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by briandear 2328 days ago
Working for a Silicon Valley tech company, you typically have extremely good health insurance and a vastly higher salary than anything in Canada. Salaries north of the border are a pittance compared to what you could earn in even a mid-tiered US city. I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour. And a non-lead was paying $C25 per hour. Ridiculous. And Toronto isn’t a cheap city. I made triple that working remotely for a Kansas City company.

Canada is a nice place, live there if you want, but “competitive compensation” is definitely not a reason.
5 comments
aprdm 2328 days ago
Using a single experience to invalidate a whole country as a place to have a competitive compensation is a bit unfair. Am sure you can find people paying even less than that for lead web developers in the USA.

If you look at levels.fyi Amazon seems to be paying around 180k TC for SD2 in Vancouver. I would rather live in Vancouver with 180K than in the US with 250k.

(Am talking local currencies as when I am living in a country I spend the money in local currency.)

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bawolff 2328 days ago
I live in canada. While its true there is less money here than usa, those numbers sound pretty low. Maybe that employer was just trying to screw you over?
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hylaride 2328 days ago
> I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour.

That is ~$62k/year and is absurdly low in Toronto unless it was an early-stage startup.

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rayhendricks 2328 days ago
That ($25CAD) is less than $2.50USD more than Seattle minimum wage (16.39USD)..
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Polylactic_acid 2328 days ago
Eventually most people work out there is value in not being stabbed for the $5 in your wallet and having to walk around in shit covered streets.
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toephu2 2328 days ago
Yes, because every tech worker in SF gets stabbed for $5 in their wallet and everyday they walk through poo on their way to work.

On a more serious note, you should learn about how the media works.

One person gets stabbed in SF for $5 and it makes the news, and then people like you believe that every one of the 884k people living in SF get stabbed.

You probably also believe that all Teslas easily catch on fire? Cause you saw it on the news?

Please learn about statistics and sensationalist media.

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refurb 2328 days ago
Have you been to East Hastings in Vancouver? It rivals anything I’ve seen in SF.
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