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No, $600k in SF is better than $200k in Canada in probably all circumstances. As long as your housing costs don’t scale with your income, you are already winning with an extra $100k of comp per year. That isn’t even considering that lots of things are more expensive in Canada, taxes are a bit higher, and Vancouver and Toronto aren’t cheap.

Where in Canada? Winnipeg? That's not where these offices are going.

Google's announcement was 1000 Montreal, 1000 Toronto, 3000 Kitchener-Waterloo. Montreal and KW being the engineering locations. Both Montreal and KW have much more reasonable housing, and are far cheaper than Toronto/Vancouver.

Gosh if you just save that salary for 5 years in the US you wont need to work for life.

Legitimately one of the reasons it’s hard to keep top talent: they save for a few years and either retire or start their own companies.