Item — HN Reader

I don't get free daycare in Canada either.

I'm not American, but I pay a few hundred dollars a year for the premium health insurance plan at my company. I also pay tens of thousands of dollars more in taxes to grant me the ability to wait for 72 hours in an ER hallway whenever I can't wait weeks for an appointment because urgent care isn't a thing.

My take home would triple if I lived in the USA as a new graduate because of things like favourable treatment of stock grants, less income tax, and the fact my salary would double.

I'm sure the $80,000 extra dollars is enough to pay for the healthcare premiums and daycare. My effective hourly rate would be high enough that going from a 72 hour wait to a few hours would be worth the thousands of dollars in ER bills. If I worked for the government or another lower paying profession it would not be good, but I am a well-compensated software engineer.

There's a reason why 90% of Waterloo immediately moves to the United States after graduation.

1 comments

My apologies. I thought $10/day daycare was universal in Canada. I guess my broader point was the difference in disposable income between U.S. workers vs. other countries becomes a lot more nuanced when things like healthcare, childcare, retirement, and taxes are taken into account.

> I'm sure the $80,000 extra dollars is enough to pay for the healthcare premiums and daycare.

You're probably right. That said, SWE compensation in the U.S. has been quite an anomaly compared to the vast majority of American labor, especially in the last 5-10 years. I don't think those who are comfortable right now are thinking far enough ahead about what they'll do if that changes, or perhaps when that changes. If this AI hype has taught me anything it's that those with capital cannot wait to start trimming their pesky engineers with those high salaries. And maybe that's always been the case, but seeing them go full mask off hits different.

Unrelated, I like your website. It's simple and the color scheme is aesthetically pleasing.

> My apologies. I thought $10/day daycare was universal in Canada.

In my understanding, it exists but it's vaporware and not really accessible.

> That said, SWE compensation in the U.S. has been quite an anomaly compared to the vast majority of American labor, especially in the last 5-10 years.

The discrepancy isn't an anomaly for Canadians in high-income fields, like law, medicine, or finance. As a rule of thumb, the USA pays twice as much but expects more productivity and less stability. I'm entitled to minimum vacation, I can't be fired at will without huge severance packages, I get lengthy parental leave, etc.

> If this AI hype has taught me anything it's that those with capital cannot wait to start trimming their pesky engineers with those high salaries.

This is the goal, but I see the opposite.

The engineers with the capacity to use AI to replace many others are extremely rare at my company since it requires breadth of knowledge to step in when you realize an LLM can't solve a problem itself, reading comprehension to understand the copious amounts of code/English the AI wants you to review, and extreme paranoia because these things lie constantly.

Otherwise, you end up in an AI delusion loop. The AI tells you it is fixing the problem but due to some fundamental misunderstanding it is unable to accomplish the task and lies to you about its ability. This ends when you are sufficiently fooled to approve the code or when you give up.

I think we're seeing signs of this as companies start replacing SaaS products.

> Unrelated, I like your website. It's simple and the color scheme is aesthetically pleasing.

Thank you! I'm attempting a blog with simple interactive components to ensure people use the site instead of summarizing it with AI.