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Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

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Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#491

Post by querulous »

reaperducer wrote: post #213
josephjrobison wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kinda unrelated to immigration, but I've heard Canadian border patrol is actually more harsh than American border control. Anyone with experience that can verify?

Back when you only needed a drivers license to cross the border, the Canadian border person looked at my Texas driver's license and said, "Texas, huh. Where are your guns?" That would be considered unacceptable and unprofessional at U.S. border control.

a us border guard once asked me if i hated america because i hadn't visited it in nearly 18 months

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#492

Post by xyzzy_plugh »

flamtap wrote: post #464
bacongobbler wrote: post #18

US salaries are much higher, the tech industry is booming in the states, and it's very simple to apply for a visa or start a consulting company to work remotely from home. If you're a student graduating out of a Canadian college/university and are looking for ways to advance your career (while making a lot more money on the side), what's not to love about moving or working remote?

I did exactly this, and have been working remotely for a Californian company as of two months ago. All I had to do was open a sole proprietorship (a trivial errand) and a USD bank account (technically optional), and report in via email on my first day. As a self-employed contractor, my costs are lower (working from home), I get myriad tax breaks, and my salary is not even comparable to what I could expect locally, ev…

I'd love to learn more about your setup. Do you know of any resources for those looking to do the same?

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#493

Post by netheril96 »

jonny_eh wrote: post #424
netheril96 wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can Canadian programmers good enough to be hired by FAANG be paid similar salaries in Canada?

No, that's the whole point of this discussion.

It's a rhetorical question.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#494

Post by ryanobjc »

systemBuilder wrote: post #228

I used to be an ECE professor at UBC, the #2 school in Canada. At that school, ECE is part of applied sciences. And do you know what else is part? Yeah, nursing. The nurses earned the same pay scale as the ECE professors. And the bus drivers also earned the same pay scale at age 30 but had been working 10 years by that time and had no student loans to pay off. When I left my pay raise was 133%. There is no word in th…

Hey that was my Alma mater.

My wife went to Berkeley and I am profoundly jealous of the quality of her education. UBC is fine but it has a local view and doesn’t deserve to be called world class imo. It doesn’t develop a worldly viewpoint in its students. And why would it? It’s mission is to educate British Columbians.

This is a hard topic for me because I was forced to move to Seattle in 2001 right after I graduated. Initially I was only semi willing, but the job market in Vancouver for new grads just didn’t exist then. It’s hard to find fellow Canadians who share similar viewpoints.

I’d love to chat more about this with you, somehow!

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#495

Post by querulous »

netheril96 wrote: post #407
vonmoltke wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FAANG can only hire so many engineers, the positions tend to be highly competitive, they pull them from all over the world, and the drop-off in compensation at the next level is pretty significant.

Can Canadian programmers good enough to be hired by FAANG be paid similar salaries in Canada?

they can work for FAANG in canada at a 30-40% discount (well not FN, but AAG)

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#496

Post by netheril96 »

ido wrote: post #264
padobson wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do Canadian companies make that much less money than American ones? Why should they get to pad their profit margins because 120k CAD is "good income"?

You can replace "Canadian" with almost every other country on earth and the question stays the same. I live in Germany, which has similar wages for software engineers as Canada. And in a 2 hours train ride I can be in Poland, where software engineers earn 1/3 their German counterparts.

I guess that Germany and Poland do have problems similar to Canada, except that their brains are harder to be drained by America due to the distance.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#497

Post by branchless »

twblalock wrote: post #395
branchless wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The language laws thing is not a big deal. People just get on with it. Montreal is great. I'm here, and if my kids don't go into IT they will work in another sector and will be able to afford to live. I'd consider SV a death sentence. Who wants to work when you will never achieve financial independence because you'll never own your own land? And if you have a huge mortgage you are your boss's bitch forever.

I work in tech in Silicon Valley and most of my coworkers own their own homes or condos. It's not uncommon at all.

housing is clearly an enormous issue in SV, yours is anecdata.

For one:

http://observer.com/2018/03/silicon-valley-housing-market-dr...

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#498

Post by chrispyper »

neilk wrote: post #306
_xzxj wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canadian here (who lives outside of Canada but recently did a stint there for a bit) and this will sound negative but f-it. Canadian culture sucks when it comes to trying new things. Canada has some extra safety net but the culture is puritanical and conservative and nobody wants to go out on a limb and try something new and crazy. Not like Americans. Those that do are constantly questioned by everybody. The idea of…

Canadian here who worked in the Valley for ~7 years, and currently works for a US-based startup remotely. You're absolutely right that the culture of respecting changemakers is not as present in Canada. But the SFBA is the world leader here. There probably isn't any place on earth that's more optimistic about innovators. I don't think this is a culture thing, exactly. It's just that everyone who became rich in the SF…

> Or, they made their money in an old-school industry, like resource extraction, and they flip out at the risk levels in tech startups.

Fuck, ain’t that the truth. Or their great-grandad made the money and each subsequent generations job is to not fuck up the gravy train.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#499

Post by netheril96 »

dblohm7 wrote: post #123
okfine wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"If Canadian companies were willing" This comes up in every thread about Canada, but it seems a lapse of logic to anthropomorphize a market like this. The market doesn't "will" anything, and people's willingness to offer/accept a salary is more a consequence of local conditions than a cause. Those conditions include the option of getting paid more if you're willing to leave the country, which some are. Presumably tha…

Well, the Canadian employees are moving south. They clearly aren't accepting it.

Those who have left are not accepting it. Those who stay are.

Re: Canada facing ‘brain drain’ as tech talent leaves for Silicon Valley

#500

Post by peripitea »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #368
thrywayhn wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. The income disparity increases at senior levels. I hit a ceiling in Toronto where I hard trouble growing my career and making more than $180,000 CAD TC. Moving to silicon valley my experience was able to fetch over $500,00 USD TC. Sure it meant that for a year and a half my spouse can't work but that's not a big deal.

> able to fetch over $500,00 USD By far this not the case. Most will be around 1/3rd that (according to the salary reports i've read) .

As someone who works/hires in the field, the salary reports are all wrong. I have not seen a single one yet that was close to accurate. In software a 90th percentile engineer can easily make 2-3x what a 50th percentile engineer makes. (And it can get even crazier as you move higher up the tail.) This is not true in virtually any other industry, which seems to cause problems for the salary reports.
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