311–320 of 424 posts
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> They will all eventually will migrate to US once the policies are relaxed. It takes at least 5 years to get Canadian citizenship. 5 years is a long time to build a life somewhere that people wouldn't want to migrate to the US. You are assuming it's just more money that motivates everyone.
3 years.
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That’s taking a huge efficiency hit over using batteries while costing more money. What’s the goal?
Liquid hydrogen and liquid ammonia have almost 10x the energy density of current battery technology. If you could go all the way to synthesized hydrocarbons it's another 2x. I'm not sure efficiency matters that much when you have far more energy production capacity than you need but it's concentrated in places and times where you can't use it. As for costing more: compared to what ? Batteries don't seem like an econo…
Run some numbers and you find batteries are surprisingly cheap at grid scale. Grid solar is already tied into the grid and does DC>AC conversion anyway as part of it’s 2c/kWh pricing. So, rather than AC>DC>AC>DC you can just use solar panel’s AC power directly. Which means your just adding minimal cabling, batteries, some electronics, and a basic box for weather protection. So, ~100,000$ for 200kWh of storage x ~5,000 cycles that’s 10c/kWh for storage + (2c/kWh solar / 90% efficiency) = ~12.2c/kWh.
Granted that ignoring some real world costs like interest payments, but battery costs are also dropping so it’s a reasonable ballpark. Especially vs a theoretical system that’s never been scaled.
PS: By comparison if your at 50% efficiency to chemical storage and world record 63% thermal efficiency at combustion that’s 2 /.5 /.63 = ~6.3/kWh just for electricity plus the cost of your combined cycle gas turbine and chemical plant.
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I keep being head hunted to work on SF/SV. And my reply is basically automatic and always the same: "Due to US external policy and cost of life I can't see it being financially practical to move. Although, I would gladly consider any remote position." I think the immigration complexity is the lesser problem there. My research based on housing, school, transport and food tells me it looks like absurdly expensive. To b…
It doesn’t happen via salary, it happens via stock. Work at a big co over the last decade or so and you’ve seen salary increase at 10% year or so and stock increase much faster. It’s very common for senior engineers in the Bay Area to be earning 175k salary, ~30k bonus, and another 150+ in stock vesting per year. High performers and/or workers at FAANGs do better than that. See levels.fyi for concrete examples. The w…
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> How's the weather there though? Right this moment, they are almost the same (46F in SF vs 37F in Toronto). Toronto winter usually goes between 5F and 40F, but summer is way warmer than SF (between 75F to 90F vs 60F to 70F in SF)
Are you picking temperatures in the middle of the night? 46F is the nightly low in SF, versus being a record warm day in Toronto during the winter.
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I keep being head hunted to work on SF/SV. And my reply is basically automatic and always the same: "Due to US external policy and cost of life I can't see it being financially practical to move. Although, I would gladly consider any remote position." I think the immigration complexity is the lesser problem there. My research based on housing, school, transport and food tells me it looks like absurdly expensive. To b…
>To be able to even consider to move there I would need a salary bump of 3x-5x. No way this will ever happen. You'd be surprised. Granted it was over a period of 4 years, but I did hit that 5x.
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Liquid hydrogen and liquid ammonia have almost 10x the energy density of current battery technology. If you could go all the way to synthesized hydrocarbons it's another 2x. I'm not sure efficiency matters that much when you have far more energy production capacity than you need but it's concentrated in places and times where you can't use it. As for costing more: compared to what ? Batteries don't seem like an econo…
That might be useful for aircraft, but not cars or the grid. Batteries are already cost competitive with peaking power plants and prices just keep dropping. Run some numbers and you find batteries are surprisingly cheap at grid scale. Grid solar is already tied into the grid and does DC>AC conversion anyway as part of it’s 2c/kWh pricing. So, rather than AC>DC>AC>DC you can just use solar panel’s AC power directly. W…
EDIT: I think for that use case you'll find that a reasonable technology doesn't exist for transporting electrons over that distance (I don't think there are any superconducting transmission lines in actual use) but pipelines have been around for a long time.
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I moved to Toronto, then to SF. Thought I'd also share my anecdata here. I used to make ~100k/yr CAD (75k/yr USD) when I was in TO around 6 years ago. I bought a house around 7 years ago for 550k. I did a remote stint for a Boulder company for a couple years (~120k/yr USD working from TO), then moved to SF (~200k/yr USD + ~100k/yr equity). I'm a bit out of the loop w/ TO salaries nowadays, but your 170k CAD definitel…
> Goods generally cost less in SF. Milk costs ~$5/gallon USD in SF vs $10/4L CAD ($7 USD) in TO. I regularly pick up a 4 L bag of 1% for about CAD 4.25 (USD 3.00). Where the heck are you doing your grocery shopping, the food hall at Holt Renfrew?
USA-ian in Canada here. Been able to work remotely for US firms consistently for going on ~5 years here. I hope these changes drive up tech salaries in Canada -- I fear they won't. Currently they're about 20-40% less than the US particularly due to the currency difference. Cost of living is also a bit higher, and absolutely insane in Vancouver (and a lesser degree, Toronto). I suspect it will continue the H-1B trend,…
And along the way they will drive up housing prices, and drive up general revenue and consumer spending since there are simply more bodies in the economy.
The system benefits the owners of capital and the migrants themselves, but not existing ('legacy') Canadians.
Along the way you get all kinds of social problems caused by the excess of males and the preponderance of Asian families to selectively abort female fetuses.
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Almost as though companies want to hire the best person for the job...
You realize the companies that push that line don't actually believe it themselves, right? I always suffer a bit of second-hand embarrassment when others earnestly accept such crude propaganda. It's all about protecting access to cheap labor.
If they have trouble bringing people to the US, it's a bigger incentive to do so.
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Why your company and employee didn't start H1B to green card conversion process?
Green cards are a joke. For some countries they are effectively impossible to get in your lifetime. That's why we have this H1B nonsense in the first place.