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A new grad SDE makes 2x more in SF than Toronto after tax and COL
- elchief 9y agoComparing salaries across borders based on that day's exchange rate is dumb. It's swung between 70 cents and parity in the last decade
- s0rce 9y agoUnless your plan is to save most of your income and move back to Canada after working in the US the amount you make in CAD isn't really relevant at all, the purchasing power of your income net taxes and rent is most relevant. Also, my experience is that the expenses don't line up either. I could be wrong but having moved from Toronto to Chicago and now the SF Bay area, other than rent in SF area, living in Canada is often more expensive, specifically: gas, food, travel (partly due to weak CAD and expensive flights), not adjusting for the currency since you are paid in CAD and also paid less.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- senatorobama 9y agoWow. Anyone who lives in Canada must get out quick. Time to go where the salaries are higher and not a backwater.
- HanayamaTriplet 9y agoI find it an odd choice to single out SF for the title (currently "A new grad SDE makes 2x more in SF than Toronto after tax and COL"), given that the data show that Seattle pay after tax and COL is almost 2.4x Toronto.
- tensor 9y agoThat's not true, total compensation in the article is ~1.7 more in SF than Toronto, but that includes stock options which are not actually the same as cash. The 2x figure comes from an analysis that factors in living expenses and refers to the amount of money you get left over for savings and similar things. Also, that comparison oddly compares living in a frat-like house in SF to having your own one bedroom apartment in Toronto.
- curmudgeon9 9y agoNot to mention the salary difference will get soaked up by real estate differences the moment you decide to buy a house. Not that Toronto real estate is cheap either. I think Google Waterloo is a great value: high CAD salary but low real estate prices (around half of Toronto). The optimal play (if you don't want to permanently live in the US) is to go to SF, continue living like a student and sock away your cash while building your reputation, then move back to Canada and work remote with a grandfathered USD salary.
- gsnedders 9y ago> Also, that comparison oddly compares living in a frat-like house in SF to having your own one bedroom apartment in Toronto. Um, uh… So how do they compare if we assume similar living situation in both? (And yes, I realise that's still a massively subjective question, given questions of neighbourhood, etc., and rent variation within them.)
- joshuamorton 9y agoRSUs =/= stock options. At a reputable public company (FAMG, Twitter, Linkedin, Snap, etc.) you will be given restricted stock units. These are more like cash than options (they may have a vesting schedule, but once they vest, you can sell them immediately for cash value). Also I'll note that you can bump up the SF numbers by 1K/mo for rent (which puts you well into the can easily afford a 1BR apartment range) and still be ahead on savings compared to the canadian salaries.
- whack 9y ago"that comparison oddly compares living in a frat-like house in SF to having your own one bedroom apartment in Toronto." 1. His Excel sheet shows cost of living with 2-3 roommates, across many different cities, including Toronto 2. The frat parties you attended must have really sucked if they were held in 3-bedroom apartments
- geodel 9y agoWell this is case with every country which is not US. Software salaries are much higher in US even after considering all different parameters e.g. PPP, currency exchange, housing cost, health insurance and so on.
- bartedinburgh 9y agoYeah, most of Europe is barely on par with Canada if not worse.
- guiomie 9y agoThe author says in the middle of the post: " I believe this is the key in retaining young Canadian tech talent in Canada. If an intern has a great experience at a Canadian tech company, they are more likely to sacrifice the additional compensation in US to remain in Canada. Sell them on the culture, not the money." And then says: " Tech CEOs in Canada often complain about the brain drain issue, but only a few companies like Shopify and Wealthsimple are actually putting money where their mouth is." Really, if you wanna "Sell" them on something, it should be the money, sure I'd go for culture if we are talking 10-15% salary difference, but if it's 50%, I'll find something that pays 50% more with a decent culture.
- Scoundreller 9y agoOr those that remain in Canada can't get a US visa for some reason. e.g. not a Canadian citizen, or otherwise can't meet TN1 requirements (not having a degree). Or have a significant other that can't get a visa.
- TylerE 9y agoWhy not both? Sell them on culture, but the compensation still needs to be not insulting.
- ttul 9y agoVancouver tech CEO here. We Canadian CEOs would love to pay our staff more, but our companies frankly suck compared to the powerhouse companies in the US. We just aren’t profitable enough. I think if you dig around, you will find that US tech companies are far better funded and thus working on things that generate more upside - for everyone. Another thing to consider is that there is a massive bull market going on. And tech is at the frothy end of it. Those RSUs are great when stock is valuable and companies are flush. When the market tanks, they won’t be so hot anymore.
- linguist_1 9y agoSecond grade tech attracts second grade employees and second grade funding. That's the law of the market. Vancouver is interesting because it's also where a lot of american firms set shops in order to house employees that can't qualify for a US visa.
- g9yuayon 9y agoAssuming employees have the same productivity in two different locations, shouldn't a company even pay more to the employees in the location that has lower operational cost, because the company will end up having a higher margin anyway? Instead, what I often see is that companies use "lower living cost"(which I assume is correlated with lower operational cost) as a justification of paying an employee less. Yeah yeah, I understand that it eventually boils down to supply and demand of talent, but just saying...
- hkjayakumar 9y agoWell, companies also prefer higher margins to lower margin i.e. if they can get away with paying lesser compensation, then that's exactly what they will do.
- andrew_wc_brown 9y agoIts quite frustrating as a Canadian web-developer. There are plenty of remote jobs that I would qualify skill and experience wise in the US that are for 120K USD. But they won't hire remote Canadians because its a hassle for some reason. There are few Canadian companies that are remoting and generally they cap out at 70K. There are higher paying remoting jobs in Canada but to get them you have to do in-person networking to secure them. I'm from Thunder Bay originally and honestly would prefer to live someone cheap but I'm forced back into the GTA because people want to have their head over your shoulder. The only way to get about the 70K cap was to run my own firm, which brought in lots of money but was quite the chore to keep stable.
- pmiller2 9y agoThe flip side of this is an experience I had a while ago interviewing with a Canadian company for a remote position. Since I expected it to be an issue, I was up front with the interviewer that I needed a minimum of $X to pay my bills in the Bay Area and that I wasn't interested in moving. They were not willing to proceed, and told me that was the reason. I appreciated their candor, but it really turned me (as an American) off of Canadian companies.
- thirdsun 9y agoIsn't that kind of expected? I assume very few companies can provide the salary that is needed to support living in the bay area and I guess most of them are probably located in the very same region, the bay area.
- farnsworthy 9y agoI'd keep looking, as I regularly see remote positions that will hire only in either the "US and Canada," or "North America."
- linguist_1 9y agoWe had so many Canadians applying for remote jobs at the last company I worked at. Honestly they got treated just like the "Indian Undergraduate Internship" [1] mails my old lab used to get. Piped straight to dev/null. The fact that couldn't even qualify for a US visa was a big red flag in terms of qualification. [1] https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-b...
- Scoundreller 9y agoIf you can work as an incorporated contractor, Canadian taxes can be quite low when you sprinkle the income across your family. * The government is starting to catch on and might put an end to paying out dividends to non-working family members.
- cheez 9y agoOnly if the dividends are above 400K or something?
- Scoundreller 9y agoI haven't been following the day-to-day news, but if that's what it is... the income splitting benefit is still massive.
- gruez 9y agosounds like a good way to get audited. abusing tax loopholes like this might be worth it if you're a corporation with an army of accountants/lawyers to defend you, but if you're an individual, you're easy pickings for the IRS.
- brady8 9y agoNot might - as of Jan 1, 2018, you can no longer pay dividends to any non-working family members. As a physician, it's a 15-20% pay cut for me :(
- saagarjha 9y ago> This data set is not big enough to draw broad conclusions. This, very much. You have around 100-120 responses, and for many groups (gender, company) you had <20 people responding. You really can't draw any conclusions from this, especially because a lot of the "results" differed by very little.
- sgberlin 9y agoI'm sure it is the same with any city in Germany compared to Zurich.
- carlmr 9y agoYep
- linguist_1 9y agoI had a Canadian colleague of mine describe it as the "1812 tax", basically the "tax" Canada pays for losing the 1812 war and failing to become a proper US state. Everything is more expensive, and the second grade currency doesn't shield them from price variations since the country is too small not to import most goods from the US. Not only that, but a single tariff can wipe out a whole industry, as we saw earlier with the bailout from Airbus. The situation is made worse with a out of control immigration, with 10x the number of migrants as compared to the United States, that all pretty much target urban areas in BC and Toronto. From what he told me, for IT folks it's mostly guys that wouldn't be good enough for a work visa here in the US. This, with all the best university grads getting poached by tech companies here in the valley creates a big surplus of average/low skilled tech workers. I mean, it's fine. It's just that these guys aren't playing in the 120-200k range for top dev talent, more like in the 50k range for average workers.
- kingofpandora 9y agoI think your friend isn't the biggest brain to have drained out of Canada considering the inaccuracies in your post. Hint if Canada "lost the war of 1812", why isn't it a"proper US state"? Did Canada fight a war to join the US in your mind?
- apercu 9y agoI have mixed feelings when I see these posts. There are a lot of places that pay a lot less than SV, even comparable cities in the US. I don;t have an advanced degree, heck, I don't even have a STEM degree, but when I left my last Toronto job nearly 4 years ago my compensation was around ~200k. Does that mean that if I was willing to a) work for someone and b) move to SV that I would be making 300-400k per year? Maybe (I'm a US citizen and Canadian permanent resident so I have that option). I guess my issue is less of one comparing west coat development compensation to Ontario compensation and say that all over North America there is an issue of stagnant wages for everyone except the top financial/business minds and the above average tech workers. Canada lags a little behind SV in employee equity and feels like it still has a bit of a British class thing going where there is the elite (capital) and the commoners (labour). Except that it's purely financial (mostly) these days. Nowhere near as bad as, say, the Bahamas. I see a lot of comments here that I agree with (moderate talent commanding wages that maybe they aren't really worth) but at the senior end, yea, it feels a little different in Canada - if you don't go in to management (I did, and hated it) you're likely to be capped (in most industries) at about $120k. That seems a little ridiculous in a time of record breaking corporate profits and startup valuations. All that said, I spent a lot of time early in my career in Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc.. and while I appreciate a lot of things about Nor Cal there is no way I would move there. Heck, it's unlikely I would ever move back to the US. Canada is simply more in line with my values.
- apercu 9y ago> British class thing going where there is the elite (capital) and the commoners (labour). Except that it's purely financial (mostly) these days. Nowhere near as bad as, say, the Bahamas. I meant to type "Bermuda" not "Bahamas"
- namlem 9y agoAside from the weather, Toronto is a much nicer city than SF. Also, the COL analysis fails to account for the value of public services, which is presumably greater in Canada. Probably not nearly enough to make up the difference, but it's something to consider.