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Comment by nl | Hacker News Reader

I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York.

I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)?

Are those number correct?

If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salaries than Canadian. Just in case anyone is looking to move somewhere...

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It's a bit higher a than 40K, but not that much. For example, I would have said around 60K and after some research, it seem I'm not wrong : http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/State=Qu%C3%A9bec/Salary

AVG: Software developer : 58K

Also in Quebec, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you want to an engineer school and are part of their order.

This is a very good thing that I wish the US would adopt. We have people with three months total programming experience jumping from sales jobs to programming and calling themselves engineers. It's an insult to those who actually perform engineering professionally.

It might be a good thing if university graduates from computer science programs could apply for software engineering positions... Consequently, most educated hiring managers don't hire for engineers, which brings us back to square one.

No, it's not. In practice it is a way to give professional associations a monopoly and force people to pay fees to them (because it is membership of those associations which give you the ability to call yourself whatever, not what you completed at university)

Fortunately there are multiple job titles in computing that mean the same thing, so this should never be a real problem in computing.

Yes, yes it definitely is. While professional engineering certification might be a monopolistic moneymaking scheme, it also verifies that an engineer has some idea that he knows what the hell he's doing in a way that graduating from a university can't. Standardized tests have a real and valuable purpose. I'm more comfortable knowing that an engineer graduating from Western State has an independent source to test his knowledge against. Accreditation alone can't do this.

"[...] In Quebec, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you went to an engineering school [...]"

That is actually true in most (all?) provinces.

It's true, except in BC some use it casually as just another job title (e.g., software engineer), and I don't recall anyone saying anything about it.

Yes it is true in most provinces, especially in Ontario.

"part of their order" is a very important part of that.

Except that you live better in Montreal than in SF with 1.5X less salary. I don't mind moving there but living in a shared room because rent are 2k5 a month for a small place...

if you live frugally in Silicon Valley your savings can be larger than your annual salary in Montreal.

How does one live frugally when rent is sometimes 60-70% of your income? Plus taxes in California are comparable to those in Quebec, but health care isn't covered.

Don't live in gentrified, high-rent neighborhoods in the city.

I rent in San Jose, have private health insurance, and am sole provider for a family of four. Our necessary expenses to maintain our standard of living for last year totaled around $40k. That year I had been offered (and turned down for unrelated reasons) a $115k job on the peninsula. Even assuming a worst-case tax situation, I still could have been saving $40k/year.

That's approximately the going rate in Quebec for the work I do.

I think they talking about after tax numbers

If this were WA it'd be a substantial difference (somewhat). CA and NY though (particularly NYC) have a total tax rate in the same ballpark as Canada.

And the Canadians get health care for that money.

That said I've done the cost of living numbers between here (NYC) vs. Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and even with the insane rent here I'm still coming out ahead - way ahead. The salary difference is truly mind-boggling.

More than the salary difference, the kind of work you're doing as a $200K engineer in SV/SF/NYC is very different than the kind of work you're doing as a $70K engineer in Toronto. There is a conspicuous lack of this level of work in Canada overall.

Taxes in Canada are not particularly higher than in the U.S.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html

http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians...

You need to include sales tax, which ranges from 5% in Alberta to 15% in Quebec. Also, taxes on alcohol and gasoline are much higher than the US.

That being said, with the recent tax increases in the US and the lower of provincial income taxes in many Canadian provinces (I'm looking at you BC), the difference isn't as great as one would think.

You're paying sales taxes in pretty much all of the US, though, though not as much(ranges from ~3% to 10%).

Not at all. Starting salary in Canada is $45-70k and I know at least four people who made north of $150k in total comp their first year out of school in SV. The interns in SV make more than some senior engineers in Canada.

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