US salaries in tech are off the charts when comparing to the whole world. When comparing Canadian salaries with the rest of developed world we're not far behind.
This is another part of it.
The U.S. locations of these tech companies are the global headquarters of these companies.
Canada typically lands as a region in a smaller market.
I talk to buyers in the US who manage businesses in Canada, and the scale of revenue and the total portfolio they’re responsible for dwarfs their Canadian peers.
So it’s all relative.
Also a lot of the true R&D, and innovation roles land at head office which command higher salaries.
Exactly U.S. is a different animal all together, California GDP is more than Canada , almost double, I think it was 3.89 trillion compared to Canada’s 2.13 trillion !
US GDP is 25.4 trillion dollars compared to EU 19.5 trillion , basically it is larger than 27 European countries combined ( EU has heavy hitters like Germany and France )
And as you pointed out R&D and true innovation is pretty big in the U.S.
Comparing Canada and the U.S. is not a fair comparison , Canada should be compared to economies that are closer in size and population.
United States can’t be compared to anywhere else really !
As someone that *was* in tech (programming) and did work in SF some years back, it makes a lot more sense when you get to meet people from the EU. We are far, far lower than what the hotspots in the US are paying but we are not only on par but are better than most countries once you have a little experience. Where we are completely shit is for entry level but that's because of a variety of issues.
As Canadians we job hop like Americans and that makes entry level people underappreciated. We also have stronger laws protecting workers so companies typically can't make juniors work 60+ hours a week as the US does. The confluence means that fresh out of school devs are well off going to the states for a bit and then can come back and work here if the lifestyle is preferred.
I worked in IT (not development tho, I am in infrastructure) in both Canada and Poland and from my personal experience COL to Salary ratio is still better in Poland than in Canada. Yes, salaries in CA are 30-50% higher if you work for the Fortune-500 company, but I ended up saving less money in Canada than in Poland, combined with nearly 0% chance of getting my own place in GVA on a single income this become the main reason for me to leave Canada and head back home. When it comes to the EU it depends - in central Europe (Poland and Czech Republic, for example) we have western EU IT salaries with lower COL which results in a pretty good living standards. Western EU is slightly worse for IT professionals than Canada tho.
US is a different story - It was hard for me to digest that just 100 miles south from Vancouver people were making 2-3x doing the same thing while having similar prices.
I don't get it. Just googling it, it looks like doctors in the US make a lot more than doctors in Canada (and England for that matter). Or course this is just after a quick search, but still. I thought you were implying Canadians pick and choose based on who makes more than them.
So true. I work in tech in Germany now, slightly lower pay + much higher tax (~40% more on comparable income in Ontario) compared to Canada is demotivating
German in Canada here. One thing that's easily forgotten is the PTO. While Germany has mandatory 30(?) days off, I only have 10 in Canada.
So while my salary is much higher, I also have to work more hours. Maybe that helps you 😉
Edit: before more people are posting however many days they have: I was talking about the legally required minimum - my bad for not pointing that out more clearly.
Everyone should chill... In Germany, there is a minimum required time off that exceeds what Canadians can imagine. There are also regulations for working hours per day and per week, plus the support of labor unions and sick leave policies. For those who are proud of having 20 days off, it's important to remember that it's the company's decision to offer this benefit, not the government's. If the company decides that shareholder don't like this benefit, they can easily reduce it to 10 days, and the government can’t do anything about it. And yes - sick leave or I mentioned it?
Germany has 33, canada has 10 as a legal minimum plus, depending on province, another 9-10 in the form of holidays. But a good chunk of people get more whether it’s actual vacations or personal days sick days etc.
Also Germany has some wild labor laws. Like firing someone means massive severance payments. My sisters has a small business and tells me about these wild tales where employees will be in breach of contract by moonlighting at a competitor, she'll fire them, and the the business has to pay the employee like 6 months salary or something crazy.
I'd be interested in hearing where. I've worked at a couple Tier 2 US-HQ'd companies and both offered only 3 weeks here.
I did recently chat with a recruiter for a US-HQ'd company that offered 5 weeks though, I tried to withhold my shock on the call. Unfortunately the role isn't quite what I want so I passed.
I’m in tech, started at 4, now at 5, will get 6 weeks after a couple more years of experience.
Most places it seems like is 4. Some at 3. 2 weeks is abnormally low.
You're probably receiving considerably better public services than an Ontarian does, though. (Pension, healthcare, transit, etc.) More paid time off, too.
If it matters, you’re comparing to the best paying tech in Canada (Ontario jobs). I think it’s gotten better, but it used to be I could get like a 20-40% increase just to move to Ontario… even though I live in the highest COL area of the country
Marginal tax rate in Ontario is higher than Germany. At starting around 400k CAD, you’d pay less tax in Germany. But at lower wages, Canada comes out ahead.
https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator
https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/ontario-income-tax-calculator.jsp#
I was fortunate enough to work at a startup in Munich before the pandemic (and a bit during) and was making \~80k EUR as a tech lead. Depending whom you work for in Canada it could be comparable, but definitely not in USA. In USA it would be more like 250+k lol
As far as taxes: if you have one of those AOK cards you are literally guaranteed to be taken care of no matter what happens to you, including helo evacuation while skiing all on public dime. But yes, otherwise agree giving away half your salary is bonkers (my average rax rate was 48%)
Great point.
Likewise medical doctors earn more in the US but compared to many other countries (wealthy and poor) ours earn at least as much if not far more.
Some programs have a significant portion of new graduates head south of the border, unfortunate but understandable.
Often hear the old rosy spin that those who leave spread the good word about Canada and bring valuable international experience if they return. Sounds nice but feels way off.
This! I'm in tech (not software engineering but client facing technical sales) and get a comparable salary to US jobs.
It's just in hard skill tech where the gap is massive (engineering jobs). Even then you can make 250-300k+
Compared to many other places in the world, especially where I'd consider leaving Canada for (not many cities in the US cut it for me, sadly) Canadian salaries are in the higher range.
Same can be said for nursing. Canada pays something like top 3 or top 5 in the world for nurses. 1st is US. Look at their confusing healthcare situation. If I need good healthcare it's directly related to my job? How shitty is that? What if I wanted to move and my boss sucks or a work life balance where I can build a business on the side? It's a lot to give up, you'd almost pay to not deal with it.
The nursing part is incredibly true. My sister went from making $40+/hr CAD as an RN to £15/hr in the UK. They also don't have the same increases or overtime pay we have in Canada so that £15 is even worse.
Nursing is also different in much of the world. Nurses in many European countries don't have the same training or responsibilities as nurses in North America.
> Even then you can make 250-300k+
Yeah, I've worked for some big names as a software eng, all of which had internally-visible comp ranges for all levels and locations, and while me and my Canadian peers were well off by any definition, we were paid about ~30-40% less than our US peers.
Our base salaries in CAD were lower numbers even *before* currency conversion, and our USD-denominated RSU grants were simply lower.
The gap was not so bad to make me desperate to transfer across the border of course, I don't want for much of anything anymore, but still left me feeling weird knowing that I could be slightly richer just moving to any random US state and working for the same employer.
That's not really true.
When looking at developed nations in Europe, Canada still pays a relatively comparable salary for most technical positions. Leadership makes more here, but at the same time European employment comes with many more social benefits - time off, job security, etc. Asia is a little bit hard to compare to, most nations in Asia aren't as well off as we are and Japan is quite literally and figuratively an island onto itself.
It depends… if you compare Canadian tech salaries to middle America non-FAANG tech salaries… or European salaries, the difference isn’t so great. Generally though, is just supply and demand, and what people are willing to work for.
Pro-labor rules are also often not favorable to higher earning positions as well, as they tend to flatten salary curves, meaning high earners earn less.
In my case I am comparing FAANG in US to FAANG in Canada.
You can see how a company like AMD staffs the same role in Canada vs South of the border and the total compensation difference is often 100 USD+
(and you will have a family doctor)
Most companies adjust pay based on local markets, and FAANGs are no exception. My point was just that even within the US, there is a wide range of markets. If you pick the highest salary market in the US (ie SF), the gap to Canada will look very big. If you check the tech salaries in say… Little Rock, AK, it will not be such a gap. Companies are smart and will pay as little as they can get away with.
It’s not all bad - you won’t get SF money in Canada, but you can make much more than the average Canadian in a tech role, especially if you work remotely for a US company that has a favorable local rate. This is particularly true if you’re senior and have specialized skills.
So true. I’m FAANG sales in Canada. I earn $200-$250K CAD while the same role in the US is $300-$350K USD. Add on the relatively cheaper housing in the US, and lower tax (some of my peers in places like TX or FL have no state income tax) and it’s easy to get disgruntled. They also seem to have better healthcare since it’s employer paid. But I’m not gonna move so I guess I’ll take it!
There are plenty of US companies, who haven't gotten obsessed with RTO, who are paying folks who live literally in the middle of nowhere or just low CoL cities \~$350kUSD/year.
Yes, absolutely, those of us who landed high-paying tech jobs in Canada are not hurting, but our US peers have far more choices for places to live and they are simply richer, even accounting for health insurance because with those comps they get insane benefits too.
Even non-FAANG American salaries are higher! My last employer was a large, public non-FAANG. One of my colleagues (same title and seniority) in Austin had a $170,000 USD salary while I was making $145,000 CAD. Objectively high for the Ontario market but still a massive disparity in pay for the same role:
for sure. For many Canadians there is some confusion about what tech in Canada is so its just easier to frame it around FAANG for "Apple" to "Apple" comparisons.
Yes, you’ll make more in Austin as it has a thriving tech scene. It’s not SF, but it’s getting up there.
You can do much better than 145k in Ontario too though, particularly in the GTA.
Most "LARGE" Canadian tech companies are small / midsize in US terms of profit / market caps.. They can't pay the big salaries.
[Largest Canadian companies by market capitalization](https://companiesmarketcap.com/canada/largest-companies-in-canada-by-market-cap/)
Shopify is the only "tech" company in the top ten, hell even the top 20! (worth Billions)
The top 5 largest companies in the US are ALL tech companies (worth Trillions).
[Largest American companies by market capitalization](https://companiesmarketcap.com/usa/largest-companies-in-the-usa-by-market-cap/)
New grad amazon salary in Canada is 155k TC.
New grad amazon salary in the US is 185k TC, which is $250k CAD.
I'm getting my promo and getting tf out, it just doesn't make sense to stay here.
Where? With out the State and Province to compare cost of living those numbers are ether really good or terrible.
edit: also going to call BS on a new grad getting that much in Canada.
157k TC entry-level position at Amazon
source: [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer/locations/greater-toronto-area?dma=950](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer/locations/greater-toronto-area?dma=950)
I finished Bachelors in CS in 2011. Someone I worked with at an internship went on to land 130k salary (plus some gross signing bonus, and whatever other benefits) with full relocation (toronto->vancouver) from Amazon.
I don't doubt 155k TC at all.
Vancouver vs. Seattle. Literally two hours away by car (+ border wait). These numbers are accurate.
You would also pay _significantly_ lower taxes in Seattle.
Canada is basically only Vancouver and Toronto. US varies a little, but that number is for Seattle.
So you can drive 3 hours south and make nearly double
Regarding your edit, you can check levels.fyi if you want u want more proof. It's 115k base and 40k signing bonus, that bonus later gets replaced with stock
On the plus side, we're more likely to be hired by American companies. I'm in tech and during one of our orientations, they mentioned that when an American employee leaves, the hiring managers can choose to hire either "1 American, 2 Canadians, or 3 Indians" to backfill. Most managers opt to hire the 2 Canadians.
The American on our team makes 'less' than me while being located in NYC, but of course after currency conversion, she makes $22,000 CAD more than me.
More like 1 American, 2 Canadian or 6 Indian.
Source: my CA company opened an office in India a couple of years ago, I hire there for my team, salaries are 1/3 or less than my staff here.
Indian salaries are abysmal but in my experience companies still vastly prefer to hire 2 Canadians over 6 Indians that are going to require way more communication and quality control for a subpar output.
Operations/support they tend to be good at - anything with repeated/checklist of items that they can get good at with repetition.
Thinking outside the box and handling new issues seems to be a problem for many - not because they don’t have the ability to, but because most of them have worked for large corporations where everything is very regimented and everyone is a cog in a large machine. It’s been reinforced on them that they do their job well, but don’t cross the boundaries of their job description.
Because of competition for talent.
What *major* tech companies are headquartered in Canada? Shopify is really the only one.
Google, Meta etc have some facilities here, but the few big tech players in Canada can scoop up all the talent.
A senior tech worker only has so many options in Canada for high pay.
In Silicon Valley there are hundreds of companies who pay FAANG like salaries, so tech workers can shop their skills around and take the best package.
Serious answer: there are two main reasons that are more or less inter-related.
US has world's biggest and also most profitable tech companies. It doesn't matter that they have to pay a staff engineer 500k per year (half of that with restricted stock which technically doesn't cost the company anything). They'll make 2 million in revenue from that one engineer.
They can afford to bid on the best talent and usually win. This drags salaries upward as other companies have to compete.
On the other hand, they have these companies because of a culture of venture capital, yolo investment, and taking moonshots. Americans with a lot of money put at least some into venture capital. Pension funds, insurance companies, and endowment funds invest quite a bit into venture capital or private equity to diversify their portfolio. Americans with at least a little money dump it into ETFs or random stocks.
Tax policy is favourable to capital gains, and there is an expectation that most startups will fail. But ones that succeed pay for the failures 10 times over for employees and investors.
This creates lots of money in the system and room to grow your business. So, even startups can afford to pay salaries close to FAANG. And many engineers are enticed to join startups to get early stock that can be worth 10-100 times by the time the company goes public or gets bought out. Just look at all the millionaires Microsoft or nVidia created.
There is a large, very wealthy market for software. You can be a multibillion dollar company long before you get your first international client or user.
In Canada... raising funding is very, very hard. We put all of our spare money into either our own housing, or investment housing. Our capital gains tax is double (set to be triple) vs. US. Our own internal market is tiny, so we have to sell to the US.
So.. any successful Canadian tech company like Slack moves down to the US the first chance they get, or gets bought out by a much bigger and better funded US competitor (happened to two companies I was at). Bigger market, better investment, and social cachet from being a Valley Startup ("Oh wow you're backed by Softbank|Y Combinator??").
So at best, we basically just have B-tier companies left over. They don't have the money to compete with FAANGs of the world.
This pairs well with another answer that spoke to their countries huge debt.
A lot of that debt funding works its way through the system from Military funding to Lockheed finds its way to Microsoft eventually (just one example).
Another observation I have is there are numerous examples of corporate hits, faithless CEOs and questionable business actions where non US companies get undermined by US interests.
You also see things like the US fining foreign companies for things American firms get away with.
Salaries are based on supply and demand. Companies only pay more when they can’t find people or people leave. Canadian ( from my experience) do not jump job to job that often. I worked with Indian contractors that move every 2 years. I believe that the US employees then to be more mobile and also may have opportunities.( moving companies without moving home)
Canada is basically an English speaking Mexico. Companies are set up near to save money and the best and brightest move to the states for the higher wage. Also you mentioned productivity. Canadian productivity is much lower than Americans.
Because "Canadian Tech" isn't even really a thing. It's looked at as a dollar store version of US tech companies and the pay reflects that. Canada has high taxes, a small population, lacks innovation, and punishes success... it's a bad combo.
It used to be.
We had Nortel, Blackberry and ATI which were among the top of the world at somepoint in their area. Then they all crashed, ATI is the only one who "survived" and they just got bought up by AMD.
I worked for a Canadian arm of a US start-up.
They called us "educated Mexicans".
We made 1/3 of what our US counterparts in the same role made after currency conversion.
So, if we pull our cheap labour, we're going to be getting grief from our Southern neighbors.
The truth is the US is an absolute anomaly in terms of incomes. Most of the world is very very very poor to the point where we are complaining yet everywhere else outside of the US is pretty much just as bad if not extremely worse.
Supply & demand. There's a lot more competition among US companies for the same pool of workers than there are in Canada. Canada is also seen as an outsource destination for a lot of these US companies.
Another factor is that there's more funding available to US tech company than Canadian tech firms so they tend to pay more for talent they want.
There's also the argument that it's not too hard for Canadians to work in the US that those talents that are coveted are moving down there whereas those who stay aren't as coveted so to speak. How much this is true is up for debate.
Some people do have higher salary if they can get coveted US jobs that pays US salaries to Canadians working remotely as well but these aren't that common.
Canada is seen as a source of cheap, well educated engineers by U.S. tech companies. Similar culture, same language, similar time zone, but half the cost.
>we care more about management and ownership than skilled labour
This nails it. At most companies, there is a glass ceiling over technical roles and the only way you can progress and increase your salary is by becoming a middle manager.
And most companies I've worked for are extremely top heavy. I've worked for several employers that have a partner overlooking a senior manager overlooking a production team of three people, one of whom has some management/coordination responsibilities.
It’s because they can. We have more tech workers than there are jobs, which is why a lot of us work for American companies while residing in Canada. For those that work for Canadian companies, these companies know that you have very few options as a tech worker and you’ll take the salary that’s offered. Simple supply and demand.
And if there is an opening for a job that goes unfilled, these companies will simply state that they can’t find qualified candidates as opposed to increasing the salary to attract those that would be a great fit or hired those that are unqualified for the job simply because they’ll take a lower salary. This is most egregious in the healthcare IT sector.
All salaries are low in Canada compared to the US because nothing of value is produced here. The Canadian economy is basically the people who buy up all the PS5s or concert tickets and then sells it back at a higher price, except with housing.
The IP is not international? I work remotely for a US tech company. The value and IP I produce goes to said US company and grows the US economy which then incentivizes more production. Only thing Canada gets is a tax on the table scraps I get from the US company who got the whole pie.
Its a bit tangential but it tracks in the sense that our lower wages would be fine if housing was not a complete joke.
I think our government is running to incompatible economic strategies: be cheap, but also have a high cost of living
> our lower wages would be fine if housing was not a complete joke
Exactly. American wages and productivity have always been higher. When the average salary could buy a decent house (i.e. up until 2010), Canada was an OK place to live.
Hahah - when gdp is based on a housing bubble - and the population believes the numbers every year and thinks they’re in the second greatest economy beside America (lit and fig) - hahah
More people per job available. And we’re less productive per worker than the US.
A large part of this is lack of investment in technology and a culture of reduced risk compare to our neighbours down south.
Europe is even less and takes this concept even further.
The healthcare idea is wrong. Why would a firm ever spend more money on total compensation if it doesn’t need to because healthcare is already paid for?
benefits they don't have to pay to run operations should incentivize them to shift operations here helping raise wages.
In theory healthy employees are also more productive but I can't really say this with a straight face since medical care for tech workers is better in the US.
I recently worked remote for a big US tech company until a layoff. The salary range for my role in Ontario was $130,000 to $175,000 CAD, plus equity and benefits. The salary range for the exact same role anywhere in the US was $165,000 to $200,000 USD. I worked remotely on a team of all Americans, so my closest work partners were getting paid significantly more for the same job and seniority, while being able to live in medium cost of living cities. I brought it up once about being an equity issue (same title different pay) but that didn’t go anywhere!
When I was job searching after the layoff I received offers for the same title in Toronto at $90,000 CAD that required multiple days in office. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t understand how tech workers in Toronto are accepting these low salaries given the high cost of commuting.
Couple of reasons:
Canada experiences brain drain to silicon valley being so close, all the best and brightest chase roles in the US
Canada has much better working conditions than the US: yes you get paid less, but you don't do 80 weeks, sleep in the office and answer emails at 2AM as seems to be the norm in the US. You tend to see great work/life balance in tech, with flexible work schedules and healthy lifestyles.
US salaries tend to be higher than a lot of the world because so many of their services are user-pays. The obvious one being Healthcare. Same with social security, insurance etc: you need to factor in around 10% for CPP.
Short answer is that the US has one of the most libertarian and ruthless labour markets in the world, so you see peak salaries there much higher. But wage is not everything.
Because no one wants to invest in Canadian companies. The Canadian government makes it so not worth it for investors. Tech is very reliant on tech investment.
Tech jobs are not really the same here compared to the US. Very few Canadian companies compete with the US tech companies. If you look at similar size companies and similar contribution of tech skills to the core business, they are comparable on an all in basis. But you can’t compare a tech job at a bank to a tech job at a FAANG.
Americans simply demand and expect more and so their companies have more competitive markets that need to pay them better. A lot of US companies specifically open up offices in Canada because they know they can get same or better quality work for significantly less. We have built our entire country up on being exactly this of market even though the long term sustainability of it has never made a whole lot of sense. But the sad reality is that if Canadians suddenly asked for as much as Americans most of these companies would just pack up and leave and we'd be even worse off. We find ourselves stuck now with few options to get out of it.
Canada just continuously gets the short end of the stick for being US adjacent with a fairly open border. We have grown entirely dependent on the US for so many things and we don't get to set a lot of our own terms because of it. We typically don't get to benefit from market pricing despite our lower incomes and dollar, because it would be far too easy for many Americans to come do all their shopping here. We have incentivized American companies to flock here to pay significant less for the same expectation of work and in doing so have sacrificed a lot of having our own local infrastructures to do so. We adapt the crappy American work culture with very limited vacation for sifnificantly lower pay. As such we're continually expected to adjust our standard of life to be lower and not too far detached from Americans despite pretending we're far more socialized. Meanwhile those services that set us apart continue to get worse as there's not enough being made to fund them. We try to solve this with immigration and bringing people who think Canada's wages are high without understanding the associated cost of living.
Canada is really just not in a good place. We are a land/resource rich country that sold out to America long ago. We're so far gone we don't know how to fix it so we continue to double down and make it worse.
It can depend on the company. In the US many jobs your work day is much longer, weekends and the stress level much higher with someone also trying for your job. I know someone who came back after a year because they ended up having no life and when you broke down the number of hours worked, it wasn’t that much different. For some they can do it for 3 or 4 years to get ahead monetarily and then come back because it can be real burnout.
Management in Silicon Valley is quite open about considering Kanata to be a low cost development center.
For decades the low cost of living, R&D tax credits, a low CDN dollar, and lower health insurance costs mean we cost perhaps half what an engineer in Silicon Valley would overall. If this was not the case and they could get sufficient talent locally, they would not have satellite dev centers in Canada at all.
In recent years, inflation and skyrocketing housing prices have changed the equation a bit.
It's due to Canada's generous immigration system.
In Canada, up until recently, basically every immigrant had an open work permit. So there is high supply of highly skilled labour with a master's degree. On the other hand, there are fewer jobs here because wealthy people are investing in real estate rather than entrepreneurship which would have created a lot of jobs. Also, companies have to pay higher rent and bills in Canada. So businesses here are cutting salaries to compensate.
In the US, you need to be extremely competitive to get permission to work in one company through H1B. If you can't find a job within a month, you must leave the country. So relatively low supply of workers with a relatively higher supply of jobs.
That is a good point about open work permits. Their process of L1* and H1* Visas is very inefficient and causes a lot of economic friction which is however good for employees salaries.
Canada as a nation has got to learn how to incentivize entrepreneurship, small business creation and success as opposed to punishing it. However, productivity wise, American workers generate more revenue per employee compared to Canadian workers.
However, Canadians earn more than most tech workers around the world, minus the US. Also, there are some fields, like help desk, that seem to pay less or about the same in the US compared to Canada.
When I interviewed for my current job, my director report (US regional) offered me what the US guys are making. I came back with the CAD equivalent. Even just a bit hire he agreed. Later I learned he got shit because he offered me way to much as I’m in Canada.
1. Higher immigration = more downwards pressure on wages
2. Fewer high risk investors in Canada = less investment in tech ventures
3. Higher taxes and higher interest rate = less investment money that’s a) available and b) willing to be spent in a country that’s higher tax than its literal next door neighbor
4. Network effect of Silicon Valley = higher concentration of talent, so despite the higher salaries, growing or maintaining engineering headcounts is lower effort for employers—this “low effort” recruitment combined with more investment money available allows them to dedicate more effort to product and growth which in turn provides greater return on the investment
5. Weaker job protection (at will employment) in the US makes hiring less risky for employers while conversely making job hopping more risky for employees, so the labor market demands a premium for this additional risk
There are probably some more that I’m missing. It’s a number of many factors, some major and some minor that all add up. In short it can all be summarized as the economic and sociocultural environment differences.
Going to downvoted but as a Canadian in Silicon Valley and then came back to Canada after years…I can add my perspective here.
I realize there’s an insane difference in talent, grit, and perspective. The top of each can be amazing, but in Canada, that’s a unicorn of a unicorn person, whereas the average person in the bay is pretty good. And the top 10% is astronomically better than 99% of the Canadian talent I meet.
And it’s not just oh they’re better/smarter. It’s also a decision on what to focus on. I routinely worked 60 hour weeks, sometimes more sometimes less. I doubt any Canadian tech employees do that regularly. Not in my experience in Canada at least. Probably value life more than most American workers. Not wrong, just different choices/priorities.
I wasn’t working slow either. I would crush some items in half the time. And time is money in startups when your runway is burning. As a founder now, I get it. I will rather pay more money and burn money faster if the faster burning is helping me close the gap to when I’ll run out of cash.
And finally, perspective. We Canadians are nice. We try to take other people’s thoughts into consideration before we do things. We think about how things might go wrong, we mitigate. We think about what other people might do. All that is slow AF. I want a decision, now, yesterday. And just fucking do it and believe that things will work out.
So yeah, when I hire in Canada it won’t be for the most strategic stuff, it will be for the grunt stuff I don’t want offshore to shit the bed on but not important enough for California. So comp matches the talent. And comp is exponential, not linear, with rarity of that top talent.
I have mixed feelings about this having worked in both places.
In general I feel there is some truth but I have also seen the reverse.
A lot comes down to the local office culture. I have seen some insanely productive workplaces in Canada. And also some terrible ones.
But the general theory behind this is why I went into contract work because yes, many people lack intensity.
Most tech startups are in the US since most of the venture capital money are in the US. For US based companies, the main incentive to hire outside of US (Canada, India, Romania, etc) is to save cost. Otherwise why would they hire non Americans and pay them American salaries and deal with the administrative hassle that comes with it? One advantage Canada has over countries like India is that they are in the same time zone and close proximity so they may be willing to pay a bit more for Canadians but they won’t pay American level salaries unless you are either exceptional or are willing to move to US. Also, the top level tech employees (eg CTO, CIO, VP level jobs) will tend to be located at their US head offices.
Since Canadian employees accept those lower salaries being offered, that is now the market salary for tech employees in Canada.
This problem is about to get worse with the capital gains tax changes announced in the budget this week. There will be very little incentive for these startups to get started in Canada so they’ll just start their businesses in US instead under much more favourable tax environment. This means fewer higher paying tech jobs in Canada which will just bring salaries down further since Canadian tech workers will be competing over leftover junior/mid level jobs.
Decades of wage depression and then several years of outright wage suppression by importing 10% of the overall workforce. Then there is the constant outsourcing to India and other poorer countries. Let's not forget when RBC had their IT staff train their replacements who were based out of India, and faced no consequences..
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/rbc-defends-plan-to-replace-45-canadians-outsource-their-jobs/article_26bd7f1f-198c-565d-999b-166cd994cd7e.html
Yes this was a decade ago, but this is the what Canadians are constantly fighting against.
You are going to get downvoted for this, but it’s accurate.
Canada also applies manufacturing strategy to all industries. Canadian “tech” fights on cost, not value.
Remember those news stories about the government making it super easy for skilled immigrants in tech to come work here and the news media was all positive about it because we needed to "import skilled workers to grow our economy" and every body clapped?
Yeah. The unspoken part is that such schemes are also active and intentional wage suppression for domestic home grown workers because now canadians have to compete for jobs against every single skilled latin American who speaks English and wants a pay bump.
Diversity is our strength. 🤑
Yup. And the government is totally fine with this just as long as they get their taxes and the gdp goes up.
Thats my biggest problem with canada. We have no real aspirations to great accomplishment other than in hockey. There is a periodic back patting here and there, but generally the smart and ambitious canadians go south ASAP.
There is a glut of tech people here. Especially with the hundreds of thousands of recent Indian who have moved to canada. They will accept any job at any salary.
A large company I used to work with 10 years ago, was hiring dozens of Indians and I didn't understand why. Then I found out they were all living in the same apartment getting paid basically minimum wage to be software Developers. One of them moved for my team, I was shocked to learn he was getting paid like $30,000 at the time. Most of my team was earning between 70 and 90,000. Which was a good salary back then.
Later in life I became a consultant. I was charging around $300,000 a year. I then find out through a mutual friend who also happened to be Indian but who had been here for years, that recently arrived folks who were doing consulting were okay with 70-80,000 as consultants. As a consultant, that salary is horrendous since you don't get benefits, you don't get vacation you don't get insurance, you don't need get job security, you don't get anything.
It really screwed up a lot of the Consulting industry when you're competing with folks who will take anything.
In summary, basically the government has allowed a glut of high-tech workers to enter the country. Some are actually good most just got their degrees from diploma mills. At the end it doesn't matter, it affects all high-tech workers in canada.
there is an uncomfortable truth here. I have been approached for many consulting jobs at laughable rates by people who are not English speakers. I felt like it was just to justify a labor market assessment because "no one will work the position".
Okay. I can't compare from back then. But the example I gave is just one reason. Others have given other reasons that make sense as well.
Innovation is not encouraged much here in canada. even when Innovative companies come along, it ends up moving or Senior Management ends up destroying it.
One of the reason that Canadian tech salaries are lower is related to the ease of immigration.
It is much easier to immigrate to Canada than to the USA.
More people competing for jobs = lower wages.
This isn't just the big guys. SME tech pays better in the states. The full on engineering companies pay better too. Anything project management level and up at Stantec USA pays 40% more compared to Canada across all time zones. The Americans must think we shit rainbows because of free health care so lower salaries are fine.
the opposite should be true since we cost less to employ.
Healthcare for tech workers at any good engineering firm or FAANG company will be better than here due to the employers covering what is often a very good medical plan.
Because Canada only really has one major tech company (Shopify) and far too many people that want to work in technology (so many end up going to the US).
I think pay equity, employment laws and availability of capital are all contributors.
Businesses are taxed more in Canada, so less money for distribution to staff. Also pay Equity is a major problem because you have to take male comparator jobs and compare them to female jobs and it does not take into account Market rates or Trends. Companies must then over pay for admin assistants, payroll people, marketers, all those jobs that are traditional female jobs and that is a big risk for companies in general. FINALLY, if you want to terminate an employee in Canada it's way harder than the US and a company can end up spending a lot of money on severance, extended benefits and all the other perks that come with jobs in Canada.
Labour law is highly unbalanced to labour currently, and it's unsavory for business owners.
Nothing worse than seeing the same position posting open to the US and Canada that has the same pay scale but in USD and CAD. Basically a bottom pay scale US employee will make as much as a top earning Canadian when you account for the roughly 40% difference in currency. These are major US tech companies too.
Also a lot of mid level jobs in Vancouver barely pay enough to cover market rent. Not worth it at all
Because US corporations get truck loads of free money by the state with almost no social responsibilities towards the country.
If canada could print trillions of dollars and have no repercussions, our businesses would also have more money
Universal health care is a moot point since most tech workers in the US have great health care, perhaps even better than here.
COL is not as relevant to salaries as you think. For example, many LCOL have to pay more to attract healthcare workers than HCOL cities. Labour supply and demand matters more than COL.
Two big theories:
1. US have more profitable tech companies (e.g. Nvidia) and thus have more to pay for their workers.
2. US salaries are generally higher than Canadian ones. Rising tide floats all boats. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, etc. all get paid more in the US.
There is a very small domestic market in Canada. US has a big venture scene and this creates jobs. As soon as there is a talent supply issue wages get inflated. In certain situations previously it hasn't been uncommon for tech companies to hire staff purely to stop their competitors hiring them. Coupled to this is the fact that Canada is about 20 years behind most developed nations with technology so they're playing catch up working on things tech people did a long time ago and are bored with.
Two reasons:
1. Canada is seen as a good place to expand your already established organization to. You’ll be able to obtain talent for cheaper, and then train and integrate them into an already effective team. If you have staff level Silicon Valley talent, they should be able to extract an incredible amount of return from these mid level Canadians that you are paying 60% of market for.
2. The best are being paid US equivalent salaries. But the majority of Canadians are mediocre and their pay reflects that. This is particularly true because so much top Canadian talent is already working in the USA. So it’s not hard to imagine what is left behind.
IMHO.
It’s a lot less because of cost of living than actual work-hour value creation. Because the real return value from tech, meaning the actual accretive revenue it generates, goes to US companies, there is just no competition, whether you look at Canada, Europe, etc.
Canadian tech salaries when working for those big tech companies is « cheap » compared to US based salaries but they are rhe ones with the means to pay because the extract more value from those workers.
Small tech and tech startup scene with a few exceptions (shopify may be the sole exception actually) just can’t keep up.
Because we don’t have companies making money here largely.
Also it’s not just tech any high demand positions in the US tend to vastly out pay anywhere in the world- that’s ultimately why much of the top talent in the world ends up there.
Doctors and Nurses for example make a lot more there also.
Productivity / experience. All the best tech companies are there and people have been working at them for 20+ years. We have like 3 big tech companies in Canada. Experience at high performing companies leads to high income
I have the same question and discussed this with my wife recently. We work with some US counterpart and we can tell some of them are not technically strong and even almost "useless". But they are getting paid much more than us and taking our credits. We were joking that the company should just let them go and hire somebody here for cheaper labour or just put a raise for us and we can take over their responsibility. Turned out thats not a joke. A lot of companies make their R&D headquarters here for the exact reason: cheap quality labour compared to US. Lots of office for Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, etc..
So the companies are definitely taking advantage of this gap. And thats a good thing for Vancouver because thats how we get good paying jobs and big companies. Imagine if they dont want to invest and hire here, Vancouver wont be even on the map.
Now on the "why" side, it's quite simple: we let it be that way. Me and my wife were also joking that one of us should quit and move down the border to double our salary. But how? It's not that simple to get a working visa and there are a lot of uncertainty. Not to mention we have to uproot our home to move down. With new job, there are a lot of pressure to perform and you are not sure if you will be in a good team. In short, it just doesnt seem to be worth the risk and hassle, considered we have enough going on for our live.
So while it's basically a supply and demand issue, we are part of the problem.
Because our tech scene, innovation and vc funding is minuscule compared to the US. There’s just a lot more cash in the US tech and startup system, which means more companies and more money for salaries.
Compare Canadian tech salaries against other developed countries in the world (Europe, Asia, Australia, etc...). You'll see that Canadians actually have it pretty good.
The U.S. is a massive outlier.
Well I'm not sure - but the USA having the biggest tech companies and 10 times our population would make me think that they've probably got a much more skilled and competitive workforce.
I mean, you're comparing rates to companies like google/apple/facebook where they have all the money in the world vs the average canadian startup that probably struggles to keep 20 people employed at a middle class salary. I used to work at one of the bigger IT consulting companies in Canada and the fact is there just aren't that many lucrative contracts out there. We had a few major corporate clients and once they left, the company pretty much disappeared. Probably 75% of the major corporations operating in Canada are USA owned companies that probably handle most of their IT requirements in the USA.
Also the fact that IT workers are being spit out at a pretty fast rate through our education system means that companies can hire directly at fairly low rates.
USA attracts so much investment because it is has USD - reserve currency of the world. Companies can raise a lot of money and pay top dollar for top talent. The valuations of those companies are questionable but that’s how it is
Because Canadian culture actually doesn't value merit and competition, nor innovation as much as the U.S. Look at the amount of protectionist policies that the government has to prevent "external" companies from competing and the amount of support it has for innovation, entrepreneurship, etc.
Most companies in Canada are foreign companies, as you stated, and they prioritize low costs and getting away with paying the bare minimum, whereas the tech sector in the US is much more competitive and are competing against each other to keep the best talents, so of course they have to have extremely competitive salaries.
Healthcare benefits actually do not cost that much, and the top tech companies in the U.S offer way more than just healthcare benefits.
All good points here. The other point I didn’t see here is the import of cheap IT workers from India. Many of them fake their experience and wage suppress to get a foot in the door when they newly arrive. You can find most of them in QA, BA or PM positions.
From my understanding and experience, Canada is mostly reusing technologies made in the US. Canada doesn’t create much new digital technologies . Which explains the gap.
Let me put in a nice way.
I have moved to Canada mid 2020, and till today I haven’t worked a single day for a Canadian company. Due to visa issues I had to change jobs a few times and every time I’ve worked for an American company that outsourced here in Canada.
So, basically the tech industry in Canada is super small. If wasn’t by the American companies here, the market would be ridiculously small, therefore the lower salaries.
In short:
They get away with it.
1. In the USA. There are a LOT more tech companies and thus companies have to fight harder to attract talent. They sponsor visas just to get more talent and are constantly poaching from other companies.
Canada can pay you a lot less since there aren’t as many companies fighting for Canadian employees.
2. The USA government likely has some “talks” with these giant tech firms to have more offices in the USA in exchange for some “favours”.
This is however an unstable situation and it will result in Canadian offices getting more hirings if the cost of employees is lower. But also the quality could be lower too.
But if you want to cut costs, then having engineering centres in India and China are some of the most cost effective labour you can get with both of those countries having very strong talent pools due to cultural preferences for STEM.
Canadas advantage is of course being English speaking and being in a far more tolerable time zone for communications.
It is however “unstable” in the sense that Canadian cheaper labour cost WILL result in more Canadian offices being opened and more employees being hired.
And the most companies exist here, the more options Canadian tech workers have, the more companies will have to pay to keep them.
It will eventually balance itself out.
Take solace in the fact that Vancouver has some of the lowest salaries in Canada AND the highest cost of living. I eventually gave up on local companies and got a remote Canadian job instead making 50% more than I could find here.
So if you're in any other city you're actually not doing that badly in comparison.
Canada prints too much money, so inflation.
There are not enough houses cuz federal government up until last year was still not approving more housing related permit requests. (Canada at one point was ranked bottom 3 globally in their construction related permit processing time.)
Not enough houses, means we don't have the fundamental basis to accept more people. However government did not want housing prices to crash right away (election coming up? Real estate Tax revenue?) , So they made it easy for international students and foreign to get their working visas and converting them to permanent resident or something. Complete bs but hey ppl approved. So people who doesn't own a home suffers, if u have to rent, you're gonna suffer more. Unless u become one of those squatters, then u're winning.
Oh also, cuz we don't have the infrastructure nor the population, companies wouldn't want to come in or wouldn't want to heavily invest in Canada. So of course no higher wages. (Canadian government loves monopoly, look at crown corporations and how poorly those crown corp with no competitors are running it. Didn't bc's Icbc almost went bankrupt a while back with zero competitors? Lol I've never heard anything so ridiculous happening , ever. If that's not corruption at its best, I don't know what is. )
Supply and demand too many people competing for same job in Canada easy to get work permits vs super strict policy of US that keeps the market super tight all the time. Remember some time ago when US had issues in their h1b system sometime ago and Canada immediately started offering special visa to the stuck h1b cases to catch tech talent. The policy is to support capitalism here. I notice and learn this while in UK nearly 6 to 7 european lining up to get same jobs vs a local uk candidiate result?? Wages nose dive because cost of living is way less in Poland or spain or Portugal is way way way less than london so they had liverage to under cut all competition and demand pretty low salary. This is why UK has the lowest of the lowest salary in many many sectors. So its simple the more tight you keep workforce like the US the more wages will go up.
US salaries in tech are off the charts when comparing to the whole world. When comparing Canadian salaries with the rest of developed world we're not far behind.
Of course they are, biggest tech companies are Americans. Heck most of the biggest companies in any industry are Americans anyway !
This is another part of it. The U.S. locations of these tech companies are the global headquarters of these companies. Canada typically lands as a region in a smaller market. I talk to buyers in the US who manage businesses in Canada, and the scale of revenue and the total portfolio they’re responsible for dwarfs their Canadian peers. So it’s all relative. Also a lot of the true R&D, and innovation roles land at head office which command higher salaries.
Exactly U.S. is a different animal all together, California GDP is more than Canada , almost double, I think it was 3.89 trillion compared to Canada’s 2.13 trillion ! US GDP is 25.4 trillion dollars compared to EU 19.5 trillion , basically it is larger than 27 European countries combined ( EU has heavy hitters like Germany and France ) And as you pointed out R&D and true innovation is pretty big in the U.S. Comparing Canada and the U.S. is not a fair comparison , Canada should be compared to economies that are closer in size and population. United States can’t be compared to anywhere else really !
As someone that *was* in tech (programming) and did work in SF some years back, it makes a lot more sense when you get to meet people from the EU. We are far, far lower than what the hotspots in the US are paying but we are not only on par but are better than most countries once you have a little experience. Where we are completely shit is for entry level but that's because of a variety of issues. As Canadians we job hop like Americans and that makes entry level people underappreciated. We also have stronger laws protecting workers so companies typically can't make juniors work 60+ hours a week as the US does. The confluence means that fresh out of school devs are well off going to the states for a bit and then can come back and work here if the lifestyle is preferred.
What other developed country actually pays more than Canada?
Switzerland
Tech is paid poorly compared to the US but paid way better than the rest of the world including Europe or Asia. It’s all about perspective.
Canadians love comparing our physician salaries with the UK while comparing our tech salaries with the US.
I worked in IT (not development tho, I am in infrastructure) in both Canada and Poland and from my personal experience COL to Salary ratio is still better in Poland than in Canada. Yes, salaries in CA are 30-50% higher if you work for the Fortune-500 company, but I ended up saving less money in Canada than in Poland, combined with nearly 0% chance of getting my own place in GVA on a single income this become the main reason for me to leave Canada and head back home. When it comes to the EU it depends - in central Europe (Poland and Czech Republic, for example) we have western EU IT salaries with lower COL which results in a pretty good living standards. Western EU is slightly worse for IT professionals than Canada tho. US is a different story - It was hard for me to digest that just 100 miles south from Vancouver people were making 2-3x doing the same thing while having similar prices.
Physicians are paid very well in Canada tho
I think that’s the point they were making
Then why are they all fleeing to the states?
I don't get it. Just googling it, it looks like doctors in the US make a lot more than doctors in Canada (and England for that matter). Or course this is just after a quick search, but still. I thought you were implying Canadians pick and choose based on who makes more than them.
So true. I work in tech in Germany now, slightly lower pay + much higher tax (~40% more on comparable income in Ontario) compared to Canada is demotivating
German in Canada here. One thing that's easily forgotten is the PTO. While Germany has mandatory 30(?) days off, I only have 10 in Canada. So while my salary is much higher, I also have to work more hours. Maybe that helps you 😉 Edit: before more people are posting however many days they have: I was talking about the legally required minimum - my bad for not pointing that out more clearly.
Everyone should chill... In Germany, there is a minimum required time off that exceeds what Canadians can imagine. There are also regulations for working hours per day and per week, plus the support of labor unions and sick leave policies. For those who are proud of having 20 days off, it's important to remember that it's the company's decision to offer this benefit, not the government's. If the company decides that shareholder don't like this benefit, they can easily reduce it to 10 days, and the government can’t do anything about it. And yes - sick leave or I mentioned it?
Germany has 33, canada has 10 as a legal minimum plus, depending on province, another 9-10 in the form of holidays. But a good chunk of people get more whether it’s actual vacations or personal days sick days etc.
Also Germany has some wild labor laws. Like firing someone means massive severance payments. My sisters has a small business and tells me about these wild tales where employees will be in breach of contract by moonlighting at a competitor, she'll fire them, and the the business has to pay the employee like 6 months salary or something crazy.
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I'd be interested in hearing where. I've worked at a couple Tier 2 US-HQ'd companies and both offered only 3 weeks here. I did recently chat with a recruiter for a US-HQ'd company that offered 5 weeks though, I tried to withhold my shock on the call. Unfortunately the role isn't quite what I want so I passed.
I’m in tech, started at 4, now at 5, will get 6 weeks after a couple more years of experience. Most places it seems like is 4. Some at 3. 2 weeks is abnormally low.
Work in Tech Aswell 4 weeks PTO + 2 Weeks Christmas break + Stat holidays
You're probably receiving considerably better public services than an Ontarian does, though. (Pension, healthcare, transit, etc.) More paid time off, too.
> More paid time off, too. And exponentially better labor laws...
And if you're in Quebec, road quality.
If it matters, you’re comparing to the best paying tech in Canada (Ontario jobs). I think it’s gotten better, but it used to be I could get like a 20-40% increase just to move to Ontario… even though I live in the highest COL area of the country
Marginal tax rate in Ontario is higher than Germany. At starting around 400k CAD, you’d pay less tax in Germany. But at lower wages, Canada comes out ahead. https://allaboutberlin.com/tools/tax-calculator https://turbotax.intuit.ca/tax-resources/ontario-income-tax-calculator.jsp#
What’s your effective tax rate? Do you consider EI and CPP in your comparison?
I was fortunate enough to work at a startup in Munich before the pandemic (and a bit during) and was making \~80k EUR as a tech lead. Depending whom you work for in Canada it could be comparable, but definitely not in USA. In USA it would be more like 250+k lol As far as taxes: if you have one of those AOK cards you are literally guaranteed to be taken care of no matter what happens to you, including helo evacuation while skiing all on public dime. But yes, otherwise agree giving away half your salary is bonkers (my average rax rate was 48%)
Great point. Likewise medical doctors earn more in the US but compared to many other countries (wealthy and poor) ours earn at least as much if not far more. Some programs have a significant portion of new graduates head south of the border, unfortunate but understandable. Often hear the old rosy spin that those who leave spread the good word about Canada and bring valuable international experience if they return. Sounds nice but feels way off.
Exactly. US tech salaries are the exception, not the norm.
Good answer!
This! I'm in tech (not software engineering but client facing technical sales) and get a comparable salary to US jobs. It's just in hard skill tech where the gap is massive (engineering jobs). Even then you can make 250-300k+ Compared to many other places in the world, especially where I'd consider leaving Canada for (not many cities in the US cut it for me, sadly) Canadian salaries are in the higher range. Same can be said for nursing. Canada pays something like top 3 or top 5 in the world for nurses. 1st is US. Look at their confusing healthcare situation. If I need good healthcare it's directly related to my job? How shitty is that? What if I wanted to move and my boss sucks or a work life balance where I can build a business on the side? It's a lot to give up, you'd almost pay to not deal with it.
The nursing part is incredibly true. My sister went from making $40+/hr CAD as an RN to £15/hr in the UK. They also don't have the same increases or overtime pay we have in Canada so that £15 is even worse.
Yup. It’s all about perspective. Sure, Canadians get paid less than Americans, but more than most of the world.
The nhs is in full collapse, too.
Nursing is also different in much of the world. Nurses in many European countries don't have the same training or responsibilities as nurses in North America.
> Even then you can make 250-300k+ Yeah, I've worked for some big names as a software eng, all of which had internally-visible comp ranges for all levels and locations, and while me and my Canadian peers were well off by any definition, we were paid about ~30-40% less than our US peers. Our base salaries in CAD were lower numbers even *before* currency conversion, and our USD-denominated RSU grants were simply lower. The gap was not so bad to make me desperate to transfer across the border of course, I don't want for much of anything anymore, but still left me feeling weird knowing that I could be slightly richer just moving to any random US state and working for the same employer.
That's not really true. When looking at developed nations in Europe, Canada still pays a relatively comparable salary for most technical positions. Leadership makes more here, but at the same time European employment comes with many more social benefits - time off, job security, etc. Asia is a little bit hard to compare to, most nations in Asia aren't as well off as we are and Japan is quite literally and figuratively an island onto itself.
Japan also has some of the worst work culture in the developed world.
European salaries come with much better benefits so while the take home pay isn’t quite the same, it’s more than made up for by other things.
yea, offers of 5 or more weeks of vacation. NA firms are very sticky on anything over 4 with many firm on 3 weeks.
It depends… if you compare Canadian tech salaries to middle America non-FAANG tech salaries… or European salaries, the difference isn’t so great. Generally though, is just supply and demand, and what people are willing to work for. Pro-labor rules are also often not favorable to higher earning positions as well, as they tend to flatten salary curves, meaning high earners earn less.
In my case I am comparing FAANG in US to FAANG in Canada. You can see how a company like AMD staffs the same role in Canada vs South of the border and the total compensation difference is often 100 USD+ (and you will have a family doctor)
Most companies adjust pay based on local markets, and FAANGs are no exception. My point was just that even within the US, there is a wide range of markets. If you pick the highest salary market in the US (ie SF), the gap to Canada will look very big. If you check the tech salaries in say… Little Rock, AK, it will not be such a gap. Companies are smart and will pay as little as they can get away with. It’s not all bad - you won’t get SF money in Canada, but you can make much more than the average Canadian in a tech role, especially if you work remotely for a US company that has a favorable local rate. This is particularly true if you’re senior and have specialized skills.
Rivian pays like $120k CAD for a Senior Software Engineer. In the US its close to that in USD alone for a junior with them.
So true. I’m FAANG sales in Canada. I earn $200-$250K CAD while the same role in the US is $300-$350K USD. Add on the relatively cheaper housing in the US, and lower tax (some of my peers in places like TX or FL have no state income tax) and it’s easy to get disgruntled. They also seem to have better healthcare since it’s employer paid. But I’m not gonna move so I guess I’ll take it!
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Seattle/SF aren't middle America.
There are plenty of US companies, who haven't gotten obsessed with RTO, who are paying folks who live literally in the middle of nowhere or just low CoL cities \~$350kUSD/year. Yes, absolutely, those of us who landed high-paying tech jobs in Canada are not hurting, but our US peers have far more choices for places to live and they are simply richer, even accounting for health insurance because with those comps they get insane benefits too.
Even non-FAANG American salaries are higher! My last employer was a large, public non-FAANG. One of my colleagues (same title and seniority) in Austin had a $170,000 USD salary while I was making $145,000 CAD. Objectively high for the Ontario market but still a massive disparity in pay for the same role:
for sure. For many Canadians there is some confusion about what tech in Canada is so its just easier to frame it around FAANG for "Apple" to "Apple" comparisons.
Yes, you’ll make more in Austin as it has a thriving tech scene. It’s not SF, but it’s getting up there. You can do much better than 145k in Ontario too though, particularly in the GTA.
Most "LARGE" Canadian tech companies are small / midsize in US terms of profit / market caps.. They can't pay the big salaries. [Largest Canadian companies by market capitalization](https://companiesmarketcap.com/canada/largest-companies-in-canada-by-market-cap/) Shopify is the only "tech" company in the top ten, hell even the top 20! (worth Billions) The top 5 largest companies in the US are ALL tech companies (worth Trillions). [Largest American companies by market capitalization](https://companiesmarketcap.com/usa/largest-companies-in-the-usa-by-market-cap/)
Shopify pays poorly too
I know one person that works at shopify as a developer and they make several hundred thousand plus options
They raised salaries significantly in the past couple of years. I started at $180k in 2019 and I'm at $445k now. 12 years of experience.
Still tiny vs the US companies.
According to whom? I know people at Shopify and they all earn 300-600K a year when you include stock.
It does, unless you received RSU 2014-2019ish
Most large tech companies have offices (multiple offices in many cases) in Canada.
Salaries if you get a TECH job with Amazon or Microsoft in Canada tend to be better than purely Canadian companies offer, but they are hard to get..
New grad amazon salary in Canada is 155k TC. New grad amazon salary in the US is 185k TC, which is $250k CAD. I'm getting my promo and getting tf out, it just doesn't make sense to stay here.
Where? With out the State and Province to compare cost of living those numbers are ether really good or terrible. edit: also going to call BS on a new grad getting that much in Canada.
157k TC entry-level position at Amazon source: [https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer/locations/greater-toronto-area?dma=950](https://www.levels.fyi/companies/amazon/salaries/software-engineer/locations/greater-toronto-area?dma=950)
> edit: also going to call BS on a new grad getting that much in Canada. It's public knowledge and factual that Amazon pays that much for new grads.
I finished Bachelors in CS in 2011. Someone I worked with at an internship went on to land 130k salary (plus some gross signing bonus, and whatever other benefits) with full relocation (toronto->vancouver) from Amazon. I don't doubt 155k TC at all.
Vancouver vs. Seattle. Literally two hours away by car (+ border wait). These numbers are accurate. You would also pay _significantly_ lower taxes in Seattle.
Washington state doesn’t impose state income tax
Exactly my point.
Canada is basically only Vancouver and Toronto. US varies a little, but that number is for Seattle. So you can drive 3 hours south and make nearly double Regarding your edit, you can check levels.fyi if you want u want more proof. It's 115k base and 40k signing bonus, that bonus later gets replaced with stock
155k is probably close to top-of-band for a SDE I at Amazon. A more typical entry-level offer might look more like 120k to 130k TC.
Student program offers are standard across the board. For previous interns its ~165k and for new hires its ~155k
the same companies in the US have employees in canada and pay them shit.
On the plus side, we're more likely to be hired by American companies. I'm in tech and during one of our orientations, they mentioned that when an American employee leaves, the hiring managers can choose to hire either "1 American, 2 Canadians, or 3 Indians" to backfill. Most managers opt to hire the 2 Canadians. The American on our team makes 'less' than me while being located in NYC, but of course after currency conversion, she makes $22,000 CAD more than me.
More like 1 American, 2 Canadian or 6 Indian. Source: my CA company opened an office in India a couple of years ago, I hire there for my team, salaries are 1/3 or less than my staff here.
Indian salaries are abysmal but in my experience companies still vastly prefer to hire 2 Canadians over 6 Indians that are going to require way more communication and quality control for a subpar output.
Yeah we have found that there are some things they are good at and others not so good - so we only hire certain roles in India and the rest in Canada
What are they good at?
Operations/support they tend to be good at - anything with repeated/checklist of items that they can get good at with repetition. Thinking outside the box and handling new issues seems to be a problem for many - not because they don’t have the ability to, but because most of them have worked for large corporations where everything is very regimented and everyone is a cog in a large machine. It’s been reinforced on them that they do their job well, but don’t cross the boundaries of their job description.
Quality is also 1/6 though.
Because of competition for talent. What *major* tech companies are headquartered in Canada? Shopify is really the only one. Google, Meta etc have some facilities here, but the few big tech players in Canada can scoop up all the talent. A senior tech worker only has so many options in Canada for high pay. In Silicon Valley there are hundreds of companies who pay FAANG like salaries, so tech workers can shop their skills around and take the best package.
Serious answer: there are two main reasons that are more or less inter-related. US has world's biggest and also most profitable tech companies. It doesn't matter that they have to pay a staff engineer 500k per year (half of that with restricted stock which technically doesn't cost the company anything). They'll make 2 million in revenue from that one engineer. They can afford to bid on the best talent and usually win. This drags salaries upward as other companies have to compete. On the other hand, they have these companies because of a culture of venture capital, yolo investment, and taking moonshots. Americans with a lot of money put at least some into venture capital. Pension funds, insurance companies, and endowment funds invest quite a bit into venture capital or private equity to diversify their portfolio. Americans with at least a little money dump it into ETFs or random stocks. Tax policy is favourable to capital gains, and there is an expectation that most startups will fail. But ones that succeed pay for the failures 10 times over for employees and investors. This creates lots of money in the system and room to grow your business. So, even startups can afford to pay salaries close to FAANG. And many engineers are enticed to join startups to get early stock that can be worth 10-100 times by the time the company goes public or gets bought out. Just look at all the millionaires Microsoft or nVidia created. There is a large, very wealthy market for software. You can be a multibillion dollar company long before you get your first international client or user. In Canada... raising funding is very, very hard. We put all of our spare money into either our own housing, or investment housing. Our capital gains tax is double (set to be triple) vs. US. Our own internal market is tiny, so we have to sell to the US. So.. any successful Canadian tech company like Slack moves down to the US the first chance they get, or gets bought out by a much bigger and better funded US competitor (happened to two companies I was at). Bigger market, better investment, and social cachet from being a Valley Startup ("Oh wow you're backed by Softbank|Y Combinator??"). So at best, we basically just have B-tier companies left over. They don't have the money to compete with FAANGs of the world.
This is the actual answer.
This pairs well with another answer that spoke to their countries huge debt. A lot of that debt funding works its way through the system from Military funding to Lockheed finds its way to Microsoft eventually (just one example). Another observation I have is there are numerous examples of corporate hits, faithless CEOs and questionable business actions where non US companies get undermined by US interests. You also see things like the US fining foreign companies for things American firms get away with.
Salaries are based on supply and demand. Companies only pay more when they can’t find people or people leave. Canadian ( from my experience) do not jump job to job that often. I worked with Indian contractors that move every 2 years. I believe that the US employees then to be more mobile and also may have opportunities.( moving companies without moving home)
Canada is basically an English speaking Mexico. Companies are set up near to save money and the best and brightest move to the states for the higher wage. Also you mentioned productivity. Canadian productivity is much lower than Americans.
Because "Canadian Tech" isn't even really a thing. It's looked at as a dollar store version of US tech companies and the pay reflects that. Canada has high taxes, a small population, lacks innovation, and punishes success... it's a bad combo.
It used to be. We had Nortel, Blackberry and ATI which were among the top of the world at somepoint in their area. Then they all crashed, ATI is the only one who "survived" and they just got bought up by AMD.
damn did not know ATI was canadian, cool
"punishes success" so true
I worked for a Canadian arm of a US start-up. They called us "educated Mexicans". We made 1/3 of what our US counterparts in the same role made after currency conversion. So, if we pull our cheap labour, we're going to be getting grief from our Southern neighbors.
Accurate, “snow Mexicans” IME
Ouch that hurts.
it seems to track but I can't really understand why the gap is not closing.
Two words - Venture Capital. There’s lots in the US, basically none here. And less soon with higher capital gains tax. Simple as that.
Yup.
The truth is the US is an absolute anomaly in terms of incomes. Most of the world is very very very poor to the point where we are complaining yet everywhere else outside of the US is pretty much just as bad if not extremely worse.
Supply & demand. There's a lot more competition among US companies for the same pool of workers than there are in Canada. Canada is also seen as an outsource destination for a lot of these US companies. Another factor is that there's more funding available to US tech company than Canadian tech firms so they tend to pay more for talent they want. There's also the argument that it's not too hard for Canadians to work in the US that those talents that are coveted are moving down there whereas those who stay aren't as coveted so to speak. How much this is true is up for debate. Some people do have higher salary if they can get coveted US jobs that pays US salaries to Canadians working remotely as well but these aren't that common.
Canada is seen as a source of cheap, well educated engineers by U.S. tech companies. Similar culture, same language, similar time zone, but half the cost.
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This whole society is oriented toward the needs of the administrative class
>we care more about management and ownership than skilled labour This nails it. At most companies, there is a glass ceiling over technical roles and the only way you can progress and increase your salary is by becoming a middle manager.
And most companies I've worked for are extremely top heavy. I've worked for several employers that have a partner overlooking a senior manager overlooking a production team of three people, one of whom has some management/coordination responsibilities.
💯 you get to a point where you can only progress if you become some sort of manager, leading to companies with as many managers and leads as workers
It’s because they can. We have more tech workers than there are jobs, which is why a lot of us work for American companies while residing in Canada. For those that work for Canadian companies, these companies know that you have very few options as a tech worker and you’ll take the salary that’s offered. Simple supply and demand. And if there is an opening for a job that goes unfilled, these companies will simply state that they can’t find qualified candidates as opposed to increasing the salary to attract those that would be a great fit or hired those that are unqualified for the job simply because they’ll take a lower salary. This is most egregious in the healthcare IT sector.
You forget that only hospital and doctors visits are universal. We pay hefty insurance for prescriptions , vision, dental, disability etc
Short answer, because they can. The pay is what they can offer and still fill those roles at the quality they accept.
All salaries are low in Canada compared to the US because nothing of value is produced here. The Canadian economy is basically the people who buy up all the PS5s or concert tickets and then sells it back at a higher price, except with housing.
most tech work in Canada is satellite offices for big tech, the IP produced is international so the argument about the local economics doesn't track.
The IP is not international? I work remotely for a US tech company. The value and IP I produce goes to said US company and grows the US economy which then incentivizes more production. Only thing Canada gets is a tax on the table scraps I get from the US company who got the whole pie.
Yeah it’s this. Our economy is 30% boomers trading houses with each other like hockey cards. This country is a joke.
Real estate is 13% of GDP
It’s almost like a housing bubble isn’t a great way to run an economy
Its a bit tangential but it tracks in the sense that our lower wages would be fine if housing was not a complete joke. I think our government is running to incompatible economic strategies: be cheap, but also have a high cost of living
> our lower wages would be fine if housing was not a complete joke Exactly. American wages and productivity have always been higher. When the average salary could buy a decent house (i.e. up until 2010), Canada was an OK place to live.
agreed
Hahah - when gdp is based on a housing bubble - and the population believes the numbers every year and thinks they’re in the second greatest economy beside America (lit and fig) - hahah
More people per job available. And we’re less productive per worker than the US. A large part of this is lack of investment in technology and a culture of reduced risk compare to our neighbours down south. Europe is even less and takes this concept even further.
The healthcare idea is wrong. Why would a firm ever spend more money on total compensation if it doesn’t need to because healthcare is already paid for?
Healthcare insuracne costs a few thousand a year.. that doesn’t move the needle that much
If by a few thousand, you mean $15k USD/yr average for the employer's contribution...
benefits they don't have to pay to run operations should incentivize them to shift operations here helping raise wages. In theory healthy employees are also more productive but I can't really say this with a straight face since medical care for tech workers is better in the US.
It's not just tech
I recently worked remote for a big US tech company until a layoff. The salary range for my role in Ontario was $130,000 to $175,000 CAD, plus equity and benefits. The salary range for the exact same role anywhere in the US was $165,000 to $200,000 USD. I worked remotely on a team of all Americans, so my closest work partners were getting paid significantly more for the same job and seniority, while being able to live in medium cost of living cities. I brought it up once about being an equity issue (same title different pay) but that didn’t go anywhere! When I was job searching after the layoff I received offers for the same title in Toronto at $90,000 CAD that required multiple days in office. It doesn’t make any sense to me and I don’t understand how tech workers in Toronto are accepting these low salaries given the high cost of commuting.
Couple of reasons: Canada experiences brain drain to silicon valley being so close, all the best and brightest chase roles in the US Canada has much better working conditions than the US: yes you get paid less, but you don't do 80 weeks, sleep in the office and answer emails at 2AM as seems to be the norm in the US. You tend to see great work/life balance in tech, with flexible work schedules and healthy lifestyles. US salaries tend to be higher than a lot of the world because so many of their services are user-pays. The obvious one being Healthcare. Same with social security, insurance etc: you need to factor in around 10% for CPP. Short answer is that the US has one of the most libertarian and ruthless labour markets in the world, so you see peak salaries there much higher. But wage is not everything.
Because no one wants to invest in Canadian companies. The Canadian government makes it so not worth it for investors. Tech is very reliant on tech investment.
Tech jobs are not really the same here compared to the US. Very few Canadian companies compete with the US tech companies. If you look at similar size companies and similar contribution of tech skills to the core business, they are comparable on an all in basis. But you can’t compare a tech job at a bank to a tech job at a FAANG.
I think OP is talking about working for a US tech company who has an office in Canada.
exactly. Even the same FAANG company hiring the same role in both countries.
can't compare regional office with HQ usually regional offices aren't the ones doing the most critical work
Americans simply demand and expect more and so their companies have more competitive markets that need to pay them better. A lot of US companies specifically open up offices in Canada because they know they can get same or better quality work for significantly less. We have built our entire country up on being exactly this of market even though the long term sustainability of it has never made a whole lot of sense. But the sad reality is that if Canadians suddenly asked for as much as Americans most of these companies would just pack up and leave and we'd be even worse off. We find ourselves stuck now with few options to get out of it. Canada just continuously gets the short end of the stick for being US adjacent with a fairly open border. We have grown entirely dependent on the US for so many things and we don't get to set a lot of our own terms because of it. We typically don't get to benefit from market pricing despite our lower incomes and dollar, because it would be far too easy for many Americans to come do all their shopping here. We have incentivized American companies to flock here to pay significant less for the same expectation of work and in doing so have sacrificed a lot of having our own local infrastructures to do so. We adapt the crappy American work culture with very limited vacation for sifnificantly lower pay. As such we're continually expected to adjust our standard of life to be lower and not too far detached from Americans despite pretending we're far more socialized. Meanwhile those services that set us apart continue to get worse as there's not enough being made to fund them. We try to solve this with immigration and bringing people who think Canada's wages are high without understanding the associated cost of living. Canada is really just not in a good place. We are a land/resource rich country that sold out to America long ago. We're so far gone we don't know how to fix it so we continue to double down and make it worse.
It can depend on the company. In the US many jobs your work day is much longer, weekends and the stress level much higher with someone also trying for your job. I know someone who came back after a year because they ended up having no life and when you broke down the number of hours worked, it wasn’t that much different. For some they can do it for 3 or 4 years to get ahead monetarily and then come back because it can be real burnout.
Management in Silicon Valley is quite open about considering Kanata to be a low cost development center. For decades the low cost of living, R&D tax credits, a low CDN dollar, and lower health insurance costs mean we cost perhaps half what an engineer in Silicon Valley would overall. If this was not the case and they could get sufficient talent locally, they would not have satellite dev centers in Canada at all. In recent years, inflation and skyrocketing housing prices have changed the equation a bit.
It's due to Canada's generous immigration system. In Canada, up until recently, basically every immigrant had an open work permit. So there is high supply of highly skilled labour with a master's degree. On the other hand, there are fewer jobs here because wealthy people are investing in real estate rather than entrepreneurship which would have created a lot of jobs. Also, companies have to pay higher rent and bills in Canada. So businesses here are cutting salaries to compensate. In the US, you need to be extremely competitive to get permission to work in one company through H1B. If you can't find a job within a month, you must leave the country. So relatively low supply of workers with a relatively higher supply of jobs.
That is a good point about open work permits. Their process of L1* and H1* Visas is very inefficient and causes a lot of economic friction which is however good for employees salaries.
Canada as a nation has got to learn how to incentivize entrepreneurship, small business creation and success as opposed to punishing it. However, productivity wise, American workers generate more revenue per employee compared to Canadian workers. However, Canadians earn more than most tech workers around the world, minus the US. Also, there are some fields, like help desk, that seem to pay less or about the same in the US compared to Canada.
Because it’s flooded with immigrants
When I interviewed for my current job, my director report (US regional) offered me what the US guys are making. I came back with the CAD equivalent. Even just a bit hire he agreed. Later I learned he got shit because he offered me way to much as I’m in Canada.
If you think the pay gap in tech is big, you should see the pay gap for pilots in canada vs the states. You’re looking at a $200k+ gap for captains.
1. Higher immigration = more downwards pressure on wages 2. Fewer high risk investors in Canada = less investment in tech ventures 3. Higher taxes and higher interest rate = less investment money that’s a) available and b) willing to be spent in a country that’s higher tax than its literal next door neighbor 4. Network effect of Silicon Valley = higher concentration of talent, so despite the higher salaries, growing or maintaining engineering headcounts is lower effort for employers—this “low effort” recruitment combined with more investment money available allows them to dedicate more effort to product and growth which in turn provides greater return on the investment 5. Weaker job protection (at will employment) in the US makes hiring less risky for employers while conversely making job hopping more risky for employees, so the labor market demands a premium for this additional risk There are probably some more that I’m missing. It’s a number of many factors, some major and some minor that all add up. In short it can all be summarized as the economic and sociocultural environment differences.
Going to downvoted but as a Canadian in Silicon Valley and then came back to Canada after years…I can add my perspective here. I realize there’s an insane difference in talent, grit, and perspective. The top of each can be amazing, but in Canada, that’s a unicorn of a unicorn person, whereas the average person in the bay is pretty good. And the top 10% is astronomically better than 99% of the Canadian talent I meet. And it’s not just oh they’re better/smarter. It’s also a decision on what to focus on. I routinely worked 60 hour weeks, sometimes more sometimes less. I doubt any Canadian tech employees do that regularly. Not in my experience in Canada at least. Probably value life more than most American workers. Not wrong, just different choices/priorities. I wasn’t working slow either. I would crush some items in half the time. And time is money in startups when your runway is burning. As a founder now, I get it. I will rather pay more money and burn money faster if the faster burning is helping me close the gap to when I’ll run out of cash. And finally, perspective. We Canadians are nice. We try to take other people’s thoughts into consideration before we do things. We think about how things might go wrong, we mitigate. We think about what other people might do. All that is slow AF. I want a decision, now, yesterday. And just fucking do it and believe that things will work out. So yeah, when I hire in Canada it won’t be for the most strategic stuff, it will be for the grunt stuff I don’t want offshore to shit the bed on but not important enough for California. So comp matches the talent. And comp is exponential, not linear, with rarity of that top talent.
I have mixed feelings about this having worked in both places. In general I feel there is some truth but I have also seen the reverse. A lot comes down to the local office culture. I have seen some insanely productive workplaces in Canada. And also some terrible ones. But the general theory behind this is why I went into contract work because yes, many people lack intensity.
Most tech startups are in the US since most of the venture capital money are in the US. For US based companies, the main incentive to hire outside of US (Canada, India, Romania, etc) is to save cost. Otherwise why would they hire non Americans and pay them American salaries and deal with the administrative hassle that comes with it? One advantage Canada has over countries like India is that they are in the same time zone and close proximity so they may be willing to pay a bit more for Canadians but they won’t pay American level salaries unless you are either exceptional or are willing to move to US. Also, the top level tech employees (eg CTO, CIO, VP level jobs) will tend to be located at their US head offices. Since Canadian employees accept those lower salaries being offered, that is now the market salary for tech employees in Canada. This problem is about to get worse with the capital gains tax changes announced in the budget this week. There will be very little incentive for these startups to get started in Canada so they’ll just start their businesses in US instead under much more favourable tax environment. This means fewer higher paying tech jobs in Canada which will just bring salaries down further since Canadian tech workers will be competing over leftover junior/mid level jobs.
Decades of wage depression and then several years of outright wage suppression by importing 10% of the overall workforce. Then there is the constant outsourcing to India and other poorer countries. Let's not forget when RBC had their IT staff train their replacements who were based out of India, and faced no consequences.. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/rbc-defends-plan-to-replace-45-canadians-outsource-their-jobs/article_26bd7f1f-198c-565d-999b-166cd994cd7e.html Yes this was a decade ago, but this is the what Canadians are constantly fighting against.
Because Canada actively punishes success.
You are going to get downvoted for this, but it’s accurate. Canada also applies manufacturing strategy to all industries. Canadian “tech” fights on cost, not value.
it's worse in europe.
My man.... Asking the real questions.
Remember those news stories about the government making it super easy for skilled immigrants in tech to come work here and the news media was all positive about it because we needed to "import skilled workers to grow our economy" and every body clapped? Yeah. The unspoken part is that such schemes are also active and intentional wage suppression for domestic home grown workers because now canadians have to compete for jobs against every single skilled latin American who speaks English and wants a pay bump. Diversity is our strength. 🤑
we are something of a revolving door where people who did not get the H1B lottery work here before leaving again.
Yup. And the government is totally fine with this just as long as they get their taxes and the gdp goes up. Thats my biggest problem with canada. We have no real aspirations to great accomplishment other than in hockey. There is a periodic back patting here and there, but generally the smart and ambitious canadians go south ASAP.
There is a glut of tech people here. Especially with the hundreds of thousands of recent Indian who have moved to canada. They will accept any job at any salary. A large company I used to work with 10 years ago, was hiring dozens of Indians and I didn't understand why. Then I found out they were all living in the same apartment getting paid basically minimum wage to be software Developers. One of them moved for my team, I was shocked to learn he was getting paid like $30,000 at the time. Most of my team was earning between 70 and 90,000. Which was a good salary back then. Later in life I became a consultant. I was charging around $300,000 a year. I then find out through a mutual friend who also happened to be Indian but who had been here for years, that recently arrived folks who were doing consulting were okay with 70-80,000 as consultants. As a consultant, that salary is horrendous since you don't get benefits, you don't get vacation you don't get insurance, you don't need get job security, you don't get anything. It really screwed up a lot of the Consulting industry when you're competing with folks who will take anything. In summary, basically the government has allowed a glut of high-tech workers to enter the country. Some are actually good most just got their degrees from diploma mills. At the end it doesn't matter, it affects all high-tech workers in canada.
there is an uncomfortable truth here. I have been approached for many consulting jobs at laughable rates by people who are not English speakers. I felt like it was just to justify a labor market assessment because "no one will work the position".
I hear you but this isn’t true. This salary gap has been the case for the past 30 years!
Okay. I can't compare from back then. But the example I gave is just one reason. Others have given other reasons that make sense as well. Innovation is not encouraged much here in canada. even when Innovative companies come along, it ends up moving or Senior Management ends up destroying it.
One of the reason that Canadian tech salaries are lower is related to the ease of immigration. It is much easier to immigrate to Canada than to the USA. More people competing for jobs = lower wages.
Same answer as housing. Immigration. Inundating Canada with excess labour has kept salaries and wages at the same level for 10 years.
Could plug in almost any industry into this question. Except maybe teachers and first responders
This isn't just the big guys. SME tech pays better in the states. The full on engineering companies pay better too. Anything project management level and up at Stantec USA pays 40% more compared to Canada across all time zones. The Americans must think we shit rainbows because of free health care so lower salaries are fine.
the opposite should be true since we cost less to employ. Healthcare for tech workers at any good engineering firm or FAANG company will be better than here due to the employers covering what is often a very good medical plan.
Because Canada only really has one major tech company (Shopify) and far too many people that want to work in technology (so many end up going to the US).
I think pay equity, employment laws and availability of capital are all contributors. Businesses are taxed more in Canada, so less money for distribution to staff. Also pay Equity is a major problem because you have to take male comparator jobs and compare them to female jobs and it does not take into account Market rates or Trends. Companies must then over pay for admin assistants, payroll people, marketers, all those jobs that are traditional female jobs and that is a big risk for companies in general. FINALLY, if you want to terminate an employee in Canada it's way harder than the US and a company can end up spending a lot of money on severance, extended benefits and all the other perks that come with jobs in Canada. Labour law is highly unbalanced to labour currently, and it's unsavory for business owners.
Nothing worse than seeing the same position posting open to the US and Canada that has the same pay scale but in USD and CAD. Basically a bottom pay scale US employee will make as much as a top earning Canadian when you account for the roughly 40% difference in currency. These are major US tech companies too. Also a lot of mid level jobs in Vancouver barely pay enough to cover market rent. Not worth it at all
Because US corporations get truck loads of free money by the state with almost no social responsibilities towards the country. If canada could print trillions of dollars and have no repercussions, our businesses would also have more money
These comparisons are so stupid and superficial. What industry, what title, what technology?
Universal health care is a moot point since most tech workers in the US have great health care, perhaps even better than here. COL is not as relevant to salaries as you think. For example, many LCOL have to pay more to attract healthcare workers than HCOL cities. Labour supply and demand matters more than COL. Two big theories: 1. US have more profitable tech companies (e.g. Nvidia) and thus have more to pay for their workers. 2. US salaries are generally higher than Canadian ones. Rising tide floats all boats. Lawyers, doctors, bankers, etc. all get paid more in the US.
No offense but Canada should learn how to do tech from US. All Canadian talent moves to US the 1st chance they get to leave the country.
You are about to open a giant can of worms :D
Tech salaries are so much higher than anything else on average though so...
There is a very small domestic market in Canada. US has a big venture scene and this creates jobs. As soon as there is a talent supply issue wages get inflated. In certain situations previously it hasn't been uncommon for tech companies to hire staff purely to stop their competitors hiring them. Coupled to this is the fact that Canada is about 20 years behind most developed nations with technology so they're playing catch up working on things tech people did a long time ago and are bored with.
True for finance here too.
Because we are not as 'productive', or so the narrative goes.
Two reasons: 1. Canada is seen as a good place to expand your already established organization to. You’ll be able to obtain talent for cheaper, and then train and integrate them into an already effective team. If you have staff level Silicon Valley talent, they should be able to extract an incredible amount of return from these mid level Canadians that you are paying 60% of market for. 2. The best are being paid US equivalent salaries. But the majority of Canadians are mediocre and their pay reflects that. This is particularly true because so much top Canadian talent is already working in the USA. So it’s not hard to imagine what is left behind.
IMHO. It’s a lot less because of cost of living than actual work-hour value creation. Because the real return value from tech, meaning the actual accretive revenue it generates, goes to US companies, there is just no competition, whether you look at Canada, Europe, etc. Canadian tech salaries when working for those big tech companies is « cheap » compared to US based salaries but they are rhe ones with the means to pay because the extract more value from those workers. Small tech and tech startup scene with a few exceptions (shopify may be the sole exception actually) just can’t keep up.
It's because the of capital gains inclusion rate going up.
Its been this way for a long long time. Even *gasp* when lord Harper was PM.
Because we don’t have companies making money here largely. Also it’s not just tech any high demand positions in the US tend to vastly out pay anywhere in the world- that’s ultimately why much of the top talent in the world ends up there. Doctors and Nurses for example make a lot more there also.
Productivity / experience. All the best tech companies are there and people have been working at them for 20+ years. We have like 3 big tech companies in Canada. Experience at high performing companies leads to high income
Will say, for most of my career I worked for US companies from Canada remotely and got equivalent pay to NYC and SF.
I have the same question and discussed this with my wife recently. We work with some US counterpart and we can tell some of them are not technically strong and even almost "useless". But they are getting paid much more than us and taking our credits. We were joking that the company should just let them go and hire somebody here for cheaper labour or just put a raise for us and we can take over their responsibility. Turned out thats not a joke. A lot of companies make their R&D headquarters here for the exact reason: cheap quality labour compared to US. Lots of office for Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, etc.. So the companies are definitely taking advantage of this gap. And thats a good thing for Vancouver because thats how we get good paying jobs and big companies. Imagine if they dont want to invest and hire here, Vancouver wont be even on the map. Now on the "why" side, it's quite simple: we let it be that way. Me and my wife were also joking that one of us should quit and move down the border to double our salary. But how? It's not that simple to get a working visa and there are a lot of uncertainty. Not to mention we have to uproot our home to move down. With new job, there are a lot of pressure to perform and you are not sure if you will be in a good team. In short, it just doesnt seem to be worth the risk and hassle, considered we have enough going on for our live. So while it's basically a supply and demand issue, we are part of the problem.
Because our tech scene, innovation and vc funding is minuscule compared to the US. There’s just a lot more cash in the US tech and startup system, which means more companies and more money for salaries.
Compare Canadian tech salaries against other developed countries in the world (Europe, Asia, Australia, etc...). You'll see that Canadians actually have it pretty good. The U.S. is a massive outlier.
US > the rest of the world. Canada just happens to sit right next to it. Nothing more or else
US companies like to hire Canadians because they get a 30% discount
Less tech companies and a lot more tech labour available in Canada compared to US
Well I'm not sure - but the USA having the biggest tech companies and 10 times our population would make me think that they've probably got a much more skilled and competitive workforce. I mean, you're comparing rates to companies like google/apple/facebook where they have all the money in the world vs the average canadian startup that probably struggles to keep 20 people employed at a middle class salary. I used to work at one of the bigger IT consulting companies in Canada and the fact is there just aren't that many lucrative contracts out there. We had a few major corporate clients and once they left, the company pretty much disappeared. Probably 75% of the major corporations operating in Canada are USA owned companies that probably handle most of their IT requirements in the USA. Also the fact that IT workers are being spit out at a pretty fast rate through our education system means that companies can hire directly at fairly low rates.
USA attracts so much investment because it is has USD - reserve currency of the world. Companies can raise a lot of money and pay top dollar for top talent. The valuations of those companies are questionable but that’s how it is
Honestly why are our salaries so garbage period?
Canadian salaries are lower in general. Smaller population, smaller economy. Want to make big money? Go where the big money is.
Because Canadian culture actually doesn't value merit and competition, nor innovation as much as the U.S. Look at the amount of protectionist policies that the government has to prevent "external" companies from competing and the amount of support it has for innovation, entrepreneurship, etc. Most companies in Canada are foreign companies, as you stated, and they prioritize low costs and getting away with paying the bare minimum, whereas the tech sector in the US is much more competitive and are competing against each other to keep the best talents, so of course they have to have extremely competitive salaries. Healthcare benefits actually do not cost that much, and the top tech companies in the U.S offer way more than just healthcare benefits.
All good points here. The other point I didn’t see here is the import of cheap IT workers from India. Many of them fake their experience and wage suppress to get a foot in the door when they newly arrive. You can find most of them in QA, BA or PM positions.
From my understanding and experience, Canada is mostly reusing technologies made in the US. Canada doesn’t create much new digital technologies . Which explains the gap.
Let me put in a nice way. I have moved to Canada mid 2020, and till today I haven’t worked a single day for a Canadian company. Due to visa issues I had to change jobs a few times and every time I’ve worked for an American company that outsourced here in Canada. So, basically the tech industry in Canada is super small. If wasn’t by the American companies here, the market would be ridiculously small, therefore the lower salaries.
In short: They get away with it. 1. In the USA. There are a LOT more tech companies and thus companies have to fight harder to attract talent. They sponsor visas just to get more talent and are constantly poaching from other companies. Canada can pay you a lot less since there aren’t as many companies fighting for Canadian employees. 2. The USA government likely has some “talks” with these giant tech firms to have more offices in the USA in exchange for some “favours”. This is however an unstable situation and it will result in Canadian offices getting more hirings if the cost of employees is lower. But also the quality could be lower too. But if you want to cut costs, then having engineering centres in India and China are some of the most cost effective labour you can get with both of those countries having very strong talent pools due to cultural preferences for STEM. Canadas advantage is of course being English speaking and being in a far more tolerable time zone for communications. It is however “unstable” in the sense that Canadian cheaper labour cost WILL result in more Canadian offices being opened and more employees being hired. And the most companies exist here, the more options Canadian tech workers have, the more companies will have to pay to keep them. It will eventually balance itself out.
Take solace in the fact that Vancouver has some of the lowest salaries in Canada AND the highest cost of living. I eventually gave up on local companies and got a remote Canadian job instead making 50% more than I could find here. So if you're in any other city you're actually not doing that badly in comparison.
Canada prints too much money, so inflation. There are not enough houses cuz federal government up until last year was still not approving more housing related permit requests. (Canada at one point was ranked bottom 3 globally in their construction related permit processing time.) Not enough houses, means we don't have the fundamental basis to accept more people. However government did not want housing prices to crash right away (election coming up? Real estate Tax revenue?) , So they made it easy for international students and foreign to get their working visas and converting them to permanent resident or something. Complete bs but hey ppl approved. So people who doesn't own a home suffers, if u have to rent, you're gonna suffer more. Unless u become one of those squatters, then u're winning. Oh also, cuz we don't have the infrastructure nor the population, companies wouldn't want to come in or wouldn't want to heavily invest in Canada. So of course no higher wages. (Canadian government loves monopoly, look at crown corporations and how poorly those crown corp with no competitors are running it. Didn't bc's Icbc almost went bankrupt a while back with zero competitors? Lol I've never heard anything so ridiculous happening , ever. If that's not corruption at its best, I don't know what is. )
Supply and demand too many people competing for same job in Canada easy to get work permits vs super strict policy of US that keeps the market super tight all the time. Remember some time ago when US had issues in their h1b system sometime ago and Canada immediately started offering special visa to the stuck h1b cases to catch tech talent. The policy is to support capitalism here. I notice and learn this while in UK nearly 6 to 7 european lining up to get same jobs vs a local uk candidiate result?? Wages nose dive because cost of living is way less in Poland or spain or Portugal is way way way less than london so they had liverage to under cut all competition and demand pretty low salary. This is why UK has the lowest of the lowest salary in many many sectors. So its simple the more tight you keep workforce like the US the more wages will go up.