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This article doesn't mention one of the major reasons for talent leaving Canada: if you work there, you need to stomach a 50% pay cut in average salaries vs the

• scosman 10y ago
  Those seem too low, both US and Canada. Is anyone really paying a ML specialist $53k?
  • jonathannorris 10y ago
    I'm assuming that comparison is converting CAD to USD which would make it ~$72k CAD, because $53k is way to low. But that doesn't make this comparison any more realistic seeing as you'd be living in Canada spending CAD.
• TP4Cornholio 10y ago
  I can't believe it's so low. I hope Canadians aren't asked to put in overtime at those wages.
  • breitling 10y ago
    You better believe it. Overtime is expected.
    • brunoc 10y ago
      Maybe where you work. Not expected everywhere at all.
    • tostitos1979 10y ago
      Not the same as the US. In the US, if you lose your job, you lose health care. That is a big motivator for people with families. I've seen people take a lot of crap in the name of a job. In Canada, it is not that bad unless you took a crazy mortgage in the last 5 years.
  • caffodian 10y ago
    It's even more fun, in BC "high technology companies/professionals" are exempt from a bunch of the usual labour laws around overtime, hours of work, stat holidays, etc. http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employment-standards-advice/employment-standards/factsheets/high-technology-companies http://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/employment-business/employ... Of course, in practice, no sane company is going to abuse this to the extreme. People do get stat holidays, overtime isn't usually used, etc.
• untog 10y ago
  It's an interesting situation. Not difficult to imagine Canadians moving to the US, while immigrants who lose out on H1B visas take their place in Canada. Of course, Trump has said before he's not a huge fan of NAFTA either, so...
• ganfortran 10y ago
  Well if you cannot stay in US, going to Canada is better than nothing. Trump says it all.
  • shamaku 10y ago
    Trump says what exactly that affects the bottom line? It's business as usual for the cabal. Wake up. Trump just be trumping.
• endorphone 10y ago
  While I do have a grievance with a much lower pay ceiling across Canada, those numbers are ridiculously low even if in US dollars as I assume they are. I don't put much stock in the StackOverflow survey. And I'm not trying to be argumentative, but your take on TN visas is extremely simplified. For instance software developers aren't actually allowed to have a TN visa, and instead you have to say that you're a "system analyst". Only they've actually started strictly demanding proof that you're an analyst and not a programmer, etc. Add that any single border crossing can lead to a revocation of your TN visa. No thanks. EDIT: Before more people reply with general comments, I am specifically talking about the salary claims for "ML Specialist" and embedded developers. Those numbers -- and I happen to have a good amount of reason to know this -- are ludicrously low. But yes, if you're a web developer, a generalist, etc, pay will be terrible in much of Canada, just as it's terrible in much of the US.
  • akinalci 10y ago
    Here's another source, Payscale.com: Software engineer (Canada): $51,000 (C$70,000) Software engineer (US): $80,825 The gap here is smaller ($30k vs. $50k) but still significant. And I'm not trying to be argumentative, but I'm more inclined to believe two surveys than a random person's claim. [1] http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa... [2] http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Salary http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Software_Engineer/Sa...
    • bootload 10y ago
      "The gap here is smaller ($30k vs. $50k) but still significant." Healthcare, stability and democracy (sans land/house prices) make up a lot for this.
      • afsina 10y ago
        I don't see people flocking even after Trump won.
• accountyaccount 10y ago
  Is that adjusted for cost of living?
• nightski 10y ago
  Statistics are good for describing populations. Average pay can be a useful metric. However, when looking at what you or I might earn in Canada it is completely useless. I make 4x the average where I live. Salary is very negotiable and often has a lot of variance.
• bickfordb 10y ago
  Part of this might be the poor CAD:USD exchange rate. Additionally, sales tax is high relative to the US. IIRC GST in Toronto was around 15% when I was there last summer.
  • rfrey 10y ago
    13% in Toronto. 5% in Calgary.
• halite 10y ago
  Maybe for some areas but for Alberta this is closer to reality: https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/occupations/computer-programmer/71003291/ https://alis.alberta.ca/occinfo/occupations/computer-program...
  • nvrmnd 10y ago
    Note that salary is also close the same wage (~10% more) as an electrician, accountant, or boilermaker.
  • josho 10y ago
    Hey fellow Albertan. Keep in mind the USD/CAD exchange and that $90k here becomes $60kUSD. The developers I know that are worth their chops have all taken remote US contracts. I'm looking to do the same because local companies just can't compete with the work available nor wage.
    • dblohm7 10y ago
      100% agreed
• jordigh 10y ago
  > TN visas are instant and infinitely renewable. Not for Mexicans, as I found out the hard way. I tried doing this to come to Canada, but since Mexicans at the time needed an entry visa, I had to leave the country for a month and apply for a work visa in NYC. It was pretty frustrating for me because I read and re-read all the documents I had to read, and everything seemed to say I could just walk into Canada with my NAFTA-relevant job offer. On the other hand, the Canadian border guard at Toronto was very nice to me, said I had to figure out my visa status and let me in anyway on a 1-month temporary visa, to give me time to go to NYC and fix my visa status.
  • neilk 10y ago
    Policies around visa processing vary with time and even depending on what port of entry or what agent you get. (It's a taste of what the state is like when there are no accountability procedures.) There are people in the Valley who specialize in tracking every twist and turn of what visa policies are like this year.
• noam87 10y ago
  No way those numbers are right. At least not in Toronto. I'm a back end dev with under 5 years experience and you couldn't get me to set the clock on your microwave for $53k.
  • flyingramen 10y ago
    For my benefit, would you be willing to share your salary or range (and currency :)?
    • throwawaycan420 10y ago
      I'm not the grandparent post, but, my salary in Canada was $80K starting in 2000, and is up to $160K now. I've been making more than double the median wage in my city for the last 20 years or so.
      • minwcnt5 10y ago
        $80K CAD is $59K USD, which is not that much different than the original post. $160K CAD = $119K USD is fairly good, but most developers with 17 years experience would take home north of $200K in Silicon Valley (I'm not familiar with other US markets). All the anecdotes still seem to point to software engineers making more than double in the US. I would love to return to Canada some day, but I'm not likely to do so until the numbers I see people post online start beginning with at least a 2 or 3.
        • tostitos1979 10y ago
          Exactly. A USD 200K software eng simply cannot move to Canada. It is messed up. That is more than a director or higher's salary in a place like Toronto.
        • anuj_nm 10y ago
          If you're living in Canada, you're spending money in CAD. I don't think its fair to convert Canadian salaries to USD to make the comparison. Still, $160K CAD is considerably less than $200K USD.
• neilk 10y ago
  In my experience, those numbers for Canadian salaries would be ridiculously low. Also, I'm assuming those numbers are converted to USD. Even if they look lower, you have to consider what kind of lifestyle the salary buys you where you are earning it. In my experience, the real reason people leave isn't so much salary, as lack of opportunities.
• eloff 10y ago
  Yes, that more or less sums it up. Plus you have fewer job opportunities and career mobility as well as higher taxes and rapidly rising real-estate prices in both Vancouver and Toronto. I think Canadian software engineers are crazy to stay in Canada. I'm a Canadian software engineer living in Canada, but I'd never consider working for a Canadian or US company here and earning Canadian dollars - it just makes no sense. I work remote only (these days only part-time.) It isn't such a great deal as it used to be for me now that I have to pay Canadian taxes, but it was bloody fantastic when I used to live in Panama and legally paid no tax of any kind other than 7% sales tax.
  • thesmallestcat 10y ago
    I thought in Panama (and anywhere else outside the US) you have to pay income tax on earnings over $100k. I think you have to pay into Social Security too?
    • eloff 10y ago
      Yes that's correct. Although, if you're working remotely you're not likely to be making much over $100K, so it may still be worth it. Your take home may still be close to working in the Valley, and your cost of living, excluding food will be less than half. I'm Canadian though, so I don't have to deal with the long-armed-fingers-in-my-pockets embrace of Uncle Sam. Every other country in the world is sensible enough to only tax residents.
      • cluoma 10y ago
        Could you explain? I live in Germany but, as far as I know, am still required to file taxes in Canada every year.
        • eloff 10y ago
          If you're non-resident in Canada, you only have to pay tax in Canada on Canadian-source income. Unfortunately, yes that includes a pension. To be non-resident you have to spend at least half the year outside the country and have no residential ties to Canada like property, dependents, bank accounts, health insurance, etc. See: http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/ndvdls/nnrs-eng.html http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/nnrsdnts/ndvdls/nnrs-eng.html
• cgh 10y ago
  >No need to wait for an H1-B, just show up at the border with job offer & credentials in hand, assuming you've graduated college. TN visas are instant and infinitely renewable. This is false. I say this as someone with a TN visa, which I use to visit my employer a few times a year. The TN application process is onerous and takes weeks to confirm. The actual visa is indeed granted at the port of entry but can be denied - simply having the completed application doesn't guarantee anything. And you have to go through the complete application process every time you re-apply. There is no renewal application. The best way to get it done is to work for BigCorp, Inc. whose team of lawyers will handle it for you. If you work for a smaller company or are a contractor/consultant, you'll have to hire a lawyer for a few grand. I know because I've been there too.
  • acchow 10y ago
    takes weeks to confirm The "application" for TN is a rather new development (introduced in 2012). In the past, you couldn't apply by mail - you just show up at the port of entry with your job offer, description of job responsibilities, and university diploma. And they grant it on the spot. This is still how I get my TN.
    • arcticbull 10y ago
      Agreed. Apply at a port of entry. Don't bother with the mail. The border crossing application fee is only $50USD and is adjudicated on the spot at secondary. Takes a half hour.
  • api_or_ipa 10y ago
    > onerous and takes weeks to confirm When I moved from Canada to the Bay Area, I accepted my job offer on a Friday evening, organized to get original transcripts from my university on Tuesday morning, FedEx'd them overnight to the law firm and they arrived on Wednesday. I received my TN-1 package (a thick, completely opaque set of forms, documents, letters and all sorts of other legal shenanigans) on Friday evening. I then bought my ticket to leave Canada the following Friday. All together it was 2 weeks from acceptance to arrival in the US. Not every experience is the same, and no doubt it would have been far harder had my company not pipelined my immigration through a very prominent and large law firm. That being said, the fact that I can be denied entry in the US at any time scares me. It scares my company. It's no secret it's expensive to hire, and even more expensive to hire new talent to replace talent that cannot enter the country. I say this as a young, educated professional with no criminal history or ties. I shouldn't have to worry about this.
• g2guo 10y ago
  I recently moved from Waterloo to San Francisco. My salary had doubled in the process, but my living costs have also substantially increased. I live in a 1-bedroom condo with similar square feet; my diet stayed the same, I pursue the same hobbies and similar habits (fitness, education, entertainment). In the end, the higher cost of living offsets my salary increase, and my quality of life stayed the same.
  • guiomie 10y ago
    You are either not paid enough for a SF/SV engineer, or were paid quite a lot in Canada. Even with my increased rent and food I'm saving in a year what took me 2-3 in Canada.
    • tostitos1979 10y ago
      Parent's mistake is to maintain the same lifestyle. If you settle for less housing or room mates, you come across ahead.
      • acchow 10y ago
        Depends how nice your lifestyle was back in Canada. If you used to live in a nice 1BR condo, you could definitely move to SF and spend an extra $20k/year in housing and still come out way ahead. If you used to live in 3br house with a backyard and garage, you definitely won't be able to maintain that in SF.
      • closeparen 10y ago
        Why would someone move for work if it meant a lifestyle downgrade?
        • nandemo 10y ago
          It doesn't have to be a downgrade in the aggregate. You can downgrade your housing but upgrade other stuff.
• tensor 10y ago
  Shopify https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salary/Shopify-Ottawa-Salaries-EI_IE675933.0,7_IL.8,14_IM981.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salary/Shopify-Ottawa-Salaries-EI_I... Software Developer $80,947 Software Engineer $96,600 500px https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salary/500px-Salaries-E600778.htm https://www.glassdoor.ca/Salary/500px-Salaries-E600778.htm Software Engineer $93,333 The averages are pulled down by lots of mediocre companies. Startups and big places like Google and IBM have salaries that are nowhere close to your numbers. Couple this with taxes here being much much lower than say the bay area, and you are doing really well living here.
  • r-s 10y ago
    For reference: $96,600 CAD == $71,718 USD
    • FreedomToCreate 10y ago
      Note that is at the current exchange rate
    • tensor 10y ago
      Sure, but most of these sky high US salaries are in the bay area. So consider that the cost of living is roughly double there: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&country2=United+States&city1=Toronto&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
  • 52-6F-62 10y ago
    You're listing two companies that are veritable unicorns in Toronto. There are a handful of successful mid-level companies like those in the city, and tens of thousands of hungry developers earning far less at non-technologically focused companies. The average Torontonian (in any field) earns ~$50-70k and costs here are quite high still, even if they trail San Francisco by ~30%. To wit: on that average salary you certainly won't starve, but pick one: save money, buy a car, have a child (and that might be a stretch).
• k-mcgrady 10y ago
  It might be better to look at the US as an outlier here. Those Canadian salaries (esp if they're slightly low based on the other comments here) don't see too dissimilar to what's available in the UK (outside London which has higher salaries for every job due to cost of living). At the end of the day, those 'low' salaries are only low relatively. They are more than enough for most people and only a reason to move south if your main driver is money. Otherwise they're good enough.
  • pbourke 10y ago
    > At the end of the day, those 'low' salaries are only low relatively. They are more than enough for most people and only a reason to move south if your main driver is money. Otherwise they're good enough. The average Canadian house costs $585k now[0]. That's over 10x these average Canadian tech salaries. Housing prices contributed to our decision to move from Toronto to Seattle 10 years ago. I imagine that they are even more of a motivator nowadays. [0] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/house-price-data-centre-canadian-house-prices-see-record-breaking-month/article29697029/ http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/house-price-data-...
    • seanmcdirmid 10y ago
      Well, as long as we are compare to the U.K. also, Canadian and American real estate often look like a bargain. The thing about Canada is that Nafta makes it easy to move south, while in the U.K. going to the USA is not as simple.
      • ruairidhwm 10y ago
        Which is extraordinarily frustrating given how close our cultures our and the amount of talented developers who'd like to take a role in the US. I just had an interview fall through because I'm a Brit and it would be difficult to get me over to SF due to the visa system. Maybe I should look for a dev job in Canada? :P
        • k-mcgrady 10y ago
• macspoofing 10y ago
  On the other hand, basing your startup in Canada means dramatically lower costs (made even better with programs like SR&ED), while still having access to a talented pool of developers. And yes, there are plenty of people who simply do not want to move South, and plenty of people willing to move North.
• empressplay 10y ago
  Even Australia is better than Canada, $100K for a senior dev vs 80K and the cost of living is pretty much the same.
• apercu 10y ago
  I was an executive at a SW firm in Toronto for almost 9 years (I'm originally from the US). In order to hire relatively talented people, the salaries were (even in 2007) no where near what you are describing. When I resigned in 2014 the lowest paid developer on a 30 person team might have been making around $80k. Typically salaries were between $88 and $110. While there are a large number of Canadians that have gone to the US to work, I regularly encounter Americans in tech that have come here. Sure, it's anecdotal. My taxes are only slightly more than I paid in Wisconsin, and likely on par with California. And for that I always have some level of basic healthcare, even if I lose my job. Plus, the government tries harder for its citizens here.
  • gabbo 10y ago
    My sense is the more ambitious Canadian engineers and/or those with high earnings potential will be drastically better off in the US (financially speaking) because the upper end of compensation and access to job opportunity is so much higher, but beyond that it's significantly murkier and highly dependent on personal circumstance.
    • apercu 10y ago
      As long as you are not on an H1B you might be better off. That said, fintech in Toronto is burgeoning.