Can someone compare salaries, work and benefits?
Amazon. Nothing amazing is being worked on at MS, Vancouver. We mostly use it to house international employees who couldn’t secure a work visa. Those employees then apply for a B1/L1 visa and periodically visit Redmond until they can get the H1 visa and move here full time.
Why not Fortinet ?
Amazon. My friend interned at Amazon Vancouver and loved it. She is going back for FT. There's tons of teams there apparently, and the pay is really good too. One of my other friends didn't really enjoy his time at Microsoft Vancouver, said interns were too siloed from FTs. Idk about FT experience though. He's not going back.
Both have same problem: unaffordable house rent.
Some examples?
Depends a lot where you live. If you want to live downtown you are looking into 2000 a month for modern one bedroom. 1500+ if you don't mind old buildings. Modern 2 beds in downtown are 3000+. Prices go down if you move away from dt. Or sometimes I think prices are same, but the quality or size of apartments are better for the same price.
3k for a nice dt 1 bed now
Apply to both get offers and compare. Both are about the same