How is Canada from tech market perspective?

Question

I am planning to shift as most of my family would be situated there. But wanted to understand how it is from a growth perspective in terms of career ladder, compensation, and startup culture.

I understand that compensations are a bit lower than US. But how is it compared to places such as India wrt the cost of living there? I was exploring US as well but the long green card process is a bit challenging, especially since I have parents who are a bit older and thus want to be with them at a place where I can have them settle comfortably. Another con I feel is that very few companies sponsor direct H1B visa and don't want to invest two years in masters as well in US.

Senior Software Engineer [SDE 3] · Accepted Answer

I can't give you a comparison with India wrt to cost of living. In term of post tax earnings, i did a rough calculation when i had both a Canadian and US offer for Amazon. For me, US post tax income would have been 2x of my Canadian offer given the tax and currency conversion. Above 220~k in Canada, your marginal tax in might be 56% at main provinces like Ontario and British Columbia. Canada also has some extremely competitive real estate market in the major cities, like Toronto and Vancouver, so owning a house would be much harder as well.

I had work at Amazon and startup and I can say that career ladder does exist but they may be less senior tech leadership in Canada compared to US if the company has a large presence in US.

Personally I have chosen to take the Canadian offer instead of US.

How is Canada from tech market perspective?

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