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Comment by mcpherrinm | Hacker News Reader

I'm moving from San Francisco to Toronto soon.

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.

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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.

You can easily find a room in a house for rent between $1000-1600 in SF. Far better than a "bunkbed". Just check craigslist.

But hey, everyone loves to knock expensive SF housing.

28k/yr for preschool in SF is on the high end. That is not the median.

Please re-do all your prices with the median, not your handpicked most expensive version.

> 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.

"On average, private preschool costs about $1,350 per month in the city, according to First 5 San Francisco. T" [1]

[1] https://www.scpr.org/blogs/education/2014/11/07/17526/san-fr...

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

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=average+daycare+cost+san+fra...

[2] https://www.google.com/search?q=average+daycare+cost+toronto...

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.

$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.

Oh, the agencies still pay shit. It's quantity over quality there. It's a similar story in most financial institutions/banks as well.

> Goods generally cost less in SF. Milk costs ~$5/gallon USD in SF vs $10/4L CAD ($7 USD) in TO.

I regularly pick up a 4 L bag of 1% for about CAD 4.25 (USD 3.00). Where the heck are you doing your grocery shopping, the food hall at Holt Renfrew?

For anyone not from Ontario, "4 L bag of 1%" must sound pretty funny.

Not as funny as a bag of homo.

To be nitpicky, $5 is too high of an estimate: https://ballotpedia.org/Milk_prices_by_state,_2018

I looked up prices from Safeway and NoFrills for 2% milk

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.

Well, we're hiring. https://careers.squareup.com/us/en/jobs?location%5B%5D=Toron...

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 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.

Amazon has 1300 people in Toronto, nearly all devs. For an sde2, 170k CAD total comp (salary + RSUs) is pretty typical.

Vancouver office had 2200 people, similar situation.

Currently the exchange rate is .77, so $170k CAD is $128,025.30 USD.

That's nothin to shake a stick at, but by NYC, DC, Seattle, LA, SF, etc. rates it is middling.

Meanwhile, SDE2 at Amazon or others is like $200K USD, at least according to HN a year ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439144

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).

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.

> That's close to $100K CAD per year.

Possibly more. Again, I'm okay with that.

> 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.

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.

I would say Toronto is a local optimum.

> 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.

How's the weather there though?

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).

> How's the weather there though?

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)

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.

Are you picking temperatures in the middle of the night? 46F is the nightly low in SF, versus being a record warm day in Toronto during the winter.

This is the clearance section of HN comments, there are no refunds or returns.

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.

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.

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.

There's plenty of snow in the forecast this week for Toronto. The same cannot be said about SF.

I can’t see why people would want to move to SF City for the weather. California? YES. Definitely. Even the Bay Area yup. But the City? Erm...

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.

Frankly, it’s too warm in the winter these days. I grew up in this climate and I really enjoy winter.

These days it’s been hard to peg a good day to go skating because it will suddenly warm up and render all the ice sluggish. It’s really disappointing.

In short: a lot of us like our weather for the variations in it...

> How's the weather there though?

In Toronto it is roughly comparable to Chicago or NYC. Vancouver would be similar to Seattle.

Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary, etc, would be much colder.

I recently sold my 2bd/2bath 1100 sqft condo in TO for 1MM CAD. No view.

IF you can find a 3bd condo it will cost you WAY more than 900CAD.

Would you have made the switch if it wasn't closer to family?

I'd probably be in Vancouver or Montreal otherwise.

The salary would still be 128k usd in those cities too right?

Probably not Montreal -- they have a reputation for lower pay and higher taxes. But also considerably cheaper COL.

As a friend from out that way put it, "its harder to be a consumer there, but easier to be a human".

> 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.

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