That's more than I make a year. I live in Toronto and work remotely for a Ukranian company.

How do you live in Toronto on that kind of money? As I understand it, Toronto is one of the highest cost of living areas in North America.

I rent a room. After rent, I have ~200 CAD net positive, which covers food and gym. I can't really accumulate money at this point, but I have existing savings and a few investments.

The opposite would make more sense.

I cannot work for a Canadian company because nobody is hiring juniors.

I cannot live in Ukraine because they will send me to war if I go there.

15k / year in Toronto? How is that even possible?

You mean 15k / year in Eastern Europe whilst living in Toronto. Probably young and renting with roommates or family.

What I mean is 15k/year is not enough to live in Toronto, unless you live with your parents who then also feed you and you never go out

I go out all the time to read books, it's great. Only downside I sometimes bump into junkies smoking weed in parks.

why would you do that to yourself?

Because this is the only way I can work as a software developer.

Surely there are contract gigs elsewhere in the world that will pay better and not ask complicated legal questions

Maybe there are, but I don't know. It seems pointless to try Fiverr and similar platforms, because it seems they are already flooded with freelancers. But I never did contracting so I am pretty clueless about that. I've read old HN threads and the general consensus seems to be that you have to have connections to get customers.

back in the bad old days id trawl craigslist and find cash poor startups. they were shitty gigs but at least enough to bootstrap a career

The vast majority of countries in SS Africa, including ones with quite good QoL (Zambia, Botswana, Cote d'Ivoire, etc).

Cuba