Montreal is an extremely easy city to live in. Very inexpensive rent, good nightlife/events and arts/culture scene, and a pretty good transit system.

The Quebecois will disagree with me on this, but I don't think you even need to speak French if you're working in tech - you might just have a smaller friend circle of Anglos.

Taxes however are crazy high and salaries are low compared to cities like Vancouver or Toronto.

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Taxes are pretty comparable to NYC, but they include health insurance (assuming one has the right immigration status) regardless of employment. Salaries are definitely lower but also in line with cost of living. Agree about language, though one may want to learn French after arriving for maximum enjoyment.

Hello from another techie in Montreal, recently arrived from NYC. :)

> The Quebecois will disagree with me on this, but I don't think you even need to speak French if you're working in tech - you might just have a smaller friend circle of Anglos.

Native anglophone; non-native fluent speaker of French.

You can totally make it work in Montreal with your small circle of anglo friends. But almost anyone I've known over the years who tried to make it work like that is either quite bitter, or has left once raising a family comes into the question.

For good reason, just as in Germany or Poland, unless you learn French, you will be excluded from public culture, especially as you get older, and that largely means a lot of the great things of Montreal get watered down.

This is fairly accurate, I am in Montreal.

Except he missed one major selling point. Our food/restaurant scene is second to none. If you consider moving here then negotiate a couple of months remote work per year and work from Costa Rica in Jan-Feb.

That's a very important point. I moved from Montreal to NYC a couple of years back and one thing I definitively miss is the food scene. Not that NYC is bad by any metric but Montreal just has an amazing food scene.

Is there an actual remote work policy there? I did think working south in the summer would be a neat way to escape the cold, though I'd pick somewhere closer. Raleigh or Nashville, perhaps.

> Why aren't more people going to there rather than Vancouver or Toronto?

1. You need to speak French

2. Winter is brutal (forecast for next 10 days, and it's only October: https://weather.com/weather/tenday/l/CAXX0301:1:CA)

Huh, it isn't that bad. More or less, the same as Boston.

Apart from the really short days in winter, the climate in Boston isn't too bad.

Opposite of the intended effect I guess.

You don't need to speak french to work in Tech in Montreal, but you won't be able to work everywhere. I know many people who don't speak french and work in mtl.

Montreal is probably the only city in the province where you don't need to speak french though.

Some of us hate SF because of (among other reasons) the lack of winter. To each their own. :)

Montreal winters are a bit extreme. That said, the top of Mont Royal after a fresh snow fall is a magical place.

They're only a bit worse than Toronto winters, and Toronto is attracting lots of tech from the States. It's not the main problem. Though I guess people who tolerate very cold weather climates may not correlate much with people who enjoy French as the main local language?

Missing winters is one thing, being obligated to wear full winter gear for 4 months a year is another.

4 months only? I like your optimism. :)

I don't know for sure either way - I only arrived at the end of February, and last winter was unusually intense and long in both Montreal and the northeast US where I was just before.

Still, if it is just 4 months, that's pretty close to canonical season length!

They offer lots of coping mechanisms too like the underground city in the downtown core and good home heating, plus lots of outdoor and indoor activities to make the winter enjoyable.

>Why aren't more people going to there rather than Vancouver or Toronto?

The main language is French and it causes harm to the expansion of many businesses.

This is partly true and bad, partly false, and partly true and good.

Partly true and bad: I think this bit is self-evident to this audience.

Partly false: the language wars have subsided in Montreal and rank and file tech workers can manage okay in English until they get around to learning French, even if the company has to deal with French by virtue of being here. The provincial politics are noise which can mostly be tuned out within the Montreal tech worker bubble.

Partly true and good: the friction that Quebec's language laws have created across the provincial border have allowed space for more "made in Quebec" companies that wouldn't have happened if Quebec let itself be treated as just another North American jurisdiction. It keeps the French/European cultural flair that makes it uniquely Quebec. Admittedly plenty of North American influence is still present.

Also,

Completely true and good: There is no price to be placed on something that core to cultural heritage i.e. language, that can be decided upon by someone who doesn't or hasn't historically participated in it.

Rent is cheap.