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Comment by bernardv | Hacker News Reader

How is it a train wreck? Are you alluding to some mis-informed view of its politics, or some aspect of its tech industry? Not clear from your comment, I’m not looking to start an argument.

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I live in SF and I've met about a dozen engineers who were studying or studied at Waterloo. 100% of them had no desire to work in Canada. They all had the same thing to say, as much as they love Canada, salaries suck, and so do the taxes.

As a Canadian citizen, it makes more sense to immediately move to the States to work because of the TN visa, but if you are an Indian or Chinese national who is dealing with a 30-50 year greencard backlog, moving to Canada for 3 years to become a citizen makes much more sense. That way you have a first world passport plus the ability to work in the US indefinitely. My parents did that, and multiple other people in our network have done that.

TN (which is a status technically and not a visa) doesn’t have a path towards citizenship / permanent residency and if a customs agent decides that’s what’s happening you can get deported. A Canadian citizen has a 6 month limit to generally visit the US but you cannot work there. I had to switch to an h1-b after my TN first before I started a process towards permanent residency. Additionally, h1-b lotteries and green cards, if I recall correctly, go by country of birth, not citizenship, so having a Canadian citizenship isn’t an aide there either.

Has something changed recently or did I misinterpret what you meant?

I think you misinterpreted some stuff. Generally, for ex-Indian and ex-PRC nationals, coming to the US on a TN and working on a TN indefinitely is preferable to having to return to India or China, because worst case you made bank and are a national of a first world country with a standard of living comparable to the US

Also, at least circa 2012-15, Microsoft's immigration lawyers would recommend going via the CBP border post in the San Juan Islands or Port Angeles (take the ferry from Victoria to Seattle) because they'd just wave you thru with little to no hassle. The CBP post at Surrey/Blaine would tend to grouse you more.

That's what I did some 23 years ago. Back then the pay discrepancy wasn’t as large as today. I started looking for positions in Canada in the last five years and have concluded that I can’t afford an approximately 50% pay cut, or to live in the big cities with ridiculous housing prices.

I've talked to many Waterloo engineers who say taxes are no different in Canada vs. California. It's the salaries that are wildly different, as well as the value that they get out of their taxes.

I'm not sure what their "train wreck" comment is alluding to either but as a recent graduate from a Waterloo university I've heard for years about "brain drain" and how most of my fellow graduates leave the area to pursue better careers down in the US or abroad because Canada's tech industry simply does not provide the pay, benefits, career ceiling, etc. as Silicon Valley, for example. This problem has been plaguing Canadian tech for quite a while you can probably find many articles about this on Google.

The parent comment seems like a bit of hyperbole, but Canada for a very long time hasn't prioritized tech industry. It's common to see salaries for tech jobs in Canada be much less than counterparts in US. I work with Canadians on my team and their opinion is that unless you're in lumber or drilling something from the ground, you might as well move to the US while of working age.

~67% of tech graduates at large Canadian universities move to another country. As someone who has done technical hiring in Canada there is a absolute massive influx of immigrant tech workforce, nearly 10:1 on job applications.

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