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My life in LA, SF, and TO
Mar 4, 2022

Tags: Life, Travel, Careers
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General Thoughts 💭

Well this took a lot longer to get to than I expected, lol. To say that the past few years were interesting is a massive understatement. The pandemic, the lockdowns, the Ukraine-Russia war, and the countless other things that happened. What a wild few years. Anyway, back to the topic at hand.

I've had the chance to live in Toronto (10yr+), San Francisco (1yr), and Los Angeles (2yr). Here are my thoughts about each:

Toronto - Similar to the New York of Canada, it has amazing social diversity, OK transit, lots of amazing restaurants, and a wide array of different people from different walks of life.

San Francisco - One of the best places to be if you're a tech nerd, but social life is severely lacking. The most interesting place in SV, but that's only because everything else is incredibly dead. Better weather than Toronto, much better transit.

Los Angeles - LA is huge and amaazing, but your experience will depend entirely on where exactly you are. It is basically 20+ cities compressed into one area. Great diversity, amazing vistas, and some of the best food on the planet. Transportation is insanely bad and you basically can't live without a car.

Culture and Safety

Toronto - Toronto is the melting pot of Canada - there are people from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ethnicities, all professions, etc. You'll never feel out of place and you'll be able to experience so much multiculturalism that it'll be a very enriching experience for you. There are {culture}-towns for every culture - Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Ethiopia, Little Greece, etc.

Toronto is generally safe. There are definitely pockets in Toronto that are less-than-stellar (Jane and Finch come to mind), but public safety is never something that I felt was compromised. The homeless population is fairly low compared to SF/LA, and are generally reasonable and unaggressive people.

San Francisco - San Francisco has pretty radically different neighborhoods for different activities - there is flamboyant Castro, the renown Chinatown, the popular Fisherman's Wharf, and the busy Financial District. Each neighborhood has its own attractions, culture, and activities. Generally a very bright and vibrant community with a fair amount of diversity. The only drawback is that most of the young people in SF are in big tech, or work in fields tangential to it.

San Francisco didn't particularlly feel unsafe, but definitely a step down from Toronto. Its Metro/MUNI systems were often either dirty or commonly people not sound-of-mind (loud, disruptive, aggressive). Especially in downtown San Francisco, the gentrification results in a lot of displaced residents and homelessness. This is especially bad in SoMa and the Tenderloin. I recommend living in a safe area or out in the outskirts of SF (Parkmerced area).

Los Angeles - LA is a giant area (the Greater Los Angeles Area) that encapsulates a TON of cities - Santa Monica, Venice, Culver City, Irvine, etc. Each one of which has a very distinct culture, and different attractions. Some notable areas are - Hollywood (celebs), Santa Monica (piers), Koreatown (food), Venice (art), and Malibu (beaches). There is a huge diversity of professions here - influencers, entertainers, programmers, artists, musicians, etc. However, ethnic diversity is a bit lower than SF/TOR - I noticed that the amount of South-Asian and East-Asian people were much lower comparatively.

Unfortunately, LA is not that safe in my opinion. The public transportation is very unsafe - tons of mentally unsound and aggressive people regularly use the metro and refuse to pay the fares. The bus operators are so jaded that they don't even confront these people because the arguements are not worth it. I've been harassed multiple times, and mugged once. The homeless population is very high in LA, much higher than TOR and somewhat higher than SF. The streets are also not well illuminated at night, which results in even more unfortunate situations that happen. Although it is incredibly neighborhood dependent (steer clear of Compton, Koreatown), the general level of safety is still subpar compared to SF and Toronto.

Technology and Career

Toronto - Toronto has a pretty good diversity of technology companies - its been noted that Toronto has one of the fastest growing tech scenes in the world - on par with Silicon Valley and Austin/Seattle. Opportunities exist in startups, big banks, fintech, and established remote offices for American Big-N companies such as Meta, Google, Salesforce, Snapchat, etc.

Toronto's pay is awful. This is generally a Canada problem, but for a city with as high cost-of-living as Toronto does, salaries for tech workers massively lag behind cities of comparable CoL in the states. In my experience, the salary ranges are something like this, for somewhat competitive Software Engineering roles, total compensation in CAD: San Francisco - SF has an amazing amount of technical diversity - startups, major established tech companies, and everything else under the sun. Here, I'm more referring to companies thare are in the Bay Area - Redwood City, San Mateo, Mountain View, Menlo Park, etc. Incredibly easy to commute between the places due to company busses and CalTrain.

SF and SV is great for career progression - companies usually move fast and promote fast. The faster you're promoted, the more you can leapfrog your career. I've seen friends reach E5 (Senior) in 2-3 years and then leapfrog to a similar company (e.g. Google -> Meta, Meta -> Google) for a huge pay bump. It's not interesting to list expected compensation for SF/SV, but it's among the highest in the world. You can look at levels.fyi for details, but expect something in this range, TC USD: Los Angeles - LA has a pretty interesting tech landscape - mainly dominated by a few big companies satellite campuses (Google, Facebook, Snapchat, Uber) as well as a fair few entertainment companies (Riot Games, Sony, Blizzard, Hulu, Netflix, etc.).

Although LA isn't a city dominated by tech, there are still a great amount of high-paying tech companies in LA. Also by virtue of being close to SF, in California, and in the states, it shares similar compensation ranges to SF. You can also leapfrog around the big companies to get notable pay bumps, or leap to one of the many startups in the LA area too. Estimations for salaries are slightly lower for LA than SF, but still high compared to TOR.

Activities and Transportation

Toronto - Toronto is probably the best place to be in Canada, and one of the best East-Coast cities for entertainment. From plays to music festivals to sports events, Toronto is up there with NYC, Seattle, and LA as major destinations for big events. Toronto has a great amount of museums, escape rooms, sports recreation, and parks. It does lack some hiking and ski/snowboarding compared to LA/SF, which you'll need to drive a fair bit out to experience.

Getting around in Toronto is doable without a car, but it's still recommended. The bus system (TTC) is cheap and convenient but often late, crowded, and unreliable. The light rail system is being deprecated, and Uber/Lyft is pretty expensive.

San Francisco - San Francisco isn't quite as lively as TOR/LA, but it definitely still has a lot of fun things to do. There are aquariums, amazing hikes/forests, ferry rides, and a lot of cultural heritage (Fishermans Wharf, Castro, Chinatown). There are also a few good music festivals, and a few great resort locations closeby (Tahoe). Also, of course, the Warriors!

SF probably had (unpopular opinion) the best local transport of the three cities. The MUNI was a lot more reliable (although older), and the CalTrain was fast and cheap. Uber/Lyft adoption is prolific and taking rideshares (especially Uber Pool) is both cheap and fast. SF is pretty compact, so the sprawl problem that Toronto and LA has isn't quite as prevalent here.

Los Angeles - San Francisco isn't quite as lively as TOR/LA, but it definitely still has a lot of fun things to do. There are aquariums, amazing hikes/forests, ferry rides, and a lot of cultural heritage (Fishermans Wharf, Castro, Chinatown). There are also a few good music festivals, and a few great resort locations closeby (Tahoe). Also, of course, the Warriors!

SF probably had (unpopular opinion) the best local transport of the three cities. The MUNI was a lot more reliable (although older), and the CalTrain was fast and cheap. Uber/Lyft adoption is prolific and taking rideshares (especially Uber Pool) is both cheap and fast. SF is pretty compact, so the sprawl problem that Toronto and LA has isn't quite as prevalent here.

Food and Cuisine

Toronto - Toronto has amazing food - East Asian, African, Middle Eastern, South American, European, etc. You may have to venture out to Scarborough for some great ethnic food, but the diversity and prolificness of food in Toronto is definitely one of its strong points. San Francisco - While San Francisco has a good amount of restaurant diversity, I found that it was especially great for Cali/Mex style foods. I heavily recommend trying seafood, Mexican food, and the historical Chinatown restaurants. Los Angeles - can't possibly describe how many amazing restaurants and cuisine experiences there are to explore in SF. I'll list some of my top contenders, but you've gotta find out what you like for yourself. These are all pretty far from each other, but all very much worth the trek.