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Comment by Gothmog69 | Hacker News Reader

20 an hour USD is what a dev makes in Canada. Crazy he couldn't save up enough in America to retire. Also crazy to read a sob story about the working poor in America and think... "must be nice"

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I don't think that's quite true. When I was working for a large/stable/boring company in Calgary, the lowest paid green devs made more than C$56k/year.

Assuming full-time work (40 hour per week, 52 weeks a year with paid leave and holidays), that's about $27/hour CAD or $19/hour USD. If they work more than 40/week then that effective hourly rate drops quickly.

That's what I mean, I was converting US$20/hour to C$/year and assuming 2000 hours/year. None of these people were paid hourly.

I think a starting rate for devs in a software shop is probably closer to C$75k/yr = US$26/hr, at least in this market. Still lower than I expected, but not US$20.

Got it, I misunderstood your earlier comment as putting $56k as a lower bound on starting pay.

Wow, at that rate I'm surprised we don't see more Canadian startups. Solo SaaS could make 10x that, maybe they don't have many devs that actually ship value?

That's a junior dev rate, and a low one. A good job for a new grad would be USD 30/hour.

Right so at those rates why don't more Canadians gamble on running their own shop? Not like a CAN company selling worldwide, paying 1/3 salaries, only makes 1/3 the revenue?

Unless corp taxes are 3x US?

Well, seniors in Vancouver can go for 160k/year (cad), still low for the cost of life, but better. 180 for lead is possible too. Over that I don't know.

Market is 1/10th USA size.

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