Canada to the valley is interesting and unexpected (I've obviously never been to Canada :] ) but I am quite surprised at your willingness to take a 40k hit to work at home. Thanks for the input!
I am quite surprised at your willingness to take a 40k hit to work at home
In terms of $/hour, $80k/year for an 8 hour work day isn't much worse than $120k/year for an 8 hour work day plus a 1 hour commute in each direction. And I think best when there aren't other people around.
Most of the Canada->SV difference is nuisance costs of adjusting to a different country. Immigration. A driver's license. Banks. Income taxes. Insurance. All the little things which we know how to do because we've done them all our lives but which are never really documented.
If I spent 5 years living in the bay area, that $20k/year would drop significantly, since I would no longer need to learn those quotidian details.
Perhaps I should have said that I consider Canada to be $5k/year preferable to silicon valley, plus $15k/year as a frictional cost of changing countries.
