Vancouver office had 2200 people, similar situation.
That's nothin to shake a stick at, but by NYC, DC, Seattle, LA, SF, etc. rates it is middling.
Meanwhile, SDE2 at Amazon or others is like $200K USD, at least according to HN a year ago:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439144
Seattle is expensive as hell these days, but Vancouver still blows it out of the water, and Toronto isn't cheap either; an improvement over SV or Manhattan, for sure, but not like Raleigh-Durham or rural Arkansas.
But we don't.
The marginal increase in my pay is not enough for me to want to move to the USA. The anti-immigrant rhetoric and the laws that follow that rhetoric make it not a place I, or many others, aspire to move to. We're happier to make less money, but feel more secure and safe (in many ways).
NYC and LA have Toronto beat in terms of culture, but NYC living is not that fun, and LA is pretty expensive too.
I would say Toronto is a local optimum.
And while the current state of play in the US is rather odious, the idea that you'd be less secure or safe in somewhere like NYC or SF is laughable. The only places I've even been accosted on the street were in Melbourne, Australia and Brampton, Ontario. The rhetoric and laws you dread are mostly, or entirely, perception; make no mistake they're a thing, but heavily magnified by a media machine based on getting eyeballs and reactions. Like, the Prairie Provinces are solidly conservative -- AB even took a crack at banning gay marriage a little while back -- and ON managed to vote in yet another Ford.
I'm happy to sit out the Trump years north of the border, but if an offer with another $100K on top of what I'm making now floated my way but required me to be in California, or NYC, or DC, I'd be hard pressed to ignore it.
