I am exploring opportunities in Canada. How does compensation change in terms of base salary and stocks if I move to Canada, assuming i am in the same company? Edit: sincere thanks to all of you. This is a very valuable information for me.
If you’re a programmer, about 50% cut sounds right.
If you are in Bay area, Seattle and probably some expensive areas, you will have steep decline in compensation. However people living in other states may not feel lot of pinch here.
But isnt the decline in absolute terms? Or does it take into account ppp?
Adjusting for local cost of living, Vancouver is about as bad as it gets. Toronto is also pretty bad (housing cheaper than SFBA, perhaps on par with Seattle, but way lower pay). Montreal is a great compromise since cost of living is low vs pay, as long as you’re OK with Quebec culturally. Technically there’s also Calgary and Edmonton and cost of living isn’t outrageous, but they’re even more limited career-wise than the big Canadian cities. If you don’t need to live in an urban environment, Waterloo has plenty of jobs (for Canada) and decent pay relative to cost of living, though AFAIK real estate isn’t really cheap anymore.
If you're willing to commute on the train for 30-40 minutes, you can get places for 600-700 bucks a month. If you're in the city, 1br is around 1500-2000. Still much cheaper than San Francisco.
Fang pays well. Base will reduce but RSU will be in USD. So net decline may be 15-20% in TC. Not too bad
At least for Google, bases reduce significantly and RSU targets are much lower than US. Add in ~20-30% in additional currency losses on top of that.
What is Fang? FB/AMZ/NETFLIX/GOOG ?
It's very low. Unless you have family there it is not worth it imo.
Focus on quality of life vs pure numbers.
I’m suffering 10-15% in absolute number compared to my Bay Area counterpart. Plus an additional 25% due to exchange rate differences.
How is the quality of life?
Less. Always much less. And if you make it about money, you’ll never move there. Move to Canada for reasons other than money. It’s the same story with every other country. Montreal is a great European city though. Lots of excellent cities in Canada.
Almost always way down.