Are Canadian tech salaries on the money?
March 2, 2008 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Business
I was looking at this post about a recent StatsCan report on Canadian salaries and income. While I don’t know if I’m going to read the whole report, I’m wondering if these comments are on the money, as it were:
What suprised me the most is the choice of income binning. The definition of the quintiles shows at best anachronistic pay expectations. In my sector 41% – almost half of the population is binned in the$ 25/hr our more slot. This is just plain shoddy work. I know people in this industry that work from $20/hr at the low end to over $250 per hour and beyond. That distribution is neatly packed away in the >$25/hr or more category. This is actually the information I was looking for. What a joke. What’s more insidious is the implied systemic reenforcement that $25 is rich. Raise your sites guys.
When compared against other sectors you can see why the quintiles are defined as they are. For those in the golden triangle that like to promote advanced manufacturing as our core industrial strength and future – give your freakin’ head a shake. Pay is shit and work is slipping to Asia. Open your eyes. Source: StatsCan out of Touch, or Am I?
Coming from academic research to federal contracting (US) to corporate contracting to corporate life to freelancing I’ve seen the gamut of pay rates in both the US and Canada. The one thing I hate about these surveys is the “gee I’m not making that…” feeling.
Do you think the tech salary range is over simplifying things?
In my experience, working in both the US and Canada, Canadian tech salaries seem to be about 75%-85% of the same salary in the US. I can remember the CEO of Nortel complaining about high tax rates in Canada while neglecting to mention that the salary for somebody like a product manager was 90k in Canada and 120k in the US, without even taking into account the exchange rate.
Canadian companies seem to focus heavily on new grads with lower salary requirements.