Vancouverite here. When major tech companies started setting up satellite offices here, I assumed it'd be a temporary situation, and that we'd be at the mercy of any change in the U.S. immigration process. The longer there's an immigration bottleneck though, the more entrenched these companies become here. There are more senior roles opening up here all the time, and salaries are increasing in this competitive market.
From my experience on the media / marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn't consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.
Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There's real momentum here as well.
I've also lived in Toronto and Vancouver. Did the obligatory move to work as a software dev in California and now live in Australia. The fact is that tech salaries in Canada are still much lower than the US while the cost of living, especially housing, is still very high, for Vancouver and Toronto in particular. Not to mention the lousy winters.
Spend any time browsing /r/vancouver or /r/toronto and you'll quickly realize that the cost of living is a huge problem. The Vancouver housing market in particular has been absurdly inflated by out of control money laundering. Local salaries and house prices are totally out of whack.
Follow https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/ to see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market. https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/status/1221315000897163264 is a particularly amusing recent thread showing where a would-be landlord writes: "This home is in rough shape and needs painting, and TLC. Looking for long term tenant willing to put labour in while landlord covers all material costs." All this for only $5650/month!
Sure, I rent a large, new, 3 bedroom house 20 minutes by train from the Melbourne CBD for $2250/month. It's great. I certainly couldn't do that in Toronto or Vancouver.
Granted if you want to buy a house, Australia (especially Sydney) is expensive for a bunch of reasons (negative gearing etc). But Toronto is still more expensive than Melbourne and Vancouver is much more expensive.
The median salary in Vancouver is substantially lower than Sydney, and its property values are similar.
Vancouver salaries are also lower than almost all of Canada's metros, while having the highest property costs. Vancouver also has the best weather. The Canadian metro with the best opportunity and lowest comparative costs is Montreal.
You have only 30 million people, living on an island continent the size of the United States. And is the country with probably the longest warm water coastline on the planet.
Something to think about: with so few people we can only sustain a handful of metro centers, for many reasons metro centers need to be of a certain size to be effective as a hub for business, jobs, social aspects and policy making, so people gravitate to where the cities already are. So "property in a busy metro" is still a scarce resource in Australia.
Another aspect is we quite simply have an inflated market, driven by foreign investment, speculators, government policies and incentives that help investors at the expense of home buyers. We also have thousands of citizens with outsized investments in real estate, and the government is doing everything it can to make sure that house of cards doesn't topple down and cause a recession.
One of our last government's policies to "Help ease house prices" was to give grants to corporate investors, so that they could buy up land and rent it back to people. That's the kind of policy making we have here at the moment
South Australia is moving toward that, which is largely desert despite it's temperate climate south eastern region and coastlines.
They recently started putting together an interstate connector to other states, which allows the state to export excess power from renewables. In part to help offset grid reductions as NSW brings some of it's fossil fuel plants offline. They already have had some 100% renewable days, but plan to be 100% renewable by 2030.
Another quirk of SA's energy history was Elon Musk offering to help solve grid costly instability with a battery solution within 100 days or it was free. Odd tactic, but it happened and they have a 100MW battery reserve in Hornsdale that is set to expand to 150MW.
In order to crack water, you need water, which is in short supply in the desert. Desalination + massive pumps and pipelines from the ocean would soak up any increase you get in price efficiency compared to batteries or even compressed air.
Liquid hydrogen and liquid ammonia have almost 10x the energy density of current battery technology. If you could go all the way to synthesized hydrocarbons it's another 2x.
I'm not sure efficiency matters that much when you have far more energy production capacity than you need but it's concentrated in places and times where you can't use it.
As for costing more: compared to what ? Batteries don't seem like an economically effective option for storing solar energy at massive scale, do they ? And in any case they don't allow the stored energy to be shipped to other locations.
That might be useful for aircraft, but not cars or the grid. Batteries are already cost competitive with peaking power plants and prices just keep dropping.
Run some numbers and you find batteries are surprisingly cheap at grid scale. Grid solar is already tied into the grid and does DC>AC conversion anyway as part of it’s 2c/kWh pricing. So, rather than AC>DC>AC>DC you can just use solar panel’s AC power directly. Which means your just adding minimal cabling, batteries, some electronics, and a basic box for weather protection. So, ~100,000$ for 200kWh of storage x ~5,000 cycles that’s 10c/kWh for storage + (2c/kWh solar / 90% efficiency) = ~12.2c/kWh.
Granted that ignoring some real world costs like interest payments, but battery costs are also dropping so it’s a reasonable ballpark. Especially vs a theoretical system that’s never been scaled.
PS: By comparison if your at 50% efficiency to chemical storage and world record 63% thermal efficiency at combustion that’s 2 /.5 /.63 = ~6.3/kWh just for electricity plus the cost of your combined cycle gas turbine and chemical plant.
What about the cost of transporting the energy from where it's generated (say Nevada) to where it's needed (say New York) ?
EDIT: I think for that use case you'll find that a reasonable technology doesn't exist for transporting electrons over that distance (I don't think there are any superconducting transmission lines in actual use) but pipelines have been around for a long time.
“A 1,100 kV link in China was completed in 2019 over a distance of 3,300 km with a power of 12 GW.” Which is rather close to your example. By comparison a major gas pipeline runs around 8 Million dollars a mile or ~16 Billion over that distance meanwhile that link cost under 6 billion USD. Granted our construction costs would be higher, but it’s not the kind of massive savings that changes the equation much.
Wind and Hydro are going to be part of the mix. So, outside of Alaska it’s largely a question of economics at this point. We already have huge investments in Coal and Nuclear which are being phased out of the market. But, cheap natural gas is a very different beast. As long as supply is abundant market forces are going to keep the price low enough to be attractive vs storage.
IMO, we are headed to about 70% renewables in 30 years baring major changes.
Energy density is a mostly useless metric for grid storage. It's installed in a place where land is cheap so if its bulky who cares? Efficiency and simplicity are the main goals. You want something that doesn't waste much power and doesn't require a huge team of experts to keep running or cost an absolute fortune to install
Out of the 8 zones, zones 3 and 4 don't seem to inhabitable, they're probably the "outback" aka desert. 1 seems to be the subtropical jungle bits. They're huge, however doing a silly size comparison with Romania, which has around 20 million people ( https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!NzkwMTU3Mg.NDI0MDg2OQ*M... ), it seems that even considering just the temperate zones, Australian population density is low.
I guess it's more an issue of bad urban planning because of economic pressures. Everyone bunches up in the same centers of population, which cover a very small area, in relative terms.
Probably the same as anywhere else. Many people want to live in a limited area, house prices go up. People who can afford them buy them, which keeps house prices there.
> The median salary in Vancouver is substantially lower than Sydney, and its property values are similar.
Not that you actually own that property value in Vancouver. If you run away and go work somewhere else for a year, and don't rent it, you owe Vancouver a hefty empty home tax.
> see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market.
It's inconclusive at best, and misidentifying the major causes in this complicated crisis could hurt any effort to alleviate housing pains.
Money laundering does happen in BC, and some of the proceeds do go into higher end housing. One can argue the restrictive zoning and ever-increasing costs and hurdles to new developments are orders of magnitude more influential on the market than the hot money. We have heavily left-leaning councilors in Vancouver that vote down any rental property project, solely to prevent private parties from making any profit.
I'm a tech worker in Canada and can agree that the tech salaries are nowhere close to the US. Housing is pretty high as well. The better paying jobs are in government.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like some numbers to back up the government comment. I live in Ottawa, my SO works for government as does many many friends. I make more then all of them. If you speak french, then maybe this is true as you can move up to director etc. but the VAST majority of the people I know in government do not make more than devs I know.
I'm a USA-ian in Canada, working remotely. I'm in a big Canadian city, we have a hockey team.
The average IT salaries where I live are in the ballpark of 70-100k Canadian Dollars (CAD) -- at least according to Indeed.ca, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. Given a 20-30% currency difference that's capping out at around $80K US Dollars (USD). Not terrible by US national standards, but not impressive for tech; i.e EMC offered me $66k USD out of college in 2008.
Meanwhile, on Reddit's r/networking, or r/sysadmin, where they have periodic salary surveys, network engineers in NoVA or Chicago are pulling $105k-115 USD with only 5 years experience and a CCNA -- and that's just an average, you can often do way better.
In Calgary the highest salaries were related to oil companies, and for tech they seemed to cap out at around $150K CAD for SCADA devs, instrumentation specialists, etc. I'm sure there are higher paying gigs available, but you're getting into specialized, only-found-by-word-of-mouth roles.
I've been lucky to be remote for the past 5 years, working for US firms, but if I wasn't it would probably be close to a 50% pay cut, on top of a higher cost of living. The COL wouldn't shock someone from NoVA or Seattle or Chicago but it's higher than you'd think.
Re: Ottawa -- I'd assume that, like Washington DC, the government contracting and federal bureaucracy are effectively their own mini employment universe that plays by their own rules, and doesn't reflect the rest of the country (e.g. security clearances mean your job can't be outsourced to India). Source: am from DC originally.
Yeah that doesn’t seem great I make 25% more than that with 5 years experience and no degree in the Midwest. Salaries here have risen so a large number of mid level people are making 6 figures. Even at some banks and retail/e-commerce companies that are a lot more corporate and old school.
I am also a tech worker and I second that. Currently paying 2000 per month in rent for a small 1bhk in downtown Toronto. 29 years of age with 4+ years of experience and a masters in CS from one of the top schools in Canada. I am making just north of 100k per year and not at all content with it. Interviewed at several companies in Toronto but failed negotiating something better because what I am being paid is above median for Data Engineer position here. I know I can make it much better in the States by all means and might consider moving there in future.
More than anything I didn't get a tech vibe in Toronto. I was at UofT and the surroundings all the time, yet it felt like the town is mostly devoid of tech. Not the same vibe you get in Seattle or Redmond or SV for that matter.
May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.
> More than anything I didn't get a tech vibe in Toronto. I was at UofT and the surroundings all the time, yet it felt like the town is mostly devoid of tech. Not the same vibe you get in Seattle or Redmond or SV for that matter.
Toronto is more of a finance town, with tech tacked on. NYC is similar.
> May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.
Curious, what cities around the world feel multicultural to you? I've lived in many multicultural cities and my criteria may be different from yours, so genuinely interested to hear your thoughts.
One of the most diverse and mutli-cultural cities that I have lived in, is London, followed by New York City. I have lived in Singapore and Toronto as well but they don't match London or NYC.
I think I would agree with you. London and NYC have been immigrant destinations for much longer than Toronto has. London of course draws its immigrants from Commonwealth countries. NYC draws immigrants from all over.
Toronto's immigrants are much newer and Toronto's reputation for multiculturalism is actually only a few decades old (there hasn't been time for a deep multicultural identity to emerge). Multiculturalism entered the national conversation in 1971. In the decades prior to that, Toronto was very much still a stodgy Anglo-Saxon enclave, with Montreal being the multicultural hub of Canada.
That said, certain large global demographics are underrepresented in London (east Asians for instance, but not south Asians). Hispanics are underrepresented in Toronto.
I feel NYC is the only city in the world where most of the world's major demographics are on balance well-represented.
Singapore is actually not that multicultural (there are only four major races/cultures). I would say it's more international than multicultural, because the residual diversity come from people who are expats rather than immigrants.
I've heard this complaint -- that the property prices are high -- however, isn't there an opportunity to put a tech hub right on the border with Seattle? Make the commute even smaller and set up a whole border town? Just wondering why a developer doesn't make it a great place to live bring cafes, housing etc.
Saying that money laundering solely affected the Vancouver housing market is simplistic and the press is successful in pushing this narrative. How about other factors like lots of people want to move to Vancouver (only major Canadian city on the west coast) and the effect of major tech companies setting up shop here? Also the greed of condo developers and landlords?
Ya but nobody is renting at $5650. Living costs and scarcity are a real problem, but more likely to be around $1300 to $2800 depending on area and size.
This is how the film industry moved to California from New York. Back then it was far enough away not to worry about Edison patent lawsuits. By the time the rail improved and the patents expired, Hollywood (they tried Fremond and Tanforan first) was entrenched.
There's really nothing like working in the Valley but not everyone likes it and if there's a solid alternative I suspect that Vancouver and Toronto will continue to prosper no matter what the US policies end up being.
I believe weather is why the industry moved south to the then minor city of Los Angeles, but many early films were filmed on stage sets anyway. Plus NYC had financing, actors, culture, etc unlike the boondocks of California
I wonder if the subject matter changes to match the weather. It goes from Film Noir, dark rainy detective scenes to Westerns with expansive outdoor scenes.
Film Noir's heyday was the 1940s and 50s. Almost all film production had moved to Hollywood by the early 1930s with most having moved well before then. Some of the classics of American Film Noir are actually set in LA.
Even before the move to Hollywood the center of the US film industry wasn't New York, but just across the river in Fort Lee, NJ.
I went the opposite way. Native US, but moved to Europe, cause the living conditions are better. Pay is worse, and cost of living is higher, but my standard of living has gone way up. Funniest thing is, I still work for an American company anyways.
I'd echo this as a Vancouverite. People coming here from elsewhere are here for Vancouver itself. It's not a stopping point on the way south.
In fact in the last few years I've even been seeing young people coming up from the USA to live here for lifestyle reasons.
IMO the dominant thing propelling tech in Vancouver forward isn't the immigration law situation, but rather the low Canadian dollar makes our companies cheap to work with for SF giants.
I view Canada as mix of good things from US (spacious streets, houses, landscape, partly English-speaking) and Europe (universal healthcare, education). If only it had a better climate... :)
Well, the climate in the populated parts of Canada parallels the northern United States, i.e. Chicago (9.5m in metro area) and Toronto (6.4m in metro area) have similar climate, as well as Vancouver and Seattle.
There are huge populations in these areas who are used to northern climate and have no trouble with it. I live in Chicago and really love the four seasons, prefer the cold to the heat and would never move to anywhere south of say North Carolina.
Climate preferences can vary quite a bit, I would say.
Also better healthcare. My parents have friends that moved from the US to Canada due to this and the very competitive job market in the US with virtually no employee rights. They weren't working in tech but banking/services.
In some ways, perhaps. The fact we frequently have to pay for prescribed medication is mind-blowingly ridiculous. Even with medical insurance (through your employer or paying for the plan yourself), you're usually forced to use generic medications if you want coverage - even when your doctor signs a Special Authority[0] form to have your medication covered. And yes, there can be pretty substantial differences between name brand and generic.
> substantial differences between name brand and generic
I was under the impression generics are molecular identical? How do they differ when the name brand version says on the pack, for example, temazepam 10mg, and the generic version says the same thing?
Lolwut? Two products produced by two different companies, expected to be of the same caliber? Nonsense. Utter nonsense.
Look into the "Warning Letters" database for generics producers vs. branded. It's ridiculous the amount of things generics producers get away with (contaminated product, improper facility maintenance, improper purity and potency oversight, poor quality control).
They're not the same thing. No matter how many laymen -- or worse actual medical professionals who think they know pharma just because they sell pills -- parrot the "fillers causing side-effects" bullshit.
The only thing generics providers need to do is establish a very loose bioequivalency through self-tested experiments (the FDA doesn't conduct the experiments or oversees them, only reviews the results and methodology). Once accepted, shady decisions are easy to cover up, since the FDA only does visits infrequently.
It's like buying on Amazon. You could get the original brand's product or some knock-off. Except in this case, the knock-off is state-supported.
> The only thing generics providers need to do is establish a very loose bioequivalency through self-tested experiments (the FDA doesn't conduct the experiments or oversees them, only reviews the results and methodology)
Though buying brand may not protect you from this. Brand name companies change up plants, processes, API suppliers, etc. without notifying end-users. They just do the same kind of testing a generic supplier may.
They have the same pressures to reduce cost as much as a generic manufacturer does.
There are optical isomers and such that could make a difference. But even the brand names may change this up from time to time.
Then there's the whole 99% pure thing, but that 1% could be made up of highly carcinogenic nitrosamines in the microgram doses that aren't as closely tracked as they should be. But buying brand may not protect you from this, or could be worse.
Working for a Silicon Valley tech company, you typically have extremely good health insurance and a vastly higher salary than anything in Canada. Salaries north of the border are a pittance compared to what you could earn in even a mid-tiered US city. I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour. And a non-lead was paying $C25 per hour. Ridiculous. And Toronto isn’t a cheap city. I made triple that working remotely for a Kansas City company.
Canada is a nice place, live there if you want, but “competitive compensation” is definitely not a reason.
Using a single experience to invalidate a whole country as a place to have a competitive compensation is a bit unfair. Am sure you can find people paying even less than that for lead web developers in the USA.
If you look at levels.fyi Amazon seems to be paying around 180k TC for SD2 in Vancouver. I would rather live in Vancouver with 180K than in the US with 250k.
(Am talking local currencies as when I am living in a country I spend the money in local currency.)
I live in canada. While its true there is less money here than usa, those numbers sound pretty low. Maybe that employer was just trying to screw you over?
Yes, because every tech worker in SF gets stabbed for $5 in their wallet and everyday they walk through poo on their way to work.
On a more serious note, you should learn about how the media works.
One person gets stabbed in SF for $5 and it makes the news, and then people like you believe that every one of the 884k people living in SF get stabbed.
You probably also believe that all Teslas easily catch on fire? Cause you saw it on the news?
Please learn about statistics and sensationalist media.
The really important thing would be if more Canadian founders were able to create massive companies successfully. The jobs are certainly welcome but I want to hear about more successful companies owned by Canadians
Owned by Canadians and registered in Canada are two different things. There's a lot more investment in US hence why a lot of the companies are registered there and you see them as "American".
Vancouverite also here. I am happy to see regular salary listings at much higher than they used to be, and if this is the reason, that's cool with me! I believe Microsoft and Amazon are opening huge secondary locations here soon.
Microsoft has long since had offices in Vancouver. It's only a few hours drive from headquarters down in Redmond. And another choice for employees that lose the H1B lottery.
This is a strange comment to read as a Vancouverite. Amazon’s has thousands of employees for years now, they had 600 jobs open last I checked. Microsoft’s main downtown office has one of the most prominent locations in the city, plus a huge sign. Those huge secondary locations are already here.
Ah. Amazon has had multiple offices downtown for a long time, and Microsoft has 2 large ones (the City Centre one and the Yaletown one near BC Place). But yes, they are still expanding.
I'm not too familiar with that, but I'm thinking in particular of Microsoft's new Mt. Pleasant office (I think) and the Amazon office going into the old Canada Post building at a large scale.
How's the housing policy in Vancouver and Toronto? If new tech companies and new tech workers keep coming, are the cities willing to allow for construction of lots of new homes? Or are there signs that the housing policies would turn as anti-growth and hostile to newcomers as happened in the Bay Area?
The demand outpaces supply currently in Toronto (where I live), Vancouver, and the prices are high. Everyone talks about affordability and so far it's been tackled by extending rent control and adding a foreign buyer tax.
Vancouver and Toronto both build quite a bit. Some will argue not enough, and there is the usual NIMBYism, but it's not comparable to the disfunction of SF.
It's cheaper and easier to build in SF than Vancouver BC and region now.
Hoping that to change - I moved to Saskatchewan to get away from that. (Alberta wasn't far enough - real estate there is effected too by the ease of international tax evaders and money launderers to buy property to "hold" their assets).
> the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene
Well, India and China have even fewer immigration restrictions on Indian and Chinese workers than Canada does... why would Vancouver take San Francisco’s place rather than Mumbai or Shanghai?
Shanghai is practically topped-out already, there's a huge amount of VC funding being spent and it's quite hard to emigrate there. Though I don't think it's about US policy so much as just good success at reproducing the Hong Kong business environment.
The drop from 92% to 75% isn’t the complete story, or even the more important story.
The real problem is all the other nonsense people have to deal with.
We have a really great employee who single handedly wrote most of the company’s build infrastructure, and was happy in the US on his H1B because while it requires renewal every 3 years, he was well paid and enjoying his life.
Until about a year and a half ago when he went back to renew his visa in India but didn’t get an approval for about 6 months. The approval process required the company to submit the salaries of the entire 15000+ global employees from the janitors to the CEO.
Once his visa was approved, he packed his bags and moved to Toronto within a couple of months. And our company has stopped hiring more tech workers in the US because they don’t want to have to deal with this anymore.
Green cards are a joke. For some countries they are effectively impossible to get in your lifetime. That's why we have this H1B nonsense in the first place.
Depends how you look at it. The countries with the longest waits are the very ones who get the most green cards. Even if everyone from India was allowed to move to the front of the line, we'd simply end up with a very long wait for everyone.
You mean if the govt could somehow assess quality? That would be nice if you have a good idea how to do that. But companies have two priorities: one is a high skill level and the other is lower pay.
If we simply removed country caps from the current system then it would be dominated by certain countries with the highest pay difference. The smartest scientist in Germany would be waiting in line behind hundreds of thousands of far-less-skilled programmers from developing countries willing to work for at-or-below market rates (in a hot market where salaries would otherwise be rising faster).
A lot of countries have moved towards points based system. It deals with your level of education, level of experience, salaries etc. That could be a good start. And docking points based on where they were born should not be part of that.
Also, smartest scientist will still get the priority via EB1 instead of lowly engineers who will get the EB3 category. This is already accounted for in the current system. so we are really talking about two lowly engineers in Germany vs India. Do you agree they should have to wait for same amount of years for employment based GC? How about two scientists from China and tiny country of Monaco?
Even the smartest scientist would probably have better odds of getting in via the EB3 category than EB1.
Yes a points system is obviously better but can be manipulated, particularly in developing countries without consistent school quality. As soon as a process to get visas is created it becomes an adversarial game to beat the system. I wouldn't rate their degrees equal. India's "engineering" degrees, for example, in my view are more akin to associate's degrees in engineering technology or such. It's all multiple choice and cramming. Even if we ignore how easy such an approach is to cheat, it doesn't teach them useful skills anyway. So if they were really assessed accurately I wouldn't expect many from India to match graduates from Germany, apart from those who attend school in the west.
China has a lot more solid schools, at least in my area, though a lot of rampant cheating and everything else too.
> China has a lot more solid schools, at least in my area, though a lot of rampant cheating and everything else too.
China also has probably 1000x schools, so even by law of averages, there would more scientists coming out from there compared to Monaco. And I would leave that to companies to figure out whether a candidate is actually good enough to be their employee or if they "cheated".
> Even the smartest scientist would probably have better odds of getting in via the EB3 category than EB1.
I don't understand the point. I explained that. Anyone in EB1 gets here before anyone on EB3.
About rest of your comment, I never said two bachelors degrees should be counted the same. Having a masters or PhD in a US university or having worked at a US based company should count much higher.
Anyway, it seems pointless saying anything more at this point since you seem to have a lot of issues with the points based system but you fail to see any issues with the current system. Have a nice day.
Green card processes are also not without caveats these days. Every visa extensions with or without I140s can be subjected to "administrative reviews" that can take anywhere from a month to six months. That's what the original post refers to. Lot of folks around HN have no clue about how the Trump administration has wedged a bureaucratic block at every stage of the work visa process. I am also pretty well settled in the US but will be moving to Toronto to get rid of this visa nightmare.
You quoted that he said he stopped hiring tech workers in the US how did you get out of that he only hires people with Visas instead of he stopped hiring people in the US period.
> because they don’t want to have to deal with this anymore
I think it's a reasonable conclusion for the parent to draw, since domestic workers wouldn't have to "deal with this". Thus, stopping all hiring to avoid dealing with visa problems implies a linkage between hiring and visas.
I read the original post as accusing the employer of only hiring people who were not here on a visa (illegal and I feel immoral).
If he just didn’t want to deal with hiring people in the US because of the current insane political climate with respect to foreigners, I don’t blame him if he has an alternative.
It's almost as though having a US office contributes to the US economy regardless of whether there's foreign or domestic workers there. It's a net positive for the US regardless, even if 100% of workers at that office are foreigners if the alternative is moving the office to a country with a sane immigration program.
Folks in the office have to rent/buy property, buy food, supplies, etc, all from local workers too. Taxes are paid. You know, business.
Get off the entitlement high horse! what you snidely dismiss as "cheap" is what companies can afford to pay. Most businesses aren't FAANG and treading water mostly. Would you apply the "no shortage if you pay enough" argument for housing, healthcare or education etc. ?
I think it is quite likely that there are many people in the US who are smart enough but lack the $100k to go to university for 4 years. Not saying that immigration is bad, but there are many US citizens who could participate if they had education.
The US skims some of the best students and programmers from around the world, but also people who are equivalent but cheaper, and also indentured.
If your goal is to employ more people in the US software industry, you've kind of shot yourself in the foot.
There are also good reasons to want to employ people who are 'closer to the client'. Plenty of places have engineers both in the US and elsewhere. Lots of companies just want to employ the best talent from wherever.
Make those things difficult though, and software is about the easiest industry to route the work abroad.
By "difficult" I assume you mean for higher pay as supply and demand dictates.
And as for the supply, everyone talks about US grads not going into STEM as if it's a law of nature. If salaries were allowed to keep going up during these temporary hot markets, more of the best and brightest would be attracted away from medicine/law (the current default choices for top students). STEM has always been a stepping-stone for the lower-middle class, not a particularly prestigious profession in my lifetime (at least compared to what someone of the same intelligence could have otherwise done). Now it is being turned into a stepping stone for the middle class from developing countries, again driving those domestic students away. (I work in education and see this every day).
Why would salaries go up that much when you can just hire people directly in Romania or wherever?
I think you are failing to grasp that this is a global market for talent. Sure, being local helps some, but if the disparity is too great, companies will move. Also, there is not a fixed lump of labor to go around.
I can grasp the concepts just fine. Being local helps immensely. The disparities are correspondingly immense. More so when you consider the high unemployment rates in developing countries.
Also there needs to be sufficient talent available across all roles needed, to completely move the company to a new location. As opposed to just a lot at the low end of skills. The cost and other downsides of that move would also be immense.
Perhaps one day remote work will be far more common, and I think this would be a good thing, by the way. I also think brain drain is bad overall. Developing countries need those productive residents far more than the west does.
You want all the benefits of a free market but all protections in the labor pool. It is not H1B workers fault that your students don't take STEM up. Stop putting everything on immigrants.
I'm at somewhat of a cross-roads related to this matter.
Note that this mostly applies to immigrants from India or China. I'm from India. This applies irrespective of education level (I did my Bachelors in the US, just FYI)
Currently I'm in the US on a student visa (currently during a period of that visa that permits me to work) that expires in a couple years. I cannot renew it. If I want to continue working in the US. My only option is an H1-B (work) visa.
There is basically no other option to me.
Okay, so let's say I do get the H1-B visa. Then, I have to work for a few more years on that visa, before I'm eligible to apply for a green card - which grants permanent resident status. Now, once I file that application, I'll be on a waitlist. Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
Even if there's no possibility of me getting a green card, I can still work. I can still buy a house, get married, have kids, etc. A lot of Indians and Chinese in the US currently are in this limbo period, where they don't have a green card. So they still continue to work, start a family. Because no other country will pay as well.
But personally, I hate the uncertainty. While even getting a green card isn't a guarantee to get to stay in the country, not having a green card is much worse. A CBP officer has the authority to deny you entry at their discretion. If do deny entry, you are banned from entry for atleast 5 years.
That's it. You're life in the US has vanished into thin air.
While I love my current job, I trying to immigrate to Canada. You get a PR immediately if you quality based on a points system calculated using specific, meritocratic criteria. If I have a PR I feel I won't worry when I buy a house, plant roots, that my life won't be upended because I failed to follow my visa's restrictions.
Now is the time to leave. 18 years in the US with a kid born here. I missed the boat in getting my priority date around the time when my friends were getting theirs (my company was laying off people in other departments and my application got audited). Didn't think it was a big deal at that time. Now, my friends are getting their citizenships and I'm still stuck on a visa. I'm at the whim of the Consul officer and the CBP officer every time I renew my visa or come back into the country. Heavily vested here assuming I'll get a green card but planning to apply for Canadian PR just in case. There's an easy way to game the system if one is in the right situation and is willing to risk it. Leave the country and work for the same company for a year as a manager. Come back on a L1 visa and boom you can apply in the EB-1 category and get your green card in a couple of years. I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc. Meanwhile, with a Masters degree and 16 years of experience, I'm at the mercy of immigration officers.
I'm surprised at the amount of confidence you have in the USCIS that you might get a greed card. If you are still on a visa, I don't see how soon you believe you can get a green card in a reasonable amount of time. I'm not sure you can use the EB-1 category even with an L-1 - unless you're at a very high level in your company. Even for that category, the waitlist is currently about 5 years.
Well, I just don't think about it. Pay being very high makes up for it. My priority date is 2 years behind the current priority date for EB2 so I'm hoping for a miracle. I cannot leave because we are so entrenched here and have lots of friends we don't want to leave behind.
It doesn't have to be a L1. Even with a H1B, if you worked as a manager in India and come here with a manager title (even Project Manager), you can apply in EB1 as a multinational manager. It's a terrible loophole and one that's mercilessly exploited.
>>Come back on a L1 visa and boom you can apply in the EB-1 category and get your green card in a couple of years.
Those days are gone now. You go into EB-1 only if you get into the US on L1-A. They don't give L1-A's easily these days. For starters you need to be in director level positions to even qualify for L1-A's. Even then the waiting period for India EB-1 itself is growing and stands at 5+ years now. And it will only increase.
>>I've quite a few friends who easily got their green cards working for TCS, Infosys, etc.
Put the saddle on the right horse. People who come in from those companies often work for <$70K an year. Most are poor blokes who survive on ramen, and giving haircuts to each other so that they can save $8.
The real deal is Cgnzt which even until recently filed L1-A's and EB-1's for thousands/lacs of people by cooking up documents. Often promoting some one with a BCom degree to a director, granting them a GC and then rolling back the promotion. Thousands to lacs have made it to GC and Passports this way. When I worked for a short time in the US, it was painful to see PhD students in Stanford struggle for little extra stay, while some one with a basic 2 year diploma land GCs in like an year. In fact even until recently the biggest incentive to work at Cgnzt was this.
8.4 lac Indians got citizenship only last year. 5.8 lac got green cards. This is basically abuse max.
Add this to manager's pets who routinely get their documents cooked to be Nobel Prize worthy talent and land GC's. Literally the wrongest possible people occupy the numbers these days. Add to this a large number of body shopping firms.
There are several top level doctors, lawyers and scientists who don't even get B1's.
In short we Indians bought this upon ourselves. Like everything else. We abuse things so much, so far and so blatantly it makes things impossible for the real people when they arrive at the scene.
I'm one of those people who got burned badly due to all these politics at every level. I have largely given up, you just need to get very lucky early life to win at these things. Or cheat shamelessly.
That was the total number of citizenships granted last year. Indians were about 50k of that total - approximately 6%. That's from the article you linked.
The reason for the backlog is the US is trying to get a diverse set of immigrants to the US. Any one country can’t get more than 5% of permanent visas in a given year.
If it wasn’t for that, 80% of people getting green cards would be Indian and Chinese.
Agreed. I'm Australian and was investigating my options for potentially moving to the US to start a company in the AI space, and there's so much friction that I ended up deciding to just stay here. I can't see how they think these policies are a good idea in the long term (or even short term, for that matter).
Oh well, yeah. That part is true to some extent. But I can only comment on things we have control on. And to some extent a system with some specific rules needs to be used the way it was intended. We can't exactly say, we have a right to do what we like(in this case, cheat) especially when these things work like resources in a common pool. I can absolutely understand if some thing like this happened less than a percent. But the moment you enter double digit percentages of abuse/fraud, you are just hurting every one else. Expecting the other party to just offer an infinite pool of resources to accomodate our doing just adds to the anti-immigrant sentiment that is going around. Please note there are also people from other countries here.
Beyond this. Every system needs to work with a degree of fairness and merit, immigration is same.
On the shorter run, I do see someone putting a fix to these things and making things harder for every one else just to stop this abuse. On the longer I can see there will be increased pressure from economic centers all over the world, because every one is fighting for talent concentration at one place. This will lead to more liberal immigration policies.
And contrary to what our American friends believe it's hard to believe they will be the only country with economic centers attractive to everyone. Paris, London and Berlin have a growing tech scene. Then there's also Singapore and Dubai. Canada is another destination.
Beyond this the Chinese Bay Area(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guangdong-Hong_Kong-Macau_Grea...) - Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. Seems to be especially designed to take on Western Economic Centers. They are building state of the art infrastructure. Roads, Railways, affordable housing and top notch Airports. They'll be fighting for the talent pie, and with their demographics on the decline, attracting top notch foreign talent with be a Chinese government priority too. I don't expect them granting them citizenships. But liberal Dubai style 99 year visas on owning a home are possible. And a lot of the world talent will want to work there.
The way I see America will only eventually succumb to the pressure and might have to open up immigration again.
An addendum: The consultancies (TCS, Infy, Accenture, IBM, Capgemini, Wipro etc.) are also to blame. They've kept salaries stagnant for over 15 years, particularly for fresh college graduates (yes, this is in part due to a glut).
They also offer employment abroad as a carrot to incentivize employees sticking with them for long periods of time in unfavorable conditions(Most co.s have high attrition rates - due to the low salaries). The companies also maintain a bond : you have to pay the company if you quit before completing 'x' years of service per contract. They withhold your experience certificate if you don't; a common requirement of any new company you hop ship to.
Most outsourced tech work is manual dreary labor. I've been on that side for 2 years.
I hope the US immigration system stops being so meritocracy blind.
The abuse of the h1b and GC process by these coding/consultancy sweat shops is truly despicable. Every competent Indian I know, hates them. Every American seems to hate them.
They seem to have support from neither Democrats (for shit wages) nor Republicans (because most people here are immigrants). What is stopping them for getting their comeuppance.
Why not sanction them in particular ? If it is so blatant to the consumer, it should be fairly blatant for a Government auditor.
This is not illegal. It's just a different way to obtain a green card faster. By the way, I'm one of those people that's NOT gaming the system if there was any confusion. I've been waiting patiently for 9 years now. I'll have to wait for the foreseeable future or do something about this. Moving to Canada or back to India seems to be the only two options if I don't like waiting.
Are you a lawyer? What he suggested is about as "subversive" as using your 401k to lower your tax bill. The EB1-C program's explicit requirements are to work as a manager abroad, and that's exactly what the person above suggested.
401K is not “gaming the system.” The IRS explicitly treats it specially for the purposes of allowing hardworking seniors to retire in dignity. The immigration law does not make explicit allowances for people to game it. If less people gamed the system, it would be more fair for the rest of us who do things the right way without manipulating.
The original poster suggested applying for a different visa that has a lower wait time for green cards. What precisely about this proposition are you objecting to?
Can't seem to edit although it's been <2h. Regret the typos.
For people looking for data backing what I'm talking about, here's[1] something that everyone looks at to track timelines. This data is released monthly. Search for "EMPLOYMENT-BASED PREFERENCES"
In that table you'll see China, India and Mexico specifically called out since they're the ones with such extreme wait times. EB-1 is extremely difficult to qualify for[2] so most people apply for EB-2. You can see currently applications from 2009 are being processed. That was more than a decade ago. Then consider the increase in applications each year since that year. That's where the 100 year figure comes from.
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
Not disputing how ridiculous your situation is, but you do have a couple other options.
The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.
The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
> The most realistic one would be to save up all your money and apply for the eb5 investor visa. If you're making 6 figures, you should be able to save up the required million dollars in about 10-20 years, depending on how much you make, and how frugal you're willing to live.
I'm an early career engineer, and this is something that a few of my friends have looked into. The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save, cause there will be more people like me. Unless I become sufficiently senior and comparatively rich like a VP, I can't realistically beat the trend.
> The other possibility is you marrying someone who isn't born in India. If you did that, you can use your partner's country of birth instead of your own, when waiting for the priority date. But obviously this isn't something you can plan for, and I wouldn't recommend letting this guide your life decisions.
This is true. Your tradeoff point hits the nail on the head. I have heard some cases of people feeling like they were married to just for the GC, and some from the other side who stand some abuse. But your broad point stands.
> The last option is progressing your career to the point where you can mount a realistic eb1 application. I've heard anecdotally that it's very hard, but not as hard as people may think it is. If you work at it over a 10-20 year time frame, it may be very realistic.
Need to progress outside the US though. Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor, the logic of the law seems to suggest that if I could rise to this position here, then an American could too. That's why the EB-1 has an allocation for applicants who became managers outside the US and transferred in.
I have upvoted you and I feel you make some great points. I wanted to iron out some details in case a third person was reading this.
> The number was 500k when I started working 3 years ago. It's now 800k. It looks like how much ever I work, the number will increase faster than I can save
The number was 500k for almost 30 years, without any increases for inflation at all. No one can predict whether it will increase again in future, but going solely off of history, there's a very good chance it will stay at the current numbers for a while.
> Unless I become a Carmack/Jeff Dean/famous inventor
I have personally met people who have successfully gotten the EB-1 without being nearly as successful as the examples you gave. If you're as successful as the average FANG employee, and have ~5-10+ years of work experience, you might have a realistic shot. I would recommend talking to some people who have gone through this process first hand, before dismissing it.
I see where you're coming from, but any of those options aren't realistic, especially when I compare them to Canada's system.
As I noted in my comment, I can stay here for a while hoping for some way of getting a green card. It's those 10-20 years that I don't want to endure, with which again I need extreme luck (I would consider me saving up $1MM within 10 years or becoming a EB-1 level 'multi-national manager' not a guarantee).
If I did go the Canada route, I can do these things there (making $1MM or becoming an C-suite executive) - however unlikely those goals are, while not risking having my life uprooted. Canada doesn't pay as high as US, but then again I don't have to worry about going back to India (where jobs don't pay as well as either US or Canada) and finding a job there without notice.
The visa bulletin is useful for past applicants, but is not generally helpful for current or recent applicants. The question current applicants should ask is: if I apply today, when will I get my green card?
Last year, the State Department (which runs the bulletin and has all the numbers) said[1] 8.4 years for India EB-5 until visa number availability. It then takes around a year to actually get the physical green card. So, 10 years is a good estimate for someone applying today.
If you’re of Indian origin (i.e. parent or grandparent is from India) it’s relatively quick to get an OCI card, which will allow you to remain indefinitely in India as well as work there. You don’t get the right to vote under that status.
Full blown citizenship is another matter, you’d have to give up your US citizenship, which still has its benefits. I can say with a great amount of certainty the US government cares a lot more for its citizens than other governments of the world, whose governments are usually outright hostile to their own citizenry/populace.
> Guess how much time it takes to get a greed card? Atleast 100 years. I'm not joking. Unless there's a policy change, there's no possibility.
So my entire family migrated from India (not H1B though, so no idea what that process is like), and some are still migrating, and this is just ridiculous. Green cards and citizenship are issued quite regularly. I'm not going to say its fast, but it's not literally 100 years (can't tell if you were being sarcastic or not). My uncle got his a few years back, and got his citizenship this year. The system works, as long as there're no discrepancies.
That's the current prediction because of the backlog. Family-based migration is different. On a H1B visa, if you get a priority date today, it'll take you a very long time to get your green card. Every year, the backlog moves by 1-2 months. i.e. in the last 6 months, I think the backlog went from processing applications from April 2009 to June 2009. Some months it doesn't move at all. I don't think you know how this system works. Of course, people exploit family-based migration which is more permissive and bring their extended family here but the situation is completely different for people on work-based visas.
My friend, there's a huge difference between family based green cards (FB categories) and employment based (EB). The wait times change from 1-10 years in the former [1] to 100 in the latter [2]. A normal indian cannot go through family, since they're not closely related to a citizen. I have close relatives who gave birth here (they're working on a H1-B). The mom and dad would make it quicker by waiting for the US citizen kid to become 18 and apply, than they applying.
Heck, they can wait for the kid to turn 18, go to Iceland/Sri Lanka, give birth to the grandkid, and that grandkid can apply for the citizenship and that would be faster. :(
[1] - friends and my roommate here in the bay
[2] - my application
That's what's called chain migration. Just because your "uncle got a greencard" doesn't mean skilled immigrants get a greencard unlike your unskilled uncle. This is the kind of immigration that Trump wants to stop. You should not comment on things that you have no idea about.
Staying at the same job, my salary will go from $180k usd to $128k usd ($170k cad). (Equity comp remains the same)
That's a pretty big cut, though at least for me it's worth it because of non-monetary reasons, like being closer to family, not dealing with immigration anymore, healthcare/education.
The money stuff isn't so bad. A downtown Toronto condo is a lot cheaper than San Francisco. That alone makes the pay cut easy enough to swallow. Either way I can comfortably live on a tech salary.
Starting prices for:
3 Bed SF condo: 1.2M usd
3 Bed TO condo: 0.7M usd (900k cad)
No rigorous comparison, just from me house hunting in both markets.
I moved to Toronto, then to SF. Thought I'd also share my anecdata here.
I used to make ~100k/yr CAD (75k/yr USD) when I was in TO around 6 years ago. I bought a house around 7 years ago for 550k. I did a remote stint for a Boulder company for a couple years (~120k/yr USD working from TO), then moved to SF (~200k/yr USD + ~100k/yr equity).
I'm a bit out of the loop w/ TO salaries nowadays, but your 170k CAD definitely seems to be on the very high end of the spectrum.
A few thoughts:
The biggest difference in pay comes from equity. ~100k/yr is pretty normal in SF big tech companies, whereas equity comp in TO is pretty much unheard of unless you're a partner in a company. Caveat: not all SF companies offer liquid equity, or even equity that is worth anything.
Taxes are higher for me working in SF (largely because salaries of comparable positions are higher in SF)
Living costs depend a lot on whether you have a spouse and/or kids. A bunkbed in SF goes for 1.6k/mo if you're single trying to save up. In TO, you can rent a cheap room for $600/mo. But for families: 2 bed condo is ~48k/yr USD, vs ~24k/yr in similar distance in TO. Another very important point: in SF, a foreigner spouse's ability to work can be extremely tricky (e.g. spouse in non-tech field would often not be able be get a work visa sponsorship at all). Canadians can get a TN visa relatively easily, but the H1B visa required for other foreigners isn't guaranteed. Green card timelines range from 2.5 years to virtually impossible to get. By comparison, getting a work visa in Canada is pretty straightforward, and the path to permanent residence is also relatively easy, regardless of country of origin.
Preschool costs ~28k/yr USD per kid in SF, vs ~18k/yr CAD (13k/yr USD)
Healthcare in SF costs me ~3.6k USD/yr base (plus copays/other fees depending on how frequently I actually use it) vs free in TO. Dental and vision costs are similar between SF and TO.
Goods generally cost less in SF. Milk costs ~$5/gallon USD in SF vs $10/4L CAD ($7 USD) in TO.
IMHO: SF is better for saving up while young, Toronto gets pretty attractive once you have a piggy bank to afford housing/build a family.
$170kCAD for an experienced engineer in Toronto is touching the upper ranges, but 5 years ago that number was at $120CAD. You are seeing higher than 170k at some companies and I know of people working remote for SV companies at very good salaries. You’re right about equity, though.
Something happened in the last 2 years in particular that has caused salaries to skyrocket (trump policies taking effect?).
If you have a family, the public schools are generally better in Toronto as well.
Interesting. How things change. I do recall getting recruiter calls for 150k positions around 3-4 years ago, though mostly for startups. Big tech agencies (e.g. CGI, Klick) haven't really caught up AFAIK.
I don't have experience w/ the public school system in Toronto yet, but I can say preschool definitely seemed to be one notch higher in TO than SF. In TO, my kids' school tuition included meals and they did STEM activities. In SF, you need to provide lunch, and curriculum-wise, it feels more like a glorified daycare w/ arts&crafts projects.
> room in a house for rent between $1000-1600 in SF
In SF? If you mean in like Oakland, yes I believe I've seen some listings a couple years ago, though I wasn't sure they were real (sites seemed shady). I don't recall finding anything in SF proper for 1.6k, let alone 1k (anywhere), but to be fair I wasn't looking too far out from downtown at the time and since I was coming from out of the country, I was restricting my searches to reputable sources and I had no word-of-mouth network. For what it's worth, I used to rent my basement in Toronto for $300 and you can go even cheaper w/ student houses. So even if you can actually find "cheap" housing in the Bay Area, I can tell you that you can get even cheaper stuff from GTA's chinese community.
The 28k/13k figure is from Bright Horizons (they have locations both in SF and TO so it's perfect for apples-to-apples comparison, and it's what I'm familiar w/). You can get definitely cheaper childcare in both cities (with the caveat that in SF you're going to struggle with wait lists, whereas you typically don't in TO). IIRC, the cheapest in SF is if you qualify for public childcare (1.7k/mo I think it was?), which is still more expensive than Bright Horizons in Toronto.
That's from 2014. Some googling says the average in SF in 2018 was almost 2k/mo USD[1] while Toronto was in the in 1.3-1.7k/mo CAD (1k-1.3k/mo USD) range[2] in the same period
You have to be careful using craigslist to assess prices. In the cities I've lived, ALL of the cheap ones are scams. They may run half or less the going rates, and promise way more for your money than the cheap end of the market should be.
It's a problematic comparison because few people in Canada earns $170K CAD writing software unless they are contracting for the government. Even then.
There are a few people lucky enough to 'make the deal' that you have.
Also, there are very few 'great companies' in Canada to work for, that can leverage high end talent - Canada is 1/10th the size of the US and spends less than 1/2 on R&D per capita. This is because Canada doesn't generally have the kinds of companies that are R&D intensive. Unfortunately.
I think most Toronto devs would happily move to California for a huge pay increase and a chance to work for a 'great company' whereas I feel few wold do the reverse.
I'm really wary of reading NPR articles like this because I feel they are basically playing the facts into a narrative of their political viewpoint.
I acknowledge I'm not in a position many will find themselves in. The shortage of senior engineering positions that pay accordingly is real. There's much more selection of jobs in SF than TO.
> It's a problematic comparison because few people in Canada earns $170K CAD writing software unless they are contracting for the government. Even then.
In Toronto if you’re an experienced sr engineer you can get this in the tech scene. It’s a much smaller employment pool, it it’s there. And there is a lot of r&d happening within that scene. That’s nothing to say of remotely working for an SV company.
The tech scene has exploded here over the past 2-3 years.
Seattle is expensive as hell these days, but Vancouver still blows it out of the water, and Toronto isn't cheap either; an improvement over SV or Manhattan, for sure, but not like Raleigh-Durham or rural Arkansas.
Sure, I'm not saying I couldn't make more if I left Toronto. As a Canadian, it would be easy for me to do that. Most of my office could easily get jobs in the USA paying more. Even those with potential visa issues have a much easier time once they're established in Canada.
But we don't.
The marginal increase in my pay is not enough for me to want to move to the USA. The anti-immigrant rhetoric and the laws that follow that rhetoric make it not a place I, or many others, aspire to move to. We're happier to make less money, but feel more secure and safe (in many ways).
For what it's worth, Toronto is a way more interesting city than Seattle, DC and SF. It's probably comparable to Chicago in terms of interestingness (though Toronto's food scene is way more dynamic).
NYC and LA have Toronto beat in terms of culture, but NYC living is not that fun, and LA is pretty expensive too.
That's not marginal, that's damn near 40%, ballpark of 80k USD per year difference. That's close to $100K CAD per year.
And while the current state of play in the US is rather odious, the idea that you'd be less secure or safe in somewhere like NYC or SF is laughable. The only places I've even been accosted on the street were in Melbourne, Australia and Brampton, Ontario. The rhetoric and laws you dread are mostly, or entirely, perception; make no mistake they're a thing, but heavily magnified by a media machine based on getting eyeballs and reactions. Like, the Prairie Provinces are solidly conservative -- AB even took a crack at banning gay marriage a little while back -- and ON managed to vote in yet another Ford.
I'm happy to sit out the Trump years north of the border, but if an offer with another $100K on top of what I'm making now floated my way but required me to be in California, or NYC, or DC, I'd be hard pressed to ignore it.
> the idea that you'd be less secure or safe in somewhere like NYC or SF is laughable
Secure has many meanings beyond the fear of criminals. Who wants to start a family knowing that the government may change its rules and kick you out of the country next year? Who wants to start a business knowing that their country just got put "on a list". And worst of all, who wants to hire someone from another country, knowing that they might be deported if they don't win a lottery in the next 3 years?
> if an offer with another $100K on top of what I'm making now floated my way but required me to be in California, or NYC, or DC, I'd be hard pressed to ignore it.
Right, that's your marginal cost to deal with that stuff. Everyone has one. I have one. But as the life for immigrants in the US gets made more difficult, the average marginal cost to deal with that nonsense goes up- and I get more coworkers here in Toronto.
And I'll tell you right now: go looking, you'll find such an offer if you want it.
It really depends on many factors. New grads? Sure, who wouldn't move to Cali from Canada. Married, kids, spouse working in non tech? Well, ya, staying in Canada is a lot better if one earner can get a high paying tech salary that's becoming more common now.
Can we just stop comparing cities? Everyone loves to complain about the cost of living in SF and always brags about how they could buy a mansion in the midwest.
No one cares. It's all about location. There is a reason why California is the most populous state in the union despite it being so expensive (weather and jobs). There is a reason the population in the midwest is so low (lack of jobs and weather mostly).
Right this moment, they are almost the same (46F in SF vs 37F in Toronto). Toronto winter usually goes between 5F and 40F, but summer is way warmer than SF (between 75F to 90F vs 60F to 70F in SF)
As someone born in Toronto, the weather is crap. You're right by a great lake, so it's damp/humid all year (step out of the shower and start sweating humid). Downtown is a series of giant wind tunnels, which isn't bad in the summer, but is downright chilly in the winter.
I moved to Calgary and the weather is great, nice and dry and Chinooks to warm you up during the winter.
I guess weather preferences are subjective. My wife prefers TO weather over SF weather. Her reasoning is that TO has "real seasons". I used to live in Sao Paulo. Great weather IMHO, if you're ok w/ 38C in summer. SF weather feels chilly all throughout the year IMHO. The weather inland in the Bay Area tends to be much better for my taste. YMMV.
Yes, that was around 9pm PST. Right now (9am PST) it's 47F in SF vs 38F in TO. Forecast for noon today is 53F in SF vs 38F in Toronto. It is an unusually warm winter in TO this year, though what I said about summers being warmer in TO holds true every year.
Try https://weatherspark.com to compare different cities. They have a nice visual map of how comfortable it gets throughout the year and have lots of stats on humidity, wind, sunlight etc.
Humidity is just as big a factor as temperature, and anything East if the Rocky Mountains is more humid than west of Rocky Mountains, in my experience.
SF has it's "the coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco" days in the summer and its share of grey and damp in the winter. On the other hand, it doesn't really get the heat that the valleys can get so it's a tradeoff.
I live in a northern snow state and, other than the relative lack of seasons, SF city weather seems pretty nice to me and not even obviously worse than the South Bay.
> As a friend from out that way put it, "its harder to be a consumer there, but easier to be a human".
This rings true but it depends on what kind of human you are (I lived in Montreal for many years and enjoyed it there, but did not see myself living there long term). It's easier to be lower middle class, an artist, a student, a chef, a government employee, etc. in Montreal, but if you're at all an ambitious human, Montreal has less for you.
Apart from the universities (there's one that is highly-ranked internationally), it's not the kind of city that attracts go-getters (exceptions exist of course -- the tech scene these days, though still not comparable to major U.S. cities, is much different from when I was there).
Montrealers feel less of an economic struggle (more joie-de-vivre and love of the simple life, rents are controlled, CoL is low), but the existential struggle to fit in (if you're not pur-laine Quebecois), to find community (if you don't speak French at near native levels) and to find meaningful work (if you're at the top of your profession) is far more pronounced if you're ambitious.
Being fully human (for me) means being able to express myself in one's work and having good relationships. For many Americans, finding these things in Montreal may be more challenging than say a place like Toronto.
On the other hand, Montreal is a way more interesting place to vacation than Toronto.
Let's not pretend that Canadian cities are a utopia for tech workers. Vancouver and Toronto are insanely expensive and salaries just don't compare to those a hundred kilometres to the south. Hopefully it steadily improves but I'm not hopeful with these tech companies having virtually an unlimited supply and no incentive to boost salaries.
Everyone here seems to assume that salaries are the biggest factor and ignoring that for many the goal is to gain citizenship in a developed country. For them getting paid well and Canada and becoming a citizen in ? (how many years does it take?) is better than being paid awesomely and waiting decades for the green card lottery.
That is because most of the people in Silicon Valley discussing Canada are Canadians who immigrated to the US. A Canadian can live in the US forever without worrying much about naturalization. They will always have their Canadian citizenship in their back pocket to fall back on.
For people looking to migrate from a developing country to a developed one, the situation is quite different.
Unfortunately Québec do not have a working skilled immigration system yet. Québec do not follow rest of Canada's immigration system. The CAQ govt. of Québec has completely messed up the immigration system of Québec. Québec focuses on knowledge of French rather than other merits for their immigration, so they get a huge chunk of unskilled immigrants who speaks only French with no employable skills.
That is ethically wrong even though a Canadian PR allows you to live and work anywhere in Canada including Québec.
I was speaking more to the high skilled foreign workers in Québec who have to wait years for a permanent residency because they work & reside in Québec. This delay also applies to foreign students in Québec who wants to apply for permanent residency after their studies. Québec is not a good choice for foreign workers and students in Québec who wants a permanent residency. Rest of Canada follows Express Entry but those who work or reside in Québec is not eligible for the fast track process. One country two rules.
I mean.. I'm a Montrealer as well, and whilst I love this city, let's not kid ourselves. Montreal is not by any means 80% English and you're essentially handicapped if you can't speak French.
You just need to take a stroll in "Plateau" to witness this.
The salaries are also really low and we are the highest taxed province in Canada.
I think we should give folks an accurate portrayal of this city instead of an endless stream self promotion
> Montreal is an Anglophone city. Last I checked 80% were English speakers
Would you be able to provide a source for that?
Even during it's Anglo heydays (pre-referenda), I don't think it was that high.
It is true that Montreal is highly Anglophone in the tech sector, but outside of enclaves like downtown, the west Island and a few neighborhoods like TMR and Ville St Laurent, Montreal is not very Anglophone at all.
As an anglophone who moved to Montreal last year, I'm kinda mixed on it. In my experience, French is both required for accurately ordering food (unless you're lucky and the person taking your order knows English) and for understanding what the métro audio bulk items say (I wish they would put those messages on Twitter too). People will generally be supportive to you trying to learn French, but in order to get permanent residency in Quebec you are required to know it to a decently high level of fluency. It's doable, but honestly a nuisance.
That’s very odd. My interactions in Montreal with stores and restaurants always begin with a “bonjour-hi” and most places have an English menu. In my hundreds of interactions, I’ve only had to use my rusty French two or three times. The rest of Quebec is another story, though.
Yeah, I've found the same as you. I've even found that if someone says just "bonjour" to you, asking parlez vous anglais? will get you a conversation in English.
Even if you get a CSQ from Québec, the Québec govt has made it such that you have to wait 2 years at Federal stage. While rest of Canada will get your permanent residency within 4-6 months with skills more in demand other than speaking French which your can learn anyway by immersion.
Unfortunately some people seem to be figuring this out... The rent has been blasting off over the past 3 years from 'low' to 'regular north american metropolis' :(
I heard that companies are mandated to support bilingualism because of Bill 101, which could be a challenge for startups. But then again, perhaps that can be easily overcome by investing enough in localization.
CAQ govt is working on that. Soon will come a bill which mandates all employers to exclusively recruit French. Currently the ruling govt of Québec is anti immigrant and showing signs of a future separatist referendum. I won't be counting on Québec to stay in Canada in the future.
That's a very pessimistic view of Quebec. PQ/Separatism is irrelevant and last time they were in power they got booted out quickly. It's more likely that Montreal separates from ROQ than Quebec separates from ROC.
Toronto may be expensive but it's not SF-level expensive. Salaries may not compare but you don't have to worry about basic things like healthcare and high-powered weaponry in the streets.
Those are just the top two–there are many other reasons to move to Canada than just money.
> And if you get a tech job in SF, you’ve got great health insurance, so not a major obstacle.
Yup, as long as you have a job with medical coverage, you're OK. But God forbid you should lose your job and get sick, right? Because then you're screwed.
Studied in Montreal, went to Texas, then to New York. When I left Montreal, people were genuinely worried for me that I'm gonna get shot.
Contrary to popular Canadian fear mongering, the US is not a shooting free-for-all, as big as a problem gun violence might be. Of all the variables, getting shot is not something I consider about when deciding between the US and Canada.
Aside from that one guy who stole a tank a few years back in San Diego, no. But shootings along I-80 are not uncommon (and then there was that driver in Gilroy with a slingshot). That big eviction in Oakland? The county showed up with MRAPs. Oh, I guess that recent Greyhound bus shooting was in California.
If they are working in tech, their employer either pays for it fully or subsidizes it to the point where the person just pay something nominal like $50-100/mo, and it is not counted as their salary. So people usually don’t include that when saying how much they make, because they typically dont even actually know or care how much their employer pays for it (at my place of work you actually have to go pretty deep into the HR portal to look it up).
> Sure, and if you live in Canada, you're explicitly paying for healthcare in the form of high taxes.
You mean, “the United States”, not Canada, right? The US pays more (not just per capita, but as a share of GDP, and thus would need higher taxes to pay for it) out of public funds for healthcare than Canada does. See, e.g., https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...
The US, unlike Canada, also pays a bit more in private funds on healthcare than it does in private funds.
Probably lower than what Americans pay (between 2.9%-3.8% Medicare tax plus insurance premiums). America's healthcare system is really bloated and inefficient compared to developed countries.
Not even close. I pay a $250 premium for my family of 6, my employer pays the rest. My health coverage is worth $24,000 per year if I paid out of pocket — with the SV salary differential between Canada and Silicon Valley, I am still coming out much further ahead even if I had to pay 100% of my own insurance.
As someone from a very red, very “high-powered weaponry” friendly area, I grinned ear to ear at your statement. Don’t let a few psychos scare you. Guns are neato.
But cities like SF aren’t like those cities at all. Quick google shows 33 homocides in SF and 142 in Toronto. Based on population, that’s 33 per million for SF and 24 for Toronto.
I moved from SF to Canada. Traded a higher salary and basically 0 shot at green card for less money, a PR when I walk in and guaranteed citizenship.
Most importantly, you cannot do anything besides your job on an H1B. No start ups, no side projects. You can't even BE in the US without a job and just bum around for a year. Every interaction with the US border folks makes me feel like a criminal. The visa fundamentally restricts the shape of your life in a way thats hard for residents to really understand.
I already get paid enough to retire comfortably when I'm older and it's no fun retiring young! Retirement costs in Canada are also significantly lower if you can count on free healthcare. Not worth it. I do miss the weather though :)
I feel the same way, but from a different perspective since I have DACA. Fortunately I can hop around different jobs or be unemployed, but every couple of years I get to feel like a criminal, and there's the ever-pervasive paradoxical feeling of not being at home but feeling like I'm home in the US. I've been thinking about moving to Guadalajara so I can at least not worry about my immigration status but I'm super scared that I won't feel like I'm home there after being in the US my entire life, and I can't go back on that decision. I've been thinking a lot about Canada as well as Europe, because I think that'll get easier for me to acclimate to.
This whole thing is just super depressing. I feel like I've worked all my life for a great career in the US and it's for nothing if I have to leave everything behind at some point.
As unfortunate as this is, I think this only applies to Indians and Chinese. I was surprised to see Yoluk did not want to bother applying to jobs in the US.
I am a foreign person from ROW (Rest of the World) in the US studying with F1 visa and trying to immigrate here via employment based options.
I have friends who also immigrated to Germany and Britain. The process is definitely easier and guaranteed there but for us ROW, the process does not look so bad to me right now. Maybe I just don't know how it should be.
After I graduate with F1, I can work up to 3 years with my OPT, companies apply to H1-B in that period. Some start the H1-B process even before you graduate if you have a bachelor's degree already. You have 4 chances in H1-B in the end.
EB-2 green card is also an option for us, as far as I know I can get that in less than 2 years. I've read about people who applied to EB-2 directly without H1-B and got that in their STEM OPT extension duration.
Finally, even though it is a slim chance, there is also diversity visa lottery. I have friends who got picked from DV lottery while studying here with F1. Everything became easier for them.
The US is still attractive to people like me, I don't think how this article portrays the immigration is true.
I keep being head hunted to work on SF/SV. And my reply is basically automatic and always the same:
"Due to US external policy and cost of life I can't see it being financially practical to move. Although, I would gladly consider any remote position."
I think the immigration complexity is the lesser problem there. My research based on housing, school, transport and food tells me it looks like absurdly expensive. To be able to even consider to move there I would need a salary bump of 3x-5x. No way this will ever happen.
* Sunnyvale, CA
* Bentonville, AR
* Bangalore, India
We regularly will gossip about best/worst aspects of each of them. My mind is blown at how much they have to pay to live in the greater SF area. 3-4k for rent on an apartment for a small family. My mortgage is 800 a month. A mortgage with a yard big enough for gardens, a bee hive, compost, a couple of trees, basketball goal, fenced in yard, etc....
Of course they get to poke fun at how they cross two timezones and go back 3 decades culturally in time when they fly out to visit. ;-)
The Bangalore folk poke fun at the US based ones at how cold/wet/expensive/boring we all are. It's all in good fun but it really does hammer in how home is where you currently are.
Did you "gossip" about pay? Despite my sky-high rent (although 1-bedroom apartments can certainly be had for much less than $3k) I'm financially better off in the bay area than I would be with any outside the bay area job offer I've gotten. My net-after-housing pay is higher here than any offer or salary range I've seen in places I'd want to move to like Oregon or Reno.
are you gonna have kids? if so that equation is going to change a huge amount. Just see what it does to your spreadsheet once you factor in 3k/month child care, and the cost of living in a place big enough for a small family, etc. did you look at the massive difference cost in eating out and groceries? housing and taxes?
Yes, I budget down to the penny every month so I am factoring in all of it. I don't have any interest in having kids, so that's an angle I hadn't considered.
It doesn’t happen via salary, it happens via stock. Work at a big co over the last decade or so and you’ve seen salary increase at 10% year or so and stock increase much faster. It’s very common for senior engineers in the Bay Area to be earning 175k salary, ~30k bonus, and another 150+ in stock vesting per year. High performers and/or workers at FAANGs do better than that. See levels.fyi for concrete examples.
The whole thing here is stock, which takes a couple years to really stack up, but once it does, you’re making a lot of money.
This is the problem, stock from a few years doesn't house my family or feed my kids. Stock to me is almost as fairly tales as it can be, the few times I received stock as part of my salary it basically evaporated. In the real life, to people that need money each month to survive, stock is a bad joke.
Or almost paycheck to paycheck, which is not as uncommon as one may think. And normally stock come with restrictions on when you can liquidate. This is basically money I don't have now and a promise in the future that may very well go wrong.
I am in a similar position.
Yes, you can work with OPT but apart from the very top companies and a few consulting shops, it has become much harder to get employment on it.
And from H-1B to greencard, you again need company sponsorship.
Canada looks good now because with Express Entry, you can become a PR relatively fast and from there within 5 years, you get citizenship. From there, getting work in the US as a tech worker can be much easier through a TN visa.
F1 makes things easier, but if you didn't come in as a student, things get much trickier. Most of the workflows you mention don't apply because it assumes you're already here to get your EB-2 or H1-B.
Even getting H1-B is challenging, especially as someone freshly graduated ("entry level positions do not qualify as skilled labour" is what the USCIS told me).
you seem to be naive. I'm actually on STEM OPT. you've read about people who got EB-2, but do you know those people ? EB-2 or O-1 visa usually require people with 10 years of experience and exceptional talent. e.g DHH shipping Ruby on Rails. But for the rest of us, your chances are with h1b, which is more luck than merit. And remember, with an H1B once a company sponsors you, you've difficulty transferring the h1b. It's almost as starting the whole process again. with h1b your salary is capped to pretty much what your company wants to pay you, not the market as you're pretty much their property. I'm one of the few people that has actually managed to get employed at 3 different places, while on STEM-OPT. And got my market rate pay, due to the fact I refused sponsorship. The US does have a point based immigration policy like Canada | Aus. they call it 'Marriage'. The government doesn't have to screen, you that much, their citizens do. That's why getting a green card via marriage is easiest out of everything. So yeah, my advise, find a gal | boy you want to marry while in college and get on with it. Otherwise, H1B is a non-starter.
> ____ salaries are less than half than in the US for software developer roles.
You can fill the blank with essentially any non-US location and it would remain correct. Nowhere in the world pays tech workers as much as US does, in absolute or relative terms. Most of the world, Canada included, has priced developer salaries close to engineer salaries. The US is the sole exception where developer salaries are priced close to doctor salaries. Let's not pretend Canada is the outlier—US is.
I am not saying US is wrong and the rest of the world is right or vice versa in figuring out the correct price for tech work. I am just saying that there are two schools of thought, one the US, the other the rest of the world, and I am sure both have good reasons for their approach.
There are no two schools of thought. There are no two "approaches". It's simple economics. Companies don't decide pay X, they have to pay X. In US, there are genuine software products company and software products happen to scale naturally and make a shit ton of money. In most other countries, software engineers are hired merely as IT guys for "main" businesses like insurance or government. They don't scale.
>The US is the sole exception where developer salaries are priced close to doctor salaries.
This is incorrect. Good software developers in Poland, and to some extent the Ukraine, are enjoying salaries comparable with doctors there, if not more.
How much would a good developer make? I'm looking to move to Sweden from Australia, and from what I saw there was a lot of equality in wages/ compression towards a mean for most fields.
Like in Norway, it seemed like SEs made 1.5-2x what a retail worker would make. Makes for a happier society maybe, but I do want to live a fairly lavish life if possible, and Australia definitely allows for that!
That's what I meant by relative terms. Relative to cost of living, American tech workers get paid much more than any tech workers anywhere else in the world. American tech workers get paid close to American doctors and get to enjoy doctor-level prosperity. Canadian doctors, in relative terms, get paid about as much as American doctors and get to enjoy similar levels of prosperity as them. Canadian tech workers, however, don't get paid as much as Canadian doctors, but as much as Canadian engineers, so they get to enjoy a lower level of prosperity. Canadian engineers get paid, in relative terms, close to American engineers.
Anywhere in the world, with the exception of the US, this is the case. US the outlier. Whether it proves the be the outlier that reverts to mean or one that the mean reverts to remains to be seen. I personally think it would be the former. But I don't have strong opinions on it one way or another.
> Canadian doctors, in relative terms, get paid about as much as American doctors and get to enjoy similar levels of prosperity as them.
No they don't.
> Canadian doctors still make dramatically less than U.S. counterparts: study
> Despite recent fee hikes, Canadian doctors still lag dramatically far behind their American counterparts in income, according to a new study that also underscores the wide pay gap in both countries between front-line “primary-care” physicians and much-wealthier surgical specialists.
> Anywhere in the world, with the exception of the US, this is the case. US the outlier. Whether it proves the be the outlier that reverts to mean or one that the mean reverts to remains to be seen.
The US has been the richest country in the world in terms of average individual consumption (not income, some small countries like Norway have higher incomes) since independence and before. It's been at the technological frontier since the 1940's at the latest, and very close to it its entire existence. There may be mean reversion in the long run but given the greater share of young people, the best higher education system in the world and a relatively open immigration system there's little reason to believe it'll change anytime soon.
> The US has been the richest country in the world in terms of average individual consumption (not income, some small countries like Norway have higher incomes) since independence and before
You’re wrong. After the civil war it’s arguable and it’s certainly true after 1900, but American policies favoring agriculture (thanks to romantic notions from Jefferson among others) retarded widespread industrialization in the US until much later than the UK, France, and Germany.
>Canadian doctors, in relative terms, get paid about as much as American doctors and get to enjoy similar levels of prosperity as them.
This is again incorrect. Canada has a significant issue with brain drain in medicine as grads, like their CS counterparts, head south for better salaries and a better quality of life.
Actually, not at all. It's just a myth from naive tech workers.
Googlers might get 200k but doctors routinely break 400k. Doctors are quite ahead even when you factor in 100k in RSU (which not everybody gets and past stock performance is not an indicator of future performance).
Noting it's H1B data so 10-20% below local salaries. Plus doctors can work anywhere in the country, not just in the city where there is google and facebook.
All the high paying doctors are usually specialists in some hard to break into specialty. Your average family doctor is probably making somewhere in the $200k while they bust their asses paying of $300k in student loans.
If you can land a FAANG job, your total comp (after education costs) will outstrip all but the highest paid physicians.
To be fair you can rent a studio in a luxury condo (with doorman, pool, gym, curtain glass walls, etc.) for the price of a bunk bed in SF, around USD1600/mo. I know, I've done both.
Real estate is expensive to buy and salaries are low, though, that's for sure.
>With the high cost of living, I don't know how anyone can live there.
what's the cost of healthcare, childcare, and transportation like in Canada? I know this discussion personally because I've seen it play out between European and American tech jobs and I've seen a lot of difference in cost for raising children.
In Germany or the Netherlands good public education, kindergardens and so on set you back a few hundred bucks a month, I've seen Americans pay tens of thousands per year. Same for two cars that you don't need if you're an urban resident near a tech hub.
Rent control.
When you compare income vs rent that you see on sites like Kijiji or Padmapper it shows rent for a new tenancy, but that's not what the locals pay.
As someone who did his graduate studies in Montreal and moved to NYC to work and then back to Toronto about two years ago I can comment on this. In Toronto I make about 10% less then what I did in NYC if you don't factor in exchange rate. But since I did my entire academic career from undergraduate to phd in Canada, I am able to enjoin a large amount of tuition tax credits which sort of makes up for it. This year I invested in some property downtown Toronto which I plan to hold onto, either living here or leasing it if I leave.
However, I think given the right opportunity I would still head back to the U.S. Things are fucked in the U.S. but the sense of scale, velocity is unmatched. In Toronto you feel that people's attitude is just not the same. There is no hunger or lust to be number #1 and I have always been competitive personality type. In NYC even traditional enterprise corporations (where I worked) there is an intensity and drive that's missing here. Call it the american spirit.
Salary as this stage is relatively unimportant, making 150 or 250k is about the about the same to me. But the scale and types of opportunities is something else. There are roles and jobs that only exist in the U.S.
That being said, for me going back is just a tour of duty, once you are past the journeyman stage of your life and wanting to start a family, then Canada wins unquestioned. The environment, benefits, healthcare, and most importantly education for your children will outweigh just about any salary you can command state-side. Because now you are talking about intangible things that are harder and harder to buy with money.
My opinion is, stay in the U.S. when you are young and/or talented. Then, if you are of Indian or Chinese birth, move elsewhere to start a family and take a senior position in Canada. Typically if you come from reputable shop state-side and demonstrate your worth, you can find a job where people will treat you with respect for that experience. They might not be able to compensate you the same way but you can usually get bumped up a notch.
If you are of white or European heritage and you are in a good place then you can consider staying the U.S. if you can make it work.
Raw numbers don't tell the whole story. From personal experience, Canada is great for new immigrants to get educated and started, but US always vacuums up the best talents.
Just like me. I did my BSc in Iran and was applying for grad school for cs 3 years ago. I just picked Canada because of easier immigration policy. Thank you Canada.
Canada gets immigrants from developing countries; immigrants take advantage of the excellent education and healthcare system, after a few years get a citizenship, a TN visa, then move to US for a better salary and a lower rent. USA gets the cream of the crop from Canada and wins. Canada loses.
If they're Canadian citizens, then aren't they still getting taxed? If by "Canada loses", you mean that they lose entrepreneurs, then it seems like (from what the startup scene people were saying in that article) the opposite is actually occurring.
Also, if your hypothesis were true, you probably wouldn't see an influx of big companies (e.g. Google, Microsoft, Intel, Uber, etc.) opening shop in Canada - the companies are obviously moving to the people in this case. Seems fairly obvious to me (as an Australian looking at options for permanent residence in the US) that the US has sabotaged its brain draining ability in the last few years.
I'm a Canadian naturalized citizen. I am currently in Japan. In the last few years since obtaining PR became a piece of cake, I have seen Indians and Chinese coming here for a masters in a technical field (which are now a joke to get into and graduate from as long as you can pay tuition), obtain a PR in less than year after graduation, 3 years after that a citizenship, apply for TN visa and get a job in US easily.
Why? Because it's very easy to do so and rent/property prices in Vancouver/Toronto have skyrocketed but tech salaries are nothing compared to what you can make in US in USD. Also taxes, cost of living, etc. in select states in US (texas for example) are much lower. Even in seattle, etc. you pay higher rent, but your salary more than makes up for it.
Canadian policy basically makes sure that we lose the brightest to US .
You are absolutely right. Salaries in Canada are pathetic. Anecdotally, I know many who did this TN visa to go back to US. US still wins despite the broken immigration system.
It’s really not, though - the point is to only allow people who literally can’t be found anywhere else to migrate. They’re looking for one in a million, not just anybody with a decent education who’s interested in living here. The immigration policy was broken for decades and is just now being fixed. We should expect to see lower, but better, immigration.
I understand the article is about visa, but the salary discrepancy between the two is very large. I am sure many Canadians are moving to SV to double or triple their salaries.
USA-ian in Canada here. Been able to work remotely for US firms consistently for going on ~5 years here.
I hope these changes drive up tech salaries in Canada -- I fear they won't. Currently they're about 20-40% less than the US particularly due to the currency difference. Cost of living is also a bit higher, and absolutely insane in Vancouver (and a lesser degree, Toronto).
I suspect it will continue the H-1B trend, in that it companies won't pay better wages, just outsource to cheaper Canadian labor, who are in turn taxed higher and squeezed harder.
An increase in immigration will drive down tech salaries in Canada - that's the entire point.
And along the way they will drive up housing prices, and drive up general revenue and consumer spending since there are simply more bodies in the economy.
The system benefits the owners of capital and the migrants themselves, but not existing ('legacy') Canadians.
Along the way you get all kinds of social problems caused by the excess of males and the preponderance of Asian families to selectively abort female fetuses.
The situation is much more complicated. Many go to school in the US, work here to pay off their debts for a decade, then move to Canada for citizenship. Arguably, the US still takes "our cut" of the global workforce.
It also depends on where the immigrants come from. Chinese and Indians have the longest wait list, and therefore its natural for them to look for better options. They are right to do so, imo.
There's also the weather and cost, the large cities in Canada can be insanely expensive, with terrible weather, and salaries aren't anywhere near US levels. If your rent is 2-3k and you're making 100k CAD a year, it doesn't feel like you're living the dream. Want to buy a home in Vancouver or Toronto? No big deal, just fork over 1-2 million CAD for a 1 hour one way commute.
The quality of immigrants is a factor too. The US still sweeps up the best and brightest of academia and business.
I know more than a few Canadians (from immigrant backgrounds) that moved to SV recently purely for the weather and salary reasons. I wonder if when they get their citizenship, many of those in the article will be back in the US or moving there.
Anyone else from western Europe had their ESTA cancelled and had to apply for B1/B2 (non-immigrant visa) just to visit the US? It happened to me at the end of 2018, and it took me a year to get a visa. It's apparently going to be issued this week. It was stuck in Administrative Processing the whole time. The situation is eye-opening.
(And no, I don't have a criminal record, or indeed any hint of what I might have "done wrong")
In the last decade US stock market went up by 256%. All other countries grew below 100%. The outstanding performance of the US stock market was thanks to tech industry. Without the tech industry we'd all be poorer whether you work in tech or not. Anything that hurts tech hurts all Americans.
Taxes in canada are very high. The ontario income tax rate of 53.53% applies at 220K CAD. the equivalent rate for Cali in USD is 34.75%. you then have PST/GST (14%), way fewer deductions and european gas taxes. The one thing that is a good deal in canada is cheap high quality education. The "free" healthcare that you get is not very good and even the for pay services are of surprisingly low quality.
The average tax rate for a single person making 250K in Sunnyvale is 32.93% [1]
The average tax rate for a single person making 250K in Ontario is 39.80% [2]
But with the extra taxes you also get some better benefits like healthcare, cheaper education. Of course if your main goal is to save as much money as you can, then it probably better in the US because you earn more salary and USD converts better into other currencies.
You appear to be misunderstanding the definition of "average" in this context. The first ~50k of your income is taxed at ~20%, the next ~50k is taxed at ~30%, and so on. The average of these percentages gets you to a ~39% average tax rate for 250k income.
We immigrated from the bay area to British Columbia a few years ago. We pay taxes in the US and Canada . Taxes aren't much higher in Canada. And we've used the health care a lot and honestly it's excellent and you don't have to worry about losing it due to job loss.
Anecdotes are just that. Anecdotes. The most objective and comprehensive measure of health outcomes, life expectancy at birth, remains significantly higher in Canada than in the United States.
That is very very naive, does not reflect the state of health care system as whole and not even related sometimes. Last I checked, Italy had lower ranking halthcare system than Canada and higher life expectancy. What about hospital wait times? What about wait times for treatments and procedures for non-life threatening illnesses? What about qualify of delivery? What about working hours lost due to all of the above? What about long term consequences of delayed treatments? That is 99% of health care.
It stands to be seen how many of them will go back to US when the immigration policy becomes favorable. Canada is still plan B for high skilled immigrants. If H4 work authorization is removed, there will be a surge to Canada. Many US skilled workers do a soft landing to get their PR cards as a plan B. Canada should stop issuing PR cards for soft landers who are playing Canada's immigration system.
Who are willing to work more unpaid overtime, as well. No matter how much you pay American citizens, they obnoxiously demand work-life balance that foreign visa holders in fear of losing their work status don’t.
Once Canada starts developing those trillion dollar home brew companies that deliver a product most of the world uses at a high margin, I’m sure Canadian salaries will go up to match.
Was this comment intended as sarcasm? I'm finding it hard to read the intention.
Anyway, I'm not so sure that's relevant. If Amazon or Microsoft pay less for the same role and skill level in their Vancouver office than their Seattle office, why wouldn't a Canadian company do the same? I don't think the pay differential is due to patriotism by upper management, so I'm not sure it has to do with where the company was founded.
In some cases proximity to the head office may be seen as worth extra pay, but that isn't always the case either.
The reasoning seems to be "we pay less in Canada because we can", and Canadian companies like Shopify or (in the past) RIM play the same way.
You could drop developer salaries probably 50% without the artificial barrier of immigration restrictions. There are literally millions of developers in the world making 1/4 of what the US pays, but are legally unable to compete for the same positions.
There is a faction of oligarchs in this country who want to saturate the labor market for their own benefit. This is merely propaganda on their behalf.
Might just as well say the same about every developed country's immigration policy. Last I heard, all accepted fewer than wanted in. If you perceive you can't get in one place you emigrate to another. Or stay home of course, making it also a boon for developing countries' tech industry (a very good thing, in my opinion).
Over 44 million residents of the US were not born in the US, as opposed to 8 million in Canada. As a percentage of the population, that's lower than Canada, but by weight of sheer numbers, the US shouldn't have any problem with this.
The US takes over 1.2 million immigrants into the country every year, we just don't have much of a skilled immigration system - ours is largely based on family reunification. Canada and Australia, on the other hand, have a points based system that favors immigrants with education and skills.
I actually do blame the high tech industry for some of this. I just don't think it's a "bug" that the US system was largely based on a very indentured approach, where high tech companies got to decide who is allowed into the US and the circumstances under which they are allowed to remain, with long, grueling waits for a green card, where a would-be immigrant was beholden to an employer (called a "sponsor") and could be fired and deported at the employer's pleasure.
Facebook, Google, Apple, all the big companies - you see, what they wanted was a freer, more open system where skilled immigrants got to choose what they'd study, where they'd work, what companies they'd work for, and even whether they'd work in tech in the first place, in accordance with their own personal values and interests and market signals such as salary, cost of living, and work conditions.
That's what google and Facebook wanted. Unfortunately, all they could get was an visa that they bestow and control, putting them in a position to determine micro aspects of a would-be immigrants life.
Right. This utterly corporate self serving H1B guest worker visa system that undermines markets and is an affront to freedom did terrible damage to the public perception of skilled immigration.
Want to be clear, I don't blame anyone for working on an H1B, this wasn't your choice, and it was your only option. Don't blame you for going to Canada, either. But I just don't buy it from the corporate lobbyists. This was hardly a bug, to the companies that make heavy use of the H1B, the control over the worker's right to live int the US is a feature, and they lobbied hard for it.
They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed. This is a typical path for immigrants who can’t get into US directly: Rest of the world -> Canada -> acquire TN Visa -> migrate to US
Except that if it goes on for too long, a bunch of people end up building a life/business/network/etc there. Someone up-thread mentioned that this is how Hollywood ended up on the other side of the country to New York.
It seems pretty hard to argue that the US's current immigration policies aren't helping out Canada right now.
It's only hard to argue they aren't helping out Canadian companies' shareholders. Other Canadians' lives don't get better in obvious ways when yuppies move into the neighborhood.
I think, in the long term, their lives would get better. Their country would end up with more resources at their disposal, which (if we look at the countries around the world) seems fairly well correlated with quality of life of the inhabitants.
Given Canada's immigration system, it's plausible (I'd guess likely, on a national scale), but it still depends on parameters like the country's current population, or the current availability of desirous places to live. For example, it's pretty clear that without immigrants bidding up property values, British Columbia would have had much higher net interprovincial migration. We see the same thing in California, with people moving out because land is too expensive.
> They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed.
It takes at least 5 years to get Canadian citizenship. 5 years is a long time to build a life somewhere that people wouldn't want to migrate to the US. You are assuming it's just more money that motivates everyone.
Except for the fact that your US immigration story will fully depend on where you're born. No amount Canada/Mexico/UK citizenship can change that place of birth, and the US will treat this generation of Indians/Chinese the way they always have.
Saudi Arabia being in top 10, makes this list and how they conduct it makes very reliable though. I can't even think one reason to move there yet this list says it
In the last 4 years the stock markets is up over 50% and unemployment has plummeted. This has resulted in salaries and total comp going even higher for everyone, and insanely higher for engineers. Living in the US likely became more desirable in the last 4 years
The same could be said about the stimulation spikes before 2000 and 2008. Short term gains != Long term sustainable industries.
Also, the gains have literally come because of the investment in smart immigrants in the 00s. That gave fluidity in the hiring market, allowing megacorps to expand rapidly while other countries couldn't. They just didnt have so many smart employees.
The impact of today's immigration policies will be felt 5 years from now
If you are not seeing growth you may need to gain more marketable skills. Whenever hiring people, more in demand skill sets definitely command a higher salary
You specifically said in the past four years salary and comp has spiked as a result of the stock market and unemployment.
But what you linked does not clearly indicate that at all considering growth has been consistent over the past 8 years. In fact it seems that salary outlook has even slowed slightly over the past four years.
I think it's hilarious that the tech companies in the States say that they "can't find talent", and yet there are reasons for that.
One: These companies want to pay less for more. Smart developers are not going to go for that, so they'll look elsewhere. Then the companies can say "Oh, we can't find anyone, boo-hoo, let's hire someone cheaper now. From overseas."
Two: See one.
IF you don't believe me, just do a job search and see all the shit software jobs out there. 12 bucks an hour for a full stack? 75k a year for 5 years experience in five languages? Oh, and you gotta be DevOps too.
These companies are just trying to take advantage of a system.
From my experience on the media / marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn't consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.
Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There's real momentum here as well.