I'm a Canadian citizen.
My current company won't transfer me to the US, but it seems like I'm leaving a lot of money on the table by not moving to the States.
Resolves Yes if I try and get a job offer meeting the criteria. Resolves No if I try and don't get a job offer meeting the criteria. Resolves N/A if I stop putting in a reasonable effort.
My job prospects:
I work at one of ycombinator's top 10 companies by valuation. I've worked here for 1 year 8 months. I was a software engineer for a year, and switched to machine learning engineering (my ML skills are still pretty entry level). I get good performance reviews.
I have 1 year and 10 months of internship experience which I consider largely irrelevant.
I have a CS major from the University of Toronto.
I don't have a very strong network.
I've been conservative in my job searches so far, consistently taking the first offer I get.
"If I try" currently means doing 1 practice interview question and 1 job application every day. I'm willing to change this to reasonable suggestions commenters make if it will improve their probabilities.
Saving considerations:
The $70k/year has to be after taxes and cost of living.
Equity compensation can only contribute to savings for the purpose of this question if the company is public.
Extrapolating based on my current spending via cost of living calculators, I would spend US$48k to $75k/year if I lived in NYC, or $18k to $30k/year if I lived in Rochester NY. Assume I'm not willing to move anywhere cheaper than Rochester.
Ask anything else you want to know.
1,000
3.00This never made sense to me in the first place. Let's say you have a $200k salary in the Bay. (Because you are entry level, are you not?) Taxes are 40% which knocks you down to 122k. And idk but your cost of living estimates also strike me as slow, but even with 75k, the maximum amount you could possibly save is 40 something thousand. Am I wrong?
Someone with a decent CS background and entry level ML skills can become ridiculously valuable in the SF Bay Area on a timeframe of a few weeks (!) by learning how to work langchain, vector DBs, LLM-ops. Being foreign makes it a little harder, but many small companies are willing to hire remote programmers or use "imaginative" visas to make it work.
How much do you make in Canada right now?
The answer matters for your specific case but in general, yes, you make a lot more money moving to the US for work.
CS majors from UofT who are reasonably smart and try hard and are optimizing for money can definitely get work as a software engineer for a tech company in the US earning 250k+/year. Living in SF can definitely be done for ~75k/year with ease and you would pay ~93k in taxes leaving you with 82k in savings.
@MarcusAbramovitch I make more than the median for Toronto according to Levels.fyi
Are you taking into account the current economic climate (layoffs etc)?