well here.
Twenty years ago jobs here would have been food service or blue collar jobs like farming, fishing, welding. Now there are people coming here to work many are not locals which is also great they bring a new perspective on the world.
There wasn't even an official computer science program at the local University until roughly the mid 90s. I made an attempt at a CS degree in the early 2000s and the assistant prof (my age!) said he had to leave to get his CS degree at another Uni.
IMHO, while everyone whines about Canada’s lackluster funding environment or culture of risk avoidance, the real problem is SR&ED.
American investors and founders are always stunned to learn that a Canadian small business can get about 60% of each engineer’s salary back in the form of a refundable tax credit. This amounts to a silent partner in every Canadian tech startup - a partner who is non dilutive and (crucially) who doesn’t care at all whether the venture makes money.
Sounds great, but here's the catch: SRED allows companies that should have died long ago to keep on living, draining the talent pool for projects that are commercially “meh” at best.
And it doesn’t take an economist to figure out that if a country rewards non performing companies through government incentives, investment will be crowded out. And that’s exactly what we see in Canada. In essence, we don’t have great venture capital because we “don’t need it”. SRED is the big game in town, and it doesn’t reward companies that succeed commercially. It rewards far too many losers.
We should get rid of SRED, let the bad companies perish, and then allow private investment to fund risk.
Since when is the whole US tech scene the same as Silicon Valley. All the statistics they showed were Canadians moving to the US in general for tech jobs. I am sure they are not all moving to Silicon Valley. Based on their own statistics seems like they should be going to Austin.
The average programmer salary in the US is $90-$100k.
In Canada it's closer to $50k.
To put that salary into perspective, the median Web developer salary in the US is nearly $70,000 according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. You can go live in a small'ish third tier US city in states like Iowa or Wisconsin and earn $75,000 per year as an ok Web developer, where houses cost $150-$200k. Or remote from those locations and do even better.
The top 10% of programmers in the US earn over $135k. The median is around $83-$85k. It's likely that the US median programmer pay is at least 2x that of Canada's median.
What percentage of those students aren't even nationals. I bet it's super high. Canada needs to incentivize not only its students to stay, but foreign students as well. The country has the potential for a large influx of highly technical immigrants.
How many people leave, gain experience at a US tech giant, and then bring that experience home? Didn't see it mentioned in the article but that would be somewhat positive for Canadian tech, if it was happening in big enough numbers.
This is obviously a very small sample size, but I work at a startup in Toronto and 3 of the 4 executives/managers started their career in the US and then moved back to Canada once they got older (30-35yo)
One main caveat "graduates from three of the country’s top universities – University of Waterloo, University of British Columbia and U of T – were working outside Canada."
There are many other schools in Canada offering STEM programs.
Although I'm not arguing the fact that Canadian grads are going south, I'm just pointing out the specific details which are important. Not only the fact that the rates are for 3 schools in Canada, but also their techniques to find people were to view their linkedin profiles. Why not go to Alumni Affairs at these schools and get contact lists? Not everyone has a LinkedIn profile, and by only contacting those with a profile, you are potentially introducing bias into the selection.
Alumni Affairs conducts surveys of their members all the time. The researchers could have approached them, had alumni affairs send out a survey to particular students and received a much better representation of the student population.
I've often wondered why Canada doesn't have way more entrepreneurs. With a strong social safety net, you can work on your startup and not have to worry about losing your health insurance.
What are your perceptions of this safety net? Hospitals and doctor visits are taken care of, but you still need a fair chunk of capital to eat and keep warm every day, especially if you want to be close to tech hubs. Access to funding is more limited in Canada compared to the VC scene in SF too.
You can also not do anything risky at all and not worry about losing your housing. It's very comfortable to let life carry you around when you know that nothing bad can happen to you.
Pessimism aside, there's not much education about the whole concept of being an entrepreneur. Most people wouldn't even know where to start. Everyone is being pushed to either college or a trade school right after high school. Not once in high school has anyone told us that it was even possible to start your own company or startup. I think the concept is simply out of everyone mind.
Well, there's a couple things related to employment:
- "At-will" employment isn't a thing. Unless you get fired for gross negligence or criminal reasons, you're going to get severence pay, which will help bridge the gap while you look for a new job. Anecdotally, I've seen people get fired for going on swearing rants at the owner, and the Labour Board required the owner to pay severence.
- Continuing with that, employers also understand the labour board's interpretation of what it takes to let someone go for being bad at their job. If you're past your probation period (nominally 3 months), you're probably going to have a good idea that you're going to get fired. There's going to be written documentation, Performance Improvement Plans, etc. You get a hint that the writing's on the wall and you should start looking elsewhere.
- Maternity/Paternity leave is federally mandated, and for a long time (35 weeks? 50 weeks? I'm not entirely sure, haven't gone through it). Having a kid isn't going to result in you losing your job, unless your employer really likes to live dangerously. The pay while on leave comes from the gov't, not the employer.
- If you're legitimately laid off (e.g. didn't quit), Employment Insurance benefits are apparently reasonably straightforward to get (I've never used this myself). They're capped and probably won't cover extravagant housing, but you'll be able to get by, especially if you've saved a bit of money.
- No real concern about healthcare costs bankrupting you.
Going back to the parent comment and projecting my current city (Regina, SK) onto it... if you go ahead and get an IT/Software job in the provincial gov't or one of the large employers here, there's a pretty good chance that you could carry on there for 20-30 years. There's occasionally layoffs and things, but as a whole there's a decent amount of stable ok-paying employment around if you want it. Projecting my own take on it: it'll probably be uninspiring and mind-numbing, but if you're looking for a 9-5 salary that can pay the bills and contribute to an RRSP... go for it.
Once you get into the social housing program, your housing cost is 25% of your income. If your income is 0, you receive a monthly check instead and the social housing is deducted from it. Varies by province.
Probably because health insurance is only one of many costs of living that you have to account for? Housing, transpo, food, utilities, etc - all account for far more than my healthcare costs for any given month/year.
Canada should make their immigration process a bit easier, whatever brains drain out to the US would be easily made up for by new entrants, who would likely have more experience.
Canada can fill jobs with skilled immigrants who can't easily go to Silicon Valley because (need it be spelled out?) that's the name of a place in the USA.
This is really surprising, you'd think the opposite would be happening by now. I dont know why people are still putting up with paying silicon valley prices.
I left a Canadian university in 1989 without graduating because the opportunity to do a startup was more aligned with my career goals than the dated CompSci program that was preparing me only for working for government, banking or an oil company in 1970s style data processing environment.
If the startup failed I planned to go back to school elsewhere. The startup was a success though and 6 years later I found myself looking for a job. I searched in Canada but given a choice between moving 5400km and 2 timezones to Ottawa where I knew no-one to work for Corel and moving 2200km and 1 timezone to the bay area where I knew a couple of other expats and colleagues. I chose silicon valley and the bay area.
I haven't regretted this choice though I have looked casually every couple of years for opportunities in my then current field. It has never been fruitful; the opportunities just aren't there. Before I left Canada I interviewed a guy who had been on the software verification team at Intel for the 486. He was desperate to move back and was willing to take almost anything to do so. I assumed that one day I would be in the same position. I am now probably less than a decade away from retirement so my main focus now is getting over the finish line in the most efficient way possible. That probably means staying put in the bay area.
I do know that sure as fuck that I won't be retiring in the bay area though; I'd have to work 5-7 additional years to afford it. This place isn't worth that. At all. I have considered Vancouver but honestly the expense of moving to the most expensive market in Canada from one of the most expensive places in the US just to try it out is also not worth it to me. I don't know where I will end up living. Maybe Hawaii.
I do think it is essential that Canada do more to develop the domestic technology and software industry and more than just international offices for Google, Amazon, etc. Canadian universities are offering much better programs (which is part of the problem!) Entrepreneurship and access to capital has come a long way in Canada in the last 30 years and it is a lot easier to attract international talent to Canada than it was. Provincial government incentives for hiring and market development would help a lot. The federal science and technology R&D tax credits helped our startup significantly. The tax credits for export market development were inaccessible to startups and/or companies which sold intellectual property which hurt.
I follow with interest the C100 and other efforts to advance Canadian technology though I wish there was more focus on funding these efforts domestically rather than coming hat-in-hand to SV for venture capital.
meh -- this has always been the case with Canadian IT jobs, this is not some new development. Nobody can realistically compete with USA's tech. sector -- US attracts best IT engineers from around the World.
Which means, not only does Canada lose out to USA - so do other IT giants such as UK, China, India, etc.
I am a Canadian who works at an 80 person Toronto based software company. Canada, and Toronto have a lot they can learn from the Bay Area tech scene when it comes to tech entrepreneurialism. It is definitely true that Canadian culture tends to be more cautious with things like money and risk, and there are certainly small c conservative currents embedded in the culture here. That being said, I would suggest that there are things that can make the Canadian/Toronto tech scene attractive that Silicon Valley lacks.
I have visited San Francisco a number of times, I have good friends who live there and my job is connected to the San Francisco tech scene. San Francisco is a very attractive place for young ambitious folks who want to dive head first into the tech world and work with very talented people, get compensated well, and further their career. It makes perfect sense to me that so many young folks with software engineering backgrounds would flock to Northern California to be a part of this. Frankly, my own decision to switch from marketing into software development was motivated by a vacation to San Francisco seven years ago (I'm now 34). At that time, if I had the means to move to San Francisco and work for a tech startup I would have done it in a heartbeat. San Francisco is the best place in the world to start a tech company with global ambitions. Getting to be a part of something like that is a wonderful experience.
All of that being said, I do not think that the ethos of completely immersing yourself in your work and being singularly driven towards professional success that is prominent in Silicon Valley is necessarily for everyone, or satisfying throughout all phases of an individual's life. I think in Canada (specifically in Toronto), in the tech industry people tend to work less hours than in San Francisco, giving themselves more time for other things in their life: non-work friends, family, non-work activities etc. In addition to this, the tech community within Toronto (much like New York) is situated within a larger city with a diverse set of industries. Friends of mine work in film, media companies, not for profits, finance, etc. Amongst the people I know in the San Francisco tech world it seems to be quite common for people's social lives to revolve around their jobs and to have a significant portion of their friends be either from their work or work at venture backed tech companies like they do. I personally think there is a lot of value to be gained from social connection with people who are different from you or who at least work on very different types of challenges to the ones you work on.
All of this to say, I think Toronto can learn a ton from the SF tech community, but places like Toronto have some things going for it that SF doesn't necessarily excel at.
I do have to say that while I had plenty of friends decamping from insanely unaffordable Vancouver for Seattle and SF, interest in relocating from my friend group has significantly cooled since Trump was elected. It helps that tech in Vancouver is in a relatively good spot at the moment.
just two f%cking days ago it was the other way around: developers and conventions are leaving the US to go to Canada because of Trump. Make up your mind already.
There's no contradiction. Two things are happening here.
Foreigners in the US (H1B applicants) are heading up to Canada because the immigration policies are more lax.
Canadian citizens from Canada are heading down to the US because the salaries are higher, and under NAFTA Canadian engineers qualify for an easy-to-get instant visa (TN status).
My son (who lives in NYC-he is dual US Canadian) told me of this site and asked me to comment. I am in the medical field - most of this blog is about tech but I think I can add to the medical brain drain. In a nutshell - I was born and rasied in Saskatchewan - enrolled McGill University after high school and spent 12 years there - BSc, MCCM, FRCSC - am a surgeon. I went to UCSF early 80's to do a microsurgical fellowship and spent 4 years there. At that point still a ground-thumping, flag-waving Canuck. Moved back to Canada with some special skills - for a number of reasons became outraged and fed up with how the Socialized Canadian Medical System treated its docs and decided to leave after 5 years. Married a US Nurse, got a green card and moved back to the Bay Area (good job offer). Have been a Professor Stanford University 28 years and am retiring. Got my US Citizenship last year. I plan spending the rest of my life in the US. If I was asked as a kid if this would be my life I would have told then they were nuts. Can add to this later if any wants.
Listen, I'm all for people looking out for themselves and getting out of Leaf Land, but to go through all that effort to end up in Cali! That's even worse!
This was the case when I graduated ~12 years ago, if anything the situation has got slightly better. When I graduated if I wanted to work in software my options were a bank or a consulting company. At least now you can get more stereotypical software jobs.
I'm a sucker for California weather but other than that I'd much rather work in a lower-cost country with universal healthcare and without the stigma associated with the United States when traveling abroad.
I came to Canada as software professional from the middle east. At one point, Canada had a glimmer of hope in attracting tech talent.
However, on the ground, tech professionals are 'forced' to start up their consulting companies, get hunted down by taxes, threatened daily with outsourcing initiatives (extremely low caliber), and have no prospect of career advancement. Either this or accept a meager pay.
First, a little bit of background: back in 1993, I uploaded Volkov Commander to Simtel FTP, they complained to the university I was uploading pirated software and I got booted from the university VAX. Noone gave a hoot about explanation or the truth.
In 2001, Dmitry Sklyarov was arrested. When I was choosing where to immigrate in 2006, this arrest was a factor in ruling out the USA (I was in a position I could choose).
In 2017, Marcus Hutchins was arrested. Since then I have not even entered the USA and will not unless badly pressed for business. This costs me hundreds of dollars when travelling to Europe but the risk is unacceptably high now.
I do not want to second guess everything I do. I do not want a simtel like misunderstanding to become a federal felony and possibly jail time.
I live in Vancouver BC, in safety and freedom. And I can't imagine how a freeminded tinkerer of software (deliberately not using "hacker" here to avoid a misunderstanding) could possibly choose to leave this for the danger the US is because of the DMCA and CFAA.
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.