If you relocate to Zurich or Vancouver from SF, highly likely most companies that re-adjust salaries will decrease your salary even though cost of living is pretty high in both of those places.
My friends at Google say Zurich is a better deal that it might seem. Between lower taxes and moderately lower cost of living, your google salary goes a lot further in Zurich than it does in Mountain View.
No, the primary driver of those differences is cost of living.
Vancouver is not actually a 'high cost of living' place - it's just the real estate.
It's supply and demand as well and since most people work 'local' and Van doesn't have huge and powerful software companies HQ'd there, pay will be less.
But cost of living is a primary factor.
The 'my wife is pregnant' thing isn't a fair comparison because it's an individual artifact, not general for a location.
The fact maybe a spouse is pregnant will 100% affect pay because it will affect the demand curve i.e. change the nature of someone's willingness to work at what salary.
Either that or get VC funding on par with what's happening in the valley.
The cost of living is not crazily different, yet the entry level comp in SF is high senior level for most technical jobs. However, my experience is that the Bay Area has a lot of British immigrants (I encounter a new (to me) at least weekly at the large company I work at), so perhaps people are indeed voting that way.
Maybe it's time to negotiate a better deal.
H1 is completely clogged with not so legal bodyshops, but what about simply getting an O-1?
Currently however, for a Canadian to move from Canada under a TN series visa than any of the visas available to Europeans, other than some limited cases such as diplomatic missions.