gabbo

Yes. Absolutely. It so much more than makes up for lost government benefits.

Health insurance working for a decent US tech company generally requires some out of pocket, but the amounts are really quite modest. Premiums are typically mostly paid by the employer and not considered part of your compensation. If you're single you'll probably pay nothing for insurance premiums and potentially up to a few thousand out of pocket if you're a heavy user of health care, and maybe $5k in the absolute worst case (and the out of pocket is often tax free). If you've got a family, you might pay a couple thousand per year in premiums and $10k in out of pocket maximum. These numbers are honestly chump change for people who are earning $50k-250k more, with better career prospects and more high paying employers to choose from if a particular job doesn't work out.

Quite frankly the "all your money will go to healthcare" meme doesn't really apply to the kind of person who's leaving Canada for a much high-paying US tech job. A person like that will in all likelihood be working for an employer that offers access to equal or _better_ health insurance than they would have access to in Canada. If it's a big tech company the employer will pay virtually all of the premiums beyond some token amount, and out-of-pocket maximums are dramatically lower than the incremental pay raise. And even if the employer didn't pay that, the premiums would still be dwarfed by the pay raise.

Rent is certainly higher in the Bay Area, though less higher now vs. a year ago, and even so, at the income levels we're talking here (especially if going to FAANG or a unicorn), there is very little chance you'll end up with less disposable income after rent and health care.

If you want to buy a property, you have your work cut out for you since real estate is insanely expensive, though. It's not too hard if you're a dual-income high earner couple but very hard otherwise and will take a number of years of savings. This is worse than the Vancouver/Toronto housing markets, but it's less worse than you think given how crazy they are now.

This may be true in parts of Europe, but it's not so clear cut in Canada. We have a decent tech job market in our 3 major cities (Montreal/Vancouver/Toronto), but it's mostly bad elsewhere. There are a few lower-tier Canadian cities which are OK (Waterloo, Ottawa), but as cities they're grossly limited compared to where you can live in Europe.

Of the 3 major Canadian cities, only Montreal could be considered affordable to software engineer. Vancouver/Toronto are extremely expensive vs. local pay. Unless you want to sign yourself up for a punishing daily commute or bought your house a long time ago, it's hard to describe the standard of living as "very comfortable" other than compared to lower earners in the local market.

Tellingly, when you look at the data more than 100% of Toronto's population growth comes from international migration. Which makes sense, it's a very welcoming place. But without immigration, the city would have shrunk by 50k people last year (~1.5% of population).

Not exactly. There are fewer linguistic, cultural, and immigration barriers when comparing Canada/US vs. Europe/US.

This is Canadian culture in a nutshell, especially politically: it's better to aim small or not to try at all than it is to really go for it and fail.

If you've been following Toronto politics for long, you'll realize this move from Tory is just another in his (and Toronto's) long history of poorly-delivered half-measures which come well after other major cities have already turned the corner.

I would not laud the city for "making some real changes" as much as I would criticize the mayor for being a stale, retrograde leader who is clearly in the business of delivering the barest possible minimum solution only after made to look like a fool.

Wake me up when he applies any pressure whatsoever to Toronto Police over their alarming lack of traffic enforcement and takes less than a year to support like the Bloor bike lane.

How is the compensation?

I'd love to hear what sort of job a UK new grad would get at Google that would pay them more than their US equivalent. Every data point I've ever seen has shown Google UK employees are paid a lot less.