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I hate to bang on about it, but as a Canadian who has worked in the U.S. and who is now in the U.K., I've tried hard to land a good position in Canada. Very few
by goodcanadian 5y ago
I hate to bang on about it, but as a Canadian who has worked in the U.S. and who is now in the U.K., I've tried hard to land a good position in Canada. Very few opportunities seem to exist, and the ones that do pay a pittance. In my experience, it is not 30% higher in the U.S. as the link indicates, but more like 100-200%. A couple of years ago, I was offered a highly technical position with a salary below what I had been paid 15 years prior. It was not really even going to cover the basic cost of living for my family.
All I can say is, if you own a company in Canada, you need to work on interesting problems and pay well. Then, you will have your pick of top quality talent. If you are having trouble getting staff, you probably need to about double your salaries.
- Mumps 5y ago(might not add much) But this has been my experience as well. People like to point out that CAD has better social support than US - fine, a paycut may balance out there. But that's nowwhere near the differential I get here in the UK _plus_ the social support here has been far superior to CAD. I interview with CAD companies from time to time and make a point of stating salary/equity requirements on par with the leading global market. Once they match, I'll be back.
- andromeduck 5y agoLower pay, higher taxes, exorbitant rents, less choice, less excellence - what's there not to like?
- preommr 5y agoSeconded. Unless someone has family or is stuck up here for some reason, it's not worth it. Nobody is serious about being competitive, it's all about trying to keep trudging along with whatever people are stuck here. All the talk about investing in tech and so on is just hot air.
- ludamad 5y agoI've been told C$120-150k is the salary top end quite a few times. Base salaries don't seem to go much higher. Meanwhile I'm trying to find alternatives to contracting for the US
- blaser-waffle 5y agoUSA-ian in Canada. Same experience here. 120k is about as high as I've seen, unless you're an oil exec or a hockey player. By comparison my middle-of-the-road IT guy salary was 140k USD (like 180k CAD), and the high-end coder pay has no comparison (save for those exec or hockey types). Meanwhile as a Canadian you probably speak N. American English, and have a strongly similar cultural background to the US -- easy to integrate -- have access to good, cheap University education, and have access to the NAFTA TN visa, which gets you across the border quickly. Is it really a surprise?
- theflyinghorse 5y agoFor anecdata sake: Recently been interviewing in Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver, 6yoe fullstack dev. Highest I saw was 120k, lowest 85k. The worst part is how little stock companies are willing to give out. I had one company offer 6k over 4 years, which really puzzled me. Had another company try to sell me on how amazing their 30k/4 years package was (on a lower salary).
- nasalgoat 5y agoEven that level is extremely rare and generally only offered by the US-based giants.