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84% of Waterloo Software Engineering undergrads move to the US upon graduation
- triceratops 6y agoGotta pay more money to keep the talent. This isn't rocket science. The crazy thing is Canada has so many advantages that should make paying higher salaries easier. University is cheaper, so people don't have as much (or any) student debt. Healthcare is cheaper for companies to provide - since they generally only have to offer supplemental coverage. And so on.
- dcolkitt 6y agoAmerican firms tend to have much higher quality corporate management than their Canadian counterparts.[1] To be profitable at FAAMG salaries requires leveraging your engineers to achieve very high levels of productivity and execution. That's generally not possible without management that consistently adheres to best practices. [1]https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.24.1.203 https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.24.1.203
- trinovantes 6y agoI think a bigger issue is the lack of venture capital. It's significantly harder to to raise the multi-million seed rounds needed to sustain Google/Amazon salary in Waterloo/Toronto
- RestlessMind 6y agoBased on my 15 years of experience (similar for my partner), there are a lot of cash flow positive companies in the US who pay a lot. They don't need venture capital at all. So there must be some other reason (profitability? SV culture of valuing engineers?) When I was at Google, I learned from an internal pay comparison spreadsheet that a person in the same job at the same level is paid much worse in Waterloo (and in the UK as well) compared to SV / NYC, and the reason cited was "cost of labor" or some such fancy term which essentially meant "we want to pay as little as possible, so a little bit more than our competitors". So ultimately, it boils down to "prevailing wages" in Canada (and the UK). The first company to offer SV level wages in Canada / UK will see a deluge of high quality applicants who want to stay in those locations for whatever reasons. I wonder why no one has tried that yet.
- danielscrubs 6y agoI was just about to say the same. What was striking to me that the managers I’ve met in SF had all been swe:s and worked up the ladder. In my country it’s very rare, most managers have a background in economics and can’t really help the swe:s with anything besides internal politics. The lens they use is that everything is a cost. Even if the system they bought is the problem of why things take time. They also rely heavy on Garter of what is popular. We are even starting to have them manage doctors!!
- johbjo 6y agoSince marginal cost is essentially zero in software, productivity as measured in revenue per head is not really relevant. The business climate might just be better in the US.
- cesarvarela 6y agoBut aren’t those things cheaper because there are more taxes? And more taxes mean less salary?
- redis_mlc 6y agoNo. There's a US media narrative that taxes and health care are worse in Canada than the US but: 1) You will likely pay more in taxes in California than Canada. 2) It's easier to itemize self-employment tax expenses in Canada, so you can easily pay half the taxes of the US. (I paid 12% of total income the last year I worked in Toronto.) 3) Everybody I know in Canada is happy with health care, and infinitely happier than Americans who've received false bills. 4) Startups have a big advantage in Canada because of the state health care, and unrelated lower salary expectations. However, salaries are lower in Canada because companies pay less (like Europe or anywhere outside the US), but that's not related to taxes or health care.
- arcticbull 6y agoOne thing folks don't account for is that the Canadian tax bill includes healthcare, which is something US employers pay $600 per month for. It's effectively a private tax. Comparing like-for-like, one should really include the health premiums paid by employers in the tax total when comparing to Canada. Even with that in mind, in a number of recent years, the median Canadian tax bill has been lower than the median American tax bill [1]. And to your point, it varies by state/province. The most expensive state OR province for high-income folks is California (51.9%) and the lowest is Alberta (39%). [1] [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/canadians-may-pay-more-taxes-than-americans-but-theres-a-catch.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/canadians-may-pay-more-taxes...
- francisl 6y agoThis is a personal conclusion having work in both, some US and some Canadian based companies. What I realized, the reason we are pay less in Canada, is caused by our perceived value from management. In the American company, the managers want me to succeed because that is directly link to their success. I'm part of the team, I'm accountable, but I had more freedom. In the Canadian one, managers want all the credit (pay+bonuses+recognition), because they are the incredible one who made the monkey produce the value. I'm part of a pool, managers will decide what programming language I'll program in, he's managing the risk after all. Oh, and by the way, it was a hard year, not all goals where reached, so they need to cap the bonuses, but the company is glad for the all-time profit record. Of course, it’s a bit of a caricature. It surely applies to US or Canadian company. But our perceived value struck me in all my employers.
- AzzieElbab 6y agoDirect taxation is not the whole story. Prices of anything including Canadian made goods are higher here than in the states. We basically earn in cdn but pay in usd. Healthcare is debatable, availability is actually a problem.
- 908B64B197 6y agoWhy not simply get paid in USD then?
- AzzieElbab 6y agoWhy not btc?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoIt doesn't work that way, especially with student debt. If I were a child and could choose, it might make sense to choose Canada. But children don't usually get to choose. When do you choose? For many people, when they graduate from college. At that point, you're from Canada and don't have student debt. Great! Wonderful! But the salary is still higher in America. So you can go to America without the student debt, and still get the higher salary. And why not? (You could think of this as arbitrage between two ways of structuring society economically.) But maybe the thing to do is to go back to Canada when you have kids, so that their university won't load them down with student debt.
- mlex 6y agoAs someone who graduated from Computer Science at Waterloo, this is common for anyone with the ability to do so. Pay is not competitive in Canada, and contrary to the common refrain here, taxes/rent/general CoL does NOT make up for this, not even close.
- xenihn 6y agoIt's not just the taxes/rent/COL. I know three Canadian SWEs whose parents could have easily bought them a nice house or condo in any major Canadian city, if they had wanted to stay. One of them explained it to me this way: the quality of employers, coworkers, and the overall software engineering work you'll do in Canada just doesn't compare to the US. Even if pay/finances were exactly the same, going to the US would still be the better career choice, because that's what everyone with talent and ambition does. The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it.
- yladiz 6y agoI was with you up until the end. There are numerous reasons why people “stay behind” beyond them not being “people you want to work with”, so don’t just lump everyone in that bucket of “they’re not good enough”.
- xenihn 6y agoNot my thoughts. I've never even been to Canada.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 908B64B197 6y ago> The people who stay behind aren't people you want to work with, if you can help it. From my experience, the only place the last statement hasn't been true is Montreal. There are a lot of engineers over there that could move but won't ever. That's partly why everyone is setting AI shops over there.
- armSixtyFour 6y agoIt's not too surprising. They pay is better and there are more opportunities for more interesting work. I didn't go to Waterloo, but I've met a number of other Canadians who, not unlike myself, made the move south. That being said I do miss living in Canada sometimes, just not enough to take a two thirds paycut.
- pmdulaney 6y agoCould it be that a lot of these young, bright folks would just rather live in the US, and getting a valuable degree enabled them to do what they've wanted to do for some time?
- lazyasciiart 6y agoAnecdotal, but that's not how any of the half a dozen waterloo grads I know describe it.
- pmdulaney 6y agoWell, you know more than me. I've never even been to Canada.
- lazyasciiart 6y agoI have, but I know all these grads because I worked with them in Seattle :D
- 908B64B197 6y agoThat's a very likely explanation. I would be curious to see the number of students with immigrants parents; maybe they tried to go to the US but couldn't due to stricter policies. Now the kid can.
- imtringued 6y agoThat doesn't explain why the rate is that high. It only explains why those students move to the US and I personally would rather stay in Canada if I were born in Canada.
- rchaud 6y agoUWaterloo is one of the most rigorous schools in Canada, particularly in CS, math and science subjects. A six-figure job in America is pretty much the only light at the end of the tunnel for them. Sometimes Waterloo kids take friendly jabs at the other school in the city, Wilfried Laurier. But the image of the two schools couldn't be more different. WLU is the party school that grades on a curve. Waterloo is much harsher academically, and the jokes and memes are usually focused on CS/Math kids having no friends, playing DoTA and waiting for their summer placements in SV.
- nine_zeros 6y agoAs a person who's had the pleasure of working with many who've worked hard to build excellent products and thus raise all our incomes and stocks, you are welcome. I understand this is not great for Canada but as an American I cannot complain.
- Proven 6y agoWow and that was under Trump?
- kgin 6y agoWhy are SWEs paid so much less in Canada vs US?
- chmod600 6y agoDisparity is the norm. It would be weird if the pay was the same. This is more true the more specialized you get. What is the pay for hockey coaches in Hawaii versus Toronto?
- granzymes 6y agoThe first two sites with listed fees for 1:1 skating lessons that I found: Toronto: $160 CAD ($125.34 USD) for 45 minutes, which is $2.78 USD/minute https://www.evergreen.ca/whats-on/event/private-learn-to-skate-lessons/ https://www.evergreen.ca/whats-on/event/private-learn-to-ska... Toronto: $9-$15 CAD ($7.05-$11.74 USD) per 15 minutes, which is $0.47-$0.78 USD/minute https://www.uppercanadaskating.com/pages/Programs/privatelessons/#:~:text=Private%20lesson%20costs%20approximately%20%249,be%20paid%20through%20the%20office https://www.uppercanadaskating.com/pages/Programs/privateles.... Hawaii: $25 USD for 20 minutes, which is $1.25 USD/minute https://www.icepalacehawaii.com/private-lessons https://www.icepalacehawaii.com/private-lessons Hawaii: Perhaps unsurprisingly, I wasn't able to find a second site in my 10 minute timebox. Not trying to snark, was just interested in looking up some skating lessons.
- chmod600 6y agoI looked briefly to find the compensation of the head coach of the Maple Leafs. It's not easy to find, but I'm guessing it's a lot based on how they talk about the contract.
- mavelikara 6y agoAlso, is the pay lower for all professions in Canada when compared to US, or just SWE?
- somerandomqaguy 6y ago
- jacques_chester 6y agoAs an Australian living in the US, I understand the dynamics. Canadians and Australians have special access to the US labour market, most of the high-prestige work is happening here... and the pay is much, much better.
- overqualified 6y ago... for now ;-). Give it a (4) year(s), mate. Happy Australia Day!
- jchallis 6y agoWe welcome our Canadian brothers and sisters with open arms. My cofounder came from Waterloo and together we built a good company with good jobs here in the US.
- arcticbull 6y agoYou should let the border guards know ;) the last time I got a TN my immigration attorney told me "honestly, you're lucky you're white, so you shouldn't have any problems."
- 908B64B197 6y agoRace doesn't have anything to do with it.
- thunkshift1 6y agoHmmmmmmm
- arcticbull 6y agoCanadian TN packets are adjudicated at the border, by a border guard, in person. The immigration attorney was conveying experience with the adjudication process of comparable packets as a function of visual appearance of the applicant.
- jdmg94 6y agoI’m glad they all went south, I immigrated to Canada and it didn’t took me long to get a 6-figure job, its not Silicon Valley salary but I’m not paying 5k in rent either ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- betaby 6y ago6 figures like 101k CAD or 79k USD. or 999k CAD? Same for the rent. Also, what's city?
- afinlayson 6y agoI've been in the USA for 12 years because of the pay difference, and job perks. I'd move back, but I'm married and have a family now. The biggest stress down here is the healthcare and the immigration status, if you are at a stable enough company these aren't an issue, I'm lucky I only had 1 startup fail and cause me months of stress as I tried to fix those issues.
- arcticbull 6y agoI've been in the US for 10 years because of the pay difference. Perks I'm over. I really don't care, I can buy my own perks with the pay. I've saved up enough to buy quite the lifestyle back in Canada, and I plan to move back before I start a family. I'm just a few months from getting my green card, and I'm genuinely over it. I can't imagine raising kids in the US. The healthcare, oof. Even having kids, maternal mortality is 4X higher in the US than it is in Canada - among the worst in the OECD, and rising, while the rest of the OECD is falling. [1] Healthcare is just about the worst in the OECD along every major metric, even though it's by far the most expensive. [2] The capital was just insurrected, is currently a military encampment, the school shootings/drills, the school metal detectors, the homeless, the riots, the lack of community. The general lack of progressivism. My street was looted a few months ago. Every business was walled off in plywood before the election. I mean, America doesn't really have a "left," just a center-right and a far-right, which really doesn't align with my personal politics. I'm not sure how I'd explain any of that to my kids. I plan to go back in the next year or two - likely to BC, and I'll try to shore up the startup ecosystem there, investing, advising, and raising awareness of principals and practices. After all, I graduated with no student debt. It's time to give back. [1] https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-during-childbirth-leaves-u-s-moms-in-danger https://www.npr.org/2017/05/12/527806002/focus-on-infants-du... [2] https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2017-Key-Findings-UNITED-STATES.pdf https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2017-Ke...
- daniel-cussen 6y agoHealthcare in USA is expensive because it's bad. If you have cornered the market on a necessity, and healthcare providers absolutely have, the way to get people to pay more is to deprive them.
- scruffyherder 6y agoWell they don’t have RIM to flock to anymore.
- rhodozelia 6y agoOr Nortel
- thenoblesunfish 6y agoWhy is this notable? Canada and the US are friendly neighbors and quite similar (from the perspective of the privileged types of people getting these jobs) and the US is bigger so you’d expect there to be more jobs there.
- chrisseaton 6y agoDo you know the concept of 'brain drain'? Canada is paying (I presume, not an expert in how Canadian universities are funded) to educate these people, but then they immediately take all their wealth creation out of the country. Nobody's saying they shouldn't be able to do that if they want, but it has long term impacts on the country's wealth, but also its ability to more generally develop, to keep educating itself, and to perform jobs that can't be done by another a company in another country, like some parts of government, defence, healthcare, etc. It's also just a bad indicator. Why do they need to move? Why can't they get what they want here? If the first thing 84% of your graduates do is get the hell out of your country as fast as they can then you should probably stop and think about what's going wrong that makes them want to do that?
- rchaud 6y agoI think the brain drain argument matters far more to developing countries that export engineering, medical and scientific expertise abroad. Canada isn't exactly falling apart because Waterloo grads are leaving to work on Doordash's algorithm.
- djohnston 6y agoI left the US to explore living abroad but the paycut really hurt. It's funny too because in my experience the quality of engineering in Europe is higher, but the market is so uncompetitive.
- td6339 6y agoOther than those who have left Canada for the US and a few other small circles, the preference for Canada's best talent to leave for the US and the dramatic difference in career prospects doesn't get a lot of discussion in public discourse. I believe in part it's because doing so would force us to publicly confront the uncomfortable truth that when it comes to ambition, creativity, and grit, Canadian companies don't employ the A-team. There are exceptions, but they mostly get the B/C players. Some broad generalizations are below, but I've worked in the tech industry for 20 years across multiple US/Canadian cities and in my experience they hold up. Broadly speaking, you can split Canadian tech worker employers into a few categories: 1) Big, noncompetitive, unambitious, staid large companies making decent money via rent extraction in the Canadian market. Often times "by Canadians, for Canadians". They're minimally innovative and have largely incremental growth prospects, but because they have pricing power over their customers they subsist by turning the screws on customers and tweaking to control costs. They don't grow productivity or produce consumer/market surplus. With a few exceptions, they don't compete abroad (either they do and they're bit players, or they don't but we know they'd get creamed). 2) Small/medium sized Canadian companies. There are some genuinely interesting ones here but honestly, most don't even theoretically have a shot at hitting really big. There are a ton of small/medium sized niches with increasing venture funding, and that's great. But they are just never going to be large or profitable enough to compete with deep-pocketed US employers for the best talent. They'll end up successfully extracting rents from a niche or become the branch office of a US company. If you listen to the Canadian business/tech press we're on the cusp of a major breakout here, but we've been undeservedly pumping this narrative for almost as long as Torontonians have been the only ones in the world pumping the city as "world-class". Is 2021 the year Hootsuite will finally become a unicorn? (spoiler: no). 3) Shopify. They're special (relative to the rest of Canada) because they're a high-growth business in a huge, scalable, global market. Unlike #1 their industry isn't protected, so they actually need to compete on merit and generally do. They're recently profitable, but not that profitable. 4) Canadian satellite offices of US tech companies (some highly profitable, some highly ambitious, and some just there for skilled labour on the cheap). They mostly skim the cream off the top of the local labour markets, paying much better than #1, #2, and usually #3. They also bring skilled talent in from abroad, particularly those with trouble clearing US immigration. The entrepreneurial A-team generally leaves to start businesses in the US. Canada is too small for them and the environment frankly seems to clip their wings. The non-entrepreneurial A-team will move to the US to 2-3x their salary and 10x their personal growth (since they're now surrounding themselves with the A-team), which they can do because US immigration is a non-issue for most Canadians in tech thanks to NAFTA. Or they'll stay in Canada and work for either #4 or Shopify, since those are the best jobs. This is really hard to overstate. Anecdotally, from tech people in my social/professional network, with 1 exception the best people are either in the US or work for US companies from Canada. The B-team works for #2 (who only pays enough to attract the B-team, so it's self-fulfilling) and can still do well for themselves, but it's a very different world. Slower-moving, less excitement, less growth. The C-team works for #1. They're the ones who work on billing systems at Bell, keep the lights on at BMO, maintain inventory management systems for Metro, or are perhaps involved with government contracting at IBM/Accenture. #1 are highly politically influential oligopolies. #2 captures a lot of mindshare and (in)direct subsidy ("X is the next Shopify!"). Neither want Canadian tech workers to become more expensive, and they all resent having to compete with #4. You see this once you look for it. Toronto's Amazon HQ2 bid was run by Ed Clark, former CEO of TD. Part of his pitch was that Toronto software engineers were 30% cheaper than in other markets (if you’re a software engineer who can work for Amazon, 30% is a significant underestimate). Not because of health care. Because of wages. All the while, local tech employers complained about how difficult it would be for them to compete against Amazon for talent. This got a fair bit of press and no one with voice in Canadian public life is willing to fight back. An industry and culture that complains about the presence of competition is not an industry which will stimulate the growth of competitive businesses. So US companies continue to quietly be the first choice for Canada’s best. Everyone else makes do with what’s left behind.
- 908B64B197 6y agoI'm curious what the data looks like for the last 4 years. I recall some clickbait articles about how websites to immigrate to Canada were flooded during election night, and commentators speculating that US academia and tech sector were doomed by the incoming administration. It would be interesting to see if these predictions held true. Was there a notable change during the last 4 years?
- blisse 6y agoThere's been no change, in fact the numbers have gone up because the program has become even more competitive. Some people in my year (2016) couldn't leave Canada due to visa issues. Most who left are still in the States. 2018s had a higher % US-bound, and so did the 2020s.
- michaelmior 6y agoAs a Waterloo CS grad who moved to the US, I'd say while I am quite happy here and have no plans to leave, all else being equal, I probably would have preferred to stay in Canada. In fact, we had a faculty member who moved to Canada from the US and was somewhat shocked to hear I accepted a faculty position in the US because dealing with funding here is much more painful than in Canada.
- jpambrun 6y agoMy first real job 5 years was remote for a US company working from home from Montreal. I made about 120k USD which is pretty high for Montreal. I am still working remotely, but for a multinational with offices in Canada. I manage to keep my US-like compensation by pointing out that with remote work there is very little frontiers and that the market is now global. This was pre-covid. I imagine this new reality will drive pay down in the US and up in Canada.