Re: IT employment options
 

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Re: IT employment options
 

Hi,

I've been seriously thinking about moving to Canada, Alberta possibly Calgary, with my family for the change in lifestyle.
I think there is a pretty good chance that we should be accepted through the express entry.

My slight concern is the job market for experienced IT workers, from what I can tell, typical rates seem to be quite a lot lower than the UK or US? I'm just trying to work out whether I can actually enjoy a good lifestyle at market rates, or if it will be a case or all work and no play.


If you can offer any insight it would be appreciated.

Re: IT employment options
 

Have been contracting here for years. "Experienced IT worker" doesn't really describe anything... what do you actually do?

Re: IT employment options
 

It's interesting, almost everything you've said in this thread has been incorrect.

Re: IT employment options
 

I would also be interested to hear more about the contract market specifically in Toronto. Currently I am in London contracting.

As someone mentioned swapping the £ for the $, what sort of rate do you mean? 500? That's quite a lot lower even with the cost of living difference.

Re: IT employment options
 

Rates here are quoted hourly. A java developer might be billed at $95 and, depending on the pimp, might get $70. No doubt there will be people working at all sorts of different rates but that's what I'd expect for someone unknown. Note that contracts here go for years, a decade in one role isn't unusual. If a client in London suddenly wanted a java developer we'd ask £95 but that's not the sort of role for which one is commonly asked to travel.

Re: IT employment options
 

I wrapped up working at a Recruitment firm in IT in March.

We'd typically try and keep 25% of the rate if we could.

It wasn't personal but we dealt mainly with the big banks. They had funny billing platforms who we had to pay 3% too. Then sometimes we'd have to subcontract through someone else who we had to pay 3% too. If someone was a sole trader it was a pain as we had to pay out a tonne of margin. Then my own firm would charge me a percentage admin fee and suddenly as a pimp I'd not be making all that very much.

We did have CIBC wanting to pay a fortune for an Ember Developer for a while. They couldn't find anyone.

Systems Administration is good money.

Dev-Ops is almost non existent in Toronto. You'd get stupid money.

Anyway I'm at my nerds end in this thread. I'm off back to the Maple Leaf to hang with the sports jockeys!

Re: IT employment options
 

Key drivers there are:

- the client
- requirement to factor the receivables.

We're quite often approached by people who have sorted their contract out with management and just need someone with a supplier number to run the deal through. If it's nothing special, not using set aside dollars, and a "you get paid when we get paid" arrangement will work then a few percent is great.

At the other extreme, if the contractor wants to be paid regularly and the client is the Canadian government, any organization in Malaysia, or a secondary financial institution then we'd like most of the rate and a personal favour for our trouble.

Re: IT employment options
 

Hi,

I'm a network engineer, I work mostly with Cisco, Juniper Checkpoint F5 etc. Mostly data center type of work for larger companies.

In the UK / Europe I have done quite well out of this kind of work based on qualifications and experience. I have only taken contract work for the past 6 or 7 years which has paid considerably better than a permanent role.. However the change of moving to Canada for us would be for a better personal life first and foremost, not to keep working in a well paid contracting position.. I just want to find out if I can't stay with my current employer, which could be possible, what the market is like in terms of salary compared to cost of living there.

Also is Canada like the US in that there are either no paid or very few paid holidays in most jobs?

thanks

Re: IT employment options
 

Yes. And you will certainly have less holiday days than in the UK. As a contractor I try not to fall below 260 days billed. However, it very much depends on the employer. Computing consulting companies/data center operators, CGI for example, will likely hold you to two weeks + stats and will try to claw back the stats.

Companies that use computers, insurance companies, banks, are more generous to their employees and will offer flex time/work from home arrangements as well as more vacation days. I have heard of people in Canada getting three weeks paid holiday each year and a flex day per month!

Re: IT employment options
 

Agreed. With a passthrough (most of my contracts) the pimp would only skim a dollar or two off per hour to compensate for their staffs time managing timesheets and fiances etc. For my early contracts where they were sourced and arranged by the pimp, I know I was getting at least $25/ph skimmed off .


Can't speak with authority on that specific field as I'm in the management and design side of things. In Calgary, the rates for PMs started at $100/ph, solution architects from $100/ph, and enterprise architects from $125/ph. However, this was all before the collapse in oil prices.

In Canada, there is a legal requirement for companies to give paid vacation to full time employees. I believe it starts at 2 or 3 weeks per year. I recently made the leap from contractor to employee - and have 6 weeks paid vacation, plus flex days. This is still far less than I had back at the UK 10 years ago before I moved here (7 weeks paid).

Re: IT employment options
 

It sounds like you have two avenues, find a recruiter and potentially take a hit (25% as above) or if you're well known arrange things yourselves with the client and get a pimp to basically be the middle-man for a few %?

The first is most common in London, and like most contractors you get screwed on your first gig. But once you get a feel for things you can negotiate down, especially on renewal where I have usually got down to 10%.

DevOps is a hot topic here too, rates are very respectable (£600+) and surprisingly QA contractors can demand more than a seasoned developer.

Are there many 'exciting' projects that require contractors? What I mean is, you have your bank contracts which are typically a bit behind the curve on technology - for good reason sometimes. But you also have media type companies or even startups who are using newer technologies (Node/Angular/React and even modern Java/.NET stacks) that I like to work with. Is that common?