Comment by notenoughbeans | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notenoughbeans | Hacker News Reader

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I live in Victoria which is one of the tech hubs in Canada, although definitely one of the smaller ones. The cost to living vs salary is not in a great spot right now but it's definitely doable.

If you are single or don't have any kids I think it is a lot more reasonable -- it's quite difficult to find housing for larger families. Even so, if you are capable of getting a good job working remote for a company it is possible to make it work.

I will say that Canada is in a bit of a flux right now. We are having an affordability crisis, and the cost of everything is going up.

It's not impossible to make a good life in Canada, but I think it's becoming increasing difficult and definitely not something that should be taken for granted.

I moved away from Victoria to the US 5 years ago and don't regret it at all. Even as someone with only about 10 years of experience I felt like I was nearing the ceiling of earning ability in Victoria. Paired with the ridiculous cost of living for a small city it didn't make sense to continue living in Victoria.

The "tech hub" is kind of laughable with most of it being small startups and only a handful of established companies that may offer more career growth.

I wouldn't recommend Victoria.

Victoria is one of those scenes that is very bimodal. You have almost two entirely different communities that don't often interact. If you can make the jump out of the larger group of companies that are playing at lower stakes you can do pretty well.

That being said, the opportunities are limited, and I'm not surprised that you found more success elsewhere.

You make a great point about finding remote work. I lived in the Victoria area before I left Canada and found that a lot of my peers worked remotely for US-based companies. During the pandemic, some were even able to get a US market rate salary instead of being paid based on the Victoria location. This made living in Victoria much more manageable.

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