Given the upheaval, instant support network and an inalienable right to enter and stay in the UK, I agree wholeheartedly with your top choice. It's just safer until you can circle the wagons and plan the next move.
Specific tech hot spots are Vancouver/Waterloo/Toronto/Montreal. The weather and healthcare are things you need to get used to, but gorgeous environment with friendly, diverse, and well educated population.
If you're at a top tech company you're doing better relative to non tech than in the US.
If you're left of center politically it's also way less stressful in Canada compared to US.
Levels.fyi shows a much higher median of 130k USD for the whole country, but is also based on many FAANG jobs -- https://www.levels.fyi/Salaries/Software-Engineer/Canada/
Canadian salaries are pretty awful, and it’s not uncommon to see job listings looking for a sr eng with 8 years of exp and offering like 90-110k.
Outliers exist, but even for top tier companies Canadian compensation is gonna be lower.
Not a bad place if you’ve got persistent health issues or maybe if you want to raise a family, but other than that it’s pretty shitty IMO. I’m personally going to try my hardest to move down south as soon as this corona stuff starts settling down.
Y'know, for years I heard this same basic story about everywhere in Europe too, IE: the money is no good. As I age though... money really isn't everything... if you can make enough to pay your bills and have a quality life, I'd take that over the rat race of the US. When the kids are raised here, my partner and I aren't likely to stick around, so I am watching this thread with great interest as well. And hoping all of you fleeing places of persecution make it safely to better places.
Some quick math and random internet sources, and moving from Vancouver to Silicon Valley would net me about a 40% haircut just on the increased cost of living.
I currently pay taxes on par with California. (Just looking at state/provincial+federal. No FICA/CPP/etc.)
Locally, we have offices for Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Hootsuite, Slack, Salesforce, Disney, Samsung, SAP, Sony, Oracle, MasterCard, Activision, Capcom, etc, etc. Lots of options.
Looking at some average salaries in Silicon Valley, it'd pretty much be a wash on the increased pay versus the increased expenses. And I have no doubt if I dig around I can tip that more in my favour. For instance, I visited an emergency room once this year and my wife had a difficult delivery when our daughter was born. I'm currently down about $100 on an ambulance ride, parking at the women & children's hospital, and coffee while I was living at the hospital. I have no doubt that could have easily eaten up the difference even with insurance.
And I certainly wouldn't put the quality of life in Canada as worse than the US.
And before you say: oh, they're different from us, remember that Sarajevo was a modern city that hosted the winter Olympics 8 years before brutal war broke out. Most of its citizens thought the idea of war happening was absolutely preposterous, until it wasn't.
Are you still so sure about the idea of internal civil strife being "unsubstantiated fear mongering"?
And by the way, race-based civil conflict is only a small part of the structural problems I'm worried about. There are multiple deeper, more dangerous threats on the horizon.
For example, are you sure that Trump will peacefully vacate the office if he loses the election? If not, what exactly do you think will happen then?
Finally, not that this matters a whole lot to me, but to provide you with "substantiation" that you may accept, many mainstream media outlets have covered this in detail in the past year or two. Here are just a couple, Google keywords such as "US civil war 2" (just "civil war" turns up Avengers stuff) and "boogaloo" for more mainstream media coverage:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/in-america-talk-turn...
https://www.macleans.ca/society/america-is-deeply-divided-an...
I don't get out much but it doesn't seem likely to me that internal civil strife will actually break out in widespread violence. Who would fight whom, and to what end? A lot of us are mad at each other, sure, but we don't really want to shoot each other. South Park did a whole episode on it.
A military coup? Having worked in a 3-star general's headquarters for years......absolutely not.
I honestly haven't followed most of the domestic US insanity since COVID-19 descended on the world. I checked in with family members "Have you cleaned your firearms? Buy some more ammo. Do you still have MREs? Double your bottled water supply too." and then tuned out a bit after the news everyday was basically "more people die in NYC".
How about the WA state senator exposed as a member of a militia group which wants to overthrow the government? Or the protesters who hung an effigy of the KY governor in his front lawn last week? There are dozens of groups like this which want to kill. You are being willfully blind to it because you don’t want to believe it.
Just be aware, the data is supposed to be in USD, but some people may still be reporting CAD.
London is London - the only city that can hold a candle to it is New York and having spent time in the latter I prefer London. ;) Basically it has anything you want shopping , hobby, entertainment, food whatever within 1h on public transport. Accommodation is expensive but it’s actually cheaper compared to HK. Current virus shutdown notwithstanding, there’s plenty of IT work here. We live in SE (Zone 4) and it’s nice and leafy area and we can still be in the centre in less than 30 mins.
Canada is quite a different way of life - more relaxed but a bit boring IMO (my opinion might well change as I get older). Toronto is OK - the city is too American looking for my liking but I didn’t spend much time there to really know it. Traffic is a big problem. Large Chinese community there - around Markham where we go is practically all Chinese. The food is excellent - much better Chinese food and seafood than London. Very clean and pleasant neighbourhood. Everything is really spread out though - outside the city going somewhere is at least 20min drive. Going somewhere else in Canada is a serious journey - it is a huge country with lots of empty space in between. Trains and flights are expensive.
I am personally biased against London and I believe it is a vastly overrated bubble, and I much prefer small cities and large towns. Rural areas can also be, unexpectedly, much easier places to make friendships if you are ok with picking up volunteering, and would be much more comfortable and picturesque than London.
I'm assuming at your age you're not doing late-night entertainment frequently - in that case you can live a fairly long way out of London and still make good use of it. You can be 50 minutes from London Bridge and live surrounded by green fields.
For the longer term, Australian state capital cities are probably the most liveable locations in the world. There is little demand for apartments, so small-space urban living is comparatively affordable.
What can you call a "normal country" these days?
A dozen some names will come up, but would there be any which aren't "retirement communes" for the rich like Canada? Not many of them have the same vibe, and dynamism. Quite a lot do actually stagnate.
What truly matters is the lack of stress from the truly adversarial environment that London's commute represents. (Though, having been to HK also, I guess London is actually not too different, in terms of what stereotypical, huge cities are like.)
You'll probably get out of one trouble into another.
That said, I'm open to other options; for example, I really liked Berlin as a tourist, but need to research more on what it's like to actually live there.
I personally like plenty about the culture shown (hard work, raising kids in alternative education outdoors, strong sense of community, their obsession with efficiency but liberal vacation time/work benefits), but I could see it turning some people off. Also of note they went to Nuremberg and he took a job at a pencil factory, which may be more traditional Germany than you'd experience in Berlin or other urban areas.
Denmark/Norway/Iceland/Sweden should also be on your radar also Netherlands/Belgium.
As a 40 year old software eng manager, where should I go? My top choice at the moment is London as my wife has British citizenship and several of my wife's friends are in Europe; I also have access to the E-3 visa so the US is also an option.