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Comment by iamshs | Hacker News Reader

When I was searching for jobs, could not just believe the startup offers. $35K - $45K in Vancouver. I would have felt like a slave working for that kind of money in Vancouver. Albertan co-op guy would easily earn double that. I have not researched other nuances of this situation, but it put me off that scene entirely. Unfortunately, great white north will keep bleeding talent.

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$35-45k sounds insane for Vancouver. FWIW, jobs I currently see advertised in the Toronto/Waterloo region (both on Stack Overflow and by recruiters) for mid-level devs are more like $70k-$110k.

$70k-$110k is pretty much standard for mid-level devs in Vancovuer as well.

What kind of role were you seeking? Even without context, those numbers immediately jump out as "....what?"

They were all coding/programming roles. I am not from comp sci, was fresh out of uni and only had limited programming experience. I asked the recruiters why are they extending me the offers at all then?

Okay, then that's not as surprising. If you have a comp sci or engineering background it would be different. Breaking into the industry is hard without the correct education background. Until you have experience companies will lowball you to compensate for the risk involved in hiring you. This is the same pretty much anywhere.

I have engineering background, just not comp sci one. In the end, I made six figures and some hefty bonuses right out of school. Don't offer me the job, but don't try to lowball me.

They likely knew they would have to train you in multiple areas, but liked your hustle and made an offer based on the cost of training you. At least, that's what I'd do - if you have limited experience, I'd need to teach you how to write code, how to work with code reviews, versioning control, etc, etc.

If the start-ups were taking a chance on me, they always had their 3 months of probation. Don't take it out on my pay. That stuff affords me my milk and eggs.

I learnt ML, sensor stuff, R, python and all other stuff in my first job right out of school. Made easy six figures (+ benefits and hefty bonuses) without any recruiter haggling, and am in comfortable position now. Because I turned towards traditional engineering companies, and then went there and did what I wanted to do as I got an understanding and tech oriented manager. I changed a lot of internal workings in that company.

This definitely seems on the extremely low end. In Toronto, you can easily find a job making 90k+ with a year or two of experience.

That's about what I was offered in Calgary a few years back while I made 3x that in Vancouver. I had wanted to move to Calgary for personal reasons but I couldn't imagine taking a 70% salary hit in a city known to pay very well for any average job (while oil was still strong). Canada is weird I guess.

That's less than what normal interns make at Google/FB or a hot startup.

It's not that far off. $120K is somewhere near normal at Google and a decent startup. Not including exchange rate, but most of the exchange is eaten up in cost of living.

Exchange can be normalized for most us/ca comparisions, i.e. 100K in Canada is only 70K US but most prices are normalized for that.

The Bay Area is mind-boggling expensive though - and you'd all be naive to not consider that.

My flat in Montreal would be $5500 a month, USD anywhere in SF. It's amazing. And cheap.

Also consider that startups in the US have to cover healthcare, which is very expensive. That said, if you have healthcare in the US, it's better than in Canada. Again, it doesn't really matter for normal people under the age of 30.

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