The work is remote, I still live in the same place, but I've increased my income by 3x, I don't see how I could justify staying with a Canadian company.
The kicker though is that presumably many Canadians harbour some type of fantasy in their heads of moving back home after N years, at which point the conversion of USD back to CAD can tip the balance. Historically the USD has been worth more than CAD, except for two times in 1974 and 2007.
It gets worse because Canadians that come down for "just a few years" probably end up staying longer since the original logic that drew us down in the first place is likely still valid. Throw on top the overhead and friction of uprooting your settled life (friends and maybe kids) and then it becomes even tougher to go back.
Next thing you know, you're applying for a greencard and the rest is history.
Rent is certainly higher in the Bay Area, though less higher now vs. a year ago, and even so, at the income levels we're talking here (especially if going to FAANG or a unicorn), there is very little chance you'll end up with less disposable income after rent and health care.
If you want to buy a property, you have your work cut out for you since real estate is insanely expensive, though. It's not too hard if you're a dual-income high earner couple but very hard otherwise and will take a number of years of savings. This is worse than the Vancouver/Toronto housing markets, but it's less worse than you think given how crazy they are now.
Maybe. Canada is bringing 400,000+ new immigrants per year until 2023 for permanent residence status, most of which are skilled workers of some kind. Probably a safe bet between that those three are setting up shop here in part because they can bring in international talent into North America more easily then with the US cracking down on it's immigration policies.
No idea on what effect it will have on salaries here though.
Canada is adding > 1% of its population in immigrants every year? I am curious if that is sustainable politically and economically. I suspect this will only drive down tech wages even further and put pressure on local housing markets, utilities, healthcare and social programs.
Their argument is essentially that Canada has a lot of space (especially with climate change and all [2]), and by bringing in a lot of people from other countries, that will make Canada a more competitive country on the world stage.
In my personal opinion, I don't have anything against the movement, its just that all of these people are coming to either Toronto or Vancouver, and so those cities are becoming more and more competitive, meanwhile more conservative regions like Alberta and Quebec have a labour shortage.
Also, this might have a weird effect on French (I'm a french speaker so I might be a bit biased), but a lot of the people that are coming in right now (mainly from Eastern Europe, India, & China) only speak English, and not French. So we're seeing French go the same way as Scots or Gaelic did in the UK -- slowly dying.
Overall though, as long as we ensure that the population is distributed (I guess high housing prices are a good thing), and that people learn French, the 100 million thing isn't too bad.
--- [1] - https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/canada-needs-to-get-to-100-milli...
[2] - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Ko... - Note right now, Only Toronto - Windsor has that light blue climate (same weather as New England), and in 2100 most of Canada will, while southern Ontario and BC will have the same weather as Washington or Normandy.
In theory, it could be done well, but it won't. All these other factors will be ignored which is just going to lead to a long wave of Conservative government in the future.
or sure wages are lower because of it. But I don't think there'll be much discontent just because immigration is not as heated an issue in the US, and we have more room to grow (especially on the infrastructure side).
However, we do have to consider that immigration does allow for businesses to grow faster, because our main bottleneck -- population, becomes less of a concern. Automation is a big concern in this regard, but we can just kick that can down the road.
Too bad Canada treats most of them like they came in a dinghy from some weird 3rd world country and leaves some of them in survival jobs (especially in a certain big eastern province)
> Over half of recent immigrants have a bachelor's degree or higher [0] > Recent immigrants were even more likely to have a master's or doctorate degree, with 16.7% of them holding these graduate degrees in 2016. [0]
[0]: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/daily-quotidien/171129/dq...
https://www.cicnews.com/2020/02/a-quarter-of-canadas-immigra...
This is already causing long-term social problems, like sex-selective abortion which is prevalent in Indian communities in Canada even after multiple generations:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S170121631...
If the USA is restricting immigration, and Canada is not, this is just another driver for the top talent to flee Canada to the USA.
Canada might succeed in becoming a dumping-ground of migrants, a country of cheap back-office labour and expensive housing, but that sounds like a terrible place to live or develop any cutting-edge technology.
Collusion like that would almost certainly be illegal - do you have a source for that?
If you think about it then it makes perfect sense, how else do businesses know they're offering competitive salaries, benefits, and perks?
Source: I consulted for a company that does these surveys and aggregates the results.
I would assume from how many applicants negotiate - or outright reject - their job-offers
But yeah - I forgot about the consulting companies that do the survey thing.
But we have our own! https://www.levels.fyi/
Negotiations for a custom salary are entirely normal IME.
Btw, it was also really difficult to find a primary care doctor in Vancouver at the time, when I finally found one taking patients after a while, he (an older guy who I assume just like living where he grew up) told me that the reason is that all the doctors move to the USA if they can.
"Paying salaries competitively" can also be rephrased as: "Raise as much money as you can and keep salaries on an upward trajectory". Optimising for profit is normally a good, healthy thing, but given the cheapness of capital (printing etc) sloshing about, how does one go about and build a profitable and steady company with good talent without getting yanked into this cycle?
All companies want talent, and capital has been freely available for the past 15 years in amounts previously unimaginable. It doesn't seem like there is any way to avoid this treadmill.
*Note, I am perfectly on board with paying competitive salaries, my point is that given the heavy market distortion because of all the VC money, that "competitive salary" isn't actually an accurate descriptor.
One approach might be to build a business by cleverly leveraging the value of competitively paid software engineers. You can accomplish quite a lot through focused effort. You shouldn't need fifty ICs to develop a profitable product.
Paying professionals doesn't have to come from absurdly oversized VC rounds. Sometimes it comes from steady, profitable, sustainable growth.
> *Note, I am perfectly on board with paying competitive salaries, my point is that given the heavy market distortion because of all the VC money, that "competitive salary" isn't actually an accurate descriptor.
You're right. It isn't. We should ignore the VC funded companies, and talk instead about the big players: FAANGs. That is the new definition of a competitive salary. I suspect you'll find it dwarfs that of many VC-fuelled startups.
You can be creative in the kind of perks you offer (4 hour workweek? More PTO than competitors etc). Note that there is some evidence to show that shorter work week may even result in better productivity.
Also - the USD varies at 1 to 1.5 CDN that has tremendous comparable effects.
The 'reason' is that a vastly disproportionate amount of the surpluses go to the winners.
'2cnd place is for chumps' - at least in the context of 'winner takes all' games.
Everywhere outside of the Valley is 'second place' and it's going to be hard to compete otherwise.
Another way of looking at it:
The market does not want Canada to be 1st place.
Canada is literally designing itself in every way to be a 'suburb' (i.e. as 'second place' country) - no specific identity (i.e. Post-Nation-Nation), high basic standard of living, high levels of material consumption, but no innovation, leadership or otherwise. The 'town square' is a shopping mall full of products and services designed elsewhere.
In crude market terms it's 'more efficient' to close the local coffee shop, put up a Starbucks and have workers take marching orders from Seattle where they can concentrate Product Innovation and R&D.
Canada used to have a few automakers - but with 'consolidation' they were all bought by US firms - which in raw market terms, makes some sense.
The same would happen to all protected industries: Bell/Telus, CTV/Global, CIBC/BMO - all of it them be snapped up instantly if they were not protected.
It doesn't matter if AT&T/Verizon are 'well managed' or 'poorly managed' relative to Bell/Telus - the fact is they are 15x bigger and that's that. 'Headquarters' will be in Virginia, not Toronto. And that's where the surpluses will go.
Canada brings in tons of 'educated workers' and then sends the best and brightest of them right away to the US (I've seen this happen time and time again). Who can blame anyone with 'no ties' to Canada moving on for 2x salary? So Canada gets 'good workers' ... and the US gets 'the talent'.
An Ontario MP, trying to attract Cisco to Toronto indicated that Canadians work for less salary than Americans and that he would do everything within his power to keep it that way.
So there you have literally the leadership trying to do what they can to keep salaries low, to keep the system firmly in '2cnd place', by design.
This is the Canadian National Strategy.
If you want to do something exceptional, go to specific places in the US where systems are designed for that.
The theory being that it's better than being in a left out US state like Arkansas, West Virginia etc..
In some ways, it's commendable, because Canada relative to the world has a really high standard of living, stable 'everything', good basic rights etc.. But of course, there is not a lot meaningful to do. That's the deal.
Does that salary increase make up for the lost gov benefits (free healthcate etc?)
'Gainfully Employed' people are generally better off in the US. The healthcare there is great - when you are covered.
The risk comes for those unfortunate/unforeseen situations, and of course, when one doesn't have coverage.
Overall - it's one of those factors that goes into the equation - but for a young, single talented person, usually it's not a priority - or - it factors favourably.
It's a good point because for the 'elite economy' - US healthcare is just fine. Good in fact.
For the 'everyone economy' it's arguable that Canadian style (or something like that is better).
The H/C equation kind of reinforces what I am saying: exceptionalism vs. the commons + stability.
Very dependent on where you work. High tech salaries are concentrated in California, where the tax burden at your numbers will be higher than most provinces. I remember doing a comparison of BC to California, and the cross over point was about $250k USD (where taxes become more favorable in California).
Health insurance working for a decent US tech company generally requires some out of pocket, but the amounts are really quite modest. Premiums are typically mostly paid by the employer and not considered part of your compensation. If you're single you'll probably pay nothing for insurance premiums and potentially up to a few thousand out of pocket if you're a heavy user of health care, and maybe $5k in the absolute worst case (and the out of pocket is often tax free). If you've got a family, you might pay a couple thousand per year in premiums and $10k in out of pocket maximum. These numbers are honestly chump change for people who are earning $50k-250k more, with better career prospects and more high paying employers to choose from if a particular job doesn't work out.
It's like the old bait-and-switch swindle.
Sales tax is a few % points more, property tax is actually less in general for new buyers unless you've owned a place for +15 years in CA.
You don't get a mortgage interest tax deduction, but you have an UNLIMITED cap gains exemption on the house you live in that you sell in Canada, while the USA has a limit.
The tax system is overall more straightforward and not a pile of fade outs and patches like the US tax system is. Compare Canadian RRSPs & TFSAs to the entire 401k, IRA, Roth IRA, mega backdoor roth 401k, etc mess that they have in the US. There isn't a penalty to withdrawing from your RRSP so there really isn't much of a loan concept for them either. I don't think something like AMT exists in Canada.
Cost of goods in Canada are overall more expensive than the USA.
It is all about talent retention. Up until early 2000, Canadian tech salaries at least somewhat kept pace with US salaries, albeit 20-30% lower.
After the dot com crash, however, for some god-forsaken reason, the surviving tech companies decided that keeping salaries low was the new path to profitability. Every year the HR departments in Vancouver and Toronto do a hush-hush survey among each other and fix their salaries to the exact same level - maybe 2% but usually closer to 1% higher than the previous year.
The result of 20 years of this is that Canadian tech salaries have fallen ridiculously behind those of US companies, resulting in a massive brain drain to the south.
Now that Amazon, Microsoft and Google are setting up shop right here in Canada, the talent drain away from Canadian companies is only accelerating.
I have no idea what it will take to make companies realize that long term success requires retention of top talent and that that in turn requires paying competitive salaries.