I listened to the podcast yesterday and while the premise is correct, the episode is actually lousy at explaining any of it, discussing anything that happened at the meetings with "leaders", and ultimately had the wrong people discussing the topic. This ended sounding like a platform for Dan Debow to talk about whatever agenda he wanted with little REAL pushback from the host.
The only reassuring thing about this podcast was the brief mention that Ted Livingston (of Kik) was at those talks with so-called "leaders of Canada". I mean, do we really expect the likes of Galen Weston, Magna International, and the like to really talk about innovation or tech? Other than Kik, which of those companies would any person on HN really be interested in working at?
This is sadly how policy decisions get made in government. The smart people building stuff are usually busy building stuff and are turned off of events with titles like "leaders of Canada". At the same time, a lot of the successful Canadian founders, who would have time for this, found success via acquisition by US companies and aren't around to attend.
I'm curious if there are articles about Canada hemorrhaging math/finance talent to New York? Or is this just something we perpetually complain about in tech as if talent/industry centralization wasn't a phenomenon in almost every big new market in history.
All of our good Canadian musicians, comedians, and actors go to the US and become big, countless have done so. That's how we can tell if their good or not, usually. And nothings wrong with that. No one complained when Drake signed to a US label when his new career took off...
When I was searching for jobs, could not just believe the startup offers. $35K - $45K in Vancouver. I would have felt like a slave working for that kind of money in Vancouver. Albertan co-op guy would easily earn double that. I have not researched other nuances of this situation, but it put me off that scene entirely. Unfortunately, great white north will keep bleeding talent.
They were all coding/programming roles. I am not from comp sci, was fresh out of uni and only had limited programming experience. I asked the recruiters why are they extending me the offers at all then?
Okay, then that's not as surprising. If you have a comp sci or engineering background it would be different. Breaking into the industry is hard without the correct education background. Until you have experience companies will lowball you to compensate for the risk involved in hiring you. This is the same pretty much anywhere.
I have engineering background, just not comp sci one. In the end, I made six figures and some hefty bonuses right out of school. Don't offer me the job, but don't try to lowball me.
They likely knew they would have to train you in multiple areas, but liked your hustle and made an offer based on the cost of training you. At least, that's what I'd do - if you have limited experience, I'd need to teach you how to write code, how to work with code reviews, versioning control, etc, etc.
If the start-ups were taking a chance on me, they always had their 3 months of probation. Don't take it out on my pay. That stuff affords me my milk and eggs.
I learnt ML, sensor stuff, R, python and all other stuff in my first job right out of school. Made easy six figures (+ benefits and hefty bonuses) without any recruiter haggling, and am in comfortable position now. Because I turned towards traditional engineering companies, and then went there and did what I wanted to do as I got an understanding and tech oriented manager. I changed a lot of internal workings in that company.
It's not that far off. $120K is somewhere near normal at Google and a decent startup. Not including exchange rate, but most of the exchange is eaten up in cost of living.
Exchange can be normalized for most us/ca comparisions, i.e. 100K in Canada is only 70K US but most prices are normalized for that.
The Bay Area is mind-boggling expensive though - and you'd all be naive to not consider that.
My flat in Montreal would be $5500 a month, USD anywhere in SF. It's amazing. And cheap.
Also consider that startups in the US have to cover healthcare, which is very expensive. That said, if you have healthcare in the US, it's better than in Canada. Again, it doesn't really matter for normal people under the age of 30.
$35-45k sounds insane for Vancouver. FWIW, jobs I currently see advertised in the Toronto/Waterloo region (both on Stack Overflow and by recruiters) for mid-level devs are more like $70k-$110k.
That's about what I was offered in Calgary a few years back while I made 3x that in Vancouver. I had wanted to move to Calgary for personal reasons but I couldn't imagine taking a 70% salary hit in a city known to pay very well for any average job (while oil was still strong). Canada is weird I guess.
If you want canadian talent you can get it, but you cannot pretend you deserve it. You must work for it.That means identifying talent in university before the Microsoft or Google recruiters get ahold of their resume. It means finding developers before the skill is obvious for the big corps. Then you treat them well and have them start their career before graduation.
During my university the local division of Coverity did a good job of this. They sponsored the programming club events. They sent real engineers to every career fair. They gave internships to 2 years. They kept on skilled programmers throughout the year. One guy I knew got married and bought a house while working part time there even before graduation.
I would say that company grabbed the majority of the high-performing nice-to-work-with students from my year. The only ones they did not get was me (video game programming japan), and my friend (C++ standard library programming at google).
Or you could whine about why you deserve to get Canada's best at insulting wages. Maybe that will work.
>Or you could whine about why you deserve to get Canada's best at insulting wages. Maybe that will work.
Had a opportunity with a Ontario based startup, their starting package was 40k and they wanted me to relocate. When pushing for a better salary, I was told this was the best they could offer. Fucking insulting wage for a backend developer (Go/Appengine)
Again and again, why don't Canadian companies understand that CS graduate can easily earn 100k in the states and can actually afford a house? How can they offer what they offer and stay competitive?
I grew up in Vancouver, went to high-school there, whet to UBC there. My family is in Vancouver. The majority of my friends are in Vancouver. I own real-estate in Vancouver. I eventually want to move back to Vancouver. I can safely say I love Vancouver. However, I currently live in Seattle. Why? The money!
As frustrating as it is to admit, and as uninteresting as it is, the simple answer is usually the most appropriate:
Canadian companies like their tier-2 low wage talent (and some tier-1 low wage talent - who prefer Canada). Its good enough for their usecases, and it gets the job done. Meanwhile, they like to complain that they can't hire tier-1 low wage talent.
Seems the philosophy Canada is going with is 'revolving-door', by balancing emigration with immigration[1][2]. What happens when the economy slows and there's record household debt? There should be more bedrock jobs than just a derivative function of the global economy.
As a naive college graduate, I accepted a package that pathetic to commute from Brampton to Markham every day. I might as well have been paying them for the privilege of working!
Any Canadian developer will tell you the problem is the abysmal pay that Canadian companies offer.
I love my country and would love nothing more than to stay here, but when moving south of the border means a 50% bump, it's hard to stay in Canada.
It doesn't help that most Canadian CEOs talk about the issue as if they're entitled to Canadian graduates working for them without making any attempt at matching US pay packages.
You will. If you're at UW and/or have a competitive portfolio you can expect entry-level US (read: Bay Area) offers to be about 2x Canadian ones in terms total comp if you ignore exchange rate (more if you include it). If you're good, that's going to scale to about 3-5x what you get in Canada after a few years.
And don't let anybody get on you about the cost of living. You can live pretty inexpensively in San Francisco, as you can in any city, if you're willing to make some sacrifices (roommates, transit).
... with people talking about offers for mid-level developers in Toronto / Vancouver being in the $70k - $110k range, are you claiming that you can pull in $280k - $440k for a software development position? If not, then I would think that this pay difference converges the more experience you have, no?
with the exchange rate maybe. I have talented friends in Toronto who tell me it pretty much caps at $100k CAD. Whereas at a comparable talent and experience level, the range in the Bay Area is $175-300k USD = $240-400k CAD. And this excluding the outliers who got lucky and joined pre-IPO.
The qualifier there is "in the Bay Area". I get the impression you could easily replace "Canada/Toronto/Vancouver" with "Midwest" and be mostly accurate.
Also, while this:
> $175-300k USD = $240-400k CAD
is accurate, it fluctuates. Back in 2008 CAD and USD were at par with CAD actually exceeding USD for periods. Also, unless you're living in Canada and getting paid in USD (or hoarding cash to return to living in Canada) the exchange rate shouldn't really mean much in terms of your career choices. It makes more sense to measure those salaries against local cost of living / quality of living / etc.
What do you mean by this? After taxes, rent, food and other living costs, you're keeping almost 50% of your compensation to spend on whatever you want. How does purchasing power not matter? How much does a car cost in Canada? An iPhone? How much does a flight to Japan cost or a dinner in Tokyo? Of course the exchange rate is relevant even when you're not "hoarding" cash and have no intentions to return to Canada.
What you really want to be doing is comparing local purchasing power to local purchasing power, unless you're looking into cross-currency transactions. Sure local purchasing power can be affected by exchange rate (e.g. things that depend on imports), but that's indirect and is a bit more complicated than doing a direct currency conversion on your yearly (pre-tax) salary.
Hehe, I remember that bold claim accmpanying my first Canadian visa. "Your permission to enter Canada is privilege and not a right, and can be revoked at any moment". I doubt this attitude changed. New Zealand is way less snobbish.
"Natural rights" are mostly a thing insofar as a mob of people that sees person A taking away what they consider a "natural right" of person B, will attack person A.
Thus, if the populist sentiment of the people of some land-mass is that you don't have a right to be there with them, then you don't, no matter what abstract arguments you might give to the contrary. Your rights only extend as far as others' willingness to enforce them for you.
> Any Canadian developer will tell you the problem is the abysmal pay that Canadian companies offer.
Companies can't pay money they don't have. In my experience as a Canadian founder, Canadian companies are just poorer. We'd love to pay more but then we'd be bankrupt.
Most US "companies" which hire tech talent, aren't looking to scale up "businesses" which are cashflow positive. These "startups" are effectively bankrupt relying entirely on their current runways and their bi-annual VC injections.
Like they said in the video, Canadians for better or worse are inherently more risk averse than their American counter parts. Even more appropriately the entrepreneurs which stay in Canada vs move on faith to the bay, are tautologically less risk averse.
To look at this from a different perspective, Canada may just be living with a sustainable tech sector.
Its like watching/envying your neighbors as they come home from their third sunny vacation, this year, to their over sized house and driveway with two Mercedes. But that envy would quickly disappear if you ever got a chance to look at their books. You'd see they just took out a second mortgage on the house, when they could barely pay for the first one, so they could continue to finance their cars. Meanwhile, they still have so much additional debt accruing it really should be criminal.
I really wouldn't know though.. I'm a risk averse Canadian, whose just sorta hoping I've found a sweet spot on the risk-reward line.
A large portion of the high wages are coming out of sustainable companies, so I don't think you can blame this on startups. Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, etc. are all outpaying Canada's tech sector by huge margins yet somehow make a profit.
Are not most of your customers (at least for tech companies) in the US? Wouldn't the weak Canadian dollar help you in that respect? I understand taxes are higher in Canada, but in the US most tech companies have to contribute to medical insurance.
In our case, most of our customers are not in the US. But, with the exception of local customers and
and customers that have Canadian subsidiaries (we deal mainly with enterprise customers) -- most customers pay in USD. If you're a large US tech company looking to near-shore, the low dollar is great; but, not so much if you're a local company.
* Our non-salary expenses are largely paid in USD (hosting, cloud services, etc)
* Developer salaries are in a global-ish market and we've seen salaries shoot up greatly because of the falling dollar to compete the falling purchasing power of the CAD
* Large US companies opening up local development offices further driving the
* Revenues lag the costs of salaries and other services -- we have to pay our staff, hosting, cloud services before we receive revenue. Of course, this is always the case, but with the falling dollar you feel it more, especially in the case of salaries
In short, this is not manufacturing where your inputs and salaries are largely localized. At best the falling dollar is a push and at worst it's a negative impact. Really, it's currency volatility that is more the issue, if it would stabilize and stay that way for a few years, it would make planning and adapting much easier. This year alone, we've seen 0.68 dollar and a 0.79 dollar.
Add to this:
* The general "Canadian Discount" US VC give to Canadian companies and the stinginess of Canadian VC
* The SRED roulette -- it's not really free money as described, you have to spend it then pray the government will give you the tax credits. In my experience what's decided as SRED-able can really depend on who the reviewer is, it's more of a lottery than anything else unless you can dedicate someone basically full time maintaining SRED records. Also, you can't pay for salaries and services with tax credits -- they only help for the next year if you have profits.
Actually, corporate taxes are lower for a Canadian Controlled Corporation than the equivalent US company, but that doesn't really factor into things like salaries. Taxes are on profits and salaries are before profits. Also, most Canadian companies, especially in the tech sector, also have to contribute to medical insurance. You're going to have a hard time recruiting without extended health care benefits.
All that said, I am positive on running a company here. Just would like less uncertainty in terms of exchange rates.
Keep in mind that because Canada has no public dental coverage, people who live the serial-entrepreneurship life, never signing on with companies large enough to have benefits-plans, just have constantly worsening teeth. I have a non-negligible number of friends here who want to work at a bigcorp for a while just so they can finally get coverage to do 5+ root canals. (As it stands, they're just constantly taking anti-inflammatories and antibiotics to get through the days.)
You can get your dental work done in third world countries for cash for cheap. I got my wisdom tooth out for $30 in Vietnam. Same procedure is $400 in Canada.
Taxes aren't necessarily higher (at least compared to California) if you consider things like healthcare costs and university tuition over your whole lifetime. But yes, goods costs and taxes will be higher.
I'd be ok with taking the "hometown discount" and being being paid much less if it was cheap to live here in Canada, but it's not. The cost of living is dramatically increasing and housing hyperinflation has made made Vancouver and Toronto totally unviable places to start a family for almost everyone.
Unsurprisingly plenty of people with in demand skills that travel are looking at the exit or are already gone.
I grew up in Vancouver and miss it daily but none of the salaries would allow me to purchase a house anywhere closer than New Westminster. Instead now I live in Sydney, Aus and have the same cost of living but a salary that's scaled appropriately.
It'll never stop being an issue. You're in tech you go to SV, you're in entertainment you go to LA, you're in international criminal law you go to The Hague, you're in particle smashing you go to Europe, you're into iron ore mining you go to Perth, etc.
Countries will just blow tax money trying to change things. Focus on your core competencies.
When I was searching for entry level SWE jobs in Canada in 2011 after abruptly dropping out of grad school, I applied to ~50 positions and interviewed at around a dozen (public+private sector) in Vancouver + Alberta, all paying $50K-$60K.
A year later, Google swooped in with an offer that quintupled my compensation. The thing that struck me about it most was the supposedly-intense Google programmer interviews were actually far less difficult than most of the all-day interviews I did for Canadian institutions. I was a bit outraged that these interviews could be so tough for such meager compensation, especially given the cost of living in Vancouver. I was surprised they were able to get away with it, and it looks like it's starting to bite them in the ass, for which I am glad.
Edit: The specific places I would name, if anyone's curious, are Zymeworks and SAP in Vancouver, as well as staff research positions at UBC, University of Calgary, and the BC Cancer Agency.
I am a UofA graduate. Back when oilpatch was throwing big money at companies, me and my manager identified a solid start-up opportunity. I contacted two UofA comp sci guys, and they were not willing to come onboard because they were going to US. Right out of the gate, we could afford five six figure salaries, but we had to abide by some restrictions. I tried a lot to build that startup, but we just could not. As the comment above mentioned, get to them before Google, MS or Intel does; and cultivate a relationship.
yeah, sure. for google/apple/facebook/etc. 150k cash + 100k+ equity and bonus compensation sounds about right. on a good year, add another 100k. on a really good year, add another 250k. on a really really good year, add a couple million. who do you think is buying all these houses?
the first step to making this kind of money is not settling for anything less, because opportunity is the biggest cost. when was the last time you turned down 150k to wait for a better offer?
It varied. The biggest difference is the Canadian interviews covered a lot more ground and asked very specific, fact-based questions. I interviewed for a bioinformatics research position at some podunk Sunflower genomics lab at UBC, and their several hour long interview consisted of questions that went pretty deep on C++, Perl, Linux sysadmin stuff, and molecular biology, and was followed by a round-table interview where ~15 people grilled me on like, BS HR stuff (stereotypical "give us an example of how you used conflict resolution in the workplace" type questions). For a position that paid around $40K! That's probably the toughest interview I've ever given. It's mind-boggling that they are able to hire people, in retrospect.
Thinking about everything else said in this thread, I think the type of interviews these companies do sort of make sense. After all, all the good talent that knows its own value is already gone; all that's left is a mix of the incompetent and the undervalued, and they're trying to pick out the undervalued.
That requires a lot more rigour than the US process, which basically consists of "hey, we're offering [huge salary], compete for it."
>Canada is a great place to live for most people, frankly, probably better than the US.
No it's not. Most youth have zero dreams related to property ownership, as everything near the core and cities that are near the core are prohibitively expensive. There is a general apathy and malaise here.
"Just move outside of the city" they say, to suburbs that are also priced 500k+, and just far enough to only have to spend an hour and a half commuting to your city job.
Having lived all over the world, all over Canada, and in Texas and Cali for many years, I can assure you that Canada is pretty good.
You have clearly never lived in the Silicon Valley if you're talking about housing.
Housing in the Valley is beyond unaffordable. A choice job at Google and you still won't be buying a home.
You're probably young, and single. Your class has always struggled with home ownership. Most couples can afford to get in on the housing ladder by buying and apartment, and in some year, buy a home.
That said - Toronto and Vancouver are distorted markets right now. Everywhere else in Canada is pretty normal and home ownership is similar to most places in the US that are not NYC/SF.
> A choice job at Google and you still won't be buying a home.
That's just not true. Housing is very expensive, but a "choice" job at Google pays enough to buy a home. The same goes for Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and the other large companies. Their compensation for mid- and senior-level people is so good that it's difficult to convince them to leave, even for considerable startup equity.
> Most devs with a few years experience won't earn that.
You referred to "choice" jobs. Those aren't jobs for people with a few years of experience. Think 5-10 years.
Furthermore, I can assure you that a huge number of people at Google clear $200k per year in total compensation, which includes a high salary, stock, and bonuses. I know people at other companies I've mentioned who do so as well, with less than 10 years of experience in the industry.
There are also plenty of homes that cost less than the median -- in fact, half of them do...
> Most devs with a few years experience won't earn that.
How sure of that are you? I don't have a lot of data points, but 3.5 years of experience got me a 270k offer from Google. I find it hard to believe it was _that_ much higher than average.
>Most youth have zero dreams related to property ownership
So what? If renting is a better financial decision than buying in a particular market, you rent. It's that simple, or else you're making an emotional decision based on value judgments rather than objective measures of benefit or cost.
The USA has lower prices because poor people earn very little, with no social safety net. I believe health care insurance is also rather expensive in the USA!
Not to say Canada is perfect but yes there is a cost to social cohesion.
Amusingly, I've been informed that my company's corporate overlords have decided to focus on growing Vancouver as their "centralized" west-coast-development location, rather than Seattle, primarily due to salaries.
So I guess we'll have to see if that works out for them.
For awhile Facebook was using their Vancouver office to 'park' foreign talent until they could secure H1Bs for them to go to the US offices, because it was much easier to get a work visa for that talent in Canada.
Actually Vancouver is never ranked in the top ten most expensive cities in the world. This is a myth that gets put around Vancouver due to Demographia's horrible annual which gets broadcast everywhere and horribly misinterpreted. They only look at a handful of Anglosphere cities and only look at housing affordability. But housing affordability is meaningless for gauging how expensive a city is -- you don't have to buy a house, you can rent, etc. Also, they have a stated goal of encouraging lower density and promoting sprawl and have ties to the automotive industry.
If you look at actual studies of the cost of living in cities around the world, like from Mercer or the Economist, Vancouver is closer to the upper middle in terms of cost of living.
Vancouver literally has a 0.5% rental vacancy rate right now. If you put up an ad on Craigslist for an apartment for rent it'll get 50 replies in two hours. People are getting into bidding wars on apartments.
Yes, it's an increasingly tight market right now -- I just moved at the start of August -- but rents are still reasonable here for a city of Vancouver's size and development. Though this may change if the market if the current tightness, which only started about 6 months ago, maintains for a few years.
The point remains, if you rent in Vancouver the city doesn't rank very high on the most expensive cities in the world list.
I'm not sure what you're saying here: the value of a commodity is measured by the probability distribution of being able to buy that commodity for a given price. If it's hard to find a unit to rent at price $X, that's the same thing as units being more expensive than $X. Imagine paying an agent to watch MLS and leap on offers for you, or paying other people to temporarily leave the market, or just spending your work-hours at home on the phone to realtors, etc. The inefficiency of those things is, itself, part of the cost of the unit.
Does anyone know why the pay is so much lower? It seems lame to blame it on "culture" (if it's really true, that's a great arbitrage opportunity). Are there systemic country-wide forces that push down on the salaries?
Especially since in Europe/UK, developer starting salaries are less than comparable salaries in US/Canada/Aus IMO. So they'd be happy with less to start off with, and chances of them moving to the US are smaller, because they can't get TN visas.
Actually planning that move myself. My Canadian wife and I had it planned before Brexit, but Brexit seems to have justified it! Threads like this are a little disconcerting however.
As others have said, the salaries aren't particularly enticing and this is being felt strongly in a place as expensive as Vancouver. Interestingly, I think this might drive a boost in immigration - the reason I can stay in Vancouver is by having my job here, or going through the immigration ordeal with another company. I don't think it's a particularly healthy situation whichever way you look at it.
The issue is the wages, in Vancouver where a house is easily in the many millions companies seem to think it's fine and dandy to pay 80k a year in the high range, ultra high range is 120k/y and get this - low level assembly and C programming generally pays less than ruby or js.
Getting by as a tech worker in Canada is possible. The way I made it work was to take remote roles. Don't live in the Vancouver or Toronto areas, if possible - that's just not going to work, given the out-of-control cost of living associated with both areas. There are still plenty of places one can live in Canada that are not saddled with such costs.
We should be able to thrive in a well paid job in a place that we want and like (not like we are entitled or anything this applies to any job everywhere).
What exactly is the benefit of living in Canada if you're outside of the cities, anyway? From what I can see (having lived in both urban and rural Canada, and the US) Canadian cities have a unique character, but rural Canada is pretty much the same as rural America. If you don't care about living "near" anything, why does it matter what country you're doing it in?
Companies in Canada don't pay as much because a) there is a talent pool who will take what they are offering, b) they don't make enough revenue from a given dev to justify high salaries, or c) their investors do not see the risk/reward payoff of investing in top tier devs.
As for a), yes, Canada's multiculturalism attracts migrants, who in spite of their talent have a crappy negotiating position and are easily taken advantage of. Everyone has a story of the guy who barely speaks english but who can code getting worked like a dog for peanuts.
for b) for software in Canada, you sell to the 5 banks or government. it's recurring license fees from stable customers but in a limited market.
And c) there is no market for software in canada that would justify a billion dollar valuation. Those valuations were based on cornering a user base to use as a sales channel.
Further Canada's de-facto official policy of currency debasement to keep industrial exports afloat means limited purchasing power for citizens, therefore anything that succeeds has to succeed somewhere else.
It's a great place to outsource your dev shop, kind of like a more reliable India or Belarus, but as a market it's just not large enough for to reap the network effect / micro-margin/infinite scale benefits of software solutions.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 187 ms ] threadThe only reassuring thing about this podcast was the brief mention that Ted Livingston (of Kik) was at those talks with so-called "leaders of Canada". I mean, do we really expect the likes of Galen Weston, Magna International, and the like to really talk about innovation or tech? Other than Kik, which of those companies would any person on HN really be interested in working at?
I'm curious if there are articles about Canada hemorrhaging math/finance talent to New York? Or is this just something we perpetually complain about in tech as if talent/industry centralization wasn't a phenomenon in almost every big new market in history.
All of our good Canadian musicians, comedians, and actors go to the US and become big, countless have done so. That's how we can tell if their good or not, usually. And nothings wrong with that. No one complained when Drake signed to a US label when his new career took off...
It's almost impossible to do anything A++ in Canada because it gets sucked into the US.
So Canada is a great place for the 99%, but for anything that's exceptional, it's the US.
The way market economies work 'exceptional' companies suck up most of the profits and surpluses ...
So it's a perennial problem for the talented.
But again, for most people, Canada is a better place if you can hack the weather.
Not the Tragically Hip. But they always seemed happy with that.
But they never sold their souls to the States and they seem very proud of it.
I learnt ML, sensor stuff, R, python and all other stuff in my first job right out of school. Made easy six figures (+ benefits and hefty bonuses) without any recruiter haggling, and am in comfortable position now. Because I turned towards traditional engineering companies, and then went there and did what I wanted to do as I got an understanding and tech oriented manager. I changed a lot of internal workings in that company.
Exchange can be normalized for most us/ca comparisions, i.e. 100K in Canada is only 70K US but most prices are normalized for that.
The Bay Area is mind-boggling expensive though - and you'd all be naive to not consider that.
My flat in Montreal would be $5500 a month, USD anywhere in SF. It's amazing. And cheap.
Also consider that startups in the US have to cover healthcare, which is very expensive. That said, if you have healthcare in the US, it's better than in Canada. Again, it doesn't really matter for normal people under the age of 30.
During my university the local division of Coverity did a good job of this. They sponsored the programming club events. They sent real engineers to every career fair. They gave internships to 2 years. They kept on skilled programmers throughout the year. One guy I knew got married and bought a house while working part time there even before graduation.
I would say that company grabbed the majority of the high-performing nice-to-work-with students from my year. The only ones they did not get was me (video game programming japan), and my friend (C++ standard library programming at google).
Or you could whine about why you deserve to get Canada's best at insulting wages. Maybe that will work.
Had a opportunity with a Ontario based startup, their starting package was 40k and they wanted me to relocate. When pushing for a better salary, I was told this was the best they could offer. Fucking insulting wage for a backend developer (Go/Appengine)
As frustrating as it is to admit, and as uninteresting as it is, the simple answer is usually the most appropriate:
Canadian companies like their tier-2 low wage talent (and some tier-1 low wage talent - who prefer Canada). Its good enough for their usecases, and it gets the job done. Meanwhile, they like to complain that they can't hire tier-1 low wage talent.
That is the only answer I can come up with!
[1]http://www.canadianbusiness.com/innovation/how-canadas-immig...
[2] http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/john-mccallum-substantially-...
I love my country and would love nothing more than to stay here, but when moving south of the border means a 50% bump, it's hard to stay in Canada.
It doesn't help that most Canadian CEOs talk about the issue as if they're entitled to Canadian graduates working for them without making any attempt at matching US pay packages.
I'm just shy of 4x.
I should have mentioned I'm still a student. I'm sure that for a senior developer, the difference is significantly larger.
And don't let anybody get on you about the cost of living. You can live pretty inexpensively in San Francisco, as you can in any city, if you're willing to make some sacrifices (roommates, transit).
Also, while this:
> $175-300k USD = $240-400k CAD
is accurate, it fluctuates. Back in 2008 CAD and USD were at par with CAD actually exceeding USD for periods. Also, unless you're living in Canada and getting paid in USD (or hoarding cash to return to living in Canada) the exchange rate shouldn't really mean much in terms of your career choices. It makes more sense to measure those salaries against local cost of living / quality of living / etc.
What do you mean by this? After taxes, rent, food and other living costs, you're keeping almost 50% of your compensation to spend on whatever you want. How does purchasing power not matter? How much does a car cost in Canada? An iPhone? How much does a flight to Japan cost or a dinner in Tokyo? Of course the exchange rate is relevant even when you're not "hoarding" cash and have no intentions to return to Canada.
How is it bold? It's a fact. You have no right to be in Canada. I have no right to be in the US.
That's why I try to behave myself.
Thus, if the populist sentiment of the people of some land-mass is that you don't have a right to be there with them, then you don't, no matter what abstract arguments you might give to the contrary. Your rights only extend as far as others' willingness to enforce them for you.
Companies can't pay money they don't have. In my experience as a Canadian founder, Canadian companies are just poorer. We'd love to pay more but then we'd be bankrupt.
Most US "companies" which hire tech talent, aren't looking to scale up "businesses" which are cashflow positive. These "startups" are effectively bankrupt relying entirely on their current runways and their bi-annual VC injections.
Like they said in the video, Canadians for better or worse are inherently more risk averse than their American counter parts. Even more appropriately the entrepreneurs which stay in Canada vs move on faith to the bay, are tautologically less risk averse.
To look at this from a different perspective, Canada may just be living with a sustainable tech sector.
Its like watching/envying your neighbors as they come home from their third sunny vacation, this year, to their over sized house and driveway with two Mercedes. But that envy would quickly disappear if you ever got a chance to look at their books. You'd see they just took out a second mortgage on the house, when they could barely pay for the first one, so they could continue to finance their cars. Meanwhile, they still have so much additional debt accruing it really should be criminal.
I really wouldn't know though.. I'm a risk averse Canadian, whose just sorta hoping I've found a sweet spot on the risk-reward line.
Hopefully everything continues as is.
* Our non-salary expenses are largely paid in USD (hosting, cloud services, etc) * Developer salaries are in a global-ish market and we've seen salaries shoot up greatly because of the falling dollar to compete the falling purchasing power of the CAD * Large US companies opening up local development offices further driving the * Revenues lag the costs of salaries and other services -- we have to pay our staff, hosting, cloud services before we receive revenue. Of course, this is always the case, but with the falling dollar you feel it more, especially in the case of salaries
In short, this is not manufacturing where your inputs and salaries are largely localized. At best the falling dollar is a push and at worst it's a negative impact. Really, it's currency volatility that is more the issue, if it would stabilize and stay that way for a few years, it would make planning and adapting much easier. This year alone, we've seen 0.68 dollar and a 0.79 dollar.
Add to this:
* The general "Canadian Discount" US VC give to Canadian companies and the stinginess of Canadian VC * The SRED roulette -- it's not really free money as described, you have to spend it then pray the government will give you the tax credits. In my experience what's decided as SRED-able can really depend on who the reviewer is, it's more of a lottery than anything else unless you can dedicate someone basically full time maintaining SRED records. Also, you can't pay for salaries and services with tax credits -- they only help for the next year if you have profits.
Actually, corporate taxes are lower for a Canadian Controlled Corporation than the equivalent US company, but that doesn't really factor into things like salaries. Taxes are on profits and salaries are before profits. Also, most Canadian companies, especially in the tech sector, also have to contribute to medical insurance. You're going to have a hard time recruiting without extended health care benefits.
All that said, I am positive on running a company here. Just would like less uncertainty in terms of exchange rates.
I pay for that stuff out of pocket and it's like, $500 a year.
Unsurprisingly plenty of people with in demand skills that travel are looking at the exit or are already gone.
http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=CAD&view=10Y
A 35-40% swing in the purchasing power of the currency is a pretty big deal.
Countries will just blow tax money trying to change things. Focus on your core competencies.
A year later, Google swooped in with an offer that quintupled my compensation. The thing that struck me about it most was the supposedly-intense Google programmer interviews were actually far less difficult than most of the all-day interviews I did for Canadian institutions. I was a bit outraged that these interviews could be so tough for such meager compensation, especially given the cost of living in Vancouver. I was surprised they were able to get away with it, and it looks like it's starting to bite them in the ass, for which I am glad.
Edit: The specific places I would name, if anyone's curious, are Zymeworks and SAP in Vancouver, as well as staff research positions at UBC, University of Calgary, and the BC Cancer Agency.
the first step to making this kind of money is not settling for anything less, because opportunity is the biggest cost. when was the last time you turned down 150k to wait for a better offer?
The only way you are likely to see "another 100k on a good year" is if you sell all the RSUs you've got that year.
I've see a few people "add a couple of million" when their project of 7 years succeeded, but these were very senior people.
I think it's an illusion to think that rank and file SWEs will ever have an "add a few million" year.
> who do you think is buying all these houses?
I see very few rank and file Google SWEs being able to afford anything within 1 hour commute of Mountain View.
That requires a lot more rigour than the US process, which basically consists of "hey, we're offering [huge salary], compete for it."
Now when I go back I'm struck by the high prices, high taxes, and a general (and sadly very Canadian) aversion to risk.
I used to brag about Canada and honestly felt it was a better place to live...I don't think that any more.
It's not a good place for talent.
No it's not. Most youth have zero dreams related to property ownership, as everything near the core and cities that are near the core are prohibitively expensive. There is a general apathy and malaise here.
"Just move outside of the city" they say, to suburbs that are also priced 500k+, and just far enough to only have to spend an hour and a half commuting to your city job.
You have clearly never lived in the Silicon Valley if you're talking about housing.
Housing in the Valley is beyond unaffordable. A choice job at Google and you still won't be buying a home.
You're probably young, and single. Your class has always struggled with home ownership. Most couples can afford to get in on the housing ladder by buying and apartment, and in some year, buy a home.
That said - Toronto and Vancouver are distorted markets right now. Everywhere else in Canada is pretty normal and home ownership is similar to most places in the US that are not NYC/SF.
That's just not true. Housing is very expensive, but a "choice" job at Google pays enough to buy a home. The same goes for Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and the other large companies. Their compensation for mid- and senior-level people is so good that it's difficult to convince them to leave, even for considerable startup equity.
That's like $7K a month mortgage payment. $82K/year. You need to be earning $200K to pay that.
There are surely a lot of people at Google earning $200K, but not that many in relative terms. Most devs with a few years experience won't earn that.
If you need to earn $200K to be able to afford a home, I would say that's ridiculous.
Most Google developers are very talented and educated, and will not be able to buy a home. That sucks.
You referred to "choice" jobs. Those aren't jobs for people with a few years of experience. Think 5-10 years.
Furthermore, I can assure you that a huge number of people at Google clear $200k per year in total compensation, which includes a high salary, stock, and bonuses. I know people at other companies I've mentioned who do so as well, with less than 10 years of experience in the industry.
There are also plenty of homes that cost less than the median -- in fact, half of them do...
How sure of that are you? I don't have a lot of data points, but 3.5 years of experience got me a 270k offer from Google. I find it hard to believe it was _that_ much higher than average.
http://www.businessinsider.com/a-google-programmer-blew-off-...
I'm not going to argue that's a reasonable set of requirements to get a house, but it's possible.
So what? If renting is a better financial decision than buying in a particular market, you rent. It's that simple, or else you're making an emotional decision based on value judgments rather than objective measures of benefit or cost.
Not to say Canada is perfect but yes there is a cost to social cohesion.
As for aversion to risk, I personally don't want to live on a rollercoaster.
So I guess we'll have to see if that works out for them.
The Vancouver technology sector is also a joke compared to Seattle... To the extent that hootsuite is a 'big deal' there.
If you look at actual studies of the cost of living in cities around the world, like from Mercer or the Economist, Vancouver is closer to the upper middle in terms of cost of living.
Vancouver literally has a 0.5% rental vacancy rate right now. If you put up an ad on Craigslist for an apartment for rent it'll get 50 replies in two hours. People are getting into bidding wars on apartments.
The point remains, if you rent in Vancouver the city doesn't rank very high on the most expensive cities in the world list.
We should be able to thrive in a well paid job in a place that we want and like (not like we are entitled or anything this applies to any job everywhere).
As for a), yes, Canada's multiculturalism attracts migrants, who in spite of their talent have a crappy negotiating position and are easily taken advantage of. Everyone has a story of the guy who barely speaks english but who can code getting worked like a dog for peanuts.
for b) for software in Canada, you sell to the 5 banks or government. it's recurring license fees from stable customers but in a limited market.
And c) there is no market for software in canada that would justify a billion dollar valuation. Those valuations were based on cornering a user base to use as a sales channel.
Further Canada's de-facto official policy of currency debasement to keep industrial exports afloat means limited purchasing power for citizens, therefore anything that succeeds has to succeed somewhere else.
It's a great place to outsource your dev shop, kind of like a more reliable India or Belarus, but as a market it's just not large enough for to reap the network effect / micro-margin/infinite scale benefits of software solutions.