Re:The Invention of Waterloo (Canada’s Technology Triangle)
by wwhchung on Monday January 09, 2012 @12:08AM
(#3441521)
We're a tech startup in Vancouver. If you're interested in coming back to Canada, please look us up. We've build up our company to be very much like what you can find in the US (i.e. ownership, high quality of talent, cool things to work on). We're always actively hiring, and we compensate very fairly, since we know we're looking for the best hackers in the world. :)
Ya, I know this sounds like a pitch, but if anyone in the US is thinking of moving back to Canada, please contact us. We've written about our reasons for opening up our primary dev shop up here, and one of them was specifically for the really great devs that wanted a cool place to work in Canada.
Our website is www.athinkingape.com It might look like a social games development shop, but it's actually much more. ;)
I started off after graduation in Seattle, where the living costs are downright identical to what you would find in Vancouver or Toronto - except I was making $100K+ total comp. Compare this with the $50-55K offers I was getting from Canadian companies, and it was a complete no-brainer.
The gap has only widened - I'm now in SF making over double what my going rate in Canada would be. The cost of living is higher (well, mostly just the rent, everything else is similar), but it doesn't even come close to canceling out the raw pay difference.
But sometimes the pay is a red herring - I know a lot of Canadian expats in the USA who would love to go home, and many are willing to take substantial pay cuts in exchange for Canadian QOL, including myself. In fact, some of us have actually investigated this option thoroughly, and the ugly truth is:
There just aren't that many interesting, challenging jobs for programmers in Canada. It's a country full of code sweatshops and satellite-office monkey labs. Interesting, fulfilling, high-impact jobs are few and far between, and incredibly hotly contested where you do see them. Compare with being in SF, where someone practically begs me to go work on their interesting, world-changing problem every week. So in order for me to go back to Canada, I'd not only have to take a >50% pay cut, but also resign myself to ye olde cubicle and TPS reports. Entirely unacceptable.