I am a Canadian tech worker clearing about C$400k/yr total comp as a Staff Eng. I pay $5k for my mortgage.

Taxed once. I work for a SF company that has set up a Canadian arm of the business.

Despite all that, it’s a bargain compared to Bay Area pay.

Safe to say your salary is an anomaly in the Canadian tech landscape.

As a staff eng? That is a fairly high rank. Doesn't sound that crazy.

Others can comment with their experience but my guess was informed by recent job searches and forums, albeit not for this title. Doing a search right now for a Staff Engineer in Toronto seems to hint at 180 - 200K CAD being the upper limit.

You are an outlier and only because you work for an American Company that pays you what they might pay locally in SF. Perhaps they don't know they could pay you 1/2 of that easily....

On a tangent what are you're taxes like, 52%?

53.5% is the marginal rate. All cap gains are at the same rate.

Net out, about 38% overall.

Another Canadian tech worker here. There were two very talented devs I know that took $11/hr CAD jobs personally before minimum wage went up to $15/hr. I know of more with rough salaries $40,000 and below.

Hate to say it but you are the outlier.

> Basement apartment for 3k a month

Even vancouver isn't the bad.

But its a remote world, just live somewhere normal priced.

> taxed at 45% and even double taxed

Why would you be double taxed? Although the highest marginal rate is more than 45%.

> so your 60-100k

Pretty shitty tech job if that is all you are making.

There isn’t anywhere normal priced

If you live away from civilization, and I mean really isolated, like 20 hours driving to get to a nice city, you are still gonna pay roughly 1000 dollars for a 1 bedroom apartment

Hi. I live alone in downtown Montreal. I pay 999 CAD a month for a 1-bedroom apartment, sublet. This includes furniture, electricity, heat, Internet.

I have friends who are renting a shared flat, works out to ~650 CAD / person, in a nice area (Plateau Mont Royal).

I'm not claiming two data points are representative of the whole distribution, and things are not great at all in terms of inflation / the housing market is tough, but there's no need to resort to gross exaggerations.

Obviously shared doesn’t count, most people don’t share a place because they want to but rather because they need to

Also, Quebec is cheaper than the rest of the country (probably because of language + anti immigration provincial agenda)

I live in a city in the praries away from civilization and pay over 1000 dollars for a 1 bedroom

I do not mean to discount your experience; I'm simply disproving the assertion that there isn't anywhere normal priced. Montreal is a major city with a lot of tech companies and research activity, so I think it is worth mentioning as more than a simple counterexample.

If you're a US citizen you are only allowed to make last I looked 127k USD if working in Canada (or anywhere else). After 127k USD any money earned is taxed by the USA. But not to worry, if you go to Canada for a tech job you won't earn anywhere near 127k USD. You'll be very lucky to earn a 100k CAD and that will amount to about 58k or less take home. Rent will eat at least 35k of that which doesn't leave much for everything else. After all is said and done you are living hand to mouth and forget ever trying to settle down and buy a house or maybe even a 500sq/ft Condo, both will require decades of saving for just a down payment.