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Comment by eigenvector | Hacker News Reader

"For years, Canada's tech industry has watched in frustration as Microsoft and Google hired the country's top computer science grads for high-paying jobs in Seattle and Silicon Valley. Now Canada believes it has found a new way to lure American and international tech workers."

Is it... paying more so people don't have to choose between their country and financial security? Let's see.

"Canadian tech companies are eager to capitalize on anxiety among international visitors and would-be immigrants following President Trump's travel ban and other immigration policies."

Nope. Just trying to capitalize on people's fear and anxiety to avoid matching their competitors' pay.

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I'd love it so much if Canada had comparable salaries. I'd move back for sure, at least if it came 10% within Seattle and SV.

But, I'm not sure it's possible for companies to do so.

I mean, first of all, in the US, outside of a few cities like NY, SV, Seattle, Bellevue, you start to see lower pay which gets closer to Canadian pay.

Appart from that, Canada just doesn't have the same market. That's the biggest difference. Most startup capitalize on the US market, and that's just easier and more accessible to do if you're US based.

In a way, Canada pays decently. You'll be very comfortable as an engineer in Canada, even with a large family. But compared to certain US cities, it's abysmal.

It's kind of crazy that in the US, a bachelor degree in CS can give you pay close to what doctors make. And a 9 month dev boot camp can have you earn similar to many university level degrees.

I'm not sure this will last forever. My point being, it's unclear if Canada's pay for tech is too low, or if some US cities pay is too high.

> I mean, first of all, in the US, outside of a few cities like NY, SV, Seattle, Bellevue, you start to see lower pay which gets closer to Canadian pay.

In cities where the pay lowers so does the cost of living. Canada will never get over the exchange rate + availability of goods in America. Canada is an amazing country to live in but America is great too when you have money.

The cost of living in Vancouver is just as high as the cost of living in Seattle. This is after the Canadian dollar tanked. In fact, right now, the cost of buying a house in Seattle is much, much lower.

Engineer wages in Seattle were ~30-100% higher - before the Canadian dollar tanked. Now they are ~50-160% higher.

Vancouver is a bit of a special case because of how insane the property prices are there. It's like the Canadian SF, except without the job market.

It's also the only major Canadian city in the same time zone as Silicon Valley... And is three hours away from Seattle.

I suppose there's also Victoria, but there's no tech jobs there.

Here's a frequently updated list of tech startup jobs in Victoria:

https://github.com/sendwithus/vic-startup-jobs

Victoria also has nicer weather than Vancouver (less summer rain). Direct flights to Seattle and SF.

> In a way, Canada pays decently. You'll be very comfortable as an engineer in Canada, even with a large family. But compared to certain US cities, it's abysmal.

Hmmm depends on where you live. In some places a large family would be quite unaffordable. The average cost of a detached house in February in Metro Vancouver was $1.76 million. Vancouver has become so unaffordable that even those with great (for Canada) six figure salaries would find it very hard to cobble together enough money to buy property.

Toronto is the same. In fact, worse because you need two cars per family

From the transportation perspective, Toronto is probably marginally better than Vancouver for families.

You're more likely to require two cars in Vancouver than in Toronto as the combination of the Greater Toronto Area public transportation options cover a wider area than Vancouver's.

That is simply not true. If you are in dt Vancouver you can get pretty much anywhere walking. Not the case for Toronto(even downtown) due to city size and climate

I'm not sure why you're suddenly restricting your "two cars per family" point to the city downtown cores alone.

But sure - if we change frames then both city downtown cores are either easily walkable or extremely accessible via public transportation, hence ceteris paribus neither family (living in the downtown core) in their respective cities would require more cars than the other.

How long will you walk from Stanley Park to the border of Burnaby? By that logic, you can get anywhere in Canada simply by walking as well.

>In a way, Canada pays decently. You'll be very comfortable as an engineer in Canada, even with a large family.

Have you actually tried that, or just hyperbolizing? Many devs in Canada net 4-5K/m. Rent in Vancouver would easily be 1.5-2.5K/m for a "large family". That's not a "very comfortable" spot.

you need to double those rent figures for vancouver

Here's my issue with your argument. The article we're commenting on is about Canadian companies being frustrated cause Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple hire away all the best Canadian talent.

As a rule, Canadian citizens are highly mobile to the US due to the TN visa, the lack of a language barrier, close proximity and the extreme similarity of cultures.

So if Canadian companies actually need that talent, and for some structural reason related to being located in Canada they are unable to pay for it, then their business isn't viable. Full stop.

If Canadian businesses are just less profitable and less productive and therefore can only afford lower wages, that's fine. They will get the talent that isn't mobile for one reason or another. Some Canadians choose to stay in spite of the lower pay, some developers just aren't able to get hired at top US companies, and Canadian immigrants who aren't yet citizens are mostly locked out of the US job market.

The problem arises when Canadian business think they can keep the low pay and get people to turn down Google to stay in Toronto. If you're trying to do, say, an AI-focused startup in Canada and you think you're going to hire top people away from Google for $100,000 CAD because Trump, that's not going to happen.

So if Canada wants to have companies that aren't "X but for Canada" but rather actual global internet companies, they should expect to pay global internet company wages.

There's viable and there's fuelled by VC cash. There's no Full stop.

America's able to lure these workers by relying on easy investment money, not business viability.

You're pretending that there's an even playing field, and there isn't. If there were an even playing field, every firm would have left the valley decades ago to find cheaper workers.

But that's just not how it works.

What is keeping that VC cash in America then? If they can get a higher return on a smaller buy-in in Canada, then why don't they?

> It's kind of crazy that in the US, ... a 9 month dev boot camp can have you earn similar to many university level degrees.

This speaks more about the relevance of these [university level] degrees than how high dev salaries are.

Entry salaries are only part of the story. What are your career prospects, or how fast can you expect to get promoted?

> Is it... paying more so people don't have to choose between their country and financial security?

I don't think many software developers in Canada are facing that choice. Is there the opportunity to be 'more' secure in the States? Sure. But being a developer in Canada is hardly a bleak proposition.

If you are in Vancouver, isn't it though?

Cost of home ownership at SF levels. Check. Salary to match? Nope.

I used to love Vancouver, I went to school there. I wanted to stay. But I doubt I'd move back except to retire.

I've lived and worked in London, NY, SF but I settled in Vancouver. I don't own a home but I pay a modest rent for a house in a good part of the suburbs and I commute on world class public transportation. My salary would sound great compared to US salaries just a few years ago but the CAD has fallen since. Nevertheless it still buys a good quality of life in Vancouver. I'm proud of the values that people have here in Canada and I'm raising a family somewhere where I feel safe and welcome as an immigrant.

After living expenses, health insurance, taxes, etc, just moving south my net income tripled.

5 years later, I'm pushing something like 8x what disposable income would have been by now if I compare with my old colleagues.

And that's even after I take out the extra expenses of my mortgage being 11x what my rent used to be (by choice, it was "only" 4x higher originally, since I lived in a rent controlled area for almost 30 years.

The difference is absolutely absurd. And since a lot of things don't vary in price with the average cost of living (cars are not more expensive south of the border. Neither are smartphones or restaurants), it matters.

Doesn't this just show something isn't right in the US? Why aren't firms hiring more in their international offices if the cost of employing developers is 3x in the US vs even advanced nations with solid talent?

Because integrating those offices is a PITA. Your workers in Paris or Lyon aren't going to stay late so that your workers in Mountain View can start the meeting at 9am rather than at 7am.

Workers in British Columbia, IIRC, are in the same time-zone as Mountain View.

As mentioned, its a pain in the ass to manage all of those offices. Also, the cost of running those offices, with all the different laws you might be unfamiliar with, can be complicated.

I worked for a company that did just that: open an office in Canada in the same timezone as their American HQ to cut cost. The taxes, expenses, and complying with local laws at large scale (think: Quebec language laws) are real, and they almost ended up killing the office because the cost was too high. They absolutely were hiring more in the American office in the end from a pure cost perspective, and using the Canadian one to scale even though it was super expensive to run.

Now, its very likely it was them simply being inefficient and unprepared for it, but it doesn't really matter: its a real issue.

Now in the case of my current employer, we absolutely have international offices where getting head count is much cheaper, but to scale, we need offices everywhere where there's talent, and that includes in the big american metros. In my case, I just moved to get the $$$ of the American offices, that's all :)

It seems like firms that are large enough to manage multiple offices do exactly that. In the games industry electronic arts is a good example. They have offices in Vancouver, Montreal, and Edmonton (a huge team grown out of the BioWare acquisition) and possibly other places in Canada.

Microsoft has a campus in Vancouver (well, Richmond, originally - it moved to downtown Vancouver later) since 2007. There was around 600 people there last year, mostly devs.

they do, but the canadians aren't stupid; they move to us jobs for 2x the compensation. the canadian offices are staffed mostly by non-canadians who couldn't get H1Bs or TNs but could qualify for the equivalent canadian visa.

Path dependence and all that, so I'm sure this is how things worked out for you.

People should be aware though, your example isn't even close to usual.

Work the numbers for a simple case - for round numbers take 100k/yr and 1000/month disposable. To do 8x that you are adding basically another 100k, post tax - so add another 35 k.

Do at this rate you have a salary multiple of 2.35. This just doesn't happen in general, for the same job. You may have an opportunity for a different job at 2.5 timed salary, but mostly people don't

Much more realistic is a 30% bump, which is still on the high end giving you a disposable income multiple of 2.5, which isn't bad.

Anyway, the numbers vary a bit with higher salary and rates, but mostly people won't see anywhere near 3x, let alone 8x - unless they are comparing very different jobs.

For Canadians it's the status quo.

I was looking for my first job out of college, offers in Canada were 1/2 what they were in Seattle. Cost of living was lower than Vancouver. A TN visa was a low barrier. This story repeats over and over again.

Everyone in this thread is talking about Vancouver, which is a housing nightmare. The scene in other Canadian cities is more practical

Where? Toronto housing isn't cheap by Canadian standards, and salaries, while higher as far as I know, are not super high either.

Montreal is ridiculous since it is essentially NYC's favorite "nearshoring" . It's also big for game dev, which pays like crap even by Montreal standards.

Is it better in Edmonton? No idea. But with Vancouver/Montreal/Toronto out of the picture, that leaves precious few options.

Montreal rents are not too expensive, no.

There are other issues though

If you can learn a programming language you can learn to say bonjour and order a meal in French. I know, I have done this.

doesnt mean that you want to.

Correct, and that's not an issue (for me)

But the rigorous winters are one, also see my other comment in this thread

The OQLF breathing down our neck bitching we didn't translate every single piece of internal software we had and exclusively use Quebec layout keyboard was fucking annoying. They apply their rules in a discretionary fashion so it affects different companies differently, but having to fend them off continually is a pain.

The caliber of engineer is just bad too. There's always the occasional superstar teams, but it's really, really hard to find a good spot unless you have connections...and even if you do, 2 years later as personnel shifts it goes to hell again.

I would have taken a pay -cut- to work in a different city. Fortunately, you'll never have to since the salaries are so bad.

2.5x sounds about right post tax, post expenses, including higher rent, for the same role. That's already a huge difference

But as you mentioned, unless you compare different jobs: the same opportunities simply don't exist up there. Making 300k, 400k or more? Its certainly not common in NYC or SF, but if you try hard enough, and shoot for it, its possible. Up north? Maybe as an exec, but as an individual contributor or tech leadish style position? I wouldn't know where to start looking. While here there's a lot of options. There's not for everyone by a long shot, but they are there.

Thus 8x or more becomes possible. And someone like a top Waterloo engineering graduate has an above average chance at those. But I don't know where they would without moving country.

Seeing a noticeable bump in discretionary income after tax is very realistic - on average taxes are a bit lower, salaries are a bit higher. Seeing an 8-fold increase is unlikely.

You are right that there are many more top tier opportunities (although they do cost in Canada in small numbers) - but by definition nearly, this doesn't apply to most developers.

> "Do at this rate you have a salary multiple of 2.35. This just doesn't happen in general, for the same job."

I'm a Canadian that moved to the US for work - this multiple sounds entirely plausible, in fact it sounds like a conservative estimate.

In major tech hubs the multiple is closer to 3-4x.

> "Much more realistic is a 30% bump"

This is not at all realistic - I know many Canadians working in the US as developers and all of them are making well in excess of 200% of their Canadian market rate.

You're characterizing Canadian tech salaries (in say, Vancouver or Toronto) as being moderately below US standards (~30%?), where in fact they are vastly below the standard in comparable markets (SFBA, Seattle, NYC, etc). The gap is already big for new grads, but it widens even further with experience. A dev with ~5+ years of experience can reasonably triple their salary moving south.

Yup, exactly. I mean, I can see it happening frequently the way the person who replied to me said it. If you're in a hot area in Canada that pays decently (I think Toronto is probably not bad, I never worked there), you probably can hit 100k? Then if you move in a tech hub and you're not all that, 135-140k is possible. Then your multiplier isn't that high.

But if you were making 70-80k in Canada then hit the US and do 200k + RSUs + bonus, you're in a much different world...and it can just keep going up and up and up and up, while up north you will hit a wall much sooner.

Especially because there is an entire category of dev jobs that simply don't exist in Canada: the $300-500k senior dev roles at institutional BigCos like Google, FB, MS, Apple, etc.

And if you are making 150k + RSUs + bonus in Canada do you really think you'll get a 3-4x larger offer in the US?

Again, I'm not denying that vastly more of these opportunities exist in the US, particularly in a few locations. But that doesn't factor into the majority of tech jobs on either side of the border.

It doesn't. And the average joe isn't going to move either.

However, the Waterloo software engineering graduate who's making 150k+RSU+bonus is probably nailing a Principal engineer position at a famous american tech company in SF/SV/NYC/Boston and is absolutely going to nail big bucks. Thats some superstar material right there. The only places I've seen that approached those numbers in Canada were Canadian offices of Wall street banks. And having worked for those companies in the past, superstar engineers at Morgan/Goldman in NYC made me look poor.

And i'm far from poor.

Yup. I'm also canadian that also moved down the US. That describes my experience perfectly. While rent also easily tripled (from Montreal to NYC) I can say I now manage to save what I'd make gross in Canada, with a better quality of life.

Being HN, you have to be careful of selection bias. I'm sure many of us know someone who left a 150k/yr job in Vancouver, say, for 400k in the valley. Or may be that someone.

But to suggest this is th norm for software jobs across both countries? The stats just don't support it.

3-4x is crazy. You make it sound like the US is crawling with tech jobs paying > 500k for mid-career jobs. It just not so.

You don't hear about senior-level jobs for $80,000 in major US markets though. In Canada they are quite common (and realistically only worth about 60,000 USD). I work remotely and I've been priced out of my own country. I occasionally take a Canadian gig and it is always about 50 percent of what I would make in USD and the client complains on and on about the cost (if they only knew).

Yup. I still have people poking me about Senior Lead Principal Architect Ninja Engineer positions and it's only been recently since those positions pop the 100-120k line in some areas.

During that time you have college grads in the states walking away if they don't get 100k as their first job in SF.

Now obviously if you take the hottest markets in Canada and compare them to mediocre markets in the US, the gap is much smaller, but that's usually not the move people are considering when this topic comes up.

Sorry to ask you. Does the calculation include kids attending similar quality schools in both places?

As a Canadian tech worker in SF... Nope. I tripled my salary coming down here even in just nominal terms (ie, before you factor in the exchange rate that eats 25% of your salary.)

I hate SF/SiValley. I would love nothing more than to go home, but I'm not about to take a paycut that's measured in multiples of the median Canadian salary.

The last sentence here isn't self-consistent.

Yeah who the fuck wants to live in Waterloo Ontario when you can live in California? Lmao. Real Canadian Winter, and crap summer.

Many of the devs worth their dime in Vancouver end up remote working when they get to the Sr. level. Get paid in USD, and for 25-30% more in a stronger currency. Works out to almost 60% more?! also if you aren't a city person you can then move to one of the gulf islands.

American companies routinely pay remote foreign workers at American rates? I find it a bit hard to believe.

If they don't have an office in the remote country they do.

I know a few vancouverites who live in Vancouver, who are working for Texas based companies, no local office in the country

They are paid in USD.

When the cdn dollar tanked against usd after being on par, it was like a 30-40% raise for them in cdn just cause of the exchange rate

No joke. I applied for several jobs in Vancouver and the best salary offer was 110k base (82k USD). Seattle actually seems to have a lower cost of living and salaries approx 2x as high.

Its very hard to attract workers when the salaries just cant compare.

Unrelated tangent: It always baffle me how people view exchange rate as something that can "eat away your salary" and when you see people making statements like "it's so expensive in the UK, a pound is like 130% of a dollar". Makes me wonder if people who are only used to currencies that are roughly on the same scale view currencies in a different way than people who are used to 10x / 100x differences in currencies.

Don't mean to pick at your comment, but it's something I've seen around lately and makes me wonder.

I think you misunderstand the comment about exchange rate. In Canada, the price difference of goods with the U.S. is beyond just the exchange rate. Thus, you can convert a salary between USD and CAD, but that doesn't account for higher prices of goods in Canada (beyond exchange rate differences). This is why many Canadians shop in the U.S. (if feasible), or travel to the U.S. to make big purchases (such as cars). When CAD gets stronger, w.r.t. USD, prices in Canada don't respond proportionately. Likewise, when CAD gets weaker, prices in Canada tend to respond quite rapidly. It seems asymmetric, and is another factor when comparing US/Canada cost of living. I'd love for an economist to explain this. It's never really made sense to me, but anecdotally, it's well known phenomenon in Canada.

IANAE but it sounds like when imports get cheaper, importers pocket as much of the the difference for as long as they can get away with it. When imports get more expensive, they pass on as much as they can to consumers as quickly as they can get away with it. Not terribly surprising for profit-driven behavior.

That sounds about right. Also, there's some cost to readjusting prices, so that probably introduces some price change hysteresis.

The sales tax in canada is brutal

Not really. The highest sales tax is 15% (NB, NL, NS, PEI).

I'll grant that's higher than in some US states, but come over to Europe where VAT is usually 19-25%. Although at least in Europe prices are advertised including VAT, so no mental math is required to calculate how much it will end up costing.

That's higher than in all US states. The highest US state sales tax is 7.25%. The highest municipal+state sales tax is 12.8%.

That's a huge outlier, though. The average is 5%, and many states exempt huge swaths of goods (such as groceries) and some have no sales tax at all.

> and many states exempt huge swaths of goods (such as groceries) and some have no sales tax at all.

Groceries are exempt from GST/PST or HST in Canada as well.

That certainly changes the cost-of-living, but it's not really relevant to the point about exchange rates and price differences, since most people compare prices pre-sales tax. Sticker prices, in the US and Canada (and Europe?), don't typically include sales tax.

As someone from India, I'm surprised people do this.

With 1 USD = 65 INR, we're used to converting with cost of living and Purchasing power in mind.

I always use the example of Japan. $1 = 109 Yen, so do people think Japan costs 1/100th of what the US does?

Japan is a good example because people have an idea that it is a rich, expensive country.

I don’t think anyone but the daftest people think that Japan costs 1/100th of what the US does.

Living in Japan with a Japanese lifestyle is not that expensive. I have many Japanese friends living in Tokyo for under $1.5-2k a month. They’re not living in luxury, but they quite enjoy their lives, travel every once in a while, etc. You won’t be doing that in SF (and Tokyo is a much more pleasant city than SF in more ways than one).

On the other hand, living an american lifestyle in Japan (big car, big house, eating lots of red meat, buying imported American goods, etc) is going to cost you a lot of money though.

The point that grandparent and ohhhwell are making is, nobody says "I came to Japan and now my salary is 100x my previous salary in nominal terms (ie, before you factor in the exchange rate that eats 99% of your salary)". But for some reason people do say things like that when the currencies involved are USD/CAD/GBP/EUR. I guess it's just not as obviously "wrong".

Just normalize everything to a single currency; we can still talk about differences in cost of living. Sure, exchange rate fluctuations can be related to the cost of living, but it's not everything.

To supplement the person you are replying to post, in Canada, the same goods and services are more expensive AND your money is worth 30% less than the US Dollar. So if you were able to move to the US and get a job that paid THE EXACT SAME SALARY, you would STILL be better off because good and services you consume would be cheaper AND you pay less overall tax.

The confusion might come from the fact that the UK can be quite expensive. So prices look nominally the same in GBP as in USD---it's just that the US is often a lot cheaper.

Thus for the casual observer it look like the difference is in the exchange rate---not in the prices.

>"I hate SF/SiValley. I would love nothing more than to go home, but I'm not about to take a paycut that's measured in multiples of the median Canadian salary."

This is an honest question - is it worth living somewhere you "hate" for increased pay? Why not take less money and live in place that would make you happy?

Depends on the price. Everyone has one. (or at least SHOULD have one).

Here is an example. Would you accept 100 million dollars to work in Saudia Arabia for a year? I probably would. I'd do it for a year, and then retire.

People do lots of things where they are exchanging happiness now, for happiness in the future.

For him, it means that he can save up a whole bunch of money, and then retire 20 years earlier at the least.

>"Depends on the price. Everyone has one. (or at least SHOULD have one)"

No, not everyone has a price for which they are willing to exchange their happiness for.

I also completely disagree that everyone "should" have a price they are willing to exchange their happiness for. It's strikes me as quite odd that you choose to pronounce these things(your opinions) as universal and absolute truths.

There are many people who work jobs that offer them happiness at the expense of lower pay. Artists, teachers, journalists, social service workers are all examples of this. I recently met some Americans and Britons who were working in tech in Berlin. Even though they could make a better salary back home they chose Berlin because the quality of life there makes them happier. So no, not "everybody" has a price.

>"Here is an example. Would you accept 100 million dollars to work in Saudia Arabia for a year?"

This is a total straw man. The OP actually stated that they were able to triple their salary by working in SV/SF. How is that at all comparable with being able to retire as one of the most wealthy people on the planet after 1 year? You are comparing a possible practical reality with a fantasy.

Also along with tripling one's salary by working in SV/SF comes a higher tax bracket and probably triple what you would pay in rent in the most expensive Canadian tech hub. It's not very realistic to think that you are going to retire 20 years earlier on just a SF/SV salary, not even close.

Rent, but not house price. Toronto and Vancouver meet or exceed SF Bay Area house prices. Rents are lower there, yes.

Seriously? You're saying that condos in downtown San Francisco can be had for under $500k? You can most likely find a condo in downtown Toronto for that price. Housing prices in Toronto are nowhere near the SF Bay Area. Geography constrains West Coast cities in a way that simply doesn't apply to Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa. There is still plenty of farm land in the GTA waiting to be developed. The distance between Hamilton and Toronto is similar to the distance between San Francisco and San Jose. You can still find houses for under $500k in Hamilton.

Given a 90 minute drive (the time it takes to drive from San Jose at rush hour on a good day), one can find a house for $500k in Antioch or Brentwood. The markets are comparable.

"Artists, teachers, journalists, social service workers" Sure. And if someone offered any of those people 100 million dollars, to work at a job that they liked moderately less than their current job for a single year, it is a universal truth that they should do it (unless they already have a billion in the bank I guess).

It is not about trading happiness for money. It is about trading a small amount of happiness NOW for a large amount of happiness later or a large amount of ability to achieve your goals.

If you are a teacher/Journalist/artist who wants the world to be more educated, more informed, or more artistically enriched, you are universally better able to achieve those goals with 100 million dollars in the bank.

So yes. Everyone SHOULD have a price. Maybe that price is 100 million dollars. Maybe it is 10 thousand. But a price is a price.

But back to the actual question at hand. Yes, i do believe that tripling your salary could lead to you retiring 20 years earlier.

It is simple math, really. Even with the increase in taxes, you will have about double at least the total amount of take home pay. And if you have a ~40 year work life, but take home twice as much money after taxes, that means you only have to work ~20 years to make the same amount of after taxes income.

Call it 15 years to be more conservative. But the numbers are close.

>"And if someone offered any of those people 100 million dollars, to work at a job that they liked moderately less than their current job for a single year,"

Are you just trolling then?

The "what if someone offered you 100 million dollars?" game is a game that children play. Your insistence on repeatedly interjecting this bit of childishness is just bizarre. The context of the discussion and the OPs comment is working as a salaried employee.

There was was never any question of a job "liked moderately less." The OP said quite unequivocally that they "hate" living where they live. Hate is a pretty strong emotion, it does not describe a state of being moderately less happy.

> Why not take less money and live in place that would make you happy?

At that point one starts hating low pay and need to move somewhere with high pay if possible.

Life, like engineering, is all about trade-offs.

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