Toronto has the best spin department in the world. I never stop seeing listicles with Toronto in the top 3, reading about how great it is a place to live and work, and how it's become a leader in innovation/tech/art/music/film/finance.

The endless fluff pieces are a bit tiresome.

I agree. I lived in the Toronto area for about 10 years. I visit regularly still because I have a lot of family there. I would consider moving back too but these fluff pieces as you say do not help. The first thing that is needed for more people who live there to admit there are problems, specifically with low wages (and relatively high taxes too applied at lower levels), I cannot get my friends or family to even realize that because they are still quoting 1990s UN studies about Toronto being the number 1 city in the world to live or something like that, being critical isn't always being negative, if you love a place there should be a desire to improve it, not ignore issues.

Maybe it’s actully a really good place to live?

How about Montréal?

I’ll do the spin:

- Healthiest city in North America [1]

- Montréal posts best job growth in 2017 among top 20 largest urban centers in Canada and the U.S. [2]

- Lowest unemployment rate since 2001 [3]

- Montréal is 2nd global artificial intelligence hub [4]

[1] https://www.spotahome.com/healthiest-cities-world [2] http://www.montrealinternational.com/en/blog/montreal-posts-... [3] https://montrealgazette.com/business/montreals-unemployment-... [4] http://www.montrealinternational.com/en/news/2017/11/montrea...

I'm a Montreal, this is pure spin.

The 'low unemployment' bit is funny considering how many underemployed, homeless and in betweens there are. I don't remotely buy it. The economy in Montreal is reasonable but soft. I guess compared to itself in 2001?

The AI hub is correct for now, that might change.

Can you quote any hard references, like the post you're replying to? Using your anecdotal method, I can say Montreal has a culture that doesn't expect everyone to simply be job focused, which you may interpret in your own way, but there is a lot of support for low key lifestyles (low cost childcare, co-op ateliers in every neighbourhood, etc) and the cost of living is quite low. Regardless, the economy is doing well, unemployment is low and the homeless population is average for Canada. Large parts of Montreal may be inscrutable to people who don't speak french well (like me) but it's still a great place to live, IMO.

I think if you can get a decent tech job and if you speak French. Montreal is definitely a better pick than Toronto.

You can easily get a job without French. I know 2 shops that can’t fill positions even with competitive (for Montreal) salaries. One is all English (Wordpress, magneto shop) and the other is large international org. The international org couldn’t even fill the secretary role for 6 month. They ended up getting a student fresh of the school without experience.

I’m constantly getting bombarded with recruiters with good offers.

If by 'better pick' you mean almost 1/2 salary.

I've lived here for quite some time and grew up in Toronto. I've lived in the Valley and around the world, I'm acquainted with most issues.

1/2 salary of Toronto? No way! Montréal salaries are lower, but by 15-20% max. Yet you can buy a condo with a parking spot, in a central location for $220. The cost of living is much lower than Toronto.

I’ve lived in Ottawa, Toronto and now Montreal. Montreal is by far more affordable than the other 2.

Do you know French and love winter?

You can do without French but then again if you're living there make an effort

Winter is worse than Toronto but not by much (and Ottawa winters seem worse than both, to the point a whole canal freezes)

Montreal winters are far worse than Ottawa, if only due to the laissez faire attitude taken towards infrastructure and maintenance of the city and buildings - not just government, but landlords as well.

Well, according to Wikipedia, Montreal has 226cm of snowfall per year and Ottawa has 175cm (and 3 fewer precipitation days)

Average and record low are lower in Ottawa though. Would be interesting to know about wind temps though.

Ah, well that sounds like something they've got in common with San Francisco.

Montreal winters are legendary. Toronto barely even gets snow.

COL massively lower than Toronto. Vast swaths of walkable, mixed zoned neighbourhoods.

Self employed, so can't comment on salary.

Maybe Montreal is optimizing its marketing to another demographic. I never see media reporting about them anywhere.

In Canada, salaries for tech seem to normally max out around 100k for developers (with exceptions for working for big US/multinational companies like Amazon, MSFT, etc.). Even 80k is pretty common for senior developers... In Canadian dollars. So around 80k USD is max a Canadian developer can expect to make other than a few unusual cases thrown in there which might go as high as 130k CAD so around 100k USD is a stellar Canadian development salary. If you compare this to how H1B workers are paid in the US, it's around those sorts of rates. I don't see it improving any time soon because the revenue that this work generates is not 10x multiples like you see in the US. Canada does not have the VC culture to support a tech culture that produces 100s of millions to billions in returns. If US companies come looking for remote workers they are looking to pay Canadian rates and save money that way.

100k? You’re either massively underpaid or badly misinformed, or both. Several friends living in Toronto make 120k+ and they’re certainly not senior or management. (All in their twenties). And that’s only for homegrown startups - Amazon, etc pay very respectable salaries, especially when you factor the lower cost of living compared to the Bay Area.

This is also why, as a founder, it's very attractive to raise US/global money but build a team in Canada. For developers for your dollar, diversity of talent, high quality education, healthcare, proximity to the US + ease of travel and immegration from the rest of the world, Canada is a great place these days to start a dev team. It's just so much harder now to build, grow and retain a dev team in SV anymore.

100k? maybe 5-6 years ago, it is not the case anymore at all. I dont what the max is but 140-150 is no that unusual(for senior people obviously)

That may be because that is about US$100k at the current exchange rates. A cynic would say that the comp has only gone up because the exchange rate has, since tech tends to be denominated in USD.

$100k CAD is not really the max in Canada. That’s how much small startups are paying to hire developers with around 2 years of experience in Kitchener-Waterloo that tends to be cheaper than Toronto

Bit of an exaggeration.

Show me any startup in Canada who'll pay $100k for two years of experience.

We just hired someone for around that amount and same level of experience last week and we're a small team of 3 so I assume companies bigger than us will pay more

Maybe for smaller companies, but msft, Amazon, tableau in Canada all pay more than that.

What's TC like for those?

AVG TC Senior Devs in AMZN, DATA, CRM, and Splunk is CAD 250k.

MSFT probably around 180k-190k.

I knew DATA offered 300k++ for Principal.

All offers with RSUs (hence TC).

How easy is it for a Canadian to set up the legalities of doing remote in the trump era ? I have an impression it’s only the big fish (fang etc) who with their legions of lawyers can mow a path down for remotes to begin working smoothly (& legally)