10 ms·
You are correct. Moving to Seattle would grant me a 50k usd raise vs what I currently make. The other issue besides getting paid less for the same value, is tha
by Izikiel43 6y ago
You are correct.
Moving to Seattle would grant me a 50k usd raise vs what I currently make.
The other issue besides getting paid less for the same value, is that the money doesn't get you as far as in the US, as the cost of living in Vancouver is high (more or less the same as in Seattle but in cad) and you have more taxes, so your 100k cad in Canada is much less than 100k usd in Seattle.
If you mention health insurance for the taxes, that's actually taxed to employers in BC, not employees, so it's not part of the taxes I pay.
- mabbo 6y agoYep. I took the cut to move back from Seattle to Toronto many years ago. But you know what? I'm not living in America. I'm not living in America in the clusterfuck that is 2020. I consider it money well spent.
- thehappypm 6y agoI respect that, but you don’t have to let politics run your life.
- vvanders 6y agoIf you're not in a place of privilege life is politics. A old co-worker of mine couldn't get permanent residency for their legal partner. As a result rather than staying in the US they both moved back to Canada. Honestly I don't blame them, sometimes I wonder if the US survives in spite of our political policies instead of because of them.
- refurb 6y agoIf you're not in a place of privilege life is politics. Hoping from country to country with your pick of jobs isn't privilege? I'd say it's the opposite. Those without privilege are the ones that don't have that option.
- vvanders 6y agoPrivilege isn't a binary thing, it exists along many dimensions. I'd hope you could understand that just because someone has a finite set of options doesn't mean they can't be impacted significantly by political policy due to society putting less value on who they are or where they come from.
- majormajor 6y agoYou can have privilege in job selection without privilege in certain other things that America would deny you while Canada would grant you...
- mushbino 6y agoYou mean like migrant workers? Many people have to leave their country to find work and most of them nobody would call privileged.
- refurb 6y agoNo, I mean educated, highly paid workers with access to multiple western countries choosing which country to reside in. That’s a luxury 99% of the world doesn’t have. Hell, I’d guess almost half of Americans can’t do that.
- mushbino 6y agoThat specific example is most certainly privilege. Being able to find gainful employment where you live is usually hard to come by. The overwhelming majority of people who _have_ to leave their home country in order to find work are definitely not privileged.
- rotexo 6y agoI would be curious to hear if the parent to your comment was talking about politics. They might instead be talking about the response to Covid-19, and the much larger death toll per million people in the US compared to Canada: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/9/9/21428769/covid-19-coronavirus-deaths-statistics-us-canada-europe https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/9/9/21428769/covid-1... Which, to be fair, is partially due to US politics. In that sense, making the choice to live in the US is letting one's life be run by politics, just in a different direction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- mabbo 6y agoAll of it. 2020 is a mess, and I'm glad to be in a country with: a strong universal health care system; a strong social support system; politicians who do the right things, listen to experts; a society of people who mostly wear masks because it's the right thing to do- to sacrifice comfort in order to help others. Is that politics? I don't think it should be. I think that if people in the USA consider those important things to me to be political, then you can add that to the list of reasons I'm glad to be in Canada.
- smoe 6y agoMaking such a decision doesn’t mean politics is running your life. What kind of society, part of which includes politics, you want to live in matters to a lot of people. For me the biggest luxury of working in tech is actually that pretty much anywhere I earn enough to be solidly in middle class which give me the freedom to weigh other aspects of work and life higher. Chasing higher compensation or climbing corporate ladders is more optional.
- dalmo3 6y agoVoting with your feet can well be an apolitical stance.
- bitwize 6y agoWe're living in the age of Trump. You may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic is interested in you.
- yodelshady 6y agoFine, I'll bite: that is what people are referring to when they refer to "privilege". Politics has an enormous influence on just about every problem you might face, from whether you're paid enough, what "enough" is, how easily you can bargain for more, to the freakin' weather, and thereby food supplies, to whether your neighbour would face consequences for shooting you, or how easy it is for them to do so. Either you don't realise how your problems are due to unfavourable (for you) politics, or you have very, very few.
- Izikiel43 6y agoI’m wondering if moving or not, due to the higher pay in the us, but I have gotten used to Vancouver (I’m not from Canada), and I’m wondering how life long term is here. Buying a house seems to be the biggest issue here, in the us it would be easier with the higher pay, as well as getting retirement money, but well, it’s the usa. Also, I could get citizenship in less than 3 years, which is tempting.
- presentation 6y agoIf I were weighing these options I’d just move to the expensive place, make the money, and then spend it later in the cheaper place. Moving for a job doesn’t mean moving for good, and your money works anywhere.
- humanlion87 6y agoIf you don't mind me asking a tangential question, how is the salary mapping from Seattle to Toronto for the same position/role. I am also thinking of moving out of the US and to Canada.
- Izikiel43 6y agoThis for Vancouver. Here I’m at 100k cad. In Seattle I would be at 120k usd. So 50k usd difference
- humanlion87 6y agoThanks for the input. Seems like things have gotten a bit better. A few years ago someone I knew said they got around 90k cad for a 115k usd role. Still a huge drop! :(
- amf12 6y agoIs it gross or net? How much difference in savings after taxes and expenses do you see?
- Izikiel43 6y agoGross. I think in the US (specifically Seattle), you can save more as you are taxed less, and cost of living is more or less the same, so 2k cad rent in downtown vancouver, 2k usd in Seattle, but you are taxed at 35/40% in Vancouver vs 24% I think in Seattle.
- 0xfaded 6y agoAlso made a decision to leave the US (San Francisco) and miss it immensely. There's nothing comparable to bring surrounded by genuine techies, and the go big or go home attitude is inspirational. Yes, the politics is in shambles and society is arguably falling apart, but at some point you need to decide what your impact on the world is going to be. If you believe you can fix tech in Europe, I applaud you, and that would be a worthy cause. I've learned that I function best in the fast lane, and that's in the tech hubs. Innovation requires lots of people bouncing lots of ideas off each other, and I don't think remote work is going to significantly compete with where the next innovation wave will come from.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cvhashim 6y agoI think you’re being too hard on Europe. There are tons of smart people on the Continent working on unique and interesting startup ideas. The only thing Europeans may lack is access to funding and resources.
- 0xfaded 6y agoI think that's exactly it. There are smart people everywhere who want to work on interesting ideas. But they will naturally congregate where the opportunity and resources exist and the bureaucracy doesn't. Fixing Europe isn't about finding smart people to work on things. It's about preventing them from leaving. Ironically Covid might be helping that for a couple years.
- 908B64B197 6y ago>The only thing Europeans may lack is access to funding and resources I've met a lot of European founders... in the Bay Area. The stories they told me were eye opening. There's so much regulation and red tape that one company's 5th employee had to be filling government grants and filing for tax exemptions full time.
- stormbrew 6y ago> If you mention health insurance for the taxes, that's actually taxed to employers in BC, not employees, so it's not part of the taxes I pay. There may be a tax on employers specifically labelled as some kind of health tax, but your health insurance coverage is being paid for out of general provincial government revenues and some (actually: a lot) of your taxes are absolutely going towards paying for health care. Fees like the one you're talking about are just a way to shift some of the tax burden off of individuals. Editing to add some specifics: - when implemented it was estimated the health tax would replace the $2.6bn from fees previously collected with $1.9bn of tax revenue: https://tricitieschamber.com/backgrounder-employer-health-tax-payroll-tax/ https://tricitieschamber.com/backgrounder-employer-health-ta... - BC health care spending $21.5bn in 2020/2021: https://vancouversun.com/news/politics/b-c-budget-2019-health-care-spending-tops-20-billion-a-year https://vancouversun.com/news/politics/b-c-budget-2019-healt...
- Izikiel43 6y agoThanks for the info. So you are saying that bc income tax is also going to fund healthcare?
- stormbrew 6y agoBC income tax as well as federal income tax[1] by way of transfer payments from the federal government to the provinces specifically designated as being for health spending (the carrot&stick the federal government uses to regulate health care across the country). Specific fees or levies for health care in canada are a drop in the health spending bucket. ([1] federal spending and taxing is more complicated than this and they are not coupled in the same way provincial spending and taxing are but that's not super relevant here)
- nojokes 6y ago> If you mention health insurance for the taxes, that's actually taxed to employers in BC, not employees, so it's not part of the taxes I pay. You actually should take this into account as this is in fact a part of the expenses for the employer to employ you. Different countries play it differently. For example some countries in EU have health and pension insurance excluded from the salary such that employee only sees the income tax deduced from the salary. In another countries employee sees half of the insurance and the other half is considered as "employer contribution". How ever you split it, it is still expense. This becomes self evident when you happen to be self employed.
- mrep 6y agoYes, both employer and employee taxes affect the tax wedge [0] and you should factor both in when calculating how much you are taxed as your employer 100% is factoring in the employer tax when calculating how much to pay you. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_wedge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_wedge