Success in Canada means moving to America
thewalrus.ca
thewalrus.ca
Lots of Americans dream of either LA or New York, depending on their industry. I imagine in Europe, it's probably Paris and London that draws both French/British and foreigners.
Frank Sinatra had a song called New York, New York and one of the lines is "If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere."
It's sort of inevitable that the largest city in the region draws talent and ambition and this gravity pool does not respect international borders. Though I wish we did a better job of fostering diversity of views from other places even within the US.
It's something I've lamented before: Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set.
If needed, my email is in my profile.
This basically skips the daunting process that's H1B lottery.
L1B visas can also convert to green cards at some point, but I have no idea how easy that is (probably not easy at all).
False. L1B is not related to Green Card in any way. You can get the employer to petiton you for a green card while working on L1B.
The United States has an adult population of 258.3 million, so it's likely you'd find someone to fall in love with if you're really looking.
I have some experience here, I have a double digit amount of family members who came to the US to marry into my family, including my brother-in-law. With one exception they are all very happy marriages, the longest lasting 3 decades. There were some who were definitely were looking to marry Americans to immigrate, but the relationship is still real.
What city is the best to find someone who is/has:
Open to new experiences and concepts (museums, art, dancing, music) <— literally the “openness to experience” on the big 5
High cognitive ability
Into meditation, yoga and exercise?
Somewhat into gaming and anime? (Optional)
Somewhat of a programmer or (game) designer/related (optional)
Generally, any big East Coast city. NYC, Atlanta, Washington DC, Chicago, and Boston would be top of mind.
It's really hard to get that marriage green card though, you're looking at many months of paperwork on top of building a successful relationship and committing your life to someone. I think it'd be a lot easier to get a job at a big company in the US and come over on an H1B, or build a SaaS business wherever you live now
To anyone that thinks these things don't matter if you earn enough money and safe a fair amount, I wish that they and especially their children never get into a situation that shows them how naive that thought was.
If you work for, say, a FAANG company, you have pretty solid healthcare. Social security is surely limited, but there's good benefits for disability and so on.
The amount of money you can make in the US as an experienced engineer is probably 5 fold if not more. Senior engineers are easily pulling 7 figures here, which means even taking into account your cost-of-living, you'll end up fairly ahead.
While you're employed. For how many days of sickness does your contract say do they have to keep you employed? Isn't it even employment at will?
I don't wanna enter this discussion further. I'm just gonna finish with that I experienced first hand someone making what's today nearly a million a year (in Germany no less!) and ending up on social security within a few years due to sickness and bad investment. And that's with universal health care. A good job, high earnings and decent savings give you leeway, but they will not protect you from tragedy and even more important they will not protect your kids from tragedy that have no fault in whatever happens.
I am not usually planning for worst case and i tend to be optimist, i have a working spouse and i make decent money, and my plan is to be buried here in the US, but if shit hits the fan, and i can no longer work, i will still have healthcare through wife. Even worse case i can always go back to turkey. It's hard but not impossible to make such life changes.
Once you are out, you are on your own. Not so in Germany.
Kinda. Healthcare is not provided by your employers, but by health care insurances. It is generally mandatory to be insured. The system is split in universal healthcare (payed as a percentage of your salary) and private healthcare (payed from your bank account). Anyone self-employed and earning above a certain threshold can opt to leave the government system and buy private healthcare (gives somewhat better treatment, most notably faster appointments at specialists, as they earn 3-5 times on a privately insured patient). When you leave an employer you remain in the system you were in before. If you were privately insured and end up on social security you will be moved to the government system and they will cover healthcare costs for you.
The issue is with "purchasing" insurance. a) you need money, b) what does the health insurance say when you wanna get insurance while having acute expensive health issues?
Getting insurance when you are healthy and have money is easy.
As a student for example it's mandatory to get insurance to be enrolled in university. Cost for students that are no longer covered by parents (above age 24 iirc) is close to 100€ per month.
A citizen of EU, coming to US, working and making good money, and somehow lose the ability to work. Could they go back, and continue to live reasonable life there without having to worry about things that they normally wouldnt if they haven't come to us in the first place?
I'm not trying to say going to the US is a bad choice, just that there are very sensible reasons not to go that are often overlooked by optimism and my personal experience will always remind me of that.
This statement is inaccurate for most people.
The salaries for H1B visa holders are actually public [1] and starting salaries for foreigners are more 100k to 200k and nowhere close to 7 figures.
Also the salary levels at FAANGs are mostly known [2] and you have to get very, very far up to even make 7 figures at a fang. An L6 (staff engineer) makes 500k total comp.
[1] https://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=&job=Software&city=San+Fra...
[2] https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Amazon,SAP,Google&track=Soft...
L5 still make great money and it is a multiple of what you get outside of SV. Just inflating to 7 figures is a bit exaggerated
Edit: this comment from 6 months ago provides a bit of inside view on getting L6 at Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28965492
senior engineers are not "easily pulling" that amount anywhere. that's way outside the senior engineer band at FAANGs/unicorns. you need to be at staff/principal level to get outside of the mid six figures, which is very hard even if you already have a job at one of those companies.
that said, I do kinda agree otherwise. if you are making $200k (typical senior at normal company, between junior/mid-level at FAANG) and are a remotely frugal person, it would take a very unlucky series of events to get to "broke". the risk exists, but from a strictly materialistic viewpoint, the increased upside more than makes up for it.
I know drastically inflated incomes is the lingua franca of online discussion, but "easily pulling 7 figures" is a bit much, don't you think?
I don't always plan for the worst case, I tend to be optimistic, and if something bad comes up, i improvise.
Also if you are a family and your spouse works, this is some sort of hedging for the scenario you mentioned.
Here is what it looks like. - I started working in 2012.
- I didn't come here married
- I married another Turkish woman a few years later, she couldn't work until she were able to get EAD which was probably around 2015/6. H1B spouses couldn't work at the time.
- We got audited for our greencard, and there were frictions in the process for whatever reason. It was no where near as bad as it is for an Indian - we were still able to complete it in about 2 years.
- During greencard process, she got EAD, it took a bit of time as a foreigner educated/non-engineer person find a FTE job. This meant she was on a contract job to build her US resume, and she had to renew every 6 months or so. It is fairly stressful for a person at the beginning of her career in a foreign country and you have to provide support. It also didn't allow us a backup healthcare in case I was out of work.
- I didn't get to 6 in 1-2 years, it took 4, and that was on the faster side at google. It could have been faster at FB, but that's not the point.
All of these are progression in life, nothing is given to you. You can't assume the worst case, because in the worst case everyone is dead tomorrow.
I took a bet to come to US(after a US school, on H1B). I didn't think of what'd have happened if i lost my job, i don't really stress over one of us losing job anymore. If it happens, we deal with it. We always have.
Risk and consequences of losing everything early on is much lower. You don't have expenses, you don't have dependents. You take a bet, and you start building a life. This is why I suggest everyone to do it as soon as possible if they want to leave their home countries.
You start reducing your risk in some things (by getting married) while you increase risk in some others (like getting a bad divorce etc), you add more financial stress if you have a kid, but you have other joys you add through it and so on.
This is not a me story, this is a story that's replicable for most people in FAANG jobs...
You can go for that Berlin lifestyle and to work in some neat startups (as an underpaid employee) but that's not the canonical definition for succcess imo.
But it is true that most startups are in Berlin, even non-German ones open technical offices there. And it's also true that the average German has little interest in going there.
I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else. Over there however you still have those mystical FAANG salaries...
Dublin and London might be different from Irish and English perspective, respectively.
Yes, the profile of the people that go to Berlin is different from people who'll go to a software job somewhere else in Germany. Very rarely you'll have that situation of someone going internally to Berlin. I might say that Berlin have few engineering offices of the biggest (non-Berlin centered) German companies.
> I think the dream of finding ambitious and cool people in a hot location and succeed with a true startup, i.e. not something backed or done by people who are already successful or well connected is dead anyway even in Silicon Valley and never really existed anywhere else.
Very possible. But the cultural draw of Berlin is much bigger than SV. Hands down.
Dublin and London also attract some profiles (given the companies that go there) but not many people think Dublin is the coolest city.
* Salary
* Way more opportunities
* Big city life, especially attractive to me, since I grew up in a rural, isolated farming town
It's the same story as the last 200 years of industrialisation and urbanisation.
For additional evidence, the setting of most of “Breaking Bad” (now continuing as “Better Call Saul”) in Albuquerque, New Mexico led to meaningful economic benefits for people living there, such as increased tourism (from https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/la-xpm-2013-a...).
Journalism is a hustle.
However, I speculate that The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are equivalently great places for advancement for reporters (if only because the NYTimes's new executive editor/editor-in-chief spent much of his career with the WSJ).
I will grant you that Sinatra's performance is strong, distinctive, even a bit better known. But he stands behind several eminent artists on this one.
In small town USA, the local culture usually is inferior. The local culture tends to be very monoculture. It's the larger cities where the culture tends to be more diverse. Getting out of small town into the nearest larger town opened me up to a hell of a lot more than the people that never left. However, even in that larger town, it's still limited. Yes, I eventually went to the west coast to have even more multi-cultural experience. Later, I even got to finally start travelling internationally to expand that multi-cultural experience further.
Maybe it's a broad brush to paint with, but my local culture 100% was inferior, but I imagine it's not unique
Just imagine you are planning a night out with friends. As someone who grew up in a small town, our options were very limited. You could go to the movies, the bowling alley, or go to someone’s house. If you wanted dinner, there were only a few restaurants serving a small variety of cuisines. It would be impossible to do a different thing every night for more than a week or so.
In a big city, you could do something different every night and not run out of different things to do for years. You could eat a different restaurant every night, eating a completely different cuisine each time.
If you are simply counting things to do, a city is ‘superior’.
I get what you're saying and agree to some degree. But at the same time, i think it's actually the last line ("if you're simply counting things to do") that I would personally quibble over as the sacred metric of what's better than the other.
Maybe some people don't really care about having ten gazillion different restaurants and would prefer at least three solid parks/hiking trails you can't get around some big cities? Maybe some folks would be more than happy to trade going to the theatres with having a home with 5+ acres to raise a chicken farm or other critters on, or if not that then at least the privacy and the minimal light pollution.
Some trades that people are willing to make kinda aren't so obvious.
> / decency / civility
That hasn't been my experience in small towns recently, unless you happen to fit in well with the people there. There's a highly aggressive paranoia and acting out.
> functional municipal government
They are almost powerless, IME. How small a town are you talking about?
Just goes to show it's all subjective.
Few American cities were founded > 200 years ago. None were founded more than 1565 (United States), and the oldest dates from 1502, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
That said, what a New Yorker visiting small-town Europe is probably referencing is the contrast between NYC and Small European Town. The specific town will likely be largely interchangeable with numerous others of similar description.
By contrast, a small town in the US or Canada largely resembles some of the less-distinguished suburbs of NYC itself: same language, same government, same mass media, same history, same chain stores and franchises. Far fewer people, however, and a much smaller economic and cultural ambit.
Even for small towns in which there is some distinctive culture ... it tends to be a single motif which dominates the entire town, rather than the melting pot of a major metropolis. Marfa, TX; Silver City, NM; Santa Fe, NM; Asheland, OR; and Napa, CA all have distinctive cultures, but it tends to be all-of-a-type.
Exceptions tend to be smaller college towns, for obvious reasons, but even here, the odds for highly-diverse communities tend to be lower than in larger cosmopolitan cities. And you can climb far up the major metro region and still find fairly stultified culture --- Chicago, IL, wears its "second city" moniker as a badge, but you'll still find there's some real edginess there about it if you press a bit or scratch beneath the surface. (The fact that it's third by size, and that Los Angeles also evinces a somewhat similar attitude toward New York doesn't help.)
I mean, NYC has a ton of culture but it's a young city.
I disagree with you premise.
And if it's not what I managed to communicate effectively, I can assure you it is not at all my intended meaning.
Which would then falisify your own premise.
But I’d argue NYC has more culture than say Edinburgh, Scotland despite the later having a far more extensive history.
Contrast though US cities of roughly comparable population (506,000 for Edinburgh), say, Sacramento, CA; Kansas City, MO; Mesa, AZ; or Atlanta, GA. Two of those are also state capitals, roughly matching Edinburgh's political status.
Remmeber that size was another key factor. Again, not sole, but key.
Global cities ratings gives additional ratings and bases for same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_city
GWAC ranks Edinburgh above all of the US cities, save Atlanta, which is just above it. Mesa and Sacramento are not ranked.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization_and_World_Cities...
Lol no. Most people go in Paris because it's where they can found a job opportunity or for studies but wouldn't have otherwise, and a whole part of the country (which I belong too) view it has a place to actively avoid for living. And I can't think of anyone that's hated more outside of Paris than Parisians.
In the context of finding the best jobs at the top of an industry, key locations like New York, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, Seattle, and others depending on the industry really are significantly better.
That doesn’t mean you can’t find okay or good jobs in other locations, but if you’re in journalism then it’s far, far easier to get a top job by moving to New York or a small number of other cities than it is by moving to some random small city somewhere.
In this context, if someone is going through all the trouble of emigrating to a different country for their career (a huge amount of work) then it only makes sense to choose the locations best suited for that work. It wouldn’t even begin to make sense if someone uprooted their entire life, switched countries, and then chose Alabama as their home base to launch their national journalism career.
It’s definitely not because people are being swayed by Sinatra songs or other media. These cities really are epicenters for certain industries.
Because it mostly is. The vast swaths of the inland US are cultural black holes of consumption. There is simply not enough population density, diversity, or opportunity to generate anything meaningful. It's probably hard for Europeans to understand that in the US, I can get in a car, drive a thousand miles in any direction to a new city, get out, and find the exact identical built environment around me, inhabited by the exact same people, speaking the exact same language and accent, wearing the same clothes, eating the same food, driving the same cars, listening to the same music, and practicing the same religion.
That's called a nation.
This reminds me of how Americans are brainwashed into believing that European culture is dramatically better than American culture (Americans are dumb, fat, ignorant, and uncultured while Europeans are intelligent and enlightened). This seems to have eased as our world has become more interconnected, but about a decade ago (before living abroad), this was definitely the impression I had from American media. I'm sure there's some truth to it in certain statistical abstractions, but in general there's enormous variety in America that a comparison of medians doesn't capture. Moreover, there's a lot of cherry-picking that goes on in those comparisons: for instance, I'd never heard any discussion about the significant (~30-50%) discrepancy in take-home (i.e., after tax, healthcare, pension/retirement, etc) income for professionals nor the high cost of living in Europe. Certainly nothing that could feasibly justify stereotypes of American inferiority.
I think that has more to do with the discrepancy in time at work though as well. If I make half as much as someone working 60-70 hour weeks (as someone who works 35 hour weeks), that makes a lot of sense.
> The average number of weekly hours worked by full-time workers in the European Union was 37.1 hours a week as of the third quarter of 2021
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1197097/average-working-...
> For those [Americans] in the typical age range for full-time work, the national average landed at 40.5, indicating that most employed adults work a 40-hour workweek
For some people, I'm sure, but don't assume everyone wants the same kind of life.
I could live in London if I chose, and there are some things about it that would be attractive, but on balance I'm far happier with my small-town life 50 miles away.
This is an interesting question. In my experience, there is no European equivalent. Relocating within the EU might be relatively easy visa-wise, but there is often a language barrier and a different culture you’d have to adjust to, which prevents the formation of industry-specific hubs. Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_, but if you ask citizens from another country in the EU the same question, I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d get different answers.
The original charter was a sort that historically never really worked anywhere and it was failing to provide funds, iirc, for paying for defense. So they gave the federal government more teeth and it became some weird beast of a sort the world had not seen before.
And here we are, with this strange beast still behaving strangely all these years later.
"Depending on the country you’re from, you’ll likely say that your capital is some kind of hub for industry _xyz_"
To narrow it down a bit, count only the places having a significant population. It's harder to make that claim for capitals like Ljubljana or Reykjavík.
It's not as true in the UK. The salary differential between a medium city and The City isn't as big so while there's definitely more opportunity and higher pay in London it's wiped out by higher costs of living. Lots of people still move there because they like the lifestyle or to climb the ladder faster but if you're content to be a solid well paid professional there are lots of smaller (but not necessarily small) cities with plenty of opportunity, better work life balance and affordable housing.
If you're going to have to relocate and bust your ass working anyway, then why not take the shot at making a larger impact and trying to reap more rewards in the larger and more prosperous city.
I was going to post the same thing. What the OP describes is the same in much of the US.
> Even Americans get kind of brainwashed that their local culture is inferior and everything is better in New York (and California) because that's where so much of our popular media originates and is set.
There is something to it: People who are ambitious, confident, and talented tend to want to be around similar people - it gives them opportunities to do more - and around other resources such as financing, leading organizations in their industry, etc. The motivated ones tend to go to NY, etc. So the talent level and resources are generally greater. Seriously, what would you tell a highly ambitious, talented coder in a small town in the middle of Nebraska? Stay where you are? Even in the days of remote work, that seems insane.
> Though I wish we did a better job of fostering diversity of views from other places even within the US.
Agreed.
I'm trying to make a different point than people seem to think I'm making. I have absolutely no idea how to clarify that in comments here. I'm trying to sort my thoughts on the topic elsewhere, which likely means a blog post that likely won't be seen by over 30 people.
https://butterflyeconomy.blogspot.com/2022/05/place-cutlure-...
Almost everyone I know is already gone, either to the US or Europe. If you're educated, the sheer amount of money you'll make in the US makes up for things like lack of socialized healthcare. In Europe, you get all the same socialized benefits (better actually), a similar to better income but housing and various day to day items cost much, much less.
We're basically a petro-state that only incidentally has other industries because we're a low-cost alternative to American labour.
[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?location...
It appears that much of this is due to CAD depreciating relative to USD over the last 10 years [2]. I suppose this is relevant for Canadians buying imported goods, but could be less relevant for local goods.
[2]: https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=CAD&to=USD&view=10Y
Oil prices explain most of the moves in CAD/USD that aren't explained by diverging interest rates.
- https://worthwhile.typepad.com/worthwhile_canadian_initi/201... - https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-you-can-go-...
https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=canada+gdp+per+capita%2...
https://data.oecd.org/chart/6Ikm
And consider that housing costs for a desirable Canadian location (Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa) are much higher than that chart. And that the middle of nowhere in any of those European countries is still liveable whereas the middle of nowhere in Canada potentially means thousands of KMs away.
And that's not touching on other COL metrics where Canada is uniquely bad.
I worry a lot about the future my kids have in this country. I don’t tell people that often, but my spider senses are tingling like crazy.
The wilderness here makes me feel like I could never leave. I’ve been plenty of other places, and the idea of not being in this place is unnerving. The ocean, the forest, the temperate climate, rain, all of it. I’ve come to feel a deep connection to it.
On the other hand, we're having a kid, and as much as I'd like them to grow up in the outdoors I'd also rather them be exposed to culture versus a bunch of hippies and redneck meth addicts... So we're making the move to Europe (back in the case of my SO).
They kind of forget that most well educated Canadians can easily go south of the border for better opportunities, cheaper housing and surprisingly better health care.
What do you mean by that? The problems with US healthcare are well known.
This seems to be contradicted by a study[1] that compared the health outcomes of americans in the top 1% and 5% of counties, against the average residents in other developed countries. The conclusion:
> This study suggests that privileged White US citizens have better health outcomes than average US citizens for 6 health outcomes but often fare worse than the mean measure of health outcomes of 12 other developed countries. These findings imply that even if all US citizens experienced the same health outcomes enjoyed by privileged White US citizens, US health indicators would still lag behind those in many other countries.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
> US has the best healthcare in the World
I hear this repeated a lot, almost like a marketing tagline, but I haven't seen it.
Mostly I see what looks like highly constrained supply: wealthy people wait a long time, sometimes months, even with very alarming or painful conditions, and then get minimal attention - usually no diagnosis, just a guess and a pill - and then are on their own unless they want to start the process over again. Or they may get referred to someone else, which starts the clock over. The lack of diagnosis is now a joke among people I know; my impression is that the doctors lack the resources (i.e., time) to track down the actual problem; they just try to manage everything.
Is there a basis to the claim?
Supporting anecdata: I happen to know of a well-regarded specialist, past retirement age, who works this niche by seeing patients for cash only, insurance billing.
Looking at GDP per hour worked, Canada is higher than the US:
* https://data.oecd.org/lprdty/gdp-per-hour-worked.htm
Average hours worked in the US is 1767, while CA is 1644:
* https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS
Perhaps we Canadians have simply decided not to kill ourselves as much chasing the almighty dollar / loonie, and that's why we make "less" money in total.
Pre-covid, Canada was the place to be for working in film/tv , visual effects and animation in terms of jobs. I skimmed it but the author didn't mention exactly what creative vocation they were in but given they said Nashville, it's unlikely to be in these fields.
Post Covid, success as a developer can mean working remote for a US company, and that is a huge tide change recently.
You're suddenly getting US rates, minus the currency conversion, in Canada. Better yet, you can get silicon valley rates.
Assuming similar high expense cities like Vancouver vs San Francisco. Other Canadian cities tend to drop off on the cost of labor scale very quickly which affects the location based pay a lot. But that's true in the US as well.
Granted that currency conversion hit is a lot. For me, it's less than the amount of time I spent commuting to work in the US, so I feel I came out in top for pay relative to my hours involved.
Location based adjustments for a USD 300k/yr IC role do make up for a huge pay ceiling increase compared to a decade ago where senior dev @ CAD 120k was a ceiling for IC roles before needing to pivot into management.
Taking a 20% discount on a SV senior salary, in American dollars, would likely be a significant raise.
It would not surprise me if the top employers in the Canadian market got to parity with US tech hub comp.
And despite rhetoric to the contrary the current administration seems intent on upholding these changes - processing for H-1Bs is still nowhere near historical norms.
It used to be that major tech cos would "park" people in Canada to wait for their US visas to clear. I suspect these changes are causing companies to rethink the "wait for US visas" part of the sentence. The more people FAANG parks in Canadian cities the more we will see FAANG-type compensation in those cities.
Tax rate-wise (at the range of incomes we're talking about, which is to say mid 6-figures) you'd compare favorably to income-taxed states like CA, NY, or NJ. In particular whole categories of spending either go away or are greatly reduced due to the presence of things like universal healthcare, which adds to the competitiveness of disposable income. When I lived in NY I did a quick modeling of what my taxes would be like for the equivalent income in Canada and it shook out to basically even.
In comparison to no income tax states like TX the situation is considerably less favorable, though depending on your life situation there might be factors that nudge you in Canada's favor (high healthcare spend, high private education spend, high college tuition spend, etc.)
No it wasn't.
That such a glib Canadian thing to say.
There are some decent jobs in those fields - but they are not even close to the kinds of jobs available in the US.
For some animation jobs - it can be a bit closer. But for anything else, no, Toronto/Van/Montreal is a 'lesser cost centre' for some labour, that's it.
Finally - most of this boils down to money. If someone can double their salary by going south they will.
There is significantly more VFX/animation studio work in Canada.
I feel like you both insulted my comment, then proceeded to do the thing you suggested my comment did. it feels like projection.
'More Jobs Per Capita' - yes - that's entirely plausible. Canada is often much better than the US on so many 'Per Capita' things. But they are probably solid middle class jobs - which is fine - not the executive/leadership and high paying jobs.
I didn't say all of entertainment. I was very specific about the subsection of the industry.
Outside of DWA, WDAS and Pixar, the majority of animation and VFX work for feature and TV has moved to Canada or Australia.
Yes there are bigger entertainment industries in the US. That wasn't what I said, and you're getting hung up on some pedantic nonsense that is fully of your own creation.
This is the 'glib' bit - I don't believe for a second that there are more animation jobs in Canada, even outside the big studios.
The US is 10x bigger, and, they have a lot of industry here.
Again: More jobs per capita? Even 'way more'? Entirely reasonable. But 'more jobs than the US' - or notably: 'the focal point of the industry' - definitely not.
It's important to recognize Canada is not 'leading' here so much as 'providing labour' - i.e. 'white collar auto assembly'.
If Canada was producing, financing, exporting creative work, then it would be another kind of story.
To brain drain Canadian talent, US companies used to need to convince people to physically move to a different country, a rather tall order, but even then people were leaving in droves.
Now, they can brain drain Canadian talent with practically 0 barriers through remote work.
Unless Canadian employers are willing and able to adapt quickly and start offering truly globally competitive salaries (and historically they have proven to be utterly incapable of this), I think this is game over.
Now people can make 2x+ within the comfort of their own homes, making it even easier for US tech companies to brain drain talent away from Canadian companies. Will that finally force them to change their ways or are they going to keep scraping the bottom of the ever depleting barrel?
I honestly don't have a very positive outlook given the history here, but would love to be proven wrong.
I used to be a professional musician, and now work at a well known tech company doing Production Engineering. I work remotely in Canada. I watched lots of creative friends move to New York and LA because that is where you have to go to really make it in almost cases.
I don’t think success in tech means moving to the US though. Lots of US companies will pay good salaries to remote Canadians. I live in Canada not because I don’t have the option to go work in the US but because the trade offs of living in the USA aren’t worth the increased salary to me.
In addition, though it captures a feeling that many Canadians have, I wish it were backed by statistics and data to support the assertion in the headline.
I also thought that the following passage was not strongly supported:
>”WHEN I GOT BACK to Toronto, I understood in a new, tactile way that I might one day leave it. Toronto’s energy flows endlessly toward the impulse to win, to never stop working until you hit your head on the visible ceiling. Then you work some more. New York has that vibe too, maybe even more so, but I feel like everyone’s more self-aware about it. And, more importantly, there’s no ceiling. You can try to dominate the world and touch the clouds, as foolish as it would be.”
I believe the “impulse to win” is more of a function of who you associate with and your own attitudes, versus the city you happen to be located in.
There is a grain of truth (people who move to New York City are often self-selected to be ambitious), but it wasn’t convincing to assert that the people of Toronto are chasing promotions as part of a corporate ladder until they hit a ceiling.
Counter-examples are abound in Toronto. Some people start their own companies, others find enjoyment outside of work (e.g. family and friends), and others are comfortable with their position in life (e.g. small business owner of a bakery).
People in Toronto also come from vastly different cultural backgrounds as the city is one of the most culturally diverse (over half as part of an ethnic minority as of 2016) in the world [0], so it is a leap to assert that everyone shares similar beliefs about work just because they live in the city.
The author’s assertion is an example of the “false-consensus effect,” where people mistakenly believe that others in a particular context must share their beliefs [1]. This is why studies with statistical analyses are important.
>”But, in practice, that inevitability now felt freeing. I guess I got tired of repressing my sense of possibility.”
You don’t need to move to New York City to feel a sense of possibility and work toward your goals.
[0] (PDF): https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/99b4-TOHea...
Which is the general theme of financial outcomes in the US: the highs are higher... and the lows are lower. It's the land of possibility and also the land of destitution and desperation. We contain multitudes, I suppose.
Being in tech and not the arts I can't say I know exactly what the author is describing - but certainly the tech "brain drain" of Canadians to the US has been overwhelmingly about money as opposed to the vague notion of "possibility". It seems valuable to not mince words about that - it's fine to want the kinds of outlier financial outcomes that the US makes possible and that's exceedingly rare in Canada, but one ought not conflate it with some other higher-minded notion.
'But we have diversity!'
As if NY, or America somehow lacks there, or that is even hugely material.
You can 'do ok' in Toronto, it's a good city. You can 'fee' whatever you want, that's up to you.
But it's nary impossible to do anything world class - and that's where the surpluses are.
The critical mass, the salary base, the talent, the lack of elite - almost none of it is there.
There are 5x more, 'Amazing Engineers' in little Tel Aviv.
Tiny little Sweden, with only 10M people (a bit less than 2x Toronto) - makes all sorts of sophisticated gear for export - Canada makes hardly any.
And this is how Canada is constructed: to be a suburb of the world - where polite people consume foreign products. We don't 'make' or 'design' anything.
Toronto is a very 'Civic City' - which is great for citizens - it actually makes a lot of American cities look kind of crappy in comparison - but it's the lack of a proper elite that's the problem, which applies to a small class of people.
Almost everyone I know has moved to the US for opportunity, and the draining of the 'talent class' will have this effect on a nation.
FYI that includes talented migrants as well: my top Canadian migrant colleagues (all from India), are now living in the US. Canada brings in 'migrants with degrees' as 'tech workers' but the 'talent' (either migrant or local) that create the opportunities leave for the US.
It's a serious problem.
This has a lot to do with 'salary' and I noticed this problem was very different when the dollar was at parity in the 2000s. With monetary incentives levelled out, the problem is not nearly as bad.
Our leaders do this on purpose. The Ontario Minister of Industry (this is several years back), proclaimed as Cisco was coming to Toronto (partly for the cheap workers), that Toronto has 'great workers at a discount' and that they would do 'everything in their power to keep it that way!'. Literally saying that their 'industrial policy' was to keep us poorer than Americans, so that American companies would have 'satellite offices' here.
Canada is a 'Small Open Economy' next to a 'Large Open Economy' (in economic terms) and that tends to create this kind of outcome, when thought of in secular terms.
But a place like Sweden - they take a different approach, and focus on key industries and 'punch above their weight' - meaning, rather than 'just being a place for bigger country satellite offices' - they are able to make their own mark. A lot of this comes from past national strategies, i.e. cars, airplanes, weapons systems - companies left over from the war era, and even further back, but it provides their people with a 'local industrial base' that Canada does not have.
We really need a 'National Strategy' to deal with this, but it's not likely to happen because none of our leaders are particularly aware of the issue, nor do they have the talent, wherewithal or ability to do something about it, let alone grasp it. And to be fair it's a really difficult problem.
Also - this is the 'EU disease' as well. The way the EU is structured, particularly with the Euro as a 'hard currency' - means slack labour will be taken up in Germany, and lost in other areas. Italy has vast, vast foundations in 'complicated things' and cultural foundation, they'll be fine. But a place like Poland? Well - it'll lose it's talent - at the very same time that standard of living is actually increasing rapidly (i.e. good for citizens), there is just no 'BOSCH' or 'BMD' or 'SIEMENS' etc for the talent to go and make a difference. For that, Deutshland. Or UK, Netherlands etc..
Also - those mean very different things.
First - Canada has vast natural resources, which are like 'easy money'. Japan can't rest on the laurels of digging money out of the ground. This actually might be keeping Canada from developing institutions.
Second - Government Spending is counted as GDP, which is a fairly odd thing because it's a measure of cost, not value. $1 in Gov. spending could create $10 in value. Or it could create 50 cents. We don't know. Sweden has huge levels of government spending so it's hard to say what kind of value is being created there. It makes all measures of GDP quite difficult.
For other Australians reading this and thinking you can't get into the US, you absolutely can. Look up the E3 visa. It's easy to get because it's reserved entirely for Australian citizens.
The arts are hyper-competitive. In the US you might think you have more of a chance because you see more successes, but I doubt the ratios are that different if you also account for more failures.
Also Canada has Québec, producing your works in French will naturally decrease the possible target audience.
But trying to become famous from the ground up in a larger country seems more difficult. Big fish in small pond theory and all.
Also, the US and Canada do not have the same level of wealth...the only country in the world that is close to the US in wealth is Switzerland and Australia (the latter is a bit unclear but is probably true once superannuation is included). Canada is definitely up there but is more similar to Europe than the US, again there is nowhere that really compares to the US.
What?! I have no idea where you got that idea from, but looking at https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/ you can see the USA is 13th in the world when its wealth is divided by its population.
If you were trying to say that the USA is the wealthiest nation in absolute terms, I would understand, but when you place Australia and Switzerland as the only nations that "come close" you're clearly implying per capita wealth, meaning that's nonsense.
And measuring wealth is very, very complex. Do you include pensions? How do you value a state pension? Do you include housing? How do you value housing? But if you look at relative net financial wealth (inc. pensions, you are likely going to Google and find something that doesn't include pensions) then the statement is true...the US and Switzerland are way out ahead on net financial assets, and in datasets that include pension wealth then you have Australia up there too (which has one of the most successful pension systems in the world, very strong economy too but they punch above that weight when looking at wealth).
Again though, measuring these kind of things is complex so you have to not only be able to Google a ranking system but understand exactly how the pension system is structured in that country, how is the financial sector structured, how is the tax system structured, etc. The US is consistently at the top by any measure though.
GDP may not be a perfect measure of wealth but it's the best we've got IMO.
I've lived for a short while in Canada, for many years in Australia, and visited the USA many times... I really don't see much difference in wealth in general. I'm sure there's a lot more extremely rich people in the USA, but those are a small portion of the population so I wouldn't consider that an important indication of the wealth of a country, at least not as much as the wealth of the majority of its citizens (and the USA notoriously also has a lot more very poor people than either Australia or Canada). If you do that, perhaps the Arab Emirates would be wealthier? Or even China, home to more bilionaires than the USA IIRC?!
Also, if you include healthcare access and pension as you seem to be doing, again, the USA is probably the worst as you're pretty much on your own with those things, while in nearly any other developed country, people get decent healthcare and pension even without having had high paying jobs their whole life.
Table 2-1 in [1] lists mean wealth per adult per country, with Monaco first ($324,721), Switzerland second ($231,354) and the US third ($215,146) as far as I can tell. Median wealth figures are of course worse.
[1] https://www.credit-suisse.com/media/assets/corporate/docs/ab...
You can also see Australia punches well above it's weight in that survey. The stuff CS produces on UHNWIs is also very interesting.
The US is a true single market because English is the dominant language and because everyone from the Deep South to Alaska consumes the cultural products of Hollywood and New York and the technology of Silicon Valley.
But I didn't compare it with the US at all, all I said was: the EU was formed, in part, because people in the 60s believed that US growth was stronger because the domestic market was larger (and that scale advantages were critically important to business success). This was a very common view in the 60s in the UK too (and held by the govt which embarked on a huge investment/forced merger program to boost domestic production that ended in disaster). And it was totally wrong, as subsequent economic performance demonstrated (the reason why the EU's single market is incomplete is nothing to do with language and everything to do with politics).
And how do you explain those products being dominant in the rest of the world? The UK went through this, tried to create globally competitive firms with scale by forcing companies to merge, almost all of them went bankrupt (have you heard of British Leyland? No?) because they were mismanaged, and produced bad products no-one wanted. It was like trying to add one to one and make twenty.
Mining is 10% of GDP in Aus. For comparison, oil and gas is 8% of GDP in US.
Basically, the US 1% is much richer than other countries, but the typical American is probably less wealthy than someone in other developed countries.
Technically, especially with the internet, there is no reason a Canadian show made in Canada could not be a hit in both countries. It is just the likelihoods that change.
The inverse is not true however -- the article is correct that Canadians are exposed to (almost too) much American content from an early age, leading to the Canadian Radio-Television & Telecommunications Commission (CRTC)[1] to adopt (read: mandate) minimum ratios for Canadian-specific content to be aired.[2]
Btw when somebody compares Canada to US I always remember the Canada rant from Shameless:
By most measures, Canada is more developed than the US.
Also, this article is about people who work in the arts, like film and music. It has nothing to do with seeking better education.
By what measures? Social benefits? I was speaking about industry and technology not about health care accessibility or whatever. By that criteria you can call Sweden more developed than US.
The majority of the world's most valuable companies are from US[0] so private sector wise US is superior.
Anyone got any examples for that the author might mean with that?
- The music of Newfoundland and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
- the writing of Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro
- the work of Métis artisans (clothing, decorative arts)
- music of The Tragically Hip
But you can't have both cradle to grave security, and the opportunity for success. You can see that in the endless Progressive proposals to erase American billionaires in exchange for more security.
But if you move to the US for ten/twenty years to amass a pile of success and money, it may be very hard to move back afterwards.
Housing affordability: Canadian prices have skyrocketed in the past 10-20 years and have increased much more than the US.
Cost of living: it’s generally higher in Canada.
Where to live: there is much more variety in the US. For instance, there are few “quaint small towns” in Canada in comparison. The American small town/city with a historic Main Street has survived, whereas it’s a fast-vanishing thing in Canada. Much of Canada is starting to look the same in terms of the built environment and urban planning.
Access to healthcare: Canada has universal healthcare, and the system kicks in if something serious happens. But for anything not at that level, there are serious issues. For instance, depending on where you live it can be hard to find a primary care doctor. There are waiting lists for many procedures, for imaging, etc. If you have an upper middle class type situation in the US your access to health care is much, much better. I can often get in to see my doctor within 24h.
Employment opportunities: it’s much better nowadays, but the US is still the place to be in terms of variety of work and compensation.
And finally, it’s hard to leave anywhere after decades - you get used to your life and your community. Canada will always be my homeland, but it’s starting to feel a bit alien to me, in subtle ways.
Canada has changed over the past 15 years and you can’t step into the same river twice.
[citation needed]
Perhaps a bit exaggerated, but the big market helps a lot and also has a network affect, attracting other talented people and resources from around the world.
> But you can't have both cradle to grave security, and the opportunity for success.
People in many countries provide much more security (and investment, such as education) to themselves than the US and also plenty of success, including billionaires, including Canada. The main difference is that the US has a much larger market.
Billionaires are of course a tiny portion of the population and not representative of the availability of success. For non-billionaires, many of whom can't afford an education or healthcare, success might be futher away because the Americans don't invest as much in themselves.
> Progressive proposals to erase American billionaires in exchange for more security
What does that mean, specifically?
https://twitter.com/berniesanders/status/1176481898685710337
The American market is global.
Isn't Canada already in America?
But people refer to the USA as “America” even though Canada and Mexico are also in “North America” and all the countries in South America exist also.
Even so, nobody would refer to someone from those countries as “American”.
Maybe not in English, but it would be quite normal to do so in some other languages.
Some cultures (arbitrarily) recognize North America and South America as separate continents, whereas some others consider them to be one continent, called America.
Among many of the cultures that recognize two continents, the term “America” has drifted in meaning over time to colloquially refer to the USA. That is the sense in which “America” was meant in this headline.
Only in English speaking and non-American countries.
All of the Spanish speaking American countries are happy to call what everyone else calls "americans" "united-stateans", i.e. "estadounidense" in Spanish. Because of course it's stupid to call gringos "american", when the entire continent is called America.
This is also happening to Europe, in a lesser extent (for 2 reasons, first of which is that the EU isn't a country, and the 2nd is that most of European countries are in the EU). "European" is more often used to refer to an inhabitant of the European Union than it's used to refer to an inhabitant of Europe, the continent.
More seriously, if you weren't joking, Canada is in North America, the continent. America, the country, is the informal name of the United States of America.
If by "inadequate" you mean "can be improved", then of course, all systems can be improved. If you mean it is fundamentally unsound then I feel this is completely unfounded. My family has had 3 seperate health-care events during their lifetime, the latest cancer related in an COIVD-overloaded emergency setting, that would have bankrupt us multiple times over had we been in the US (and yes, they are all remarkably healthy individuals, no diabetes, etc. in general). Even in the latest case the health-care we recieved was amazing, over a month of hospitalizatoin, for which we will see ZERO bills. The latest treatement, monoclonal antibody based chemo, ZERO bills. Was there stress? Yes, but I can hardly imagine a better overall outcome.
If you are rich, in Canada, you can get whatever healthcare you want, just like in the US. If you are middle-class or poorer, the difference betweent the two systems is so vastly different it's mind-boggling.
what do you mean? you say that you work in vfx but do canadians creating television and movies not count as "offering something culturally?" Not to mention the long list of actors and famous musicians/bands from canada. more specifically, I wonder what you consider to be important cultural contributions.
anyhow, your prognosis of 'borrowing from everyone else' is factually correct. canada is a land of immigrants. though, if you don't think toronto has a specific toronto food culture, you'll be disappointed when all you find is the usual gaumet of international food options in new york and la. unless if you want to tell me that italian food is somehow a cultural contribution of new york.
Also, if you want the healthcare system to improve then are you supporting parties and candidates that want to improve it? Or do you just want the Conservatives in power because they don’t call you a Nazi?
Also, there is no "Montreal food" as much as there is no "Toronto food". I don't know why you think there is a distinction.
The healthcare you seem to be upset about is years long effort by the conservative governments to gut it down including the current conservative government in Ontario. And yet, not a word from you about that?
Good luck for your move to US but I think you have some other things you are unhappy about and I don't think moving countries is going to help.
I'd never heard of this senator before watching this video, but he really did summarize the situation well and seems to me to be a legitimately serious person unlike many of our current politicians (all parties).
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-conservative-swasti...
> A small number of the assembled protesters have displayed Nazi insignia, including the swastika and yellow stars of David, while others have flown the Confederate flag during these anti-government demonstrations.
> Other groups have since attached themselves to the movement, including some far-right and white nationalist elements.
What should we call these people? Your being upset at them being called Nazis says more about you than Trudeau.
Note that the protest organizers made no attempt to dissociate themselves from these and only did so in the later days of the protests.
Trudeau's criticism of his conservative colleagues was more about them not criticizing these people (which they didn't) and not calling them Nazis.
It's also telling that the protests against lockdowns criticizing Trudeau, calling for his death (https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-protest-racist-deat...) were not addressed towards Doug Ford, the Ontario premier responsible for the lockdowns. No politician in Canada should get any death threats but the point I am making was no criticism was directed towards Doug Ford for something he did (the longest lockdown in North America in Ontario) but towards Trudeau, who had no role in it.
That tells you everything you need to need to know, that is, if you want to know it and not be willfully obtuse.
So, it sounds like there was a small number of such people. Of course, if that's not true, I'm happy to be convinced otherwise. I will not accept an argument based on guilt by association however (or in this case guilt by proximity which is even more absurd).
Finally, the truckers were protesting the federal trucker mandates (with their trucks no less) so it was not a particularly abstract demonstration. I guess these people were in the right location by your calculus but non-truckers should have disbursed to protest at their own provincial capitals. That is a reasonable argument but I think many of the protesters were also there in support of the truckers.
> Now, as the convoy descends on Ottawa with the stated aim of opposing all COVID-19 mandates, anti-hate experts allege those with white nationalist and Islamophobic views don’t just represent the fringes of the movement but are among the organizers of the convoy.
There is no guilt by association. These are the people themselves.
I think Canada is better if you are an outdoorsy type person. Access to nature is really the primary appeal of the country in my opinion. Of course the US is awesome as well in this regard.