Canadians, why do you still work at Canadian companies?
These last 2 years or so has become the golden era for tech in Canada. Not because of any Canadian company (lol) but because of all the US companies aggressively hiring Canadians now even within Canada. So many top US companies have either satellite offices here or allow fully remote work now.
So why still work at a Canadian company that will never pay you your real market worth? Why reward them for taking advantage of you? Even the highly profitable Canadian companies don't pay well. So why only make the rich executives at these companies richer while you get nothing?
TC: ~320K CAD (220K CAD base + stock options)
YOE: 4.5 SWE L4
Previous Canadian company TC: ~115K CAD
Note, if you work for an honest non-profit Canadian company that can't afford to pay well, this does not apply to you of course.
comments
1. The interview process is the same rigorous leetcode and programming which isn’t a thing outside SV. Even engineers in Phoenix or Atlanta wouldn’t want to go through this interview
2. Companies find it easier to hire you in Canada if they have a legal entity. Not a lot of companies have legal entities set up in Canada. The role I finally accepted I will be working as an independent contractor
My base is 220K CAD. The rest is private equity I can't do anything with yet (except early exercise to save on taxes and hope for the best).
That means I STILL can't afford a house in the city despite being in the top 1% of earners. So just imagine how horrible it is for regular folks. They can barely afford to pay rent. A house is a pipe dream for them.
I did 3 months of LC after work, about 200 in total and about 20 mock interviews. I think the ROI was good.
TC went from 160k (at a Canadian company) to 500k at US Remote company last year.
As long as I think this pandemic is pretty bad for society, it has actually been incredibly good for my family (and maybe also Trump with his h1b swings).
Back to the original point, I have a few friends that I’m trying to make jump their sinking ships for better comp, but they have been incredibly overwhelmed with everything during this pandemic so don’t even have time to prep :( that’s another reason why Canadian companies can still retain with huge underpayment.
The pandemic has been great for tech workers as terrible as that sounds. I doubt Bolt and countless other companies would have become remote first otherwise so I probably would not have received this job.
It's odd you never hear about Brex as being a top paying company that hires Canadians. Granted you could say the same about Bolt. I wonder how many hidden US gems are out there that are throwing ridiculous offers (compared to the local market) at Canadians.