[dcolkitt]

American firms tend to have much higher quality corporate management than their Canadian counterparts.[1] To be profitable at FAAMG salaries requires leveraging your engineers to achieve very high levels of productivity and execution. That's generally not possible without management that consistently adheres to best practices.

[1]https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.24.1.203

[danielscrubs]

I was just about to say the same. What was striking to me that the managers I’ve met in SF had all been swe:s and worked up the ladder. In my country it’s very rare, most managers have a background in economics and can’t really help the swe:s with anything besides internal politics. The lens they use is that everything is a cost. Even if the system they bought is the problem of why things take time. They also rely heavy on Garter of what is popular.

We are even starting to have them manage doctors!!

[trinovantes]

I think a bigger issue is the lack of venture capital. It's significantly harder to to raise the multi-million seed rounds needed to sustain Google/Amazon salary in Waterloo/Toronto

[RestlessMind]

Based on my 15 years of experience (similar for my partner), there are a lot of cash flow positive companies in the US who pay a lot. They don't need venture capital at all. So there must be some other reason (profitability? SV culture of valuing engineers?)

When I was at Google, I learned from an internal pay comparison spreadsheet that a person in the same job at the same level is paid much worse in Waterloo (and in the UK as well) compared to SV / NYC, and the reason cited was "cost of labor" or some such fancy term which essentially meant "we want to pay as little as possible, so a little bit more than our competitors". So ultimately, it boils down to "prevailing wages" in Canada (and the UK).

The first company to offer SV level wages in Canada / UK will see a deluge of high quality applicants who want to stay in those locations for whatever reasons. I wonder why no one has tried that yet.

[johbjo]

Since marginal cost is essentially zero in software, productivity as measured in revenue per head is not really relevant.

The business climate might just be better in the US.