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Comment by dagmx | Hacker News Reader

Covid has changed this quite a bit, though even pre covid this wasn't exactly true depending on your profession.

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.

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My Canadian startup was acquired by a silicon valley company. They definitely did not pay US rates. They referred to our office as Bangalore of the North.

That's a shame. I've been part of acquisitions of Canadian companies when I was still in the Bay Area. Other than conversion rates, we didn't price Canadian companies differently than the US acquisitions.

Uh... I have a less rosy picture of the situation.

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.

That's a fair view on it if you're viewing it from a domestic growth. I was viewing it from the perspective of an employee. Many of these companies are opening up proper Canadian divisions however, though it does price out many Canadian headquartered companies in the process.

That’s quite an assumption that US companies are paying US rates in Canada. I can confirm that mine is paying 20% less

Last I checked, here in BC the wage for a senior programmer typically ranged between 80 and 150, Canadian.

Taking a 20% discount on a SV senior salary, in American dollars, would likely be a significant raise.

150 seems high in my experience in Vancouver. Are you able to comment on which companies pay towards that end of the range? I guess this would be Amazon, Microsoft, Apple?

150 is entry level for Amazon Vancouver now. These would have to be local companies

I know for certain that SAP, Amazon and Microsoft will pay that much for a senior developer.

The main difference is no RSUs vs. $200-500k/year RSUs.

My new US based employer laughed when he saw what I was making in Canada. “So this will be quite a nice jump for you?” Yes. Yes it was.

The US company I started working for during the pandemic is paying me US rates, in USD, so I wouldn't call it an "assumption" just because you accepted a job in which you're getting paid 20% less.

Are they paying SV rates with RSU though as FB and Google are definitely paying noticeably less overall as that was the point of the OP?

The person I am directly responding to was disputing the idea that employers are paying US rates in Canada at all ("That’s quite an assumption that US companies are paying US rates in Canada."), not SV rates specifically. Please don't try to shift the goal posts.

20% less might still be over double local rates.

Which is probably still >50% higher than Canadian companies pay with exchange rates factored in.

My girlfriend from Vancouver is moving to the states to live with me. In trying to find a job for her, whenever potential employers hear that she is Canadian, they immediately want to offer remote for her from Vancouver at the local salary rate, which is half what it would be in the US.

Agreed - as someone who watches this market closely since I'd like to return to Canada at some point in the future, the gap has closed considerably. I would say there's still something of a gap but a) it's way way closer than it has ever been and b) it appears to still be closing.

It would not surprise me if the top employers in the Canadian market got to parity with US tech hub comp.

For sure. Amazon will pay $300K in Vancouver for a DevOps role. That’s just one data point, but I can tell you it has never looked this good by half. The pandemic changed everything.

I wouldn't discount the role of tightening US immigration policy either. Starting with the last administration H-1B admissions plummeted: processing times and rejection rates skyrocketed. It's now dicier than ever to come to the US on a H-1B visa.

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.

And it’s not just FAANG. Silicon Valley seems to have discovered that Canadian universities churn out a lot of skilled graduates - many who come from third countries via generous student visas. Many valley based startups have opened offices in Vancouver, Toronto, etc. and are paying great salaries not much removed from valley pay levels.

How does the exchange rate and tax rate differences affect the take-home pay comparison?

The exchange rate isn't much of a factor - since you're paying for goods in CAD$ anyway and purchasing power isn't hugely different. Some categories are considerably more expensive, like your internet bill, but for most people (and at the incomes in consideration) it's a rounding error.

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.)

You _can_, but most companies are doing location-based pay, so it certainly isn't easy

Even with location-based pay adjustments, big tech has had a growing presence in Canada, and it's becoming more and more realistic to land roles in the upper range of the trimodal comp distribution curve.

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.

It's true, but I'm seeing a significant change in the number of roles I'm being reached out to for, or that my friends have gotten, where the location based pay is just the currency difference +-10%.

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.

" Canada was the place to be for working in film/tv , visual effects and animation in terms of jobs"

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.

Ironically, I think your comment is a very glib American thing to say. You reduced the entire Canadian market to just being cheaper, which was perhaps true in the height of tax breaks, but that doesn't negate the size of the industry in Canada is massive.

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.

First, I'm Canadian, second - "There is significantly more VFX/animation studio work in Canada." - coming from an 'industry adjacent' situation (but not in the industry) - I would higly doubt that. I don't think you realize just how big the USA is, and that 'Entertainment' is one of their core industries.

'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.

Well either way your comment was glib and seems to completely ignore the specifics of which industries I mentioned.

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.

"Outside of DWA, WDAS and Pixar, the majority of animation and VFX work for feature and TV has moved to Canada or Australia."

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.

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