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Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

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Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#141

Post by potatolicious »

ripb wrote: post #104
naterator wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. It's not a valid criticism if the gov. footing 80% allows these companies to now offer SV/NY competitive salaries. Which I suspect will happen if they do it right (bot…

>I think it's a very valid criticism if your best people (not talking about "most" people, who don't start companies and create new stuff) can easily move to another country (or other state inside the US) and earn WAY more for the same job or skill set. I think, what a lot Americans overlook, is that most people in the rest of developed world want more from life than a high salary. Moving from somewhere with the high…

> "I think, what a lot Americans overlook"

Looks a lot of Canadians have overlooked it too - all but 2 people in my graduating cohort are writing code in the US.

You are welcome to delude yourself into thinking that "real" Canadians don't value a high salary, but in reality it's causing a massive brain out of the country.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#142

Post by refurb »

DennisP wrote: post #117
nivertech wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they talking about after tax numbers

Taxes in Canada are not particularly higher than in the U.S. http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/tx/ndvdls/fq/txrts-eng.html http://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0411/do-canadians...

You need to include sales tax, which ranges from 5% in Alberta to 15% in Quebec. Also, taxes on alcohol and gasoline are much higher than the US.

That being said, with the recent tax increases in the US and the lower of provincial income taxes in many Canadian provinces (I'm looking at you BC), the difference isn't as great as one would think.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#143

Post by TheCoelacanth »

beagle3 wrote: post #85
activepeanut wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver is more expensive than Seattle.

.... maybe the ACA is changing that, but it used to be true only as long as you did not need non-trivial healthcare services.

You're probably right at the lower-end of the income spectrum, but any non-joke, non-freelance software development job in the US will include health insurance on top of the quoted salary at little or no cost to the employee.

I have a chronic health condition that needs some fairly expensive drugs and relatively frequent doctor visits and procedures. My total out of pocket healthcare expenses are less than $500 per year.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#144

Post by Tiktaalik »

gotrecruit wrote: post #119

I'm moving to Vancouver, BC soon to found a startup, so it's good to hear this. But from comments here, i'm hearing a lot of comments pertaining to Toronto and Waterloo region, but not much about Vancouver or BC in general. Why is that? Is Vancouver/BC not a good place for startups? Am I heading in the wrong direction? I'm still in a position to switch back to Toronto if necessary, so if someone can enlighten me that…

Vancouver seems like a fine place for a startup to me. Better weather than the rest of Canada, same timezone as SF, very short flight to SF. One of Canada's startup success stories, Hootsuite, is in Vancouver. There are lots of video game studios and branch offices of American tech companies (Amazon, MSFT) so there is tech talent around.

(I live in Vancouver)

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#145

Post by maaku »

michaelochurch wrote: post #98
maaku wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the downvotes? Seriously that's why the incentive exists. Not enough skilled people wanting to live in Canada.

Many immigrants prefer the US over Canada because (a) there are major benefits to the US passport, and (b) there are unexpected prestige factors. In some parts of Asia, Canada still has the stigma of being "for people who couldn't get in to the US" even though, for the past 20 years or so, it's been as hard to get into Canada as the US (if not harder). If you take away New York and Silicon Valley and the unique oppor…

I'm not aware of any single real benefit of a US passport over a Canadian passport.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#146

Post by maaku »

Thaxll wrote: post #123
nl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)? Are those number correct? If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salari…

Except that you live better in Montreal than in SF with 1.5X less salary. I don't mind moving there but living in a shared room because rent are 2k5 a month for a small place...

if you live frugally in Silicon Valley your savings can be larger than your annual salary in Montreal.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#147

Post by MisterBastahrd »

DavidPP wrote: post #113
nl wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't understand this. If the "average" engineer in SV makes 120Kish, then the same engineer is making 40K in Canada? And they can make 240K in NY (with no additional experience)? Are those number correct? If they are: I'd note that salaries in Australia are more closely aligned with SV salari…

It's a bit higher a than 40K, but not that much. For example, I would have said around 60K and after some research, it seem I'm not wrong : http://www.payscale.com/research/CA/State=Qu%C3%A9bec/Salary AVG: Software developer : 58K Also in Quebec, you cannot call yourself an engineer unless you want to an engineer school and are part of their order.

This is a very good thing that I wish the US would adopt. We have people with three months total programming experience jumping from sales jobs to programming and calling themselves engineers. It's an insult to those who actually perform engineering professionally.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#148

Post by rdmcfee »

CoolGuySteve wrote: post #7

One of the worst things about tech in Canada is that the salaries are ridiculously low compared to the US. I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. But really, I want to say this: as a Canadian, I find that image of poutine extremely offensive. What is that yellow stuff on top, Curry? Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not mel…

In this case "worst" depends on whether you're a developer or an employer.

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#149

Post by logfromblammo »

orbitur wrote: post #84
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #7

One of the worst things about tech in Canada is that the salaries are ridiculously low compared to the US. I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. But really, I want to say this: as a Canadian, I find that image of poutine extremely offensive. What is that yellow stuff on top, Curry? Are those even proper cheese curds? They're not mel…

> I made 2-3x as much by moving to California and then another integer coefficient greater than one when I moved to New York. I don't think this is much of a valid criticism, since most people in the States can also move to SV/NYC and make 2x or 3x their current salaries as well . Hell, those cities probably have the highest numbers (so ignoring CoL) than most places in the world.

Also, in order to be paid that much, you usually need to live there. It all depends on how you value certain things.

Ample parking, day or night: $2500/yr

People smiling; kindly neighbors: $5000/yr

Public schools that don't suck: $15000/yr

Parks/public spaces that you actually want to visit: $2500/yr

Low violent and property crime rates: $5000/yr

Political and cultural compatibility: $2500/yr

Good local television and radio stations: $1250/yr

Things like that add up, and are highly subjective. But when I see significantly higher salaries in very specific geographical regions, what I see is one of two things: either people there tend to be more valuable than others, or they are demanding compensation for all the crap they have to put up with and/or purchase that they can get for free or at reduced cost elsewhere.

For instance, in Chicago, I had to pay an extra $100 a month for a parking space behind my apartment. That's $1200 a year already. Never mind if you actually wanted to go anywhere in your car and park in the same ZIP code. That costs you additional time and walking distance or additional cash. And it certainly impacts your property and casualty insurance premiums.

Having grown up in a different city, where parking had never been an issue, that threw my own freedom of movement up in stark contrast, as something that had calculatable value to me, and which likely differed significantly from other people. The costs of having a car in Chicago were only partially mitigated by having CTA and Metra commuter service. Grocery shopping is a lot different when you can only buy what you are willing to carry in your arms for as long as it takes to get home. You buy a lot less of the things that are mostly air (additional volume) or mostly water (additional weight).

That was but one of the reasons that I found the local pay was not worth the local costs, and moved.

For a variety of reasons, the people deciding on the location of a business do not value those local costs in the same way, and do not realize that their employees may demand more in compensation because of them. Or they just don't care.

As for myself, I could probably get 1.5x my current pay in SV or 2x in NYC. But it would have to be 3-5x to be worth it. I currently rent a 3br 2.5ba house for about 12% of my gross pay, and can drive to work in 20 minutes. Is that even possible in SV or NYC on income less than $15 million a year?

Re: Canada's Pitch to Tech Entrepreneur: We'll Pay 80% of Your Salaries

#150

Post by peeters »

gotrecruit wrote: post #119

I'm moving to Vancouver, BC soon to found a startup, so it's good to hear this. But from comments here, i'm hearing a lot of comments pertaining to Toronto and Waterloo region, but not much about Vancouver or BC in general. Why is that? Is Vancouver/BC not a good place for startups? Am I heading in the wrong direction? I'm still in a position to switch back to Toronto if necessary, so if someone can enlighten me that…

Vancouver has a strong tech industry, but its cost of living is very inflated. Waterloo in particular has managed to have a thriving tech sector while maintaining a comparatively low cost of living. I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the day I banked the same amount as I do now if I moved to the valley. Toronto has similar cost of living issues to Vancouver (mostly super inflated housing costs).
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