11 ms·

One of the worst things about tech in Canada is that the salaries are ridiculously low compared to the US. I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and the

One of the worst things about tech in Canada is that the salaries are ridiculously low compared to the US. I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. But really, I want to say this: as a Canadian, I find that image of poutine extremely offensive. What is that yellow stuff on top, Curry? Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not melted. Is that scallion? How can this article be trusted when their choice of stock photo is so wrong I question if they've ever even had the dish?

stormbrew 12y ago
It's especially worth noting that this is true even though these tax credits already exist. The benefit has largely gone to the companies that use them, not so much to their employees. Of course, it can be argued that there would be fewer jobs for them without it, so that is not to say that there has been no benefit -- it's just kind of hard to quantify. But it has not helped make salaries in Canada more competitive.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. Another 2x? 3x? 4x? Why make us guess? It's valuable info that helps inform people's decisions for the future. Thank you for the datapoints.
- jgh 12y ago
  I can vouch for the 2x from Canada->California, I'm making more than 2x what I did in Canada (Toronto) now. I don't know about the 3x or 4x, maybe sillysaurus was making like $30k in Canada before, or maybe he's just some kind of superstar that gets paid $250k/year.
  - mcpherrinm 12y ago
    60k/yr to 180k/yr are not unbelievable salaries for a junior Canadian moving to a now more senior position at a big silicon valley tech company.
    - jgh 12y ago
      Yeah I guess my starting point coming down from Canada was a bit higher and I'm not in Silicon Valley so my data points are less exciting.
    - serge2k 12y ago
      I got a 1.7 times increase (+ better tax situation) by moving from BC to Seattle. Positions at the same level.
      - zizee 12y ago
        Is cost of living comparable?
        activepeanut 12y ago
        Vancouver is more expensive than Seattle.
        beagle3 12y ago
        .... maybe the ACA is changing that, but it used to be true only as long as you did not need non-trivial healthcare services.
        overgryphon 12y ago
        Health care is generally included on top of salary in the US, so Canadian health care wouldn't be a consideration for engineers working at established companies. Even significant health costs per month are ignored in a corporate environment in the US, though small startups may be different. For entrepreneurs, health care costs would matter before the company was large enough to have figured out benefits. Any startup employees\founders willing to comment on how health insurance is generally handled at US startups?
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        12y ago
- CoolGuySteve 12y ago
  2x of silicon valley and then bonus on top, but that required moving into finance. It also helped that my previous employer was Apple, it opened many doors when it came time to interview. The fact of the matter is that other industries are starved for talent. If you can keep up in silicon valley, where all anyone talks about is technology, you will be godly in a different marketplace with more capital flow. Finance in particular has way too many people who think things like this are a good idea and The Right Thing To Do: https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections
  - sk5t 12y ago
    Do you mean they're self-satisfied enough to write themselves a framework, but too myopic to see that writing it is a massively misguided waste of time?
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Maybe it's because I don't know Java, but the complete separation of interface for "ImmutableBagFactory" and an implementation "ImmutableBagFactoryImpl", and the fact you need a factory for an "ImmutableBag" in the first place... seems like very poor design. Even if it is common in Java (?).
      - lmm 12y ago
        Given that constructors can't conform to interfaces, if you want to be able to pass a constructor around you pretty much have to do this. I agree it's probably overkill, but if you wanted really strong compatibility guarantees I can see how this would make sense.
  - nl 12y ago
    Finance in particular has way too many people who think things like this are a good idea and The Right Thing To Do: https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections . I think that's a pretty unfair criticism. Firstly, it isn't clear exactly what you don't like about it. That it is Java? That it exists? You need to put its existence into historical context. When it came out, it was before Google's Guava collections libraries were open source, so there were no decent collections libraries that did more than what the JDK libraries did. That's the context GS Collections were built for. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, but I do remember when they were released)
- potatolicious 12y ago
  I went Canada -> Seattle -> SF -> NYC. Here's a datapoint: - Seattle salaries were ~70% higher than what I would've gotten in Canada at the time (mostly looking at Toronto area market, though it's all fairly similar) - SF salaries were ~30% higher than Seattle. I didn't know it at the time but that meant I took an effective pay cut. My total comp was about 1.8x what I would receive in Canada at the time. - NYC salaries were another ~30% higher than SF (64% higher than Seattle). Cost of living here is lower than SF (weirdly enough), so I effectively got a large raise moving. I've been here for a while, and looking at the Canadian market now I'd reckon I'm about 2.2x higher than a similar position in Canada. All of the above were done while staying in the same "field" - i.e., did not go into finance. And all of the above assumes I'd be fetching top-10th-percentile salaries for my position in Canada (itself far from a guarantee). If I do "just average" for compensation in Canada my NYC salary would be about 2.6x. The one overarching trend is that the gap widens as you gain experience and seniority. Canadian salaries never catches up, and in fact continues to fall further and further behind as you go up the ladder.
beltex 12y ago
2-3x factoring in cost of living in places like SF and NY? Isn't that the evening out factor, at least for new grads, for a job in say Toronto or Waterloo vs the valley?
- dataminer 12y ago
  You will still come out ahead in SF vs Toronto http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Toronto&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
  - erichate 12y ago
    interesting site, plugged in Victoria Canada (city my company is in) and numbers seemed a little off for rent currently listed in craigslist. +170% on website more like +300% from quick look in craigslist. also doesn't factor in time commuting, quality of life, avg hrs worked per day, etc... would love to see a pay breakdown $$ / hr worked (at office).
    - dataminer 12y ago
      The data is crowd sourced so it may deviate, you can contribute your data to keep it aligned. Also the quality of life and commuting comparisons can be done from the pull down menu in the header.
      - erichate 12y ago
        interesting, would imagine that could deviate quite a bit then. for things like cost of coffee / meals i could see crowd sourcing but aggregating from an online source for rentals / housing sales would lead to much more accurate estimate as they are the bigger ticket items.
    - untog 12y ago
      OT, but how is Victoria as a city to run a tech company in? I lived there nearly a decade ago and enjoyed my time - I still think about returning some day.
gabbo 12y ago
As someone who keeps tabs on the poutine and labour markets back home, I can vouch for everything you said. I don't even live in CA/NY (so my gross pay multiple isn't quite as high, but income net tax/cost of living is pretty great) and there's just no comparison. I probably make 60-80% more total comp in the USA than I would expect in a major Canadian city, and that's not even accounting for higher taxes (depending on state/province), frothy Canadian real estate valuations, and higher consumer prices almost across the board. But Canada sure is a great place to live and I miss it dearly. I still hope to move back one day.
Istof 12y ago
here is how a standard poutine should look like for anyone who doesn't know: https://www.google.com/search?q=ashton+poutine+images https://www.google.com/search?q=ashton+poutine+images
- kelvin0 12y ago
  Yeah, it's not supposed to have a weird 'cheese Whiz' yellowish radioactive gravy (see the Article's picture of an unnameable monstrosity)
  - Istof 12y ago
    You are correct and I never seen a poutine like this before but there is many variations that are good... I like a good "poutine italienne" for example: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snFyhK5zhAg/UOW2AzMTNEI/AAAAAAAAARs/cvGGgRT7rV4/s1600/IMG_0834.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snFyhK5zhAg/UOW2AzMTNEI/AAAAAAAAAR... or "poutine galvaude" (with chicken and peas): http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8Qv78uyb88/ToDfKVqZzdI/AAAAAAAAACE/VMa4rZj941g/s1600/IMG_0874.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8Qv78uyb88/ToDfKVqZzdI/AAAAAAAAAC...
sirdogealot 12y ago
Hah, you're telling me. Poutine is just fries, gravy and cheese curds where I'm from!
davidu 12y ago
Our compensation doesn't differ widely between our YVR and SFO offices. YVR rents and housing is very expensive. More than SFO in many areas. The comp rebate is nice, but not why we are in YVR.
- fredophile 12y ago
  I moved from YVR to SFO a couple years ago. Buying a house in either city is expensive. However, my rent doubled when I moved. If I had chosen to live in San Francisco itself my rent would have been even higher. Parts of Vancouver are more expensive than parts of San Francisco but if you compare similar neighborhoods Vancouver will almost always end up cheaper. Transportation costs in the Bay Area are also much higher than the GVRD. Parking in San Francisco costs a fortune and public transit is a mess. You can get a three zone bus pass in Vancouver for far less than I spent each month on BART and the Caltrain. Because there's only one transit company that bus pass is good everywhere. In SFO you need passes for each service. BART doesn't do monthly passes and if you need to go to Oakland bring cash. Your clipper card isn't good there. If I was looking at equal compensation there is no way I'd choose to live in SFO.
porterhaney 12y ago
That is the most offensive representation of poutine I've ever seen.
- astrodust 12y ago
  It looks like a Philly Cheesesteak exploded on some french fries.
nl 12y ago
I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)? Are those number correct? If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salaries than Canadian. Just in case anyone is looking to move somewhere...
- nivertech 12y ago
  I think they talking about after tax numbers
  - DennisP 12y ago
    Taxes in Canada are not particularly higher than in the U.S. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians-really-pay-more-taxes-than-americans.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians...
    - refurb 12y ago
      You need to include sales tax, which ranges from 5% in Alberta to 15% in Quebec. Also, taxes on alcohol and gasoline are much higher than the US. That being said, with the recent tax increases in the US and the lower of provincial income taxes in many Canadian provinces (I'm looking at you BC), the difference isn't as great as one would think.
      - cube13 12y ago
        You're paying sales taxes in pretty much all of the US, though, though not as much(ranges from ~3% to 10%).
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    If this were WA it'd be a substantial difference (somewhat). CA and NY though (particularly NYC) have a total tax rate in the same ballpark as Canada. And the Canadians get health care for that money. That said I've done the cost of living numbers between here (NYC) vs. Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and even with the insane rent here I'm still coming out ahead - way ahead. The salary difference is truly mind-boggling. More than the salary difference, the kind of work you're doing as a $200K engineer in SV/SF/NYC is very different than the kind of work you're doing as a $70K engineer in Toronto. There is a conspicuous lack of this level of work in Canada overall.
orbitur 12y ago
> I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't think this is much of a valid criticism, since most people in the States can also move to SV/NYC and make 2x or 3x their current salaries as well. Hell, those cities probably have the highest numbers (so ignoring CoL) than most places in the world.
- naterator 12y ago
  I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. It's not a valid criticism if the gov. footing 80% allows these companies to now offer SV/NY competitive salaries. Which I suspect will happen if they do it right (both the governement and the entrepreneurs).
  - ripb 12y ago
    >I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. I think, what a lot Americans overlook, is that most people in the rest of developed world want more from life than a high salary. Moving from somewhere with the highest standards of living in the world, such as Toronto, to somewhere that doesn't even make the list of top 5/10 in North America alone such as NYC, might come with a salary increase but it's a significant trade off in terms of other factors.
    - aianus 12y ago
      I've lived in both and while I love Toronto, NYC is the greatest city on the planet. It's not really comparable.
    - potatolicious 12y ago
      > "I think, what a lot Americans overlook" Looks a lot of Canadians have overlooked it too - all but 2 people in my graduating cohort are writing code in the US. You are welcome to delude yourself into thinking that "real" Canadians don't value a high salary, but in reality it's causing a massive brain out of the country.
joeyspn 12y ago
Tell us where are you looking for job cos all the positions I've checked in Toronto where 80$ - $90k, plus stock options, etc... I'm talking about last week..
michaelochurch 12y ago
Where in NYC did you work? Are you in finance? One of the reasons I'm bearish about NYC's future as a tech hub is that, although Manhattan cost of living is extremely high, engineer salaries still seem to have the $150k ceiling, except in finance. Which means you'll have plenty of under-30 talent but few long-term, highly experienced engineers.
scrabble 12y ago
I'm a software dev in Waterloo and I can definitely see that. I've got absolutely no problem getting job offers, but they are low compared to what friends of mine who moved to the US are making. I'm sure my cost of living is less. On the other hand, looking at the figures makes you feel a little undervalued.
deleted 12y ago
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deleted 12y ago
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criveros 12y ago
How did you find a job in the US?
rdmcfee 12y ago
In this case "worst" depends on whether you're a developer or an employer.
kafkaesque 12y ago
I'm from Vancouver and have lived in Los Angeles for three years now. There are 'hidden costs' to living in LA/California. It just depends on what you prefer and where your priorities are. I would love to move back to Vancouver, because when you consider gas (living close to work vs living in a suburban sprawl), property (yes, you get a bigger house here, but unsafe neighbourhoods are just around the corner, and bad air), quality of education (Canadian primary and secondary schools outperform American ones), then is it really worth the trade off? For example, in LA, the concept of 'you get what you pay for' is truly taken seriously. You want the best? Get ready to pay thousands and thousands of dollars (more expensive than Canada, usually). If you just want mediocrity and barely get by, LA is super cheap, affordable, and you can raise 10 kids here, no problems. EDIT: With regard to poutine, that looks like the fancy poutines you get in Santa Monica. Savages! All of them! EDIT2: Added clarification
biggc 12y ago
> Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not melted You must be from outside Quebec. Fresh cheese curds, (they'll squeak as you chew them), won't melt in the gravy, only soften a bit. Melted cheese curds means that they've been sitting in a fridge for a few days or more.

stormbrew 12y ago

It's especially worth noting that this is true even though these tax credits already exist. The benefit has largely gone to the companies that use them, not so much to their employees. Of course, it can be argued that there would be fewer jobs for them without it, so that is not to say that there has been no benefit -- it's just kind of hard to quantify. But it has not helped make salaries in Canada more competitive.

sillysaurus3 12y ago

I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. Another 2x? 3x? 4x? Why make us guess? It's valuable info that helps inform people's decisions for the future. Thank you for the datapoints.

jgh 12y ago
I can vouch for the 2x from Canada->California, I'm making more than 2x what I did in Canada (Toronto) now. I don't know about the 3x or 4x, maybe sillysaurus was making like $30k in Canada before, or maybe he's just some kind of superstar that gets paid $250k/year.
- mcpherrinm 12y ago
  60k/yr to 180k/yr are not unbelievable salaries for a junior Canadian moving to a now more senior position at a big silicon valley tech company.
  - jgh 12y ago
    Yeah I guess my starting point coming down from Canada was a bit higher and I'm not in Silicon Valley so my data points are less exciting.
  - serge2k 12y ago
    I got a 1.7 times increase (+ better tax situation) by moving from BC to Seattle. Positions at the same level.
    - zizee 12y ago
      Is cost of living comparable?
      - activepeanut 12y ago
        Vancouver is more expensive than Seattle.
        beagle3 12y ago
        .... maybe the ACA is changing that, but it used to be true only as long as you did not need non-trivial healthcare services.
        overgryphon 12y ago
        Health care is generally included on top of salary in the US, so Canadian health care wouldn't be a consideration for engineers working at established companies. Even significant health costs per month are ignored in a corporate environment in the US, though small startups may be different. For entrepreneurs, health care costs would matter before the company was large enough to have figured out benefits. Any startup employees\founders willing to comment on how health insurance is generally handled at US startups?
        deleted 12y ago
        [deleted]
        12y ago
CoolGuySteve 12y ago
2x of silicon valley and then bonus on top, but that required moving into finance. It also helped that my previous employer was Apple, it opened many doors when it came time to interview. The fact of the matter is that other industries are starved for talent. If you can keep up in silicon valley, where all anyone talks about is technology, you will be godly in a different marketplace with more capital flow. Finance in particular has way too many people who think things like this are a good idea and The Right Thing To Do: https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections
- sk5t 12y ago
  Do you mean they're self-satisfied enough to write themselves a framework, but too myopic to see that writing it is a massively misguided waste of time?
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Maybe it's because I don't know Java, but the complete separation of interface for "ImmutableBagFactory" and an implementation "ImmutableBagFactoryImpl", and the fact you need a factory for an "ImmutableBag" in the first place... seems like very poor design. Even if it is common in Java (?).
    - lmm 12y ago
      Given that constructors can't conform to interfaces, if you want to be able to pass a constructor around you pretty much have to do this. I agree it's probably overkill, but if you wanted really strong compatibility guarantees I can see how this would make sense.
- nl 12y ago
  Finance in particular has way too many people who think things like this are a good idea and The Right Thing To Do: https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections https://github.com/goldmansachs/gs-collections . I think that's a pretty unfair criticism. Firstly, it isn't clear exactly what you don't like about it. That it is Java? That it exists? You need to put its existence into historical context. When it came out, it was before Google's Guava collections libraries were open source, so there were no decent collections libraries that did more than what the JDK libraries did. That's the context GS Collections were built for. (Disclaimer: I've never used them, but I do remember when they were released)
potatolicious 12y ago
I went Canada -> Seattle -> SF -> NYC. Here's a datapoint: - Seattle salaries were ~70% higher than what I would've gotten in Canada at the time (mostly looking at Toronto area market, though it's all fairly similar) - SF salaries were ~30% higher than Seattle. I didn't know it at the time but that meant I took an effective pay cut. My total comp was about 1.8x what I would receive in Canada at the time. - NYC salaries were another ~30% higher than SF (64% higher than Seattle). Cost of living here is lower than SF (weirdly enough), so I effectively got a large raise moving. I've been here for a while, and looking at the Canadian market now I'd reckon I'm about 2.2x higher than a similar position in Canada. All of the above were done while staying in the same "field" - i.e., did not go into finance. And all of the above assumes I'd be fetching top-10th-percentile salaries for my position in Canada (itself far from a guarantee). If I do "just average" for compensation in Canada my NYC salary would be about 2.6x. The one overarching trend is that the gap widens as you gain experience and seniority. Canadian salaries never catches up, and in fact continues to fall further and further behind as you go up the ladder.

beltex 12y ago

2-3x factoring in cost of living in places like SF and NY? Isn't that the evening out factor, at least for new grads, for a job in say Toronto or Waterloo vs the valley?

dataminer 12y ago
You will still come out ahead in SF vs Toronto http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Canada&city1=Toronto&country2=United+States&city2=San+Francisco%2C+CA http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...
- erichate 12y ago
  interesting site, plugged in Victoria Canada (city my company is in) and numbers seemed a little off for rent currently listed in craigslist. +170% on website more like +300% from quick look in craigslist. also doesn't factor in time commuting, quality of life, avg hrs worked per day, etc... would love to see a pay breakdown $$ / hr worked (at office).
  - dataminer 12y ago
    The data is crowd sourced so it may deviate, you can contribute your data to keep it aligned. Also the quality of life and commuting comparisons can be done from the pull down menu in the header.
    - erichate 12y ago
      interesting, would imagine that could deviate quite a bit then. for things like cost of coffee / meals i could see crowd sourcing but aggregating from an online source for rentals / housing sales would lead to much more accurate estimate as they are the bigger ticket items.
  - untog 12y ago
    OT, but how is Victoria as a city to run a tech company in? I lived there nearly a decade ago and enjoyed my time - I still think about returning some day.

gabbo 12y ago

As someone who keeps tabs on the poutine and labour markets back home, I can vouch for everything you said. I don't even live in CA/NY (so my gross pay multiple isn't quite as high, but income net tax/cost of living is pretty great) and there's just no comparison. I probably make 60-80% more total comp in the USA than I would expect in a major Canadian city, and that's not even accounting for higher taxes (depending on state/province), frothy Canadian real estate valuations, and higher consumer prices almost across the board. But Canada sure is a great place to live and I miss it dearly. I still hope to move back one day.

Istof 12y ago

here is how a standard poutine should look like for anyone who doesn't know: https://www.google.com/search?q=ashton+poutine+images https://www.google.com/search?q=ashton+poutine+images

kelvin0 12y ago
Yeah, it's not supposed to have a weird 'cheese Whiz' yellowish radioactive gravy (see the Article's picture of an unnameable monstrosity)
- Istof 12y ago
  You are correct and I never seen a poutine like this before but there is many variations that are good... I like a good "poutine italienne" for example: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snFyhK5zhAg/UOW2AzMTNEI/AAAAAAAAARs/cvGGgRT7rV4/s1600/IMG_0834.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-snFyhK5zhAg/UOW2AzMTNEI/AAAAAAAAAR... or "poutine galvaude" (with chicken and peas): http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8Qv78uyb88/ToDfKVqZzdI/AAAAAAAAACE/VMa4rZj941g/s1600/IMG_0874.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s8Qv78uyb88/ToDfKVqZzdI/AAAAAAAAAC...

sirdogealot 12y ago

Hah, you're telling me. Poutine is just fries, gravy and cheese curds where I'm from!

davidu 12y ago

Our compensation doesn't differ widely between our YVR and SFO offices. YVR rents and housing is very expensive. More than SFO in many areas. The comp rebate is nice, but not why we are in YVR.

fredophile 12y ago
I moved from YVR to SFO a couple years ago. Buying a house in either city is expensive. However, my rent doubled when I moved. If I had chosen to live in San Francisco itself my rent would have been even higher. Parts of Vancouver are more expensive than parts of San Francisco but if you compare similar neighborhoods Vancouver will almost always end up cheaper. Transportation costs in the Bay Area are also much higher than the GVRD. Parking in San Francisco costs a fortune and public transit is a mess. You can get a three zone bus pass in Vancouver for far less than I spent each month on BART and the Caltrain. Because there's only one transit company that bus pass is good everywhere. In SFO you need passes for each service. BART doesn't do monthly passes and if you need to go to Oakland bring cash. Your clipper card isn't good there. If I was looking at equal compensation there is no way I'd choose to live in SFO.

porterhaney 12y ago

That is the most offensive representation of poutine I've ever seen.

astrodust 12y ago
It looks like a Philly Cheesesteak exploded on some french fries.

nl 12y ago

I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)? Are those number correct? If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salaries than Canadian. Just in case anyone is looking to move somewhere...

nivertech 12y ago
I think they talking about after tax numbers
- DennisP 12y ago
  Taxes in Canada are not particularly higher than in the U.S. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians-really-pay-more-taxes-than-americans.aspx http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians...
  - refurb 12y ago
    You need to include sales tax, which ranges from 5% in Alberta to 15% in Quebec. Also, taxes on alcohol and gasoline are much higher than the US. That being said, with the recent tax increases in the US and the lower of provincial income taxes in many Canadian provinces (I'm looking at you BC), the difference isn't as great as one would think.
    - cube13 12y ago
      You're paying sales taxes in pretty much all of the US, though, though not as much(ranges from ~3% to 10%).
- potatolicious 12y ago
  If this were WA it'd be a substantial difference (somewhat). CA and NY though (particularly NYC) have a total tax rate in the same ballpark as Canada. And the Canadians get health care for that money. That said I've done the cost of living numbers between here (NYC) vs. Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal, and even with the insane rent here I'm still coming out ahead - way ahead. The salary difference is truly mind-boggling. More than the salary difference, the kind of work you're doing as a $200K engineer in SV/SF/NYC is very different than the kind of work you're doing as a $70K engineer in Toronto. There is a conspicuous lack of this level of work in Canada overall.

orbitur 12y ago

> I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't think this is much of a valid criticism, since most people in the States can also move to SV/NYC and make 2x or 3x their current salaries as well. Hell, those cities probably have the highest numbers (so ignoring CoL) than most places in the world.

naterator 12y ago
I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. It's not a valid criticism if the gov. footing 80% allows these companies to now offer SV/NY competitive salaries. Which I suspect will happen if they do it right (both the governement and the entrepreneurs).
- ripb 12y ago
  >I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. I think, what a lot Americans overlook, is that most people in the rest of developed world want more from life than a high salary. Moving from somewhere with the highest standards of living in the world, such as Toronto, to somewhere that doesn't even make the list of top 5/10 in North America alone such as NYC, might come with a salary increase but it's a significant trade off in terms of other factors.
  - aianus 12y ago
    I've lived in both and while I love Toronto, NYC is the greatest city on the planet. It's not really comparable.
  - potatolicious 12y ago
    > "I think, what a lot Americans overlook" Looks a lot of Canadians have overlooked it too - all but 2 people in my graduating cohort are writing code in the US. You are welcome to delude yourself into thinking that "real" Canadians don't value a high salary, but in reality it's causing a massive brain out of the country.

joeyspn 12y ago

Tell us where are you looking for job cos all the positions I've checked in Toronto where 80$ - $90k, plus stock options, etc... I'm talking about last week..

michaelochurch 12y ago

Where in NYC did you work? Are you in finance? One of the reasons I'm bearish about NYC's future as a tech hub is that, although Manhattan cost of living is extremely high, engineer salaries still seem to have the $150k ceiling, except in finance. Which means you'll have plenty of under-30 talent but few long-term, highly experienced engineers.

scrabble 12y ago

I'm a software dev in Waterloo and I can definitely see that. I've got absolutely no problem getting job offers, but they are low compared to what friends of mine who moved to the US are making. I'm sure my cost of living is less. On the other hand, looking at the figures makes you feel a little undervalued.

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criveros 12y ago

How did you find a job in the US?

rdmcfee 12y ago

In this case "worst" depends on whether you're a developer or an employer.

kafkaesque 12y ago

I'm from Vancouver and have lived in Los Angeles for three years now. There are 'hidden costs' to living in LA/California. It just depends on what you prefer and where your priorities are. I would love to move back to Vancouver, because when you consider gas (living close to work vs living in a suburban sprawl), property (yes, you get a bigger house here, but unsafe neighbourhoods are just around the corner, and bad air), quality of education (Canadian primary and secondary schools outperform American ones), then is it really worth the trade off? For example, in LA, the concept of 'you get what you pay for' is truly taken seriously. You want the best? Get ready to pay thousands and thousands of dollars (more expensive than Canada, usually). If you just want mediocrity and barely get by, LA is super cheap, affordable, and you can raise 10 kids here, no problems. EDIT: With regard to poutine, that looks like the fancy poutines you get in Santa Monica. Savages! All of them! EDIT2: Added clarification

biggc 12y ago

> Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not melted You must be from outside Quebec. Fresh cheese curds, (they'll squeak as you chew them), won't melt in the gravy, only soften a bit. Melted cheese curds means that they've been sitting in a fridge for a few days or more.