But, I'm not sure it's possible for companies to do so.

I mean, first of all, in the US, outside of a few cities like NY, SV, Seattle, Bellevue, you start to see lower pay which gets closer to Canadian pay.

Appart from that, Canada just doesn't have the same market. That's the biggest difference. Most startup capitalize on the US market, and that's just easier and more accessible to do if you're US based.

In a way, Canada pays decently. You'll be very comfortable as an engineer in Canada, even with a large family. But compared to certain US cities, it's abysmal.

It's kind of crazy that in the US, a bachelor degree in CS can give you pay close to what doctors make. And a 9 month dev boot camp can have you earn similar to many university level degrees.

I'm not sure this will last forever. My point being, it's unclear if Canada's pay for tech is too low, or if some US cities pay is too high.

As a rule, Canadian citizens are highly mobile to the US due to the TN visa, the lack of a language barrier, close proximity and the extreme similarity of cultures.

So if Canadian companies actually need that talent, and for some structural reason related to being located in Canada they are unable to pay for it, then their business isn't viable. Full stop.

If Canadian businesses are just less profitable and less productive and therefore can only afford lower wages, that's fine. They will get the talent that isn't mobile for one reason or another. Some Canadians choose to stay in spite of the lower pay, some developers just aren't able to get hired at top US companies, and Canadian immigrants who aren't yet citizens are mostly locked out of the US job market.

The problem arises when Canadian business think they can keep the low pay and get people to turn down Google to stay in Toronto. If you're trying to do, say, an AI-focused startup in Canada and you think you're going to hire top people away from Google for $100,000 CAD because Trump, that's not going to happen.

So if Canada wants to have companies that aren't "X but for Canada" but rather actual global internet companies, they should expect to pay global internet company wages.

America's able to lure these workers by relying on easy investment money, not business viability.

You're pretending that there's an even playing field, and there isn't. If there were an even playing field, every firm would have left the valley decades ago to find cheaper workers.

But that's just not how it works.

Hmmm depends on where you live. In some places a large family would be quite unaffordable. The average cost of a detached house in February in Metro Vancouver was $1.76 million. Vancouver has become so unaffordable that even those with great (for Canada) six figure salaries would find it very hard to cobble together enough money to buy property.

You're more likely to require two cars in Vancouver than in Toronto as the combination of the Greater Toronto Area public transportation options cover a wider area than Vancouver's.

But sure - if we change frames then both city downtown cores are either easily walkable or extremely accessible via public transportation, hence ceteris paribus neither family (living in the downtown core) in their respective cities would require more cars than the other.

Have you actually tried that, or just hyperbolizing? Many devs in Canada net 4-5K/m. Rent in Vancouver would easily be 1.5-2.5K/m for a "large family". That's not a "very comfortable" spot.

In cities where the pay lowers so does the cost of living. Canada will never get over the exchange rate + availability of goods in America. Canada is an amazing country to live in but America is great too when you have money.

Engineer wages in Seattle were ~30-100% higher - before the Canadian dollar tanked. Now they are ~50-160% higher.

I suppose there's also Victoria, but there's no tech jobs there.

https://github.com/sendwithus/vic-startup-jobs

Victoria also has nicer weather than Vancouver (less summer rain). Direct flights to Seattle and SF.

This speaks more about the relevance of these [university level] degrees than how high dev salaries are.

I don't think many software developers in Canada are facing that choice. Is there the opportunity to be 'more' secure in the States? Sure. But being a developer in Canada is hardly a bleak proposition.

5 years later, I'm pushing something like 8x what disposable income would have been by now if I compare with my old colleagues.

And that's even after I take out the extra expenses of my mortgage being 11x what my rent used to be (by choice, it was "only" 4x higher originally, since I lived in a rent controlled area for almost 30 years.

The difference is absolutely absurd. And since a lot of things don't vary in price with the average cost of living (cars are not more expensive south of the border. Neither are smartphones or restaurants), it matters.

People should be aware though, your example isn't even close to usual.

Work the numbers for a simple case - for round numbers take 100k/yr and 1000/month disposable. To do 8x that you are adding basically another 100k, post tax - so add another 35 k.

Do at this rate you have a salary multiple of 2.35. This just doesn't happen in general, for the same job. You may have an opportunity for a different job at 2.5 timed salary, but mostly people don't

Much more realistic is a 30% bump, which is still on the high end giving you a disposable income multiple of 2.5, which isn't bad.

Anyway, the numbers vary a bit with higher salary and rates, but mostly people won't see anywhere near 3x, let alone 8x - unless they are comparing very different jobs.

I'm a Canadian that moved to the US for work - this multiple sounds entirely plausible, in fact it sounds like a conservative estimate.

In major tech hubs the multiple is closer to 3-4x.

> "Much more realistic is a 30% bump"

This is not at all realistic - I know many Canadians working in the US as developers and all of them are making well in excess of 200% of their Canadian market rate.

You're characterizing Canadian tech salaries (in say, Vancouver or Toronto) as being moderately below US standards (~30%?), where in fact they are vastly below the standard in comparable markets (SFBA, Seattle, NYC, etc). The gap is already big for new grads, but it widens even further with experience. A dev with ~5+ years of experience can reasonably triple their salary moving south.

But to suggest this is th norm for software jobs across both countries? The stats just don't support it.

3-4x is crazy. You make it sound like the US is crawling with tech jobs paying > 500k for mid-career jobs. It just not so.

During that time you have college grads in the states walking away if they don't get 100k as their first job in SF.

Now obviously if you take the hottest markets in Canada and compare them to mediocre markets in the US, the gap is much smaller, but that's usually not the move people are considering when this topic comes up.

But if you were making 70-80k in Canada then hit the US and do 200k + RSUs + bonus, you're in a much different world...and it can just keep going up and up and up and up, while up north you will hit a wall much sooner.

Again, I'm not denying that vastly more of these opportunities exist in the US, particularly in a few locations. But that doesn't factor into the majority of tech jobs on either side of the border.

However, the Waterloo software engineering graduate who's making 150k+RSU+bonus is probably nailing a Principal engineer position at a famous american tech company in SF/SV/NYC/Boston and is absolutely going to nail big bucks. Thats some superstar material right there. The only places I've seen that approached those numbers in Canada were Canadian offices of Wall street banks. And having worked for those companies in the past, superstar engineers at Morgan/Goldman in NYC made me look poor.

And i'm far from poor.

I was looking for my first job out of college, offers in Canada were 1/2 what they were in Seattle. Cost of living was lower than Vancouver. A TN visa was a low barrier. This story repeats over and over again.

Montreal is ridiculous since it is essentially NYC's favorite "nearshoring" . It's also big for game dev, which pays like crap even by Montreal standards.

Is it better in Edmonton? No idea. But with Vancouver/Montreal/Toronto out of the picture, that leaves precious few options.

There are other issues though

The caliber of engineer is just bad too. There's always the occasional superstar teams, but it's really, really hard to find a good spot unless you have connections...and even if you do, 2 years later as personnel shifts it goes to hell again.

I would have taken a pay -cut- to work in a different city. Fortunately, you'll never have to since the salaries are so bad.

But the rigorous winters are one, also see my other comment in this thread

But as you mentioned, unless you compare different jobs: the same opportunities simply don't exist up there. Making 300k, 400k or more? Its certainly not common in NYC or SF, but if you try hard enough, and shoot for it, its possible. Up north? Maybe as an exec, but as an individual contributor or tech leadish style position? I wouldn't know where to start looking. While here there's a lot of options. There's not for everyone by a long shot, but they are there.

Thus 8x or more becomes possible. And someone like a top Waterloo engineering graduate has an above average chance at those. But I don't know where they would without moving country.

You are right that there are many more top tier opportunities (although they do cost in Canada in small numbers) - but by definition nearly, this doesn't apply to most developers.

I worked for a company that did just that: open an office in Canada in the same timezone as their American HQ to cut cost. The taxes, expenses, and complying with local laws at large scale (think: Quebec language laws) are real, and they almost ended up killing the office because the cost was too high. They absolutely were hiring more in the American office in the end from a pure cost perspective, and using the Canadian one to scale even though it was super expensive to run.

Now, its very likely it was them simply being inefficient and unprepared for it, but it doesn't really matter: its a real issue.

Now in the case of my current employer, we absolutely have international offices where getting head count is much cheaper, but to scale, we need offices everywhere where there's talent, and that includes in the big american metros. In my case, I just moved to get the $$$ of the American offices, that's all :)

Cost of home ownership at SF levels. Check. Salary to match? Nope.

I used to love Vancouver, I went to school there. I wanted to stay. But I doubt I'd move back except to retire.

I hate SF/SiValley. I would love nothing more than to go home, but I'm not about to take a paycut that's measured in multiples of the median Canadian salary.

Don't mean to pick at your comment, but it's something I've seen around lately and makes me wonder.

I'll grant that's higher than in some US states, but come over to Europe where VAT is usually 19-25%. Although at least in Europe prices are advertised including VAT, so no mental math is required to calculate how much it will end up costing.

That's a huge outlier, though. The average is 5%, and many states exempt huge swaths of goods (such as groceries) and some have no sales tax at all.

Groceries are exempt from GST/PST or HST in Canada as well.

With 1 USD = 65 INR, we're used to converting with cost of living and Purchasing power in mind.

Thus for the casual observer it look like the difference is in the exchange rate---not in the prices.

Japan is a good example because people have an idea that it is a rich, expensive country.

Living in Japan with a Japanese lifestyle is not that expensive. I have many Japanese friends living in Tokyo for under $1.5-2k a month. They’re not living in luxury, but they quite enjoy their lives, travel every once in a while, etc. You won’t be doing that in SF (and Tokyo is a much more pleasant city than SF in more ways than one).

On the other hand, living an american lifestyle in Japan (big car, big house, eating lots of red meat, buying imported American goods, etc) is going to cost you a lot of money though.

Just normalize everything to a single currency; we can still talk about differences in cost of living. Sure, exchange rate fluctuations can be related to the cost of living, but it's not everything.

This is an honest question - is it worth living somewhere you "hate" for increased pay? Why not take less money and live in place that would make you happy?

Here is an example. Would you accept 100 million dollars to work in Saudia Arabia for a year? I probably would. I'd do it for a year, and then retire.

People do lots of things where they are exchanging happiness now, for happiness in the future.

For him, it means that he can save up a whole bunch of money, and then retire 20 years earlier at the least.

No, not everyone has a price for which they are willing to exchange their happiness for.

I also completely disagree that everyone "should" have a price they are willing to exchange their happiness for. It's strikes me as quite odd that you choose to pronounce these things(your opinions) as universal and absolute truths.

There are many people who work jobs that offer them happiness at the expense of lower pay. Artists, teachers, journalists, social service workers are all examples of this. I recently met some Americans and Britons who were working in tech in Berlin. Even though they could make a better salary back home they chose Berlin because the quality of life there makes them happier. So no, not "everybody" has a price.

>"Here is an example. Would you accept 100 million dollars to work in Saudia Arabia for a year?"

This is a total straw man. The OP actually stated that they were able to triple their salary by working in SV/SF. How is that at all comparable with being able to retire as one of the most wealthy people on the planet after 1 year? You are comparing a possible practical reality with a fantasy.

Also along with tripling one's salary by working in SV/SF comes a higher tax bracket and probably triple what you would pay in rent in the most expensive Canadian tech hub. It's not very realistic to think that you are going to retire 20 years earlier on just a SF/SV salary, not even close.

It is not about trading happiness for money. It is about trading a small amount of happiness NOW for a large amount of happiness later or a large amount of ability to achieve your goals.

If you are a teacher/Journalist/artist who wants the world to be more educated, more informed, or more artistically enriched, you are universally better able to achieve those goals with 100 million dollars in the bank.

So yes. Everyone SHOULD have a price. Maybe that price is 100 million dollars. Maybe it is 10 thousand. But a price is a price.

But back to the actual question at hand. Yes, i do believe that tripling your salary could lead to you retiring 20 years earlier.

It is simple math, really. Even with the increase in taxes, you will have about double at least the total amount of take home pay. And if you have a ~40 year work life, but take home twice as much money after taxes, that means you only have to work ~20 years to make the same amount of after taxes income.

Call it 15 years to be more conservative. But the numbers are close.

Are you just trolling then?

The "what if someone offered you 100 million dollars?" game is a game that children play. Your insistence on repeatedly interjecting this bit of childishness is just bizarre. The context of the discussion and the OPs comment is working as a salaried employee.

There was was never any question of a job "liked moderately less." The OP said quite unequivocally that they "hate" living where they live. Hate is a pretty strong emotion, it does not describe a state of being moderately less happy.

At that point one starts hating low pay and need to move somewhere with high pay if possible.

Many of the devs worth their dime in Vancouver end up remote working when they get to the Sr. level. Get paid in USD, and for 25-30% more in a stronger currency. Works out to almost 60% more?! also if you aren't a city person you can then move to one of the gulf islands.

Its very hard to attract workers when the salaries just cant compare.

I know a few vancouverites who live in Vancouver, who are working for Texas based companies, no local office in the country

They are paid in USD.

When the cdn dollar tanked against usd after being on par, it was like a 30-40% raise for them in cdn just cause of the exchange rate