Here's my issue with your argument. The article we're commenting on is about Canadian companies being frustrated cause Google/Facebook/Microsoft/Apple hire away all the best Canadian talent.

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.

There's viable and there's fuelled by VC cash. There's no Full stop.

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.

What is keeping that VC cash in America then? If they can get a higher return on a smaller buy-in in Canada, then why don't they?

> 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.

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.

Toronto is the same. In fact, worse because you need two cars per family

From the transportation perspective, Toronto is probably marginally better than Vancouver for families.

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.

That is simply not true. If you are in dt Vancouver you can get pretty much anywhere walking. Not the case for Toronto(even downtown) due to city size and climate

I'm not sure why you're suddenly restricting your "two cars per family" point to the city downtown cores alone.

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.

How long will you walk from Stanley Park to the border of Burnaby? By that logic, you can get anywhere in Canada simply by walking as well.

>In a way, Canada pays decently. You'll be very comfortable as an engineer in Canada, even with a large family.

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.

you need to double those rent figures for vancouver

> 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.

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.

The cost of living in Vancouver is just as high as the cost of living in Seattle. This is after the Canadian dollar tanked. In fact, right now, the cost of buying a house in Seattle is much, much lower.

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

Vancouver is a bit of a special case because of how insane the property prices are there. It's like the Canadian SF, except without the job market.

It's also the only major Canadian city in the same time zone as Silicon Valley... And is three hours away from Seattle.

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

Here's a frequently updated list of tech startup jobs in Victoria:

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

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

> It's kind of crazy that in the US, ... a 9 month dev boot camp can have you earn similar to many university level degrees.

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

Entry salaries are only part of the story. What are your career prospects, or how fast can you expect to get promoted?