I love my country and would love nothing more than to stay here, but when moving south of the border means a 50% bump, it's hard to stay in Canada.
It doesn't help that most Canadian CEOs talk about the issue as if they're entitled to Canadian graduates working for them without making any attempt at matching US pay packages.
Unsurprisingly plenty of people with in demand skills that travel are looking at the exit or are already gone.
Companies can't pay money they don't have. In my experience as a Canadian founder, Canadian companies are just poorer. We'd love to pay more but then we'd be bankrupt.
Most US "companies" which hire tech talent, aren't looking to scale up "businesses" which are cashflow positive. These "startups" are effectively bankrupt relying entirely on their current runways and their bi-annual VC injections.
Like they said in the video, Canadians for better or worse are inherently more risk averse than their American counter parts. Even more appropriately the entrepreneurs which stay in Canada vs move on faith to the bay, are tautologically less risk averse.
To look at this from a different perspective, Canada may just be living with a sustainable tech sector.
Its like watching/envying your neighbors as they come home from their third sunny vacation, this year, to their over sized house and driveway with two Mercedes. But that envy would quickly disappear if you ever got a chance to look at their books. You'd see they just took out a second mortgage on the house, when they could barely pay for the first one, so they could continue to finance their cars. Meanwhile, they still have so much additional debt accruing it really should be criminal.
I really wouldn't know though.. I'm a risk averse Canadian, whose just sorta hoping I've found a sweet spot on the risk-reward line.
How is it bold? It's a fact. You have no right to be in Canada. I have no right to be in the US.
That's why I try to behave myself.
I'm just shy of 4x.
I should have mentioned I'm still a student. I'm sure that for a senior developer, the difference is significantly larger.
A year later, Google swooped in with an offer that quintupled my compensation. The thing that struck me about it most was the supposedly-intense Google programmer interviews were actually far less difficult than most of the all-day interviews I did for Canadian institutions. I was a bit outraged that these interviews could be so tough for such meager compensation, especially given the cost of living in Vancouver. I was surprised they were able to get away with it, and it looks like it's starting to bite them in the ass, for which I am glad.
Edit: The specific places I would name, if anyone's curious, are Zymeworks and SAP in Vancouver, as well as staff research positions at UBC, University of Calgary, and the BC Cancer Agency.
the first step to making this kind of money is not settling for anything less, because opportunity is the biggest cost. when was the last time you turned down 150k to wait for a better offer?
Exchange can be normalized for most us/ca comparisions, i.e. 100K in Canada is only 70K US but most prices are normalized for that.
The Bay Area is mind-boggling expensive though - and you'd all be naive to not consider that.
My flat in Montreal would be $5500 a month, USD anywhere in SF. It's amazing. And cheap.
Also consider that startups in the US have to cover healthcare, which is very expensive. That said, if you have healthcare in the US, it's better than in Canada. Again, it doesn't really matter for normal people under the age of 30.
The only reassuring thing about this podcast was the brief mention that Ted Livingston (of Kik) was at those talks with so-called "leaders of Canada". I mean, do we really expect the likes of Galen Weston, Magna International, and the like to really talk about innovation or tech? Other than Kik, which of those companies would any person on HN really be interested in working at?
I'm curious if there are articles about Canada hemorrhaging math/finance talent to New York? Or is this just something we perpetually complain about in tech as if talent/industry centralization wasn't a phenomenon in almost every big new market in history.
All of our good Canadian musicians, comedians, and actors go to the US and become big, countless have done so. That's how we can tell if their good or not, usually. And nothings wrong with that. No one complained when Drake signed to a US label when his new career took off...
It's almost impossible to do anything A++ in Canada because it gets sucked into the US.
So Canada is a great place for the 99%, but for anything that's exceptional, it's the US.
The way market economies work 'exceptional' companies suck up most of the profits and surpluses ...
So it's a perennial problem for the talented.
But again, for most people, Canada is a better place if you can hack the weather.
Not the Tragically Hip. But they always seemed happy with that.
Now when I go back I'm struck by the high prices, high taxes, and a general (and sadly very Canadian) aversion to risk.
I used to brag about Canada and honestly felt it was a better place to live...I don't think that any more.
Not to say Canada is perfect but yes there is a cost to social cohesion.
It's not a good place for talent.
No it's not. Most youth have zero dreams related to property ownership, as everything near the core and cities that are near the core are prohibitively expensive. There is a general apathy and malaise here.
"Just move outside of the city" they say, to suburbs that are also priced 500k+, and just far enough to only have to spend an hour and a half commuting to your city job.
As for aversion to risk, I personally don't want to live on a rollercoaster.
During my university the local division of Coverity did a good job of this. They sponsored the programming club events. They sent real engineers to every career fair. They gave internships to 2 years. They kept on skilled programmers throughout the year. One guy I knew got married and bought a house while working part time there even before graduation.
I would say that company grabbed the majority of the high-performing nice-to-work-with students from my year. The only ones they did not get was me (video game programming japan), and my friend (C++ standard library programming at google).
Or you could whine about why you deserve to get Canada's best at insulting wages. Maybe that will work.
Had a opportunity with a Ontario based startup, their starting package was 40k and they wanted me to relocate. When pushing for a better salary, I was told this was the best they could offer. Fucking insulting wage for a backend developer (Go/Appengine)
The Vancouver technology sector is also a joke compared to Seattle... To the extent that hootsuite is a 'big deal' there.
If you look at actual studies of the cost of living in cities around the world, like from Mercer or the Economist, Vancouver is closer to the upper middle in terms of cost of living.
Vancouver literally has a 0.5% rental vacancy rate right now. If you put up an ad on Craigslist for an apartment for rent it'll get 50 replies in two hours. People are getting into bidding wars on apartments.
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=10Y
A 35-40% swing in the purchasing power of the currency is a pretty big deal.
Countries will just blow tax money trying to change things. Focus on your core competencies.
We should be able to thrive in a well paid job in a place that we want and like (not like we are entitled or anything this applies to any job everywhere).
So I guess we'll have to see if that works out for them.
As for a), yes, Canada's multiculturalism attracts migrants, who in spite of their talent have a crappy negotiating position and are easily taken advantage of. Everyone has a story of the guy who barely speaks english but who can code getting worked like a dog for peanuts.
for b) for software in Canada, you sell to the 5 banks or government. it's recurring license fees from stable customers but in a limited market.
And c) there is no market for software in canada that would justify a billion dollar valuation. Those valuations were based on cornering a user base to use as a sales channel.
Further Canada's de-facto official policy of currency debasement to keep industrial exports afloat means limited purchasing power for citizens, therefore anything that succeeds has to succeed somewhere else.
It's a great place to outsource your dev shop, kind of like a more reliable India or Belarus, but as a market it's just not large enough for to reap the network effect / micro-margin/infinite scale benefits of software solutions.
