That and pitching Vancouver as an ideal HQ2 location since tech workers are worth ~50K less than in America[0]. Is this something that Canadians approve?
[0] https://www.vancouvereconomic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02...
In other words, there are plenty of your “home-grown studios” here, who benefit from the manipulated market created by the multinationals that came before them.
Salaries won’t rise to meet parity until labour gets organized, but as a previous commenter pointed out about labour laws and overtime pay, it’s a massive uphill battle.
For regular dev jobs, I think the market is less imbalanced than it appears on the surface. Cost of living isn't cheap in BC but free medical care is a big bonus and the city is quite pleasant. Senior devs will end up pulling senior dev money - it's mostly the entry level wages that are depressed.
Even the high deductible plans I’ve seen are no more than $3500/single or $7k family per year out of pocket max. And those allow you and your employer to put money into a high deductible savings account pre-tax like a retirement account. And it can be used for any qualified health payment for the rest of your life and is passed down upon death. It’s really like a 401k for health payments.
Wait, that's meant to be good? What kind of insanity is this. Why do you have to pay anything out of your pocket at all??
So yes it’s very good, or can be. Putting pre-tax money away and also lowering your tax burden while saving over time for healthcare matters is nice. Because you have a “maximum out of pocket” cost each year you stay ahead of it.
There are many different healthcare schemes in the USA that work best in different ways for people that have different circumstances.
My out of pocket expenses this year for all health related stuff is around $100. That is made up mostly of prescription dispensing fees ($10 for a 3 month supply), and massage fees that were over the per visit limit (they only cover the first $100/hour. My massage therapist is $115/hr)
Benefits in Canada blew my mind when I moved up here.
The downside is that I make $80k ($62kUSD) as a mid level web dev, and that is not really considered low for the position.
(I'm not Canadian, but here in Europe, without insurance, I've never paid more than a few hundred for dental work or tens for prescriptions. Even if its more in Canada, I imagine its still less than "thousands")
Oh the same thing goes for vision insurance, alternative medicine (RMTs and acupuncture) and some medical devices - i.e. a CPAP for Sleep Apnea.
Our medical providers are competing private businesses. There are really good doctors, really bad doctors, and everything in between. Everyone wants to go to the better doctor, but there’s just not enough of them. Price differentiation is important.
There are $0 deductible and $0 copay plans and $0 coinsurance plans. They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
It’s a strange mindset to think that something should just be free. We pay for our cars, our housing, our food. Medicine is not free to provide. The America system is broken in many ways, but not because people have to pay for medical care. The problem is that it’s too expensive because of artificial constraints on the supply of doctors and other medical resources.
When it comes to healthcare? Yes, it should absolutely be free to the recepient.
I don't know why it's such a strange concept to you - afer all, Americans are also used to receiving certain services for free - you don't have to pay the police for coming to help you, or the fire brigade for that matter. To me it's the same thing - if your house on fire, the fire brigade will come and help, free of charge - that's what taxes are for. So if I'm ill, I will be given any and all help needed - also free of charge, after all, that's what taxes are for.
>>They are also exorbitantly expensive because of the absurd moral hazard they create.
Like, sometimes I think Americans live literally on a different planet. Do you think that in countries where healthcare is free to use people have medical procedures without any reason and simply because they don't have to pay for it?
In general, it's simple - if a country wants to have healthy, productive citizens, it should pay for their healthcare, I don't understand why it's such a divisive concept. The crown example of how crazy the US system is, is the fact that you have to pay to give birth. Like.....so US cares so little for its citizens that literally the very act of giving birth to new ones is not covered by the government? That's....beyond mind boggling.
Police and fire are public services because they would not work as market systems. Fires spread from house to house, for example, regardless of who pays or doesn’t, so private fire brigades would have to protect non-payers in order to also protect payers. That’s a classic market failure that can be solved by public services. (Potentially, that problem could have been solved by requiring fire coverage, but then there's the further problem of a row of houses, each with different fire services, some better than others, with the better ones still needing to protect the houses insured by the worse ones to protect their own customers. Not to mention that a single house fire can lead to a whole city burning down. It's just not a service that the market can effectively provide in most places.)
And no, of course people don’t completely waste care in other systems either. That’s because it’s rationed by the government. Elective procedures have long wait lists, access to specialists is specially guarded, etc. Limited resources always have to be rationed by some mechanism.
Our system in the US is far from perfect: we let the doctor’s guild limit the supply of doctors, we are too uncomfortable with ending care for the very old and terminally ill, and the whole hospital and medical device industries could use an antitrust shakeup.
Unless you're in a "no pay, no spray" area and haven't paid your fire subscription fee. Wish I wasn't being serious.
My out of pocket max per year is around $6000 USD, and my salary is double what I was (under)paid in Toronto, and taxes are a bit lower here (CA).
So the take home pay is mid-5-figures more, and worst-case scenario healthcare is mid-4-figures, so it balances out very favourably for my situation (anyone in tech with a full-time job, basically).
(Of course, those who aren't well-paid in tech have a much worse situation and I can't imagine how difficult that must be.)
1. If you have a problematic history (which includes things entirely outside of your control, like being born in the wrong part of the world[1]), it can be nearly impossible.
2. If you don't have a problematic history, it's incredibly stressful. If you're on a TN visa, you can be turned away at the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you're on an H1B visa, you can also be turned away from the border at any time, for any reason whatsoever, including no reason whatsoever. If you lose your job, you need to immediately start dealing with immigration issues, while looking for a new one, or you have to leave the country.
3. If you're married, your spouse can't work for a long time.
4. If you aren't married, your girlfriend/boyfriend/whomever can't even try immigrate with you, even if they wanted to.
5. Being three hours and a border away is not remotely the same thing as being three hours away from your friends and family.
6. There is a long, long, long list of cultural reasons for why a comfortably-living Canadian may prefer to avoid living in the US, even for double the paycheck.
[1] I had a friend whose family fled from Saddam's Iraq, due to their political activities, when he was a child. As an adult, he was consistently singled out for harassment, intimidation, and delays during his crossings at the US-Canadian border. [2] According to him, getting a work visa in the US was not remotely a possibility.
[2] Isn't it wonderful how passports list your country of birth?
I worked for an above-market-rate firm in BC. When I got a job offer in SV, my boss could only counter-offer the financial gains if I relocated to their SV office.
There's a fair amount of evidence that this works. It's not like Vancouver is solely populated by foreign studios. Local game companies like Kabam, Black Bird Interactive, Relic, United Front, etc would have all either had their roots in EA workers or would have hired ex-EA workers.
If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed. If there was enough investment available locally and local companies had the resources to hire more workers and were successful enough to pay them well, those salaries would be higher, but the resources to make that happen have to come from somewhere.
I'm not sure I completely understand.
> If local salaries are depressed like that, this implies the outside investment is sorely needed.
It's interesting because a lot of capital is flowing into Vancouver right now in the form of real estate speculation.
Vancouver is a large market for tech as is Toronto, and now the rest of the cities in Canada are picking up. Anecdotally I have never seen this much recruiter activity in Alberta as we're seeing right now.