As someone who did his graduate studies in Montreal and moved to NYC to work and then back to Toronto about two years ago I can comment on this. In Toronto I make about 10% less then what I did in NYC if you don't factor in exchange rate. But since I did my entire academic career from undergraduate to phd in Canada, I am able to enjoin a large amount of tuition tax credits which sort of makes up for it. This year I invested in some property downtown Toronto which I plan to hold onto, either living here or leasing it if I leave.
However, I think given the right opportunity I would still head back to the U.S. Things are fucked in the U.S. but the sense of scale, velocity is unmatched. In Toronto you feel that people's attitude is just not the same. There is no hunger or lust to be number #1 and I have always been competitive personality type. In NYC even traditional enterprise corporations (where I worked) there is an intensity and drive that's missing here. Call it the american spirit.
Salary as this stage is relatively unimportant, making 150 or 250k is about the about the same to me. But the scale and types of opportunities is something else. There are roles and jobs that only exist in the U.S.
That being said, for me going back is just a tour of duty, once you are past the journeyman stage of your life and wanting to start a family, then Canada wins unquestioned. The environment, benefits, healthcare, and most importantly education for your children will outweigh just about any salary you can command state-side. Because now you are talking about intangible things that are harder and harder to buy with money.
My opinion is, stay in the U.S. when you are young and/or talented. Then, if you are of Indian or Chinese birth, move elsewhere to start a family and take a senior position in Canada. Typically if you come from reputable shop state-side and demonstrate your worth, you can find a job where people will treat you with respect for that experience. They might not be able to compensate you the same way but you can usually get bumped up a notch.
If you are of white or European heritage and you are in a good place then you can consider staying the U.S. if you can make it work.
I left Toronto Canada 30 plus years ago for a Tech job in the US. I earned more in my first 10 years than I would have earned in my entire working life had I stayed in Canada. Anyone who has the opportunity to land a job in the US would never consider going back to Canada because it just doesn't make sense. If you're making 150K USD or 300k as a couple, a flight back to visit family or friends once a month is trivial.
I recently had to make that same decision myself, and chose Toronto. The salaries on the jobs I was interviewing for (not to mention perks) were astronomically high. I'd considered just going to work for 3 years, saving as much as I could, then coming back to Canada.
I the end, I worried that I would never come back in spite of my early intentions. Toronto's a great city, and I'm quite comfortable with my compensation, but I don't begrudge anyone who moves for the chance to be instantly wealthy.
You get 2-3x the pay without converting. The median salary for a senior in Toronto and Van right now is around 150-170 TC, and that is generally the type of salary you're getting from the FAANGS here. Some might push above 200k, but you need to be exceptional and do very well in the interview. There is a reason Canada's top grads leave to the US right away.
The CoL is lower in America. It might be comparable if you try to buy a house in Manhattan or the bay area, but the suburbs are good options and the commutes are no worse than GTA to Downtown or GVA to Downtown Van. There is a 46% premium on housing between Canada and the USA, adjusted for exchange. Also every day life can be generally cheaper (groceries, gas which is about half the cost, cell phone and internet service etc.).
The big differentiator between Canada and the US is social. Our socialized healthcare is subpar to the type of healthcare you get through the private plans you'll get working at big tech companies. Wait time are long, and governments don't pay for the most up to date procedures. I'm speaking first hand. Schools are the other big thing. Where you live in the US really determines the quality of education your kids receive, but if you're getting paid FAANG salaries you're fine.
Anyway, again, as my note mentioned, I'm not here to discuss the merits of the Canadian tech market. I only posted this to dispel the notion that the US is worse. It's not, and the supposed benefits in Canada objectively are not there. Subjectively they might be. Everyone is welcome to their opinion.
That point about moving on or expecting a raise upon finishing my degree is a great point. And yes, I realize that I took a salary risk leaving my job without an offer.
Cost of living makes the salary difference less significant than it would otherwise be, but tax differences pretty much cancel that out - rough estimate would be that in Texas I was taking home around $66k USD after taxes, vs around $46k USD with the new offer in Canada. Insurance and other benefits are comparable.
I lived in Montreal for 5 years (I went to college there), and it's a really fantastic city. Now that I've gotten the experience of living in a place I'm not so keen on, I'm more aware of how much that factor weighs in my decision.
For another data point: I'm an Amazon SDE2 in Ottawa making CA$225k total compensation this year (about 2/3 of that is salary). That's very good pay locally. I'm not sure I can match that anywhere else in the city.
I might be able to get better in the States, even after cost-of-living increases, but what quality of life gain would there be? Would it be worthwhile to have to deal with all the crazy shit with the education and healthcare systems and the politics down there?
So I'm sticking here in Canada. I just don't see the point in moving south.
I really like Toronto, but cost of living is high (one of the largest housing bubbles in the world, high taxes), salaries are low and jobs (not only in tech) are scarce. In the States you won't find engineers, doctors, accountants working in the supermarkets/starbucks. Go to any store in Richmond Hill/North York and you will see plenty. There is an ugly truth that people don't like to discuss much, Canada accepts too many professional immigrants relative to the number of available jobs. The proportion of underemployed immigrants is astounding (people who either have to work in unrelated fields or a few levels below their skills). Most of what you mentioned is true, but it's also true that in the States it's much easier to make a living or have a fulfilling career for a professional.
It's crazy and upsetting to watch Canada squander the talent its great engineering schools produce, especially given the low cost.
I left Toronto 8 years ago for the US but have close ties to home and keep regular tabs on the labour market. Even at 1:1 CAD:USD, before factoring in increased cost of living in Toronto (vs. where I am, which is not SF), I'm making close to double what I'd hope to fetch back home. If I really bust my ass and kill it where I am, the disparity is only going to grow.
Once you account for other factors like the increased cost of everything and the general rarity of high-paying tech jobs, returning to Toronto feels like too much of a risk: even if I were to strike relative "gold" and make $120k-140k+ CAD as a senior engineer (a far cry from what I get how), what happens when I move on to something else? A close, highly-talented friend of mine has one of those jobs but feels trapped and doesn't even know where else he could go.
I love that the Toronto startup scene is growing and maturing and I have friends who are really working to, but I fear what's going to happen when funding in the US begins to contract. SF, NYC, and Seattle all have profitable "anchor" employers which will continue to bid for talent even when startup funding won't sustain high tech salaries. Toronto has small branch offices of American companies and some banks (I'm skeptical about the latter). Is there much else?
As far as I can tell there just isn't as much good work. I want to go home some day, but as someone who was fortunate enough to land a good tech job in the US: returning is a massive step down in pay for: fewer choices of work, a more fleeting labour market, a less ambitious environment, an expensive city with overpriced real estate, and a public transit/commute crisis which might not get materially better before I retire. I really do love the place though.
tl;dr I'm an exceptionally fortunate Canadian spoiled by great career prospects in a major American tech hub and find it hard to justify returning home :(
Semi-flippant response forthcoming, but if you factor in cost of living differences in their respective local currencies (e.g. moving to NYC or SF pre-COVID), healthcare (pay more in the US), comparable taxes (NYC/SF) to Toronto/Vancouver, then you likely might come out roughly the same or slightly ahead in absolute amounts saved depending on the salary+bonus bumps.
The kicker though is that presumably many Canadians harbour some type of fantasy in their heads of moving back home after N years, at which point the conversion of USD back to CAD can tip the balance. Historically the USD has been worth more than CAD, except for two times in 1974 and 2007.
It gets worse because Canadians that come down for "just a few years" probably end up staying longer since the original logic that drew us down in the first place is likely still valid. Throw on top the overhead and friction of uprooting your settled life (friends and maybe kids) and then it becomes even tougher to go back.
Next thing you know, you're applying for a greencard and the rest is history.
I just moved to Toronto from Vancouver. The pay gap between Canada and US is closing. I got FAANG
salary about 20% less than my US coworkers after conversion. However, I think I may still consider moving to the US in the future to have the opportunity to explore other cities. As well as save more to afford housing here in Canada.
As a Torontonian, I would say this is 'Canadian Cope'
'But we have diversity!'
As if NY, or America somehow lacks there, or that is even hugely material.
You can 'do ok' in Toronto, it's a good city. You can 'fee' whatever you want, that's up to you.
But it's nary impossible to do anything world class - and that's where the surpluses are.
The critical mass, the salary base, the talent, the lack of elite - almost none of it is there.
There are 5x more, 'Amazing Engineers' in little Tel Aviv.
Tiny little Sweden, with only 10M people (a bit less than 2x Toronto) - makes all sorts of sophisticated gear for export - Canada makes hardly any.
And this is how Canada is constructed: to be a suburb of the world - where polite people consume foreign products. We don't 'make' or 'design' anything.
Toronto is a very 'Civic City' - which is great for citizens - it actually makes a lot of American cities look kind of crappy in comparison - but it's the lack of a proper elite that's the problem, which applies to a small class of people.
Almost everyone I know has moved to the US for opportunity, and the draining of the 'talent class' will have this effect on a nation.
FYI that includes talented migrants as well: my top Canadian migrant colleagues (all from India), are now living in the US. Canada brings in 'migrants with degrees' as 'tech workers' but the 'talent' (either migrant or local) that create the opportunities leave for the US.
It's a serious problem.
This has a lot to do with 'salary' and I noticed this problem was very different when the dollar was at parity in the 2000s. With monetary incentives levelled out, the problem is not nearly as bad.
Our leaders do this on purpose. The Ontario Minister of Industry (this is several years back), proclaimed as Cisco was coming to Toronto (partly for the cheap workers), that Toronto has 'great workers at a discount' and that they would do 'everything in their power to keep it that way!'. Literally saying that their 'industrial policy' was to keep us poorer than Americans, so that American companies would have 'satellite offices' here.
Canada is a 'Small Open Economy' next to a 'Large Open Economy' (in economic terms) and that tends to create this kind of outcome, when thought of in secular terms.
But a place like Sweden - they take a different approach, and focus on key industries and 'punch above their weight' - meaning, rather than 'just being a place for bigger country satellite offices' - they are able to make their own mark. A lot of this comes from past national strategies, i.e. cars, airplanes, weapons systems - companies left over from the war era, and even further back, but it provides their people with a 'local industrial base' that Canada does not have.
We really need a 'National Strategy' to deal with this, but it's not likely to happen because none of our leaders are particularly aware of the issue, nor do they have the talent, wherewithal or ability to do something about it, let alone grasp it. And to be fair it's a really difficult problem.
Also - this is the 'EU disease' as well. The way the EU is structured, particularly with the Euro as a 'hard currency' - means slack labour will be taken up in Germany, and lost in other areas. Italy has vast, vast foundations in 'complicated things' and cultural foundation, they'll be fine. But a place like Poland? Well - it'll lose it's talent - at the very same time that standard of living is actually increasing rapidly (i.e. good for citizens), there is just no 'BOSCH' or 'BMD' or 'SIEMENS' etc for the talent to go and make a difference. For that, Deutshland. Or UK, Netherlands etc..
I suppose my comments from yesterdays thread about "Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere" is relevant:
I did the math for Toronto(which is more expensive than Montreal, and about the same as Vancouver).
For a typical software engineer, taxes take away 25% of gross pay in Ontario while it's over 30% in California and New York. Cost of living is much less(by 30-40% if you rent) in Toronto compared to Cali/New York. Of course, you will also earn 40% less in USD. So it about evens out. The site Hired.com came to similar conclusions that I've attached in an image below [2]
To go into more detail, According to numbeo[1] which crowdsources data, groceries and restaurants are 20% cheaper(adjusted for currency) in Toronto, but of course the salary is more than 20% lower. But the real kicker is the rent, and while Toronto rent is definitely increasing, it is nowhere close to NYC of Silicon Valley levels, and most sources do say you have to pay 50% more for an equivalent apartment in NYC.
Also according to my calculations from the data on numbeo, the equivalent of (pre-tax) $135,000 USD in NYC is $110,000 CAD in Toronto. It is of course easier to get 135k in NYC than 110k in Toronto, but the difference isn't nearly as big as the CAD/USD differences and wage gap makes it seem. And if you can get a job in the Waterloo-Kitchenner area, CoL of course plummets. Freelancing for clients in the US or working remotely also has great advantages.
If you're a US citizen, I don't think Canada or Toronto is enticing enough to drag you away - especially with places like Seattle, Austin and Colorado being better than SV and NYC in terms of Salary:CoL. But if you're not, Canada is comfortably the second best company to be a software engineer in, and the expected expansion of Amazon, Google and Microsoft in Toronto is likely to create a lot more high paying jobs and new startups in the coming years, especially with the US's anti-immigration stance basically making it impossible for Indians and the Chinese to get permanent residency.
The excellent universities and industry leading research in AI of UToronto and UWaterloo is a bonus if you're a student as well.
Be ready to take a big salary haircut. Toronto is not SF or NY, but it's still expensive, and you'll earn about 50% less in USD terms.
As a Canadian, I heartily recommend to anyone in the tech business - work remotely for EUR, USD, GBP, or CHF or relocate to the US. You can make good friends anywhere, but a 50% salary difference plus higher taxes takes a lot more to overcome.
Quite true, and your compensation will drop to match, and then some.
The question is can you afford to purchase any property in Manhattan, even with the salary most may get? There are quite a few companies in Toronto (startups as well) paying over $120K for well versed engineers. I can't say it's the norm but it's not impossible to find.
But having lived in SF myself, I can tell you it all balances out if you're thinking of settling down in an area. The cost of housing, healthcare (if you're part of a startup that doesn't have full insurance coverage - only my partner who worked at one of those big companies you dislike was offered full coverage comparable to what you'd get in Canada, well slightly better really), etc all add up while that's adjusted for up here.
In the US my "backup" plan is working with more talented, well-funded people on some other thing. In Canada my "backup" plan involves drop ceilings and fluorescent lighting.
I would have agreed with you 2 years ago but more and more I see amazing companies take off here. And again I've lived in SF as well so I know very well what you're talking about and it's the main reason I suggest a lot of new grads to hang out down there for a few years before coming back up. It is a huge reason to still live down the states but there are a ton of cool well funded companies here as well.
Also when there's 300,000 Canadians living in San Francisco, most of that talent you're talking about is Canadian anyways!
This is me. I left Vancouver for Toronto 5 years ago. What is not mentioned (that I saw) is that salaries in Vancouver are also much lower than Toronto for the same job. Montreal is even cheaper than Toronto and is probably more fun (if you are bilingual)
A Canadian living in US, so take this with a grain of salt.
Canada is a great place to immigrate too, I would also explore Montreal, it has more of a research/AI/gaming scene but the cost of living is lower than Toronto. Don't know about the salaries, I would investigate!
As a Canadian, if you're going to the trouble to move, aim for the USA first. The salaries are just so much higher. Canada is a solid backup plan if you can't get into the USA after trying.
I left Canada shortly after graduating to move to California and got a 2x raise at a herpy derpy startup.
I could've been making a great salary in Canada as a new grad but it just didn't make sense to stay when I could make 1.5x more in the US (and in USD!).
Not to mention the salary difference will get soaked up by real estate differences the moment you decide to buy a house.
Not that Toronto real estate is cheap either. I think Google Waterloo is a great value: high CAD salary but low real estate prices (around half of Toronto).
The optimal play (if you don't want to permanently live in the US) is to go to SF, continue living like a student and sock away your cash while building your reputation, then move back to Canada and work remote with a grandfathered USD salary.
However, I think given the right opportunity I would still head back to the U.S. Things are fucked in the U.S. but the sense of scale, velocity is unmatched. In Toronto you feel that people's attitude is just not the same. There is no hunger or lust to be number #1 and I have always been competitive personality type. In NYC even traditional enterprise corporations (where I worked) there is an intensity and drive that's missing here. Call it the american spirit.
Salary as this stage is relatively unimportant, making 150 or 250k is about the about the same to me. But the scale and types of opportunities is something else. There are roles and jobs that only exist in the U.S.
That being said, for me going back is just a tour of duty, once you are past the journeyman stage of your life and wanting to start a family, then Canada wins unquestioned. The environment, benefits, healthcare, and most importantly education for your children will outweigh just about any salary you can command state-side. Because now you are talking about intangible things that are harder and harder to buy with money.
My opinion is, stay in the U.S. when you are young and/or talented. Then, if you are of Indian or Chinese birth, move elsewhere to start a family and take a senior position in Canada. Typically if you come from reputable shop state-side and demonstrate your worth, you can find a job where people will treat you with respect for that experience. They might not be able to compensate you the same way but you can usually get bumped up a notch.
If you are of white or European heritage and you are in a good place then you can consider staying the U.S. if you can make it work.
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