Fellow Canadian, living in California but worked in Canada beforehand. There's still plenty of companies who don't ask leetcode style questions. However, none of them pay even close to what the FAANG companies pay in my experience. You can find offers for similar base salaries (there's startups in LA paying 180k base for roles), but the TC is still nothing compared to the 300k+ packages you're getting from the big boys.

It may have changed since I've been living in Canada, but total comp in Toronto at the time were HALF what they were for similar positions in California. Almost all my great engineer friends who still live in my home town in Canada work remote for USA companies for that reason.

For sure salaries don't compare but that wasn't the question. If you want to maximize salary then you probably want to work for FAANG and go through the interview process.

Same experience here. I'd actually say interviewing was a very interesting learning and participative process. Lot of companies handled it as a chat between peers. Usually there is a coding challenge upfront though (understandable).

The beauty of the peer chat was that it shows the company culture. Lot of interesting people. And makes you highly interested in the company and the job.

Not all experiences were great, but I didn't have to go through painful whiteboarding sessions

this is the case in major tech hubs on US coasts with high salaries/competition