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Comment by lewisl9029 | Hacker News Reader

As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left.

To the Canadian tech industry: How are you ever going to become competitive with the US if you keep offering these humiliatingly low salaries and letting the best and brightest of our own talent get leeched away?

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I think that's an issue everywhere in the world. I'm living in Taiwan (not from here originally), and the tech scene is really being hollowed out for years if not decades. The really best, brightest, and most motivated people are already working abroad. "Humiliating" is a strong word, but the more I think about it, the more apt it feels, there should be a lot more reward for the good techies here (there are some left, miraculously!)

It is sad when hire salaries for programmers are to be had in mainland China (e.g. Beijing) than Taiwan. There are just tech friendly places and those that are not, with the USA being at the top in terms of pay.

There will always be people who work for unjustifiably lower salaries

Why should there be a reward for staying? The market is screaming "leave" and you don't rich by laughing at what the market says.

Yes, this is definitely not a problem unique to Canada, but I feel the effects are felt a bit more strongly here due to the fact that the barrier to entry into the US for Canadian citizens is practically nonexistent (TN Visa) compared to elsewhere in the world (H-1B).

We have a similar problem in Scotland, I know a lot of people would love to have continued living in Scotland but can make >2 times the salary as a developer by making the move down to London. The cost of living in London is higher, but the increase in pay more than makes up for this. Granted, this is a move within the UK so it's not really a drain on the UK's economy but it leads to a more London-centric economy and, with an increasingly devolved Scottish parliament, is not good for Scotland.

What's really crazy is that salaries in London aren't that high (unless you are in the financial sector). I am constantly astonished by the low salaries (for qualified programmers) offered in most parts of Britain. I suspect that you could actually get away with building a consulting firm in the country side and getting companies to offshore work from the US.

I'm not familiar with how things in the US are, but in the UK and specifically in London a lot of senior tech people do contract work which pays considerably more than permanent positions.

Contracting rates != salaried rates. You have to charge more because you don't get any benefits (vacation, sick leave, pension), and have little job security.

Re job security - In reality as long as you produce value it is just as secure as a perm job. Also, psychologically I think it is more "secure", ie. there are no surprises. Companies hire you for a reasonably well defined task and term, hence you are fully aware how much you will earn during this period as well as when you will have to find your next gig.

This is changing. The other week every LN contractor at my company was told they are getting a pay cut.

Contractors have also been first to be let go. The last 10 years, yes. The next 10, not so sure.

What is LN?

What I've said above is of course anecdotal based on my circle's and my own experience, but when looking I was never without a new contract longer than a couple of weeks in the last 7 years. The next 10 years... I don't know, however another advantage being a contractor in my opinion is that you have more opportunity to be exposed to and learn new stuff, which helps staying current.

London. Agreed, next 10 years who knows. 7 years is interesting because it's just not long enough.

Pre 2008 I was surrounded by contractors all citing the benefits of the extra money. Then things thinned out. I remember one day looking up and I was sat with loads of empty seats around me and I realised just how many contractors they had let go over a period of time.

£35,000 salary in the UK has the same buying power (for want of a better expression as a $60,000 US salary. Adjust for "because London" and you're looking at £45/55K (not hard in London) equating to $75K - $100K.

Thinking about it, I know a dozen or so people in the "poor deprived" north east of England earning over £40K who are under 30 years old so we're not all badly paid.

The difference is that Brits feel poor when they come to the US, whereas Americans feel rich when they come to the UK.

Sure, PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) comparisions are important (e.g. it's easier to live in Thailand with $1000 per months than in NYC), but absolute values matter as well.

Sure they matter, but only to the extent that foreign expenditures are a part of your costs.

I.e. sure when you go to the US and have to buy USD with GBP you'l be at a disadvantage, or when you buy some electronics priced in USD, but how big a portion of your spending is that compared to food/rent/commuting/hobbies etc., all of which are priced in your local currency.

> The difference is that Brits feel poor when they come to the US, whereas Americans feel rich when they come to the UK.

Are you sure about that? For a start, converting USD to GBP will make their money go not as further

Might be just general British negativity, they probably feel miserable at Disneyland.

> Are you sure about that?

No. I was just going off what parent said. I've seen way too little UK (mainly only London) and US (mainly only NYC) to judge myself.

I live in one of the most "miserabilist" parts of the UK (where Morrissey grew up, just to mention one celeb), and everyone goes crazy for Disneyland. We don't have direct flights to SF but we get dailies to Vegas and Florida. 'nuff said.

Very wrong. American here, was in the UK last summer and it physically hurt me to buy anything.

UK and American prices are around the same number but in pounds which meant ~1.6x USD at the time.

That's probably the 20% VAT that's included in the price. If you are coming from a state with no sales tax, this could explain your surprise. Hell, coming from Canada where I was paying 13% sales tax (never included in the sticker price), I found UK prices shocking.

Wrong way round, when I go to the US I generally don't bother looking at the price of things as it's all so cheap. Even if the exchange rate was 1:1 it would be cheap (decent clothes are amazingly cheap, petrol/diesel is laughably cheap and eating out is great) but with the exchange rate being the way it is it's even better. The was a time before the crash when the exchange rate was $2 to the £, so long as you could afford the flights over you could have the best holidays in the US.

This is only true when being a tourist though as you are thinking in your native currency and basing purchasing decisions in that frame of reference, when you actually live and work in the respective country then (ie if you move to another country) then that stops being an issue as you are earning in the new currency.

Well 45/55k is /cheap/ for a senior dev. Unless you work for a bank/inner london (or google) all you can hope for is perhaps 65k, at the top... So yeah, if you want more, the only way is to sell off and 'manage', or go off contracting. There's many junior 'managers' who can barely lace their own shoes who get quite a bit more than 65k.

In the UK you get ahead by going into management. Tech (or sales, or accounting, or whatever) is just a short term thing you do for a few years until you get promoted into management. We don't like to reward people for being clever; we like to reward people who tell others what to do.

It works similarly in Germany and other economies with strong social support systems as well, it seems. You're doing really well to break 65,000ish Eur as a developer, but get on the management track and the sky opens up.

Why would "strong social support systems" be connected to this?

Generally speaking, you don't need to be paid as much if you don't have to pay for your own healthcare, pension, schooling for kids, etc. I believe that's what the parent is alluding to.

I have a suspicion how this works:

As an American, when I was early in my career, and had a baby and wife to support, being underpaid was super painful. Medical care, for instance, was expensive. Being able to be easily and quickly fired without a typical European justification process is another factor. You can find yourself unemployed at any time, with any justification.

It all lit a fire under me to demand better pay. In fact, I got very used to doing so, and also got very comfortable with the idea of doing whatever it took to turn myself into a sought-after commodity, with a goal of being able to find a new job as fast as possible "just in case" things went south quickly. I quickly learned to recognize companies where technologists are treated as a cost center. These companies, if they are indeed technology focused businesses, are going to inevitably have terrible products, mediocre employees due to the dead-sea effect, and awful work environments.

I wonder if a strong social support system would have never incentivized me to get comfortable negotiating, to invest in myself as a valuable piece of human capital in a very cutthroat, competitive market. Who knows?

I think you're overestimating European social support systems a bit.

Here in the UK, you can be fired quite easily until you've been in a job for 2 years.

After that, you can still be made redundant. IBM are currently laying off a lot of people and only paying them the legal minimum settlement (1 week's pay for every year worked).

Our unemployment benefits are very low. Most professional people wouldn't even bother claiming them when between jobs, the hassle involved is huge.

It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

So I still feel pretty damn incentivised to look out for myself, even in this socialist utopia.

Continental Europe (Germany, Austria, the Nordic countries, etc) is a lot more socialist than the UK.

The UK seems to be somewhere in between the US and continental Europe.

> It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

Is the NHS really that bad? I understand there must be some disadvantages to it but it is still pretty damn impressive especially when you consider that Americans spend more per capita on health care but still need to get private health insurance.

It's not that bad, I think I was overstating things. I've explained a little more in my reply to the parent comment

> It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

I have private medical insurance in the US. I can still go bankrupt if I go to the emergency room and whomever is providing care isn't covered by my insurance plan.

Yes, perhaps I was overestimating, especially for the UK. We Americans tend to jealously view the EU as a bit of a utopia when it comes to these things, as you correctly pointed out.

However, don't underestimate the NHS. My biggest fear when I was early in my career was not having health insurance for my baby boy and wife. Getting ill between jobs (this was before Obama's new health care expansion) could result in bankruptcy. In fact, perhaps the biggest driver for me was the fact that my wife was not insured by her job when she became pregnant with my son. My job charged unaffordably high premiums to cover her (they don't scale to your salary, and I was being paid $11/hour, so it was literally a third of my monthly pay to cover her). The awful medical care she was able to get was Medicaid, which is the government subsidized health plan for the poor in the United States. Good doctors don't take it at all, so you end up getting terrible health care from the doctors nobody wants to see. She received horrible pre-natal care, typical screening procedures were never done, including simply looking at her cervix to check for warning signs of pre-term labor. Had these warning signs been even checked for, we could have avoided my son being born 3 months premature. But they weren't, and we didn't. The doctors at the hospital were appalled when they found out that my wife had gone to a checkup and been cleared a few days before the labor started, and one of them began crying when she found out from us that the doctor hadn't looked at my wife's cervix. My son was given a 70% chance of survival at his birth, because my wife didn't have fucking insurance.

Just be thankful you have the NHS. Healthcare here is a fucking horror show.

I had to accept that I live in a country where not having a GOOD job means that you and your family are going to get inferior medical care in tangible, life-threatening ways.

Point taken, perhaps my final point was overstating things a bit (or underestimating just how awful the healthcare situation is in America).

I think people like me who are lucky enough to be basically healthy can get a skewed view of the NHS, because for routine medical care the 'customer service' is pretty awful.

I've come to believe this slightly mediocre experience is actually necessary to the survival of the NHS. If you could (for example) instantly see a GP and get referred to a physiotherapist every time you got a bit of back pain, the whole system would be inundated with demand. For routine stuff like this, most working people would skip the NHS altogether and go direct to a private physio (or have it covered by their employer's plan).

But it's there for all the important (and expensive) stuff like childbirth and serious illnesses. And for that we are insanely lucky.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened to your wife and son. I hope they're both doing great now.

I noticed this phenomenon myself. I work in retail data analytics, and deal a lot with both American and British customers, as well as technology companies.

It is mind-blowing to me how huge a disparity there is between the British and US mindsets on technology talent in an identical industry. The American companies, even the more old-fashioned ones, are (or are starting to) treating technical talent the way a sports team treats it's players. The British companies are way, way more 90's style: the techies need to stay in the closet and let the big-boy managers do all the talking. The pay, of course, reflects this. I'm sure there are numerous exceptions in both directions, but within my industry it is pervasively accurate.

It's really difficult to generalize the situation in the US due to the size and diversity, in terms of industry and business scales, of the country. In general, I would say that you hit a ceiling in career development within 10 years on a technical track. (Of course, there are exceptions in industry sectors and a small number of geographic locations. But, I'm looking at the aggregate.)

However, management is no panacea. The pay is higher, but you can easily be stuck in mid-level management limbo with no say on budget or technical direction. Of course, you are "empowered" (read the remainder of the sentence with an abundance of sarcasm) to do reviews, deal with resource allocation issues for projects, operations, support work, and not to mention the coveted verification that your team does mandatory training on sexual harassment and the like. My manager is a prime example. He sits in many meetings. Ostensibly, he has a voice at the table with the "big wigs". In reality, he controls nothing and has the boring administrivia to handle. Mid-level management is also the first layer to be cut in a down-sizing.

If you stay on the technical track past 10 years, it really has to be because you love the ability to create something and see it used. I've been on the technical side for 25 years. Much of my job I find boring and intellectually vacuous. But, the times when I can actually create something still thrill me like the first time I wrote a program and saw it run.

Also IMHO management is risky because you become specialised to your companies systems.

One downsizing later you find yourself with 10 years of experience in working around limitations in the stationary ordering system at NowBustCompany. Welcome to the scrap heap.

By contrast in IT you can stay fresh more easily and be in demand should you need to move on.

The same thing can certainly happen in IT. How many IBM folks specializing in lotus notes are being laid off as we speak? Its one of the bigger problems working at BigCo's - you can end up only knowing internal people and internal systems. The only place you can conceivably jump to is companies nearby founded by other ex-BigCo people (in many cases nowadays, the primary competitors are overseas - capital has free trade to move freely but humans do not).

If you don't maintain some semblance of connection with the outside world you can get stuck. The scariest thing in the world to me is a job that is only internal facing.

Agreed. I think this is easier to do in middle management but agree with your general fear!

Londons great when you are young, but in my experience people eventually leave when they realise they cant afford property even though they are well paid. Plus they realise quality of life is important too, and that the work centric culture in London isnt for them

I'm coming to that realisation pretty quickly

I'm in the camp who moved out to the green belt but commute to the city. Best move ever :)

London banks can pay more because whilst other companies have to make products banks make fiat money. This acts as a tax on the rest of the uk.

The cost of living in London is higher, but the increase in pay more than makes up for this

Are you sure? I made the opposite move for reduced cost of housing (and commuting).

This definitely depends on the specific job, but in general there are more opportunities for high paying positions and a higher salary ceiling. It also depends on where you want to live within London and the kinds of activities you want to take part in. For me, I've found I have way more disposable income since the move to London as I had a huge salary increase from my previous job in Edinburgh. Although I have much, much less free time and would say I'm generally more unhappy

Odd - I'm ~6 years out of a Scottish university with a CS degree. Everyone of my class who stayed in Scotland owns their own property and has a much higher disposable income than those in London. They're in Edinburgh mind you, why anyone would choose to live in Glasgow is beyond me...

Edinburgh recently topped the stakes for average disposable income in the UK - £800 per month compared to £300 in London.

>why anyone would choose to live in Glasgow is beyond me

Glasgow is a really fun city though. I'm staying here cause I like it, I don't really care that I could earn more living in that other city.

What's wrong with Glasgow? Just curious

Some do leave, yes. Many come back home later.

Amazon opened the Toronto office back in 2011 because there was demand- Canadians who didn't want to live in America anymore- often because of family, friends back home or because they wanted to have kids and not raise them as Americans, culturally.

It started with less than 10 people, plus the hiring they were able to do locally. It's now an office of over 300 people, maybe 100 of which transferred from Seattle. And the transfers back haven't slowed much- lots of folks simply want to come back home after a few years.

Lots of room here to grow. If Trump wins, I expect we'll need it.

Respectfully, I would not consider Amazon a champion of good working conditions. :>

Then I would guess you haven't worked as a developer at Amazon. I can talk for hours on what I like and don't like about the culture here, but suffice to say the benefits far outweigh any downsides to me.

Or, you can look instead at Google Waterloo, which is a similar-sized office just an hour away from here. Same pattern.

Amazon already has an office on the low here in Vancouver that I heard has upwards of 200 employees and started out the same at 10. I heard it is also used as a staging ground to get people into the US office, and also easier to get foreign workers in Canada than the US.

As an outsider, respectfully - what is "culturally American" compared to "culturally Canadian"?

I've been to both countries several times and I would not be able to tell if a person is American or Canadian unless they told me.

American: huh, guns are great, healthcare IF you can afford it, language #2 = spanish, hockey is a sport they play in Canada, worlds most powerful military, Trump, avg. American knows little about Canada, metric system - who needs that, good universities

Canadian: eh, no guns allowed, healthcare FREE for all, language #2 = french, hockey is the 2nd most popular religion, neighbors with country with worlds most powerful military - they'll have our back, no Trump, avg Canadians knows a little about America, metric system, good universities - taxpayer subsidized

But there are plenty of Americans that fit most of your Canadian stereotypes (see sanders's popularity among young Americans for example) and probably vice versa too.

I suspect 2 US states that are far from each other will have more cultural differences than a US state and Canadian province that are adjacent.

I moved from the US to Canada (European originally), Canada on the outside looks like the US but inside it's closer to Europe from my point of view (not everybody agrees and think we're very similar).

In terms of politics and religion, US is an outlier compared to western countries, many US Democratic politicians (say "liberal" Hillary Clinton) would be considered "conservative" in Canada, we're way more "progressive" than the US. Donald Trump for example would have a big chance of being prosecuted for hate speech in Canada or taken to the Human Rights Tribunal if he was a local politician.

I know quite a few tech people in Canada who had the chance to move to the US and they wouldn't even consider it for cultural reasons, perceived violence or whatever. I know a lot of people that moved as well.

It's a good question.

Gun culture is a big aspect of it; I wouldn't want my hypothetical children raised in a place where people keep handguns around 'for protection'. Conservatism; Bernie Sanders would be a centrist up here, not a liberal. The strange mania of patriotism and flag-love. The military culture with half the tax dollars spent there and politicians fighting to increase it. The absolute hatred of taxes.

It's not that all Americans are like this (or that no Canadians are) but so many are that the laws, rules and norms reflect it. The culture is much further in those directions than I want to be.

I loved living in Seattle, which is more liberal than Canada in many ways, but it's still very American.

In a nutshell: Canada was one of the first countries to legalize same-sex marriage. America was one of the last in the Western world. No one is surprised by either of these two facts.

It's fascinating, in Saskatoon we've got a pretty neat little tech community. Some people leave, but there's a few companies that identified that people were leaving or contracting remotely and increased their salaries to be sufficiently enticing to keep people here.

There's still some people who leave (apparently there was a thing for a while at Apple where people would hang their Saskatchewan license plates on their cubes), but as a whole there's a lot of people staying and making good money here. In the last 10 years or so since I've graduated, entry-level salaries are up probably 50-70% and intermediate-experience salaries around $90-100k/yr aren't unheard of.

>Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left.

This is what young people do; they adventure. Then, many times, they come back to their roots to settle down.

I'm sure there're a few people around these parts with anecdata regarding the joys of finding housing and raising a family in the SF Bay Area.

Anecdata is my new favorite word.

How will they come back if there isn't a tech scene waiting for them?

There will be a tech scene, the Vancouver portion of that scene may 1 day be smaller than what it is now.

> This is what young people do; they adventure.

I think this is a rather unfair, and possibly dangerous, attitude, to simply dismiss this phenomenon as typical young people "adventuring". Is it really adventuring if it's a decision made after countless hours of carefully weighing different employment options and coming to the conclusion that the US offers far more opportunities and far better rewards for our careers?

I have nothing but anecdotes to support that the brain drain is actually happening at any significant scale, but it's certainly not difficult to imagine why young people who are offered a US position would come to these same conclusions, given the sorry state of the Canadian tech industry today.

RE: Settling down. Seattle, which is a 3 hour drive from Vancouver, offers about double the average Vancouver salary with comparable housing prices. Needless to say, I'm not planning on going back until the situation improves dramatically.

Disclaimer: grew up in Ontario, studied at UWaterloo, then worked at BB, then worked in London, UK for 2 years, and now moving to Silicon Valley on a TN visa.

I wouldn't worry _too_ much about the brain drain. Sure the US is more lucrative for young people, but I would say Canada is more lucrative for families. Consider the public schools in Canada vs in the US, and cost of a UW degree vs a comparable university degree in the US. I don't think that most young Canadians who move to the US will stay there permanently.

So the consolation is what? That although people will flee to spend their best years elsewhere and sell their potential there at least they'll come back to Canada so their younglings will benefit as they did from the better formative conditions?

Nope. I left Canada 8 years ago with two school-age kids who are now finishing high school. They'll probably go back to Canada for university, but honestly higher pay solves a lot of problems.

Is the question that Canadian companies genuinely can't pay more, or just that they won't, for whatever reason?

Or maybe that Canadians are willing to work for less? (I remember reading an article that auto manufacturers charge more for the same cars in Canada simply because Canadians will pay more.)

Good point. Perhaps Americans are better negotiators, and haggling over price/salary "isn't done" in Canada (I know nothing about Canadian culture, but fascinated about the possible effects of culture on an economy).

This isn't done in America very much either. We have a white list of things that are appropriate to haggle price on (cars, houses, things on craigslist), but everything else is basically, "wait for sales."

Local salaries are driven by supply and demand. Tech workers in Vancouver are paid very well compared to other workers in the city. If all tech workers suddenly demanded 20% raises I guess it would happen, but at lowered profit margin for the employers who may end up relocating.

Well, in the case of Toronto, I make a better salary relative to the cost of living (all things considered -- rent, health care, insurance) than I could make in SF or NY at the moment. Taxes in Cali aren't that different from Ontario, but the cost of living is nuts (and for the most part astonishingly suburban). Even if I could get slightly more money, I'd lose a lot of quality of life because my entire network is here. Personally, the idea of dropping my entire life for a pay cheque would necessitate a substantial increase in pay.

I think companies pay what the market will bear, and enough people feel the same way I do.

Why would they pay more?

As long as they can fill the seats they have open, paying "Canadian" rates, why not?

Sure, they are aware that some talent is leaving for greener pastures southward, but there is no "shortage" of talent available in the Vancouver market.

When/if enough of the developer supply has exited, that filling those seats becomes difficult, salaries will increase.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

This definitely looks like a tragedy of the commons type situation. Companies act in self-interest by paying as low as they possibly can, with no regards for the damage being done to the Canadian talent pool.

It honestly feels rather hopeless for the Canadian tech industry at this point.

This also happens in third world countries too. I think this is happens when one can easily compare salaries all over the world.

The brain drain is definitely a big issue in Canada.

On the bright the cost of living will end up being cheaper in Canada if you can get my flow ;)

Many Canadians return back to Canada; even Drake lives in Toronto :)

There is always (your) life cycles. Both myself and my brother Waterloo grads in the 90s. He is in the sv and I stayed in Toronto. My company sent me down to the valley to "help" for a few months (ie living and food all expensed) when I was still fresh. Hated it.. there is nothing at night. So I never have the urge to move there afterwards.

Then once you have multiple kids, single income doesn't take you far in the valley even with Google scale salary and mortgage. Plus Amazon has dev centre in downtown Toronto that pays well (not silicon valley well, but Seattle well). (Yes, startups don't pay well in Toronto, but then there are lots of small and profitable sw firms that pays decently).

Or just convince google to move that Kitchener office to Toronto, when so many people are commuting anyway..

And then, Vancouver is always a retirement city..

well, that's why so many people commute from SF to the valley, if they want a certain culture. Toronto suburbs seem to go on forever, so not fair to compare Toronto to SV (and not SF or OAK)

Agreed. It's just so easy to hire in Canada right now due to the strong USD Exchange Rate. Many startups make money in USD and hire in CAD.

Exactly same issue with India. India has tons of IT Company and Government invests a lot in education.. obviously pay is more in US but I think it is also environment.

That makes me wonder what has US done right to remain talent magnet

The issue in India is that our IT Companies are way overhyped. None of them are doing well financially, all of them barely scraping through each quarter given the Industry at-large stance on outsourcing.

"what has US done right to remain talent magnet"

It sells itself better. Given the same conditions, an US offer will sound better because the benefits (the pay) will be highlighted while the drawbacks will be presented in a lesser manner or even hidden from view entirely. This is more so when it's about foreigners for which the discrepancy of what's currently available to them and what can be promised is simply staggering. Here is less about the job offers in themselves as means to cover needs as it is with them as advertised goods that generate tremendous amounts of attraction. That's why so many foreign talented individuals are jumping through hops and work on mediocre conditions (which includes the payment) just to be able to dream about the advertised big rewards. I say "to dream" because it works like a lottery, it's a rat race not for a piece of cheese but for a chance to that piece.

There is a lot to talked about on this subject, but it's suffice to say that at its root the difference comes from what is a fair trade, which differs greatly from USA in comparison to other places.

According to the article real estate costs in Vancouver are half that of San Francisco. Are salaries half too?

Based on some quick Googling and Glassdoor, it looks like average salaries are ~110k vs. ~80k. The cost of rent in San Francisco looks to be ~190% higher.

Not sure how well those figures line up with reality, though.

Metro Vancouver (2800km^2) is quite a bit bigger than SF (600km^2), so you may want to include rents in other outlying Bay Area cities.

Most people here make way above average, and that's when differences increase dramatically. In the US I make close to $300k. In Europe, and London in particular, I get offered under 80k EUR.

"Most people make way above average"?

The GP claims most people on HN, which seems likely.

Wow, nice quoting technique you've got.

That estimate of real-estate/rent cost for Vancouver seems low to me.

Your right. For a typical 1 Bedroom unit, in the city, you would be looking in the $1500 ballpark, a 2 Bedroom unit closer to 2K. For a 3 Bedrooom unit, well good luck with that.

Even with the cost/affordability, the bigger problem is the lack of availability of rental units. The current vacancy rate in the city is at 0.8% and heading downwards.

Sad thing is, there is LOTS of empty condo's!

> The price of a typical Vancouver home rose 21 percent to C$775,300 ($584,290) in January from a year earlier, according to the city’s real estate board.

The costs quoted in the article are a bit vague. If one were to assume that by "Vancouver home", she was referring to a "house" located within the city of Vancouver, you would be in for a rude awakening. Average house price is pushing 2M and what that will buy you is a place to tear down in what was/is the less desirable part of the city.

If your talking a 1 bedroom condo in the city, 500k will get you started and the 775k quoted will get you something a bit above the basics.

When you can figure out how your going to pay that mortgage with your "Vancouver tech" salary, and still be able to afford to live, I'm all ears :)

Problem is those $700k condos are being bid up to $800k, and often sold so fast there's no time to go back to your bank and request an additional $100k mortgage. The Chinese buyers have cash to make the sale immediately.

The newer buildings are now exclusively luxury condos, like the tower being built on Harwood St that's one unit per floor for offshore millionaires.

The ~$700k number the article cites takes into account condos.

If you're only looking at detached houses then Vancouver is as expensive as SF if not more expensive. The median price is $1.3 million in the east side and $3.2 in the west side.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/ho...

Salaries are nowhere close to SF salaries. This is why Vancouver is one of the most unaffordable cities in the world.

They can be. It's more accurate to say that Vancouver has a narrower range of salaries with a lower ceiling.

Right now I'm in NYC making about 4x what I would make in Vancouver for a similar job (disregarding exchange rate! It'd be ~5-6x if we include exchange rate), so yeah, still way ahead despite NYC's astronomical cost of living.

I agree as an American. I've met some super smart Canadians in SF and DC. They all say basically the same thing: most Canadian cities have a high cost of living, and salaries don't always keep up, so much so that even the Bay Area is attractive over Vancouver, since at least there's tons of jobs to choose from and they can optimize on salary with many offers.

I always thought that Canada's low pay was balanced by their universal healthcare. No ?

Healthcare is often provided by the U.S. employer anyways, so I guess it's a wash in that case.

If we're addressing the said healthcare only nominally then yes, it may be discarded from the list of considerations.

It's not that Canada or anywhere else in the world has humiliatingly low salaries, it's just that the USA has such strong regulations on skilled immigration, that the wages for developers are artificially inflated.

Most other countries, when faced with a shortage of workers in an industry, prioritise them over everyone else. In New Zealand, you need a certain amount of points to immigrate, and being in a high demand industry gives you a whole stack of points. Meanwhile, the USA still runs a lottery for immigration, as well as H1B, which is a lot more restricted than skilled immigration to a lot of other countries.

"the wages for developers are artificially inflated"

The wages are reasonable given extremely strict "culture fit" requirements. Must be male, must be white, must be under 30 with precisely 1-3 years experience never more or less, must be an ivy grad or close equiv, must perform well in hazing rituals like the whiteboard interview, must tolerate sweatshop working conditions, etc etc etc.

I mean, if you want to hire developers, the USA currently has way too many. Regardless, if you require incredibly narrow "culture" criteria, then there is going to be a massive shortage and opening the floodgates will be useless.

Seriously, does anyone think a bro-filled startup would hire, for example, a middle aged black woman immigrated from Senegal with 6 years experience and a non-ivy degree? "Oh I'm sorry, you're overqualified". "I don't think you'd be a culture fit".

You can be a developer and not be working at a startup.

There's a general shortage of developers. I'm fairly sure that IBM and other large companies are short of developers, and they'd absolutely hire "a middle aged black woman immigrated from Senegal with 6 years experience and a non-ivy degree"

Why does everyone act like everybody else wants to work in startups. I don't. I was a nice job, where I come to work at 0900, leave at 1730, and do my own thing outside of work.

I'd hazard a guess that 90% of programmer jobs aren't at startups.

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