Senior positions at EA, MS, and Amazon all pay at that level in Vancouver. That's what I was making as a TD at EA 7 years ago -- wow I can't believe it's been that long. Pretty much everyone in my peer group has a base salary in that range.
The problem in Vancouver is that it often feels like any PHP jockey with 3 years of industry experience is called "senior". This doesn't happen in other market's I've experienced. It happens here because the Vancouver talent pool is very shallow. We have a very wide base of low skilled juniors and intermediates with a very narrow point of experienced senior engineers. There are far more juniors than there is demand for juniors so that pushes down salaries. Conversely, there is a lot more demand for seniors, real seniors, than there is supply in the local market and that pushes up salaries.
The problem in Vancouver is that it often feels like any PHP jockey with 3 years of industry experience is called "senior". This doesn't happen in other market's I've experienced. It happens here because the Vancouver talent pool is very shallow. We have a very wide base of low skilled juniors and intermediates with a very narrow point of experienced senior engineers. There are far more juniors than there is demand for juniors so that pushes down salaries. Conversely, there is a lot more demand for seniors, real seniors, than there is supply in the local market and that pushes up salaries.