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Comment by mahyarm | Hacker News Reader

It also depends on the cost of living. Your rent doesn't change much when the Canadian dollar goes down. Your medical care is still free, some utility bills stay the same. Buying things are more expensive now although.

For example, that $2000/mo USD rent is now $2900/mo CAD instead of the $2000 CAD it used to be. Your $900/mo rent in Canada is now $600/mo USD!

So you have to look at the total profit margin to make more sense of it. It's definitely a great time to start paying your Canadian student loans and to work in the USA! It's also really good to work remotely and still live in Canada.

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> It's also really good to work remotely and still live in Canada.

You'd think, but every bigcorp I've suggested this arrangement to says it would want to put me on the payroll of their Canadian subcorporation, paid out in CAD at a 1:1 conversion of the USD rate. Kind of a lousy bargain, all told (though one I'm currently taking anyway from IBM.)

Yup they will all do that. The key is to not work with bigcorp.

At the current exchange and the salaries that are higher in the US, you can nearly double your salary. Lets says you can have 100k USD, exchange to Canadian gives you 145k CAD. In a city like Montreal where you can have a maximum of 85k CAD in most places (yes I know some pay more, but it's still not that common), this make a huge different.

Best is to work remotely, but if you move across for a couple of years, when you come back, this is a new house paid cash.

I can understand it's hard for people with family, but otherwise I really don't understand why young engineer stay here.

Agreed, it's almost universally better for young people. With families I would argue the US has higher cost of living though (education costs mostly).

What are some good resources to find this particular type of setup? i.e., work in Canada for a US company without actually having to latch on to a subsidiary.

A smaller startup too small to have a subsidiary. Or to just do it as a contractor or as part of general negotiations.

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