[loufe]

If you're considering Montréal, do your research before. French language is not a requirement to get by day-to-day in the city (though elsewhere in the province is another story). We have a decent tech sector with some big companies like CAE, Mindgeek, and Hopper. There is also a respectable AI research scene and an incresing amount of startups in the city. If you're open to learning French (a good chunk of jobs require it) and have any data centre credibility, you might be on a good trajectory. Québec has super low electricity costs and data centres are interested for that reason.

The city has a low cost of living, high provincial taxes, but a top notch cultural scene, bar scene, festival scene, etc.

If not Montréal, Toronto or Vancouver have their callings but most tech folks I studied with headed off to the states for higher wages - but I imagine many of them will return with stacked savings accounts at some point. As someone else pointed out, Waterloo is a special case and might be worth looking at, too.

[sailingparrot]

This. However I would say the reason why you really need to learn French is if you want to stay more than just a couple of year. Getting your permanent residency in Québec requires a certain level of proficiency in French. For jobs you can find plenty of them that won't require it.

[Maven911]

What would you say are the wages for different types of tech roles and seniority in Montreal? And how accessible are those to non-native French speakers?

[mardifoufs]

Your salary is probably going to be lower in Montreal, but it's much cheaper city to live in than Vancouver or Toronto. There are high paying jobs if you know where to find them, but it seems to me like a lot of the software engineers I've come across here are a little less "ambitious" and don't mind settling for a smaller salary if it means more stability. It's also very taboo here to talk about your salary (sometimes even to your SO?) but that's changing and I think it's not unique to Quebec at all.

In my experience, and purely anecdotally, I've really witnessed a 2 speeds system where some people are very highly paid (120k+, keep in mind you can buy a condo in the middle of downtown for 300k) and some are getting very (40-50k) low salaries for the same amount of experience, same alma matter and probably even the same skill . How you sell yourself is always a huge factor in how much you get paid, sure, but the difference is particularly striking in Montreal imo.

As for seniority, most of the teams I've seen are very young with very dynamic leads. The industry is booming right now ( or was booming before march, I'm not sure now).

[Maven911]

Thanks for the detailed info!

[swat535]

Agree with the OP.

To add on to this, from someone who is actually living in Montreal.. Quebec has the highest tax rates in Canada.

To give you an idea, the majority of software engineers here make between: 70k-95k.

This means you should be ready live with around 4-6k/mo after taxes.

The rent is still cheap, but not as cheap as you think, a descent apartment will cost you ~1,200$/mo.

The healthcare is (almost) free, you still have to pay the government ~200-400$ year if you're not on a private plan. But it's nowhere near the US.

Also French really is a requirement, especially when dealing with the government.

[wenc]

I lived in Montreal for 4 years in the early 2000s and although I had no trouble with day-to-day living, I felt that social life as an English speaker was limiting. I enjoyed the cultural and restaurant scenes (Mtl Jazz Festival, Just For Laughs), but meeting like-minded people was hard.

And although it's possible to get used to, there are tiny frictions everywhere -- e.g. signage is generally not bilingual (you learn how to guess from context and from the Latin roots of words). This is not a big deal in real life because there's usually small print in English available separately as printed materials. That said, most cities in Europe, South America and Asia (the ones I’ve visited) have far more bilingual public signage than Montreal.

Not everyone is bilingual (only downtown and certain suburbs like NDG/West Island) so exchanging little pleasantries becomes more difficult, and there's always a guessing game going on as to whether someone looks like Anglophone or Francophone, even just east of St Urbain in downtown MTL. STCUM announcements are French-only so if there's an emergency on the tracks or a train schedule change, you have to ask around to see if someone can translate.

The tech scene was very underdeveloped when I was there. Big events/conferences/exhibitions were always happening elsewhere, e.g. Toronto, even Vancouver, but no one was coming to Montreal -- the biggest conference I remember was the grassroots Perl's YAPC. (although PyCon would eventually come to be hosted there in 2014-2015). Things are different now with the existence of many more startups, but the ecosystem is still much smaller than in many cities in English Canada.

You also have to understand that English-language culture in Montreal is an afterthought due the English-language market being smaller -- most big international productions (say musicals/concerts/talks... in fact, almost anything) will often skip over Montreal but will have a show in Toronto, and even smaller cities like Ottawa. I felt I was constantly missing out on stuff that was happening in the U.S. and ROC (rest of Canada).

I could've tried to learn more French, and though it would have eased things significantly, I suspect I would still have not been able to sufficiently integrate into society -- there truly are two solitudes (as Hugh Maclennan once put it) in Quebec society.

There's also a certain feeling you get in Montreal: it's a little bohemian (so a little gritty in parts) and eschews change (lacks a forward momentum and go-getter spirit in terms of embracing new things -- infrastructure is not as well kept up as in other Canadian cities, heritage building laws are very strict which is good, but it also means new developments are very restricted). I went back to visit a little more than a year ago, and nothing has changed.

I don't mean dissuade anyone from considering Montreal -- everybody wants different things in life -- but just wanted to provide a data point from someone who tried to live there unhappily. YMMV.