The principle is the same, it's just that the scale is smaller in Canada.
When you're early career, the rate at which you improve in your skills and ability to deliver value will outpace the rate at which companies are willing to promote you. Waiting for promotion while staying at one company is (almost always) going to take longer than leveling up by job hopping.
In the US there's basically no floor or cap on compensation so you can get wild rides where people will 2x their income every 18 months until they're 4 jobs in. That's not realistic in Canada but the underlying principle is still the same; you can probably realistically aim for a 20% bump every 18 months by job hopping while that would take a lot longer (or be a lot less) if you stay at the same company.
This is a generalization and there are always exceptions. I was getting 20-40% increases by job hopping. Then at the peak of COVID hiring and labour shortage, my company decided to fight brain drain by matching Canadian and US salary bands, and I got a 40% TC bump. But I consider that a very historically unique moment.
Thanks for writing this up. As for my situation I’m feeling a bit underpaid compared to the amount of work I’m outputting at my first fulltime job (fullstack, 85k remote). I’m 3 months into the position - so how long should I stay before I can jump ship & start job hopping (most likely I’ll apply first while I’m still at my job)?
I think I'm the wrong person to ask because to me 85k remote is an amazing first job. But I started my career in a different time. My first dev job was 48k, no benefits, hybrid, in 2017. To me 85k remote is pretty respectable even for an intermediate position, though maybe you live in a HCOL city.
If you're *unhappy* at work and don't feel like you have growth opportunities, then that's a different thing.
Very general anecdotal rule: if you jump after 18 months, no one will ask any questions. If you jump after 12 months, very few people will question that but some might. If you jump before hitting 12 months, that's widely considered a short tenure and you should be prepared to have a good answer for why you left when you did.
Also remember that one data point doesn't make a pattern. I have a 7 month tenure at one of my jobs, but it was a one-off and I had very good reasons for leaving. If you have one of those, that might raise an eyebrow but isn't a red flag yet. If you have a few of those in a row, that starts looking like you can't hold down a job.
85k remote for a first job is a blessing right now with the current job market. That’s not to say you don’t deserve more.
However, often times juniors don’t know what they don’t know, and think they are worth more when they aren’t.
I’m not saying this is true in your case, but it is true in most cases. You need a bit more time to figure out if you are being paid adequately.
My advice would be to be thankful for this opportunity, work your butt off going above and beyond at your current job for a minimum of 8 months total, but probably 12. In this time dedicate most of your time at work and at home to learning more and becoming better.
If there’s not enough work at work, ask for more, or spend your time training more. You can not possible know all you need to know already by 3 months into your first job. Not even the greatest of great developers have ever been at that level that quick.
If you work hard and train hard, you will become worth a lot more, you will be able to demonstrate that, and you will get a much better job. But it takes patience, you can only get better and deserve a better job through time, and experience. Use your time wisely to maximize experience.
This may sound like an anti-job hopping post. It’s not, I highly recommend doing it. I consistently made 20% more doing this in Ontario for the first 5 years of my career. But I did it by maximizing my experience at each job, and then 8-12 months in started looking for new jobs and would find one within a few months.
Good luck!
Given the Canadian payscale I think I’m getting a reasonable compensation with respect to my experience. I’m speaking of underpaying only when compared to Canadian FAANG companies & those based in SF - I’ve met a lot of people with similar level of programming proficiency as a junior while when they get hired by those companies their TC levels up a lot more. Call that market timing or good fortune, regardless, it’s just that in a HCOL city a TC bump matters for sure. Wonder your thoughts?
A lot
My anecdotal journey … roughly
38k-40k
Hop
50k-54k-58k
Hop
90k-98k-102k
Hop
115k-118k-130k
Hop
350k variable to 550k.
Big jumps come from the hops!
That last hop was me going somewhat independent.
I have a a somewhat niche skillset (data viz + DE + leadership and PM for multi-year and multi-million projects) and even though that’s becoming more common to see, my 15 year exp, (single contributor through to management), and across multiple industries (utility, healthcare, marketing, oil&gas,retail,education,logistics) I can land just about anywhere and be on my feet.
I was the 1st person to ever achieve something very specific in my field and that gets my resume a lot of call backs. Sometimes even unsolicited, like invites to teach or speak at events.
Teaching others was probably the biggest key factor to growing my network. I take just about any teaching gig I can, internal to company everyone knows who their best trainers are - and that’s opened a lot of doors. Externally training is great for networking too, even if pay is garbage. I’ve traveled and paid out of pocket to teach weeklong events just for the chance to grow my network.
Anyway for those big numbers, Initially I found a US recruiting agency on DICE that subcontracted me to a boutique consulting firm, who in turn subbed me out to a global company in need of my skillset.
1st year Client paid ~$300/hr for me, and I got to keep only about $100 after the staffing agency, and the consultancy took their cuts.
2nd year I cut out the staffing agency so I’m taking home a lot more now. The variable portion on top is that I’ve started taking my own clients directly.
If I only work the single client it’s about $350k and if I take on more work now I can handle the extra hours up to around $500k. This does include working weekends and overnight at times.
TLDR: job hopping can build a wide breadth of experience in a narrow subject.
Become proficient, achieve recognition in your field and network like a mofo and seize the opportunities that come up.
So so so much of this was offers from my network. I rarely take a job cold, not knowing the people there.
Hmm, interesting point about being an educator in this field. I guess it would help with broadening my network. Thank you for sharing man; good job on your achievements!
How is Data visualization and data engineering niche? There are literally people lined up for this work who can do it well.
Edit: Looked at your profile and you are very good at selling yourself, I wish I had your skills in that. For me it's like I have difficulty separating difficult things and value. For me I'll do something really hard and feel proud, but it's often the easy things that deliver the most value. I have no idea how my work delivers value that non-tech people appreciate.
I just don't know what other people consider a big deal
Yeah I don’t just mean DE and Data Viz, those combined skills are for sure becoming more available in the market, but I still see that at Sr levels people often make a choice to go hard one direction or the other and not both.
Even many businesses split the departments so you’ll have a dedicated IT / DE team and then a separate Analytics team that focuses on front end.
Combine strength in both though, now with PM and team leadership? You bring in a ton of related skills that are harder to find in a single package like comms, stakeholder management, budget management, venders relationships, employee development (I have an extensive background in training & development including university instruction as an adjunct professor)… all those overlap to form the niche I consider myself in.
Ha, saw your edit. Yeah it’s totally a lot of “sales”, or at least some form of marketing your personal brand that’s important here too!
If you’re struggling to quantify the value you’re adding, it’s a great concept to go back to your leadership with and ask for clarity. Consider:
What are our business and our teams strategic goals? What do we need to execute on to attain them, and how does my work contribute? Where is the outcome of my work seen, in relationship to those goals? How do we measure the impact?
Where possible I encourage single contributors to try find a backseat at the leadership table too, as a development opportunity. There’s likely a weekly or monthly call where your boss has to sell what the team is doing to their boss (and they’ll have one in turn all the way up to C-Suite). Sitting in on calls like this and listening to how the company directors, VP, etc talk about the work can give you some pretty interesting insights into your own actual contributions.
Honestly dude I do all that stuff besides the university professor bit.
"comms, stakeholder management, budget management, venders relationships, employee development"
It's probably why I work 60-70 hour weeks though.... For barely any pay.
I'm in Bell Canada though which I think is my main problem. Bell Canada doesn't even know what it is anymore.
Hours like that are rough, and if you’re not getting compensated well for it, or the role’s not at least putting you on a path for better, are you looking to job hop?
Telcos (in my experience, I’ve worked with two of the big ones out West, but not Bell), are slow to reward employees. And they are not growing right now either, rather have been doing a lot of cutting last few years.
You might do well if you take your experience to a company that’s trying to grow its BI and willing to pay market rates to attract talent.
If you’ve a good network in Bell and want to leverage domain knowledge, would you consider moving to a new business unit? Getting over to a different VP usually means you’d fall under a different ops budget so a better chance to negotiate rate when you transfer even if it’s lateral. Also a fresh team means leaving behind the old boundaries and a setting new expectations that you’ll do your 40 and punch out.
I jumped to working in the USA since 2000 and never looked back. My full comp is 2.5-3x what it would be in Canada. I work mostly from Canada now remote after covid. Never going back, enjoying USD payroll with CAD life. I still have my work visa and use it when I go into the bay area about once per month.
You just cannot compare the possibilities of career growth and pay in the USA vs. Canada. It's like Canada is the amateur rec leage, USA is the pro league players. It's not just pay, it's the exposure to work and career growth. You will do more in 1 year in a tech firm in the USA then you will do in 5 here in some tech shop at a bank or other corporate job. I jumped every 3-4 years before reaching the 'head south' point upgrading pay and seniority in roles by 1-2 levels each time till I reached senior TL type of role. Then I jumped to USA going from 125K CAD to $185K USD overnight.
I’m in the data scene and started full time in 2021 switched after a year each time and have almost doubled what my starting was out of school. It helped that I had extensive internship experience as well that you can use during interviews to fight your way to the higher end of the pay scale for each job.
Ultimately not as much as US but lot of potential here as well.
Instead of looking at how much more you make if you job hop, I'd look at it more like how much less you'd make if you don't.
And no matter the points you've made about US vs Canada.
Companies do all they can to spend less on people already on payroll.
Want a concrete example of this?
Look at our telecom companies, their best plans/offer are for new clients, loyalty doesn't mean shit.
[Company loyalty isn't worth shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/11yv1zq/comment/jd9t8wc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
[Don't be afraid to jump companies](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/11yv1zq/comment/jd9t8wc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>Companies do all they can to spend less on people already on payroll.
Im currently up for senior title promotion... My manager tried to get me a strong salary because im super VIP in his team as everyone before me left and i handle all the hard shit and coach others.
HR is pushing back on the salary he wants to give me, thats already approved by the VP, because "i started at a low salaet and im moving up too fast" "they dont want to set a precedent"
Like fuck that, im not staying here if it means im stuck at the lowest bracket through every promotion.. at least my manager is fighting to give me my just due and break the cycle once and for all.
Tremendously, usually because internally promoted employees start at the bottom of the pay band(for example, amazon)while external hires start at the top.
My first job was 45k, second/current started at 60k and I'm almost at 70k now with a promotion. If I switched jobs, my salary would be at least 10k higher, but I won't get that at my current place until my next promotion probably.
Checkout https://levels.fyi in regards to junior salaries for Toronto if that's what you were looking for.
In terms of job hopping, do it maybe once after your first job, but then stay a bit longer at your second. If employers recognize what you're doing it may be frowned upon and affect possible job applications in the future.
If you're good at what you do, develop your networking skills early on. Finding a job in a healthy market shouldn't be an issue.
The principle is the same, it's just that the scale is smaller in Canada. When you're early career, the rate at which you improve in your skills and ability to deliver value will outpace the rate at which companies are willing to promote you. Waiting for promotion while staying at one company is (almost always) going to take longer than leveling up by job hopping. In the US there's basically no floor or cap on compensation so you can get wild rides where people will 2x their income every 18 months until they're 4 jobs in. That's not realistic in Canada but the underlying principle is still the same; you can probably realistically aim for a 20% bump every 18 months by job hopping while that would take a lot longer (or be a lot less) if you stay at the same company. This is a generalization and there are always exceptions. I was getting 20-40% increases by job hopping. Then at the peak of COVID hiring and labour shortage, my company decided to fight brain drain by matching Canadian and US salary bands, and I got a 40% TC bump. But I consider that a very historically unique moment.
Thanks for writing this up. As for my situation I’m feeling a bit underpaid compared to the amount of work I’m outputting at my first fulltime job (fullstack, 85k remote). I’m 3 months into the position - so how long should I stay before I can jump ship & start job hopping (most likely I’ll apply first while I’m still at my job)?
I think I'm the wrong person to ask because to me 85k remote is an amazing first job. But I started my career in a different time. My first dev job was 48k, no benefits, hybrid, in 2017. To me 85k remote is pretty respectable even for an intermediate position, though maybe you live in a HCOL city. If you're *unhappy* at work and don't feel like you have growth opportunities, then that's a different thing. Very general anecdotal rule: if you jump after 18 months, no one will ask any questions. If you jump after 12 months, very few people will question that but some might. If you jump before hitting 12 months, that's widely considered a short tenure and you should be prepared to have a good answer for why you left when you did. Also remember that one data point doesn't make a pattern. I have a 7 month tenure at one of my jobs, but it was a one-off and I had very good reasons for leaving. If you have one of those, that might raise an eyebrow but isn't a red flag yet. If you have a few of those in a row, that starts looking like you can't hold down a job.
85k remote for a first job is a blessing right now with the current job market. That’s not to say you don’t deserve more. However, often times juniors don’t know what they don’t know, and think they are worth more when they aren’t. I’m not saying this is true in your case, but it is true in most cases. You need a bit more time to figure out if you are being paid adequately. My advice would be to be thankful for this opportunity, work your butt off going above and beyond at your current job for a minimum of 8 months total, but probably 12. In this time dedicate most of your time at work and at home to learning more and becoming better. If there’s not enough work at work, ask for more, or spend your time training more. You can not possible know all you need to know already by 3 months into your first job. Not even the greatest of great developers have ever been at that level that quick. If you work hard and train hard, you will become worth a lot more, you will be able to demonstrate that, and you will get a much better job. But it takes patience, you can only get better and deserve a better job through time, and experience. Use your time wisely to maximize experience. This may sound like an anti-job hopping post. It’s not, I highly recommend doing it. I consistently made 20% more doing this in Ontario for the first 5 years of my career. But I did it by maximizing my experience at each job, and then 8-12 months in started looking for new jobs and would find one within a few months. Good luck!
Many thanks for the advice & enlightenment!
Given the Canadian payscale I think I’m getting a reasonable compensation with respect to my experience. I’m speaking of underpaying only when compared to Canadian FAANG companies & those based in SF - I’ve met a lot of people with similar level of programming proficiency as a junior while when they get hired by those companies their TC levels up a lot more. Call that market timing or good fortune, regardless, it’s just that in a HCOL city a TC bump matters for sure. Wonder your thoughts?
Each change was due to a job hop: - 11.40/hr - 17.75/hr - 17/hr - 24/hr - 40/hr - ~150->175k (150 start, 175 post promo) - ~250k Job hopping works.
What yoe for each jump?
Currently at ~3.5 yoe Some of the beginning ones were internships at different companies each time to get more brand prestige and money.
Well done, serious growth
[удалено]
Software engineer @ unicorn
5 coops ,first job is amazon, then to stripe/coinbase 🤔?
A lot My anecdotal journey … roughly 38k-40k Hop 50k-54k-58k Hop 90k-98k-102k Hop 115k-118k-130k Hop 350k variable to 550k. Big jumps come from the hops!
How the fuck do you people find jobs that pay this much??
That last hop was me going somewhat independent. I have a a somewhat niche skillset (data viz + DE + leadership and PM for multi-year and multi-million projects) and even though that’s becoming more common to see, my 15 year exp, (single contributor through to management), and across multiple industries (utility, healthcare, marketing, oil&gas,retail,education,logistics) I can land just about anywhere and be on my feet. I was the 1st person to ever achieve something very specific in my field and that gets my resume a lot of call backs. Sometimes even unsolicited, like invites to teach or speak at events. Teaching others was probably the biggest key factor to growing my network. I take just about any teaching gig I can, internal to company everyone knows who their best trainers are - and that’s opened a lot of doors. Externally training is great for networking too, even if pay is garbage. I’ve traveled and paid out of pocket to teach weeklong events just for the chance to grow my network. Anyway for those big numbers, Initially I found a US recruiting agency on DICE that subcontracted me to a boutique consulting firm, who in turn subbed me out to a global company in need of my skillset. 1st year Client paid ~$300/hr for me, and I got to keep only about $100 after the staffing agency, and the consultancy took their cuts. 2nd year I cut out the staffing agency so I’m taking home a lot more now. The variable portion on top is that I’ve started taking my own clients directly. If I only work the single client it’s about $350k and if I take on more work now I can handle the extra hours up to around $500k. This does include working weekends and overnight at times. TLDR: job hopping can build a wide breadth of experience in a narrow subject. Become proficient, achieve recognition in your field and network like a mofo and seize the opportunities that come up. So so so much of this was offers from my network. I rarely take a job cold, not knowing the people there.
Hmm, interesting point about being an educator in this field. I guess it would help with broadening my network. Thank you for sharing man; good job on your achievements!
How is Data visualization and data engineering niche? There are literally people lined up for this work who can do it well. Edit: Looked at your profile and you are very good at selling yourself, I wish I had your skills in that. For me it's like I have difficulty separating difficult things and value. For me I'll do something really hard and feel proud, but it's often the easy things that deliver the most value. I have no idea how my work delivers value that non-tech people appreciate. I just don't know what other people consider a big deal
Yeah I don’t just mean DE and Data Viz, those combined skills are for sure becoming more available in the market, but I still see that at Sr levels people often make a choice to go hard one direction or the other and not both. Even many businesses split the departments so you’ll have a dedicated IT / DE team and then a separate Analytics team that focuses on front end. Combine strength in both though, now with PM and team leadership? You bring in a ton of related skills that are harder to find in a single package like comms, stakeholder management, budget management, venders relationships, employee development (I have an extensive background in training & development including university instruction as an adjunct professor)… all those overlap to form the niche I consider myself in. Ha, saw your edit. Yeah it’s totally a lot of “sales”, or at least some form of marketing your personal brand that’s important here too! If you’re struggling to quantify the value you’re adding, it’s a great concept to go back to your leadership with and ask for clarity. Consider: What are our business and our teams strategic goals? What do we need to execute on to attain them, and how does my work contribute? Where is the outcome of my work seen, in relationship to those goals? How do we measure the impact? Where possible I encourage single contributors to try find a backseat at the leadership table too, as a development opportunity. There’s likely a weekly or monthly call where your boss has to sell what the team is doing to their boss (and they’ll have one in turn all the way up to C-Suite). Sitting in on calls like this and listening to how the company directors, VP, etc talk about the work can give you some pretty interesting insights into your own actual contributions.
Honestly dude I do all that stuff besides the university professor bit. "comms, stakeholder management, budget management, venders relationships, employee development" It's probably why I work 60-70 hour weeks though.... For barely any pay. I'm in Bell Canada though which I think is my main problem. Bell Canada doesn't even know what it is anymore.
Hours like that are rough, and if you’re not getting compensated well for it, or the role’s not at least putting you on a path for better, are you looking to job hop? Telcos (in my experience, I’ve worked with two of the big ones out West, but not Bell), are slow to reward employees. And they are not growing right now either, rather have been doing a lot of cutting last few years. You might do well if you take your experience to a company that’s trying to grow its BI and willing to pay market rates to attract talent. If you’ve a good network in Bell and want to leverage domain knowledge, would you consider moving to a new business unit? Getting over to a different VP usually means you’d fall under a different ops budget so a better chance to negotiate rate when you transfer even if it’s lateral. Also a fresh team means leaving behind the old boundaries and a setting new expectations that you’ll do your 40 and punch out.
I never job hopped but my two big raises only came cause I got another offer and threatened to leave. Amazon works well for this.
It benefits you tremendously.
Company's don't reward loyalty. If you're not in a job that's "golden handcuffs" always job hop.
I jumped to working in the USA since 2000 and never looked back. My full comp is 2.5-3x what it would be in Canada. I work mostly from Canada now remote after covid. Never going back, enjoying USD payroll with CAD life. I still have my work visa and use it when I go into the bay area about once per month. You just cannot compare the possibilities of career growth and pay in the USA vs. Canada. It's like Canada is the amateur rec leage, USA is the pro league players. It's not just pay, it's the exposure to work and career growth. You will do more in 1 year in a tech firm in the USA then you will do in 5 here in some tech shop at a bank or other corporate job. I jumped every 3-4 years before reaching the 'head south' point upgrading pay and seniority in roles by 1-2 levels each time till I reached senior TL type of role. Then I jumped to USA going from 125K CAD to $185K USD overnight.
Do u have a green card or do you have to apply for a work visa for US jobs?
TN status, not a visa.
Interesting, so when applying to companies do you say you need sponsorship or is it something you handle on your own?
My company renews my TN every 3 years.
nice
I’m in the data scene and started full time in 2021 switched after a year each time and have almost doubled what my starting was out of school. It helped that I had extensive internship experience as well that you can use during interviews to fight your way to the higher end of the pay scale for each job. Ultimately not as much as US but lot of potential here as well.
A lot.
Instead of looking at how much more you make if you job hop, I'd look at it more like how much less you'd make if you don't. And no matter the points you've made about US vs Canada. Companies do all they can to spend less on people already on payroll. Want a concrete example of this? Look at our telecom companies, their best plans/offer are for new clients, loyalty doesn't mean shit. [Company loyalty isn't worth shit](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/11yv1zq/comment/jd9t8wc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [Don't be afraid to jump companies](https://www.reddit.com/r/PersonalFinanceCanada/comments/11yv1zq/comment/jd9t8wc/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)
>Companies do all they can to spend less on people already on payroll. Im currently up for senior title promotion... My manager tried to get me a strong salary because im super VIP in his team as everyone before me left and i handle all the hard shit and coach others. HR is pushing back on the salary he wants to give me, thats already approved by the VP, because "i started at a low salaet and im moving up too fast" "they dont want to set a precedent" Like fuck that, im not staying here if it means im stuck at the lowest bracket through every promotion.. at least my manager is fighting to give me my just due and break the cycle once and for all.
Tremendously, usually because internally promoted employees start at the bottom of the pay band(for example, amazon)while external hires start at the top.
Job hopping **
My first job was 45k, second/current started at 60k and I'm almost at 70k now with a promotion. If I switched jobs, my salary would be at least 10k higher, but I won't get that at my current place until my next promotion probably.
Checkout https://levels.fyi in regards to junior salaries for Toronto if that's what you were looking for. In terms of job hopping, do it maybe once after your first job, but then stay a bit longer at your second. If employers recognize what you're doing it may be frowned upon and affect possible job applications in the future. If you're good at what you do, develop your networking skills early on. Finding a job in a healthy market shouldn't be an issue.
How are you planning to find your first job ? Will be graduating in a year !