Hi all,

Been thinking about making the move for probably 2 years now (I know, could have been half way there by now!) and lurking on here for over a year!

I've seen it come up a couple of times about IT in Canada and the posts weren't overly complementary! Is the computing industry really that competitive and short of jobs over there?

I've got the usual stuff, a degree, couple of professional certifications and about 7 years experience - over here it's fairly easy for me to find work.

What areas of Canada have the most amount of IT jobs available? We don't have a particular region in mind at the moment, so if I start with a list of places where IT jobs are plentiful, I can start to narrow them down from there....

Main motivations for looking to move are the same as everyone else seem to be, better future for our children etc etc....

Cheers

Hellooo

I'm an ex-IT Contractor from the UK with similar experience to your good self.

The areas you'll be looking at are Toronto and Ottawa, only. In my view.

For a UK ex-pat, canada has about 25% of the number UK vacancies you'll be familiar with from the lucrative UK market. Why? There's just less work and you're not a Canadian.

Things are really picking up in the UK and Europe with some daily rates of £300 not hard to attain. The same simply cannot be said in Canada. I've seen some IT Director roles here paying absolute peanuts.

I don't know what you're looking for in terms of salary - money may be much less important to you. You have to be really really sure that Canada will offer you the lifestyle you're searching for before making the sacrifice in your salary.

Best wishes

LB.

Thanks for the reply - I'm a technical architect (infrastructure), in the UK, if I was to go the contract route, I could probably get something like £400 a day without trying too hard....

I guess in Canada, I'd be hoping for $70-80K at least - would that be unrealistic?

It's hard to find out what's "normal" over there as it seems none of the adverts have salary figures on them and of course, not being Canadian, they don't even reply if I enquire about them - so I'm only going on the salary guides on Monster etc and they seem a tad optimistic in my opinion....

You mention Toronto - how is that for commuting into in comparison with some of the UK cities like Birmingham or Manchester etc?

I think that would be reasonable for that type of position.

That's reassuring - it's frustrating looking at job ad's on Monster, Workopolis etc when none of them list a salary When I'm looking for jobs in the UK on jobserve etc, if it doesn't list the salary, I normally discount it, as I feel they have something to hide

$70-80K would be enough to get by I think, more would be nice, who doesn't want more All I would expect would be a decent ish size house - bigger than the 3 bed semi shoebox we have here in the UK and enough for the other essentials, plus a trip back to the UK every year....

..depends if you want live out in the country or not.

It can be heavy going, if you're going to drive it. I'm in Barrie - about 1.5 hours north of Toronto and the highway 400 south is a mind-numbingly boring and busy stretch of road into the city at peak times. Easily comparable with the worst junctions on the M25.

If you want to live nearer to Toronto in a more urban setting, then the preferable option is the train.

Getting yourself a larger property will be very easy.

LB.

I don't know about Toronto but in BC I'd say $70-80k is about the maximum you could get. There are a lot of clever people here with experience and degrees earning a lot less. It's probably best to never quote a salary when asked in an interview. Wait for them to make the offer and decide for yourself.

Thanks for the advice guys - sounds like looking at Toronto is the way forward....

BC would be nice, but with a low salary and expensive housing, wouldn't make sense.....

here is my experience. i was in the US for about 10 years and then moved here. im the hiring manager at the small company here in Toronto. have been here in canada only for a while. i dont know the market here either !
but ive been conducting some interviews for a new position. the way i see it working here is 3 classes ( fresh out of college , ok experience, lot of experience) and then again 2 classess ( canadian/north american exp and new immigrants).

The salaries our company could afford was max of 65k for a new programmer !
but most of the experienced guys were expecting 80+

They usually dont prefer new immigrants and the starting salaries for new immigrants are pathetically low. but i dont want to generalize. im just sharing my limited experience.

but back in the US you dont get even fresh college guys for 80k !!

monster.ca has a salary calculator which is helpful.

I dont know if this helps.

and again GTA is the place to be if you are in IT.
programmers are paid decently. but if you are into IT support , from what i have seen the salaries are just not worth the move to canada !

Closest fit for my job I can find on the monster salary report comes back with :-

Quote:

A typical Engineer IV working in Ontario -- Toronto earns a median base salary of $117,657, according to our analysis of data reported by corporate HR departments. Half of the people in this job earn between $98,974 and $137,543

That would be more than acceptible I think..... I guess the immigrant factor could reduce that considerably though!

This could be on the high end. i dont know of a lot of people making this salary. even if you can get to high 85+ to 90+ thatl be good. my suggestion is to see if you can get some interviews before you land here.

Not even started the application yet - so who knows what things will be like in 4+ years time..... Plus I would have another 4 years experience under my belt....

Interesting. Now this has me thinking. am I making less

No really as I said me being a hiring manager in the company and also the coder/architect in the company dont see such salaries for engineer IV working for us. so anyone else here in IT can throw some light ?
where does Monster get its data. because i know a girl, very smart one working as a s/w architect for a leading bank in Toronto for 17+ years makes about 85+bonus . soo....

That's pretty much why I posted on here - the salaries on monster seemed to be a bit high to me.... but then in the other IT thread on here recently, someone said that $100K should be a starting point for an architect! Of course, Architect covers a number of totally different roles too - a software architect has absolutely nothing to do with being an infrastructure architect, but yet often they have the same title! Makes looking for jobs frustrating...

As a tech support contractor (mainframe and midrange) I was on about 100k (GBP) working in London and alot of my mates are still on that salary and more and don't work too hard for it.

Here in Canada I am now on about $100k doing the same work (on contract) and I can confirm there does seem to be less work around here. When this contract finished I am not too hopeful of finding something similar.

If you're into legacy systems like me, you might be slightly better off since the older, experienced legacy system guys seem to be retiring and or just 'coasting' in their jobs waiting for a redundancy package.

If you're into newer stuff like Java etc then you'll have to compete with locals, younger people also who can work for less money.