[dleslie]

Sure, but not every software engineer in California is a FAANG engineer; and even among FAANG engineers that stated salary is rather high.

It's not particularly useful to make claims that one can earn enormous amounts by changing region without also acknowledging that such an opportunity is only available to a small minority.

[ponker]

Among FAANG engineers $285K is not high.

[throwmyusername]

For L4, 285k is within ballpark. "Among FAANG engineers" is a big pool from L3 all the way to L5/L6.

[MikeTheRocker]

You're right that this is achievable only by a small percentage of people at the upper end of incomes, but I am comparing the same category of companies across both regions. Microsoft in Seattle vs Microsoft in Vancouver can be a 1.5-2x difference for example.

[dleslie]

1.5-2x is a much narrower range, and smaller limits, than the 2-4x you posted earlier.

[MikeTheRocker]

I'm saving over $100k USD per year after rent, food, phone, entertainment, etc. at age 24. This is impossible in Canada or most other parts of the world. My situation is not unique either, I know dozens of young engineers working at mid to high compensation companies earning around the same. Contrast this with new grads and mid level engineers in Canada earning < $75k USD and it's a no brainer to work here.

[dleslie]

That smacks of sample bias and survivorship bias.

Sure, you and your social sphere have done well; but what about the population in aggregate?

Not everyone will or can work at a FAANG, or is competent enough to rise to that compensation level within those companies.

[throwmyusername]

> Contrast this with new grads and mid level engineers in Canada earning < $75k USD and it's a no brainer to work here.

You're comparing SF to the whole Canada. If you zoom in to just Vancouver and Toronto, less than 75k is definitely smaller local companies. Similar to some no-name companies in SF in general won't net you close 200k TC.

SAP new grads TC can hit $100k and this company is considered to pay the least among Salesforce (and Tableau), Microsoft, Amazon, Shopify, Splunk, etc around Vancouver.

Senior Devs (outside the list above) avg base pay in Vancouver is around 130-140k at entry (newly minted Sr. Dev) before bonuses (10-20%), RRSP matching, and stock if the company is public.

Toronto have more tech companies that pay similar avg I believe.

Definitely it's not $285k for intermediate dev (SDE2) for SF Bay but Vancouver and Toronto have established themselves as tech hotspot in Canada leaving the rest.

On the other hand, I agree with you on the point of your saving rate provided that you are young without family. With Family, I believe you have to pay extra health-insurance out of your own pocket. You might have to pay extra for education as well (or pay extra to live in better neighborhood).