Seeing the same in Ottawa. Big startups are hiring here now. In fact, rates are quickly climbing up here from my observations - from local tech forums & job postings. Amazon & Apple jobs started popping up. Looks like companies are looking at Canada & South America due to the same timezones yet smaller rents.

Good for us, maybe I won't be moving to the states in 3 years like I originally planned.

I’m in the US and very far from SF. I have been getting a lot more recruiters from SF reaching out.

All the big tech companies are remote. What would Canada and COVID have to do with it?

Google, Apple and Netflix are definitely not remote, that's half of FAANG (not sure about FB, never applied there). Maybe you get lucky and get some unicorn remote gig there (sales typically). I've turned down all 3 in the recent past because they wouldn't let me work 100% remote and expected me in SV/Los Gatos. Even with COVID they're probably expecting people back in the office eventually, I know Google Cloud is hiring and letting people work where they are remotely until quarantine is over- then they're expected to move to the office.

Montreal and Toronto are top 2 places in the world for jobseekers and employers bailing out of the US due to visa or political issues.

No one wants to go into work so they are having a hard time finding in person employees.

No one is calling about remote.

This is what people are afraid of. If you live in a city where you have IT salaries over 100k (Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.

There was a lot of hiring early on. We might see big tech layoffs come August/September.

> companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent

That's not a bad tendency in the long run. In case remote work gains serious traction, tech workers would be eventually dispersed around the whole country, and that would drive down rents in previously expensive areas. With workers living in less expensive places, they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.

Time zones still matter, very few companies are going to go fully remote, salaries are sticky downwards, many companies are going to keep large campuses in elite cities. That said, to the degree living in NYC or SF starts to be seen as the same sort of luxury choice being made by employees that living in a prime beach location is, the comp premium will go down. Employers don't care that you like living in particular cities or that you like living somewhere you can easily hop to other local jobs and, in fact, the latter is something of a negative.

> they wouldn't need an SV salary to afford a good lifestyle.

While I agree you wouldn't need to worry about affording SV-grade housing costs, I feel like these discussions leave out a couple of things:

* The CoL is going up everywhere. Food, medical care etc... None of it is getting cheaper.

* Good houses in good school systems with reasonable access are still expensive in many areas of the country.

* It's kind of ridiculous to see companies pushing the narrative that they can suddenly pay everyone less based on arbitrary geography when the average revenue/profit generated per engineer is often many, many multiples of their total compensation costs.

This isn't true. The costs of some things are going up while others are going down. Transportation is much cheaper, for example, even without taking into account remote work. The cost of cars, gas, and auto insurance is lower than it was 20 or 30 years ago when adjusted for inflation. Education and Healthcare are getting dramatically more expensive. Clothes are much cheaper, and the cost of consumer goods in general is decreasing a lot. Think about how much a microwave cost in 1980's.

I'll concede that some durable goods are cheaper adjusted for inflation.

But at the end of the day, what has the most impact on socioeconomic mobility and overall success? It's probably not a cheap microwave.

It's access to good schools, health care, and diet. All of the things that are getting more expensive.

Cheaper gas and clothes also have hidden(less so now) costs in pollution and ethical sourcing concerns.

Good point. I'd strongly prefer cheaper healthcare and pricier gasoline to cheap gas and cost-prohibitive healthcare.

==(Seattle, San Fransisco, Chicago), companies may be using this as an opportunity to hire 'cheaper' workers in markets where you don't need that type of income to pay rent.==

To clarify for those reading, rent in Chicago is about 50-60% cheaper than Seattle or San Francisco.

Source? Are you talking 1BR or 2BR? I would put this number closer to 25-30% [1].

[1] https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare...

I was going off the Best Places COL Calculator [1]

Seattle housing: 67.9% cheaper [2]

San Francisco housing: 83.4% cheaper [3]

[1] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/

[2] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/seattle-wa/chicago...

[3] https://www.bestplaces.net/cost-of-living/san-francisco-ca/c...