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I was wondering this too, and would love to hear the parent's reasoning. One difference I can think of is that Canada has Universal Healthcare. Maybe the comp

I was wondering this too, and would love to hear the parent's reasoning. One difference I can think of is that Canada has Universal Healthcare. Maybe the compensation system differs because Canadian companies can pay <Salary> and US Companies have to pay <Salary + benefits>? (I mostly see people here on HN throwing salary numbers around, not total compensation. Also, I wonder if having the government handle benefits would make it easier to pay more (since companies don't have to pay benefits) or less (since companies just pay the government to do the benefits). )

frandroid 9y ago
If that was the case, Canadian employers should have the upper hand in competitive salaries, because they don't have to cover healthcare, and corporate taxes are also cheaper. This happened in the auto sector, where Canadian plants have enjoyed a few decades of favoured status compared to American plants due to lower employment costs. That's now changed since the UAW has caved in so much to the automakers and workers in the U.S. South will work for peanuts, on top of state government offering massive subsidies to attract new plants. What happens is simply that many Canadians like Canada and don't want to move south, and the Canadian economy is poorer than the American one (in particular, there is way less VC investment per capita), so companies have less money to fight over developers, and many developers (like myself) are content with this market.