5 ms·

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 gu

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]
        TheCoelacanth 12y ago
        You're probably right at the lower-end of the income spectrum, but any non-joke, non-freelance software development job in the US will include health insurance on top of the quoted salary at little or no cost to the employee. I have a chronic health condition that needs some fairly expensive drugs and relatively frequent doctor visits and procedures. My total out of pocket healthcare expenses are less than $500 per year.
        beagle3 12y ago
        Except, before the ACA they could refuse to take you on because of "pre-existing conditions". I know several people who did not switch away from jobs they hated because they risked losing health care. And freelancers, even if they commanded high salaries, also had problems getting reasonable insurance. I'm up-to-date as of 2011, I'm sure things have (and still are) radically changing - but the health insurance situation in the US was a horrible mess until recently - Everything worked fine until the day it didn't, and then you were possibly shut out of healthcare.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - michaelochurch 12y ago
    Silicon Valley companies tend to downgrade you in position for the simple reason of not being from there. That person would get a salary bump, but it'd be to another junior role around $100-120k. The money improves, but the job position degrades. I found it obnoxious and annoying, and it's one of the reasons I'll probably never move to that cesspool. The idea that I should have 5 years knocked off my career because I came up in New York (which is a far better city than San Francisco, and far less expensive relative to opportunity and urban amenity) is one I just can't accept.
    - miguelrochefort 12y ago
      Junior role? The things I'd do for $100-120k...
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.

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]
        TheCoelacanth 12y ago
        You're probably right at the lower-end of the income spectrum, but any non-joke, non-freelance software development job in the US will include health insurance on top of the quoted salary at little or no cost to the employee. I have a chronic health condition that needs some fairly expensive drugs and relatively frequent doctor visits and procedures. My total out of pocket healthcare expenses are less than $500 per year.
        beagle3 12y ago
        Except, before the ACA they could refuse to take you on because of "pre-existing conditions". I know several people who did not switch away from jobs they hated because they risked losing health care. And freelancers, even if they commanded high salaries, also had problems getting reasonable insurance. I'm up-to-date as of 2011, I'm sure things have (and still are) radically changing - but the health insurance situation in the US was a horrible mess until recently - Everything worked fine until the day it didn't, and then you were possibly shut out of healthcare.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- michaelochurch 12y ago
  Silicon Valley companies tend to downgrade you in position for the simple reason of not being from there. That person would get a salary bump, but it'd be to another junior role around $100-120k. The money improves, but the job position degrades. I found it obnoxious and annoying, and it's one of the reasons I'll probably never move to that cesspool. The idea that I should have 5 years knocked off my career because I came up in New York (which is a far better city than San Francisco, and far less expensive relative to opportunity and urban amenity) is one I just can't accept.
  - miguelrochefort 12y ago
    Junior role? The things I'd do for $100-120k...

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.