Hacker News Reader

Comment by bobdole1234 | Hacker News Reader

50%?

I'm just shy of 4x.

... with people talking about offers for mid-level developers in Toronto / Vancouver being in the $70k - $110k range, are you claiming that you can pull in $280k - $440k for a software development position? If not, then I would think that this pay difference converges the more experience you have, no?

with the exchange rate maybe. I have talented friends in Toronto who tell me it pretty much caps at $100k CAD. Whereas at a comparable talent and experience level, the range in the Bay Area is $175-300k USD = $240-400k CAD. And this excluding the outliers who got lucky and joined pre-IPO.

The qualifier there is "in the Bay Area". I get the impression you could easily replace "Canada/Toronto/Vancouver" with "Midwest" and be mostly accurate.

Also, while this:

> $175-300k USD = $240-400k CAD

is accurate, it fluctuates. Back in 2008 CAD and USD were at par with CAD actually exceeding USD for periods. Also, unless you're living in Canada and getting paid in USD (or hoarding cash to return to living in Canada) the exchange rate shouldn't really mean much in terms of your career choices. It makes more sense to measure those salaries against local cost of living / quality of living / etc.

> the exchange rate shouldn't really mean much

What do you mean by this? After taxes, rent, food and other living costs, you're keeping almost 50% of your compensation to spend on whatever you want. How does purchasing power not matter? How much does a car cost in Canada? An iPhone? How much does a flight to Japan cost or a dinner in Tokyo? Of course the exchange rate is relevant even when you're not "hoarding" cash and have no intentions to return to Canada.

What you really want to be doing is comparing local purchasing power to local purchasing power, unless you're looking into cross-currency transactions. Sure local purchasing power can be affected by exchange rate (e.g. things that depend on imports), but that's indirect and is a bit more complicated than doing a direct currency conversion on your yearly (pre-tax) salary.

Maybe I'll get there someday :-)

I should have mentioned I'm still a student. I'm sure that for a senior developer, the difference is significantly larger.

You will. If you're at UW and/or have a competitive portfolio you can expect entry-level US (read: Bay Area) offers to be about 2x Canadian ones in terms total comp if you ignore exchange rate (more if you include it). If you're good, that's going to scale to about 3-5x what you get in Canada after a few years.

And don't let anybody get on you about the cost of living. You can live pretty inexpensively in San Francisco, as you can in any city, if you're willing to make some sacrifices (roommates, transit).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com