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Quote/edit mistake.
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Jan 25, 2021 02:01
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the stars had to align for me to hit that comp, but i'm by no means a unicorn. apple, msft, amazon and salesforce all have large presences in vancouver and there's a ton of b tier companies with large (and growing) headcount like splunk, ea, unity, activision, shopify, stripe and probably a bunch i'm forgetting. i know people at all of them that are making as much or more than me anecdotally, almost everyone i know who has changed jobs in vancouver in the last 12 months has jumped at least 50% in total comp. rsus are basically free for most of these companies and if you can defer income for the 12 months it takes to vest you can ask for and get previously ridiculous offers there's definitely some inequality tho, startups and non tech companies that aren't able or aren't comfortable throwing around non cash comp are struggling to hire and retain from what i have seen. $120k is pretty reasonable if you work at one of those (but why would you when the ones that pay $$$ are constantly hiring?)
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Jan 25, 2021 02:07
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Victoria anecdote here, we have a couple of big players in town as well. I moved from a company offering RSUs to a small local shop for career advancement purposes. I had hit a ceiling at my last company where they wouldn’t consider me for anything other than personal contributor, even though I was doing plenty of informal leadership type stuff. From what I’ve seen the base salary in Victoria for senior devs is still 90-100k ballpark for a new hire into that role, so slightly lower than Vancouver. With RSUs I was making ~160-180k. So I took a pay cut, obviously, despite my base salary actually increasing. But to me it was totally worth it - way more recognition and responsibility at a company that’s growing. I can always go back to the big companies if I need the money, and now I have experience they can’t downplay or overlook. Thread relevant: hoping to buy property this year so maybe I’m just an idiot lol Also none of my friends, who mostly do not work in tech, can afford property without their parents footing a significant part of the bill. I’m actually dreading telling some friends if/when we finally do buy, because it’s something they may never afford. I just can’t see this bubble popping if COVID didn’t do the trick...
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Jan 25, 2021 02:36
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Femtosecond posted:Is this owning a SFH or living in Bellevue lmao the house, the mortgage, working at amazon, all of the above. is this is all i have to look forward to after I've joined the middle class 
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Jan 25, 2021 02:48
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the talent deficit posted:the stars had to align for me to hit that comp, but i'm by no means a unicorn. apple, msft, amazon and salesforce all have large presences in vancouver and there's a ton of b tier companies with large (and growing) headcount like splunk, ea, unity, activision, shopify, stripe and probably a bunch i'm forgetting. i know people at all of them that are making as much or more than me Hm yeah that is more public companies than I thought. I guess Shopify is going all WFH too. Didn't know Stripe was here. Maybe I've had too much wine tonight because I'm not totally sure I'm parsing this passage right: quote:rsus are basically free for most of these companies and if you can defer income for the 12 months it takes to vest you can ask for and get previously ridiculous offers Do you mean here that like most the annual income is coming via RSUs? That is that if you need the higher cash flow (ie. for a high mortage payment) it could be tricky to get as much as if you could get by with less and get more with stock? I love where I'm at in terms of the people I work with and the culture there, and I'm pretty deep into a project so you hate to be too much of an rear end in a top hat by leaving. I figure I'll linger around for a bit. It does seem like there's not a lot of options for private companies versus these public guys aside from vacation flexibility like I mentioned. Last year my company started tacking on an extra day off onto every long weekend in the summer, which I thought was a pretty smart move, since it's a nice little bonus and a big chunk of the company is bound to take the day off anyway, so whoever is left working could get blocked and be less effective.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:37
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What's these RSU you are all talking about? Are those stock options? Also yeah it's depressing new Amazon grads are making 50% more than I am after 20 years in my career. Def chose the wrong track
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Jan 25, 2021 03:40
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Alctel posted:What's these RSU you are all talking about? Are those stock options? Also yeah it's depressing new Amazon grads are making 50% more than I am after 20 years in my career. Def chose the wrong track RSU = Restricted Stock Unit, a pile of shares you're given when joining that slowly vest over a few years (usually three now). Normally you have a one year cliff before you can access any, then you get a third and every month a small portion of the remainder. Options are slightly different - usually they vest the same but you're given the option of buying shares at a certain price (they're a bit better for tax reasons but mostly the same). Often you'll get 50-100k of RSUs when joining and if you look at the share prices of things like Shopify, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, etc you'll see that it's far more lucrative than just being paid cash. Past performance doesn't indicate future performance but at most public companies it can be quite compelling. Edit: Also specifically though for your case I mentioned SRE and dev ops roles, these companies pay similar shitloads of money and RSUs for people in infrastructure roles. There is more coding than in a classical administrative role but it's worth checking out that track if a full switch is a little daunting. I've done both and went from software to SRE/devops and then back to software so if you have any specific questions DM me! Less Fat Luke fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Jan 25, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 03:45
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Segue posted:I just want to say salary discussion always staggers me as I talk with people getting by on minimum or glad they have a good salary of 45k while living with roommates in Toronto. Yeah, I got be honest, I feel guilty making my mid-level civil servant salary sometimes but these numbers stagger me. I made the choice to move back in with my parents to help take care of my dad and I'm very thankful that this basically gave me an escape from rent because I don't know how I could possibly get a house now. The price spikes in Ottawa have been crazy, basically all my coworkers are screwed in looking for places now.
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Jan 25, 2021 03:50
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Alctel posted:What's these RSU you are all talking about? Are those stock options? Also yeah it's depressing new Amazon grads are making 50% more than I am after 20 years in my career. Def chose the wrong track Femtosecond posted:Do you mean here that like most the annual income is coming via RSUs? That is that if you need the higher cash flow (ie. for a high mortage payment) it could be tricky to get as much as if you could get by with less and get more with stock? an rsu is a restricted stock unit. it's a thing that converts into real stock at some point in the future .most companies this will be spread over 4 years from the date of your hiring. aws is notorious for backloading the schedule so you get very little in years 1 and 2 and the bulk in year 4 so you are to some extent trapped. other places it's usually just evenly spread over the 4 years often with a "cliff" where you don't actually get paid out until 12 months after your start date. companies tend to be pretty liberal with them because they are accounted for separately from salaries and they are as good as cash to employees my comp is about 40% salary/50% rsus/10% other. i could have gotten more salary if i'd taken less rsus, but my salary is high enough that i optimized for total comp, not salary
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Jan 25, 2021 03:52
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Alctel posted:What's these RSU you are all talking about? Are those stock options? Also yeah it's depressing new Amazon grads are making 50% more than I am after 20 years in my career. Def chose the wrong track Thanks for asking a question I had as well. Also wishing I had gone into tech, my industry caps out at 80kish unless you're exceptionally talented or own your own business. The interesting thing to me is other industries that can hit those levels apart from tech. It basically ends up reserving housing for doctors, (good) lawyers, engineers, and those lucky enough to be higher end in tech. Vancouver is past the point of no return but Victoria is getting there. Going to be really interesting to see how things continue. Even if there was a crash I feel like there are so many who could pick up the slack at every rung down the pricing ladder.
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Jan 25, 2021 04:24
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The Little Death posted:Yeah, I got be honest, I feel guilty making my mid-level civil servant salary sometimes but these numbers stagger me. I made the choice to move back in with my parents to help take care of my dad and I'm very thankful that this basically gave me an escape from rent because I don't know how I could possibly get a house now. The price spikes in Ottawa have been crazy, basically all my coworkers are screwed in looking for places now.  I used to feel like a boss for making as much as both my parents did til I realized that after inflation I make about what either one of them did 30 years ago. Except they have a paid off house and an irrational hatred of ritalin, and I get cut out of the will for giving my kid the meds he needs to function. So ownership is off the table for now, but at least I have pretty good job security in a field I like and a pension at the end of the road 
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Jan 25, 2021 05:52
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I think the pandemic has changed a lot of people's thinking on the rationality of the housing market. I know for me, I would have expected it to adjust, but nope. I do think there is something to the tech worker effect, though I don't think the absolute effect is that big. I do think, however, that its effect is dramatically magnified given how tight the housing market is. Someone mentioned doctors affording housing here...some don't have problems, but there are an awful lot who can't afford the quality of life they think they deserve. Recruitment of physicians to come here is exceedingly difficult, and it's only getting worse. The cost of living is a huge problem to getting people to come here and the greying of the profession is going to create a lot of problems in a few years as a result.
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Jan 25, 2021 06:59
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Someone asked how easy it is to get these jobs. Getting the first big salary tech job is actually not at all easy and you actually do have to be pretty knowledgeable in your field and/or at least be knowledgeable enough to get lucky in a whiteboard session. Once you’re in you’re in though, you’ve got the compensation leverage and big tech gives you a lot of credit for having another big tech on the resume for an appreciable time without getting fired. I’ve seen multiple senior engineers leaving for other companies in the locality because they basically had a brinks truck driven directly to their bank accounts. Everyone working in a private tech company in Vancouver is either actually bad at the job or just hasn’t had their break yet (more the former). So yeah those companies do not stand a chance since they can’t keep the competent workers at 80k a year. qhat fucked around with this message at 07:54 on Jan 25, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 07:49
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:I think the pandemic has changed a lot of people's thinking on the rationality of the housing market. I know for me, I would have expected it to adjust, but nope. Given how it's now basically impossible to get a family doctor as a newcomer to Vancouver or Victoria, I'd say the greying of the profession is already a problem. Also just lol at those compensation figures. I guess that explains why we have so much trouble finding candidates to work as junior devs at our research centre for $50-$60K/year. Not much we can do about it either, given the way salaries are structured. At least we get a defined-benefit pension, and can feel like we're making the world a better place.
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Jan 25, 2021 07:56
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Lead out in cuffs posted:Given how it's now basically impossible to get a family doctor as a newcomer to Vancouver or Victoria, I'd say the greying of the profession is already a problem. At one private company I worked at here a couple of years ago I was legitimately shocked we could even hire 1 year devs at 75k. I only took the job myself because I was a newcomer desperate for work. That comp range is just not the market these days.
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Jan 25, 2021 08:05
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qhat posted:Someone asked how easy it is to get these jobs. Getting the first big salary tech job is actually not at all easy and you actually do have to be pretty knowledgeable in your field and/or at least be knowledgeable enough to get lucky in a whiteboard session. Once you’re in you’re in though, you’ve got the compensation leverage and big tech gives you a lot of credit for having another big tech on the resume for an appreciable time without getting fired. I’ve seen multiple senior engineers leaving for other companies in the locality because they basically had a brinks truck driven directly to their bank accounts. This reflects my experience, on both sides of the equation, no less. I've left big tech and decided to cash out my RSUs to self-fund myself as I give the startup thing a go for a while (I also can't stand working at big tech, but that's another story). Hiring competent tech people for salaries that won't break the bank, particularly specialists, is extremely painful, and easily the single biggest risk factor that could tank us. The only real exception that I've seen is hiring them as cofounders. Once the business has been bootstrapped, good loving luck. It doesn't help that I am vehemently against lopsided salary distributions. On that subject, I haven't been in the video game business for a very long time, but back in the day, that industry completely ascribed to the 10X engineer mentality. If you could convince management that you were an essential value contributor, your total comp could easily be triple what the expendables got. Aramis fucked around with this message at 08:52 on Jan 25, 2021 |
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Jan 25, 2021 08:32
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:I think the pandemic has changed a lot of people's thinking on the rationality of the housing market. I know for me, I would have expected it to adjust, but nope.
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Jan 25, 2021 09:02
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gloom posted:A smaller but still interesting issue will be how something similar affects the professoriate at UBC, and I guess to a lesser extent SFU. I know of at least two star candidates in the past few years who turned down UBC professor job offers because they had families and there was no way they could afford a SFH in Vancouver. I'm not super clear on the faculty and staff housing situation, my understanding is that there is some subsidized rental housing stock, but it seems to be all basic condos and you have to live in the bubble on the far side of the endowment lands. I guess UBC at least intends to address the issue mainly by shifting from ladder-track to contingent positions, and hiring younger people who don't mind condo living into the few remaining tenure-track jobs, but that's a gamble compared to poaching established scholars. I wonder how that will affect their reputation and ranking in the long run. This is a great example of Canada losing its competitiveness because government policy is so focused on propping up number.
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Jan 25, 2021 15:57
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Aramis posted:On that subject, I haven't been in the video game business for a very long time, but back in the day, that industry completely ascribed to the 10X engineer mentality. If you could convince management that you were an essential value contributor, your total comp could easily be triple what the expendables got. There's the weirdo domain knowledge thing that I think can be an incredible modifier on your salary. Nothing terribly special about a gameplay programmer or UI programmer, but a rendering programmer seems to be able to pick their price. I recall hearing as well that the black art knowledge about how to optimize and lay out data on a disc to improve streaming and loading times was highly sought after.
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Jan 25, 2021 19:36
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I remember a really good gameplay programmer that could pull off custom IK / physics / pathfinding / etc getting the full white glove treatment, but I guess that still falls within the umbrella of "weirdo domain knowledge". That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if all these have been pretty much commoditized at this point, and only Epic, Unity or extreme studios like Naughty Dog were the only place willing to really invest on that stuff anymore.
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Jan 25, 2021 20:26
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the key is staying highly paid in tech to keep on the leading edge of "weirdo domain knowledge". right now you want to be someone who can keep machine learning pipelines healthy and filled with training data or someone who can pretend like you know what anomaly detection is
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Jan 25, 2021 21:06
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Damnit I'm gonna have to do more than "move this button 5 pixels to the left" to make more money?  Anyways, in more topical Canadian Debt News: quote:This Ontario couple needs to get their debt under control to enjoy a carefree retirement
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Jan 26, 2021 02:59
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Femtosecond posted:Damnit I'm gonna have to do more than "move this button 5 pixels to the left" to make more money? quote:They bought investment house at too high a price and took out loan to get into cryptocurrencies, only to see shares slump Nothing could be more damning for these people than this one sentence. I don't even need to make a joke out of it; this sentence verbatim is probably as funny as it's going to get
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Jan 26, 2021 03:09
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Is your spending really $1000/mo greater than your income when your expenses include $4,000/mo in RRSP+TFSA contributions?
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Jan 26, 2021 03:26
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Sassafras posted:Is your spending really $1000/mo greater than your income when your expenses include $4,000/mo in RRSP+TFSA contributions? poo poo like that always infuriates me. I'm super stoked I can even contribute to my savings regularly, and I've only managed that in the last 3 years or so. This is literally the equivalent of saving my entire paycheck for retirement every month. Who the gently caress is this article supposed to be for? Am I supposed to sympathize with these people?
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Jan 26, 2021 03:33
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Well yeah - it's clickbait, tailored to piss you off whether you are rich or poor. (I'm not saying people shouldn't post or respond to this stuff, but vOv)
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Jan 26, 2021 04:12
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Financial Post publishes a lot of abject trash like that. The last one I remember was millennial earning 250k and wanted to know how to save money or something.
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Jan 26, 2021 04:49
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qhat posted:Financial Post publishes a lot of abject trash like that. The last one I remember was millennial earning 250k and wanted to know how to save money or something. They keep running these things because it generates page hits and rage comments. Every one of these consists of comments from people saying 'what the hell is wrong with these people'? Rarely, they profile someone with real challenges but for the most part, the problems are those of the 1%.
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Jan 26, 2021 04:56
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:They keep running these things because it generates page hits and rage comments. Every one of these consists of comments from people saying 'what the hell is wrong with these people'? Rarely, they profile someone with real challenges but for the most part, the problems are those of the 1%. The perspective of these as like a 1$ honey-boo-boo style hatewatch reality tv makes a lot of sense. It worked on me :v.
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Jan 26, 2021 05:08
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Or you can read a nightmare like this.
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Jan 26, 2021 05:52
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Paywalled, but seriously, why is she paying off her Mom's debts? That's insane! I had a colleague who claimed she had to pay off her dead father's debts (how that's even possible is beyond me, but maybe had something to do with the fact she was dual US citizen?).
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Jan 26, 2021 06:20
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:Paywalled, but seriously, why is she paying off her Mom's debts? That's insane! I had a colleague who claimed she had to pay off her dead father's debts (how that's even possible is beyond me, but maybe had something to do with the fact she was dual US citizen?). The story didn't explain it. I can't stand facile reporting like this.
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Jan 26, 2021 06:49
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"Reporting" assumes there is/was something real to report on. For all anyone knows the people in the stories are entirely made up.
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Jan 26, 2021 06:58
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Mandibular Fiasco posted:Paywalled, but seriously, why is she paying off her Mom's debts? That's insane! I had a colleague who claimed she had to pay off her dead father's debts (how that's even possible is beyond me, but maybe had something to do with the fact she was dual US citizen?). I have heard that some CC companies and others will try to convince the loved ones of deceased people to pay debts they are not obligated to out of a sense of honor (aka taking advantage of grieving people)
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Jan 26, 2021 11:01
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Here, I busted the paywall: https://outline.com/SdXd22 It sounds like the "debt" is a shared (co-signed?) mortgage Edit: Actually re-reading a bit, it sounds like she just doesn't want her mom to "worry" and my take is since they have a shared mortgage Mom couldn't just declare bankruptcy. quote:Nearing 40, Sophie, is making $78,000 working in the transportation industry and has been helping pay off her mom’s debts for her entire working life. Cold on a Cob fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Jan 26, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 13:35
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Years later, foreign buyer naysayers on Vancouver housing twitter that were proven wrong continue to be like, "well if you look at the data this way Actually I'm correct and foreign buyers weren't an issue after all."  https://twitter.com/LausterNa/status/1353917886130053120?s=20 
Femtosecond fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 26, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 22:12
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doh double post.
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Jan 26, 2021 22:15
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It's very hard to imagine that when you sell Canadian passports, many of the buyers have the means to buy houses and not really use them full time. Separately, my brother and his wife pay the speculation tax because they live together less than half the time due to half-on, half-off custody arrangements with their respective exes in cities many hours' drive apart. Attempts to move children denied because after all, they already have demonstrated they have the means to do what they're doing without moving them. Kinda BS that by selling the place and renting an identical unit [no net housing unit impact] they'd save a few thousand bucks a year. vvv oh fine I'll edit out the whole tangent instead of leaving the exciting journey Sassafras fucked around with this message at 04:51 on Jan 27, 2021 |
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Jan 26, 2021 22:41
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Hey thanks for that!
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Jan 27, 2021 03:36
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Crossposting w Canadian Finance because it doesn't seem to get too much traffic and I can't find the CanPol thread:Professor Shark posted:This is somewhat related to Canada and finances: some of my Grade 12 students were wondering if they are able to draw EI while still attending high school next semester. Is this possible?
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Jan 27, 2021 21:06
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