Work in Silicon Valley and Spooked About Trump? Canada Wants You
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
I am genuinely curious on your take, since you seem to have direct knowledge. I have seen many people say things in the same vein, but also hear positive things from people in Canada and outsiders as well.
Re: SRED credits - I've been a part of the application process twice. Documentation can be a bit cumbersome, but not much more than 5 minutes summarizing the weeks work in a spreadsheet (for each employee), and tracking their hours spent on related tasks. Add in source control and the numerous artifacts that software devs come up with, means low amount of effort for high payout. And by high payout, I'm talking 1-2 devs salary in a 10 dev shop. We also hired a consulting company that specialized in SRED applications which saved us a ton of overhead. Cost 10-20% of payout, but was worth not having to deal with the application and/or any audits had they occurred.
Where do they live? Even a crack house in Vancouver costs $1M. Vancouver has probably some of the most expensive real estate in the entire world now.
But I've been in a few different startups in Canada, and they've all successfully received very significant SRED payments. Having the government pay a huge chunk of your engineering payroll has been a key part of the success of some of these companies.
> not serious abot
True Canadian confirmed.
Moving to Canada from the USA lowers your quality of life by 50%.
I have lived in both the US and Canada, I prefer Canada.
* housing cost is generally higher in Canada, except maybe if you're comparing to the Bay Area in which case it's a wash
* cars cost a LOT more in Canada (as does everything else)
* tech salaries are a lot lower in Canada
* taxes are generally higher in Canada (plus the huge VAT for sales)
While I'm not going to argue Canada is the best place ever or that we don't have some issues, the quality of life is still pretty damn good. Certainly not 50% lower than the US or Silicon Valley...
Remember, we're comparing lifestyles of tech professionals here, not average people or poor people. For people who can't afford decent health insurance, Canada definitely seems to have a much better system. But a tech professional should not have much trouble paying health insurance premiums.
University is like $3000/year here. I heard it's almost the same in the US if you go to a regular University.
Healthcare is irrelevant is you're insured. And if you want access to care or a specialist in a reasonable delay, you have to got the private route, which means you actually pay twice. Considering that 50% of our taxes go to healthcare, I'm paying almost 25% of my income on healthcare here in Canada.
My uneducated guess is it's about 5-10 times that at private U.S colleges.
I know people will bring up healthcare, but I would argue if you have a high-paying job in the US, you never really worry about going bankrupt due to healthcare and you get access to some of the top physicians/hospitals.
Now don't get me wrong, Canada has a lot going for it. I think Canadian cities tend to be run better and this shows up as being safer and cleaner. Canadians also tend to be nicer and because they are 100% committed to the rat race, they tend to be less high strung and competitive.
Overall, I had to move from Canada since there weren't any jobs in my home town. I could have move to Toronto (3 hr flight) or I could have moved to the Bay area (3 hr flight). I'm the same distance from family, so why not go for the bigger opportunity?
Final disclaimer: this is my own opinion. Obviously some people will look at the US and go "yuck". Live where you want to live. It's all good.
Canada is a lot more egalitarian.
But from what you've said it seems like making the move to US is a good idea if you want more money and more opportunities. Hopefully I will be able to make the move soon. I am pretty ignorant of how the visa stuff works though and assuming I don't make it to the big tech companies I don't know how I'd be able to walk a middling startup through it. It seems like it would generally be easier for these startups to hire Americans.
If you have a blog where you've shared your experiences on the move I'd be very interested in reading it because this is a subject that's been in my head for a while.
I think a lot of that depends on your personal experiences. There aren't really "ghettos" in Canada like the US, but there are very poor areas, just like US cities. They just tend to look a little less rundown since I think city gov'ts in Canada tend to work better.
Like I said in my original post, it all depends on what's important to you and that can change over time. If you've decided the rat race isn't for you, then Canada is a great place to live. Stability, good social services, etc are in abundance in Canada. To each his own.
As for my immigration story, I never really put it down in writing. Even though you're Canadian, it can be a real slog. You have to stand in line just like every other immigrant, although you do get some benefits (like TN visa) that other countries don't. But when it comes to a green card and citizenship, it really isn't any different that other countries.
If you want to read up on it, just google, there is a ton of information out there. If I were you, I'd give it a go using a TN visa. As long as you have a degree in certain fields, all you need is an offer letter from the company. You can get the visa at the border.
I agree to every single of your points.
Sure, greatly reduced health care cost. But even accounting for that, it still seemed like a big financial setback.
Unless I'm missing something, it seems like if you could afford a home in Toronto, you might as well sell it and buy a house in NYC or SF or Boston. Your cost of living would be about the same, but your income would jump roughly 2x or higher.
EDIT : For example, Sortable is the Canadian company in the article. Their "3+ year experience" Software Engineer position on their website maxes out at 100K CAD, a salary 25% lower than Amazon's Seattle interns make (~100K USD).
I wouldn't say I'm making bank in Mtl, but my salary is comfortable and gives me slack. Most people I know start buying homes here in their mid-30s.
If not, then fine, we'll find another country that wants to greatly improve their tech sector. You don't want anything like the economic juggernaut that is Silicon Valley in your country? That's your choice, but seems pretty shortsighted to me. Most countries actually want to import people who grow their economy a lot and contribute a ton in taxes without draining their social-welfare systems.
Hey, if you're happy being a backwater full of degreed people who don't actually produce anything that anyone's ever heard of, that's fine. If you enjoy having Silicon Valley-level housing prices but no Silicon Valley-level jobs or economy, that's fine too.
Is zero value somehow supposed to impress me?
However, we're comparing present-day US to present-day Canada, and I'm not seeing any advantages to living in Canada, except for living around friendlier people. Economically, there don't appear to be any advantages at all to professional tech workers, only big disadvantages.
If you think Silicon Valley has a broken real estate system, have you checked out the real estate situation in Vancouver? Personally, I'd love to live in Vancouver, but there's no way I'm going to get a job there that pays enough for me to buy a house that costs several million dollars (CAD), given that even crack houses there cost $1M.
At least here in the US, there's still a lot of cities besides SV where there's a lot of tech jobs, the pay is really high for them, and the housing costs are bearable.
So we applied for a visa, and that was denied because there's no category for software developer or designer or PM in NAFTA. And even if there was, I would have required an engineering or graphic design degree to be eligible... without doing a costly analysis to make sure no one else in Canada could do my job.
Agreed with above comment about this being a gimmick.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/justin-trudeau-proposes-lift...
In the meantime, you probably can get an ordinary tourist visa? I don't think you really need to go through the NAFTA categories or get a Labour Market Opinion for a 3-day business trip, do you?
I should have said I was there for pleasure, but I was trying to be ya know, honest. Now my passport is flagged for 7 years, so I better have a rock solid vacation plans if I want to try to enter on a tourist visa.
As a Canadian, I once travelled to the US to assist a client with integration for a week. I got pulled into secondary questioning. He asked one question about what I was doing in the States, and then spent a few more minutes grilling me about what exactly the first level agent had asked me, how I had answered, et cetera. I could tell he was preparing to ream out the first level agent for wasting his time...
I think around ~70% of the shops in the area are close to bankruptcy and the system is crashing really hard currently. If it stays like this, everyone will be relying on some sort of black market to purchase goods in less than 10 years. While I guess main cities are still okay, things are not really working anymore in remote areas.
If that includes freedom of speech, you may want to rethink Canada. Say something politically incorrect and expect to be pulled in front of the on Human Rights Commission to explain yourself and potentially be fined.
In terms of corruption, try googling "Sponsorship Scandal".
>Low corruption
>policies that encourage education and health
>progressive expanded rights and freedoms.
You can chose only 3.
I'm pretty sure you're lucky to get 1
Considering how pissed the establishment Republicans are that he might be the nominee, they're all betting on an open convention followed by some combination of a Walker, Cruz, Rubio, Ryan ticket.
I can't believe how people have lost their minds and he most likely won't get the amount of delegates required to get the nomination outright before the convention in June. Clearly whatever he's doing, he's struck a HUGE nerve somewhere, because there is a fuck ton of panic in the streets and it's still very, very, very early in the process.
By contrast, Trump is a moderate masquerading as a conservative caricature.
The worst part is that it looks like you guys will be stuck with an 'establishment' president who'll simply continue the status quo of funnelling money to the rich and waging wars in 3rd world countries (Hillary).
Historically, extremists on the liberal side have focused more on policy than personality, like Sanders, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, and to a lesser extent, Jesse Jackson. These guys aren't populists. They promote the interests of folk who are below average economically and civilly, raising their prospects upward toward the mean, rather than promoting the economic or moral interests of those already in the mainstream.
IMHO, that difference is less likely to attract megalomaniacs, like Trump.
That really depends on where you're coming from, politically. Compared to some places in the world, the most "liberal" and "socialist" Democrat (no, not Hillary) is already a right wing extremist. For starters: She's a hawk. She and her husband deliberately came in to office to push the already right-leaning Democratic party further to the right. She's for enlarging the already massive surveillance state. These are not moderate positions to a lot of people. Maybe moderate compared to Trump.
Regarding whether a moderate or an extremist is more likely to win, there's little evidence that Presidential elections get decided on political positions. Sadly, personality and style are far more significant.
Of course, my preferred choice is Bernie, but with how plainly and obviously corrupt the DNC is, I don't have a lot of hope of him getting the Dem nomination and running in the general election. Maybe things will go totally haywire and both Bernie and Trump will get pissed and run as independents after the establishment railroads them both, and then we'll have a 4-way race.
If you removed gun control views Hillary could run just fine as a Republican. She's in favor of climate change policies too, which establishment Republicans disagree with, but I don't see many average joe Republicans giving a shit about it.
You are right though, she really has no extreme stances. This is mainly due to the fact she tailors her views and policies to what's popular at the time.
except for consistently lying...
"Oh my god! Candidate X won New Hampshire, what an upset! Who knows what will happen!!!"
[5 months later...]
"As expected, the candidate everyone thought would win the nomination did."
It's a bit of a farce. I swear the nomination process was created solely to see newspapers.
Canadians come to the US for a better standard of living, comparatively more affordable housing (yes, even in the Bay Area!), a diverse and booming job market with interesting opportunities and a less conservative startup culture. None of that seems to be changing anytime soon.
(preparing for modbomb oblivion)