This sounds like 90% of the people I knew at Google.
> US salaries are extreme because the US work-ethic doesn't support that lifestyle.
This isn’t even remotely true.
The longest work day I've had is 40 or 50 hours without sleep to meet a deadline that and then had to be in bright and early the next morning. But there's been more then a few times a year that I ended up sleeping in the office because I missed the last 1:00am train out.
Not all Canadian companies are like that anymore then all American companies are like Amazon or Google. Nor do I claim to understand why this is the case, but at least from what I've seen, Canadian tech salaries do lag quite a lot compared to US salaries compared to the skill demanded.
> I can earn 100k in London and be very comfortable doing less than 40 hours a week, never working weekends, never doing crunch time, never being forced to work overtime, taking 6 weeks of vacation every year, sometimes more
This describes LOTS of engineers at big tech, just change 100k to 400k and 40 hours to 20
2022: everyone brags about working 20 hours a week
IT professionals in Ontario, at least, are probably exempt from most of your list of things you'd think are required.
Engineers and engineering students get an even shorter stick, in the form of more labour law exemptions.
https://www.ontario.ca/document/industries-and-jobs-exemptio...
This is pretty normal in the US too. Sure, its not "mandated" but everything besides 6 weeks of vacation is pretty common for SDE.
I think that misses a cultural difference, which is that Canada and EU jobs don't require as much work because our work ethic is different. I can earn 100k in London and be very comfortable doing less than 40 hours a week, never working weekends, never doing crunch time, never being forced to work overtime, taking 6 weeks of vacation every year, sometimes more, and half of that is legally mandated. I don't have to flat-share on 100k.
US salaries are extreme because the US work-ethic doesn't support that lifestyle. If you value your time more than your money then it's the US that provides an embarrassingly low return.