Depends on where you are. Toronto? Definitely. I get recruiters every day asking if I want a job (always onsite though, never contracts). Anywhere else I've found salary and perks drop quickly. Case in point, my last location (PEI) the salary was barely above minimum wage (35-50k/year), even though they keep complaining about shortages in skilled IT folks
Well I put it this way to friends of mine out in the Maritimes. Back in 2012 I was laid off due to government cutbacks (the company I worked for did the Tourism site), and in the three months afterwards I had three interviews across the maritimes. In a week visit to Toronto, I had twenty five interviews.
And salary is like night and day. The highest PHP salary I heard of out there in my interviews and travels was 55k. Toronto PHP jobs start at 60k and many are in the 70's and 80's. I've heard an even larger gulf for Java devs, especialy as you get up to the senior ranks. I don't know about salarys for other languages, but if you don't know Java, .Net, or PHP in the maritimes, you'll be waiting a long time to be employed. There's the occasional C++ or Python gig, but youd' make twice as much in Toronto.
And remote jobs, in Canada, in my experience, do not exist. I've seen maybe five in the last five years. Meanwhile I see remote gigs in the States daily. Basically if your'e looking for remote work, you're looking in the US. Canadian employers I've found are leery to openly hostile about folks working remotely.
Now things could have changed in the last year, and that's just my own experience, but if your'e looking for solid work, and good pay, and in Canada, it's effectively Toronto or bust.
Yeah, it is really too bad that there are such few jobs in the GTA that allow for more flexible working conditions. Guess things haven`t changed much since I left. I hope employers` attitudes will change once more and more startups mature, or do they not even allow a flexible schedule?
