[Phanyxx]

Vancouverite here. When major tech companies started setting up satellite offices here, I assumed it'd be a temporary situation, and that we'd be at the mercy of any change in the U.S. immigration process. The longer there's an immigration bottleneck though, the more entrenched these companies become here. There are more senior roles opening up here all the time, and salaries are increasing in this competitive market.

From my experience on the media / marketing side of things, a lot of people moving here that didn't consider the U.S. as an option. For some roles, our entire crop of interviewees have moved to Canada from other countries.

Yes, the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene, but cities like Vancouver and Toronto are more than a mere crashpad for people waiting to move to SV. There's real momentum here as well.

[jbarham]

I've also lived in Toronto and Vancouver. Did the obligatory move to work as a software dev in California and now live in Australia. The fact is that tech salaries in Canada are still much lower than the US while the cost of living, especially housing, is still very high, for Vancouver and Toronto in particular. Not to mention the lousy winters.

Spend any time browsing /r/vancouver or /r/toronto and you'll quickly realize that the cost of living is a huge problem. The Vancouver housing market in particular has been absurdly inflated by out of control money laundering. Local salaries and house prices are totally out of whack.

Follow https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/ to see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market. https://twitter.com/mortimer_1/status/1221315000897163264 is a particularly amusing recent thread showing where a would-be landlord writes: "This home is in rough shape and needs painting, and TLC. Looking for long term tenant willing to put labour in while landlord covers all material costs." All this for only $5650/month!

[endgame]

You left Canada because the housing market was a rort, and chose to come to AUSTRALIA!?

[jbarham]

Sure, I rent a large, new, 3 bedroom house 20 minutes by train from the Melbourne CBD for $2250/month. It's great. I certainly couldn't do that in Toronto or Vancouver.

Granted if you want to buy a house, Australia (especially Sydney) is expensive for a bunch of reasons (negative gearing etc). But Toronto is still more expensive than Melbourne and Vancouver is much more expensive.

[throw0101a]

> 3 bedroom house 20 minutes by train from the Melbourne CBD for $2250/month.

For comparison, that is the cost of renting a one bedroom condo (downtown) in Toronto:

* https://rentals.ca/national-rent-report

* https://dailyhive.com/toronto/monthly-rent-predictions-toron...

[linkregister]

The median salary in Vancouver is substantially lower than Sydney, and its property values are similar.

Vancouver salaries are also lower than almost all of Canada's metros, while having the highest property costs. Vancouver also has the best weather. The Canadian metro with the best opportunity and lowest comparative costs is Montreal.

[blackrock]

Why is property value in Sydney so high?

You have only 30 million people, living on an island continent the size of the United States. And is the country with probably the longest warm water coastline on the planet.

[mcbain]

The inland of Australia is nothing like inland North America. There is very little water, much is literally desert.

Something like 85% of the population lives within 50km of the coastline.

[ehnto]

Something to think about: with so few people we can only sustain a handful of metro centers, for many reasons metro centers need to be of a certain size to be effective as a hub for business, jobs, social aspects and policy making, so people gravitate to where the cities already are. So "property in a busy metro" is still a scarce resource in Australia.

Another aspect is we quite simply have an inflated market, driven by foreign investment, speculators, government policies and incentives that help investors at the expense of home buyers. We also have thousands of citizens with outsized investments in real estate, and the government is doing everything it can to make sure that house of cards doesn't topple down and cause a recession.

One of our last government's policies to "Help ease house prices" was to give grants to corporate investors, so that they could buy up land and rent it back to people. That's the kind of policy making we have here at the moment

[blackrock]

The desert sounds like a good place to harvest the sun.

Install some solar panels, and use it to crack water, to make hydrogen, and convert it to ammonia. Australia can power the next fuel cell revolution.

[oblio]

True, but you made me curious about it and I checked the Australian climate zones. I found this: https://www.abcb.gov.au/Resources/Tools-Calculators/Climate-...

Out of the 8 zones, zones 3 and 4 don't seem to inhabitable, they're probably the "outback" aka desert. 1 seems to be the subtropical jungle bits. They're huge, however doing a silly size comparison with Romania, which has around 20 million people ( https://thetruesize.com/#?borders=1~!NzkwMTU3Mg.NDI0MDg2OQ*M... ), it seems that even considering just the temperate zones, Australian population density is low.

I guess it's more an issue of bad urban planning because of economic pressures. Everyone bunches up in the same centers of population, which cover a very small area, in relative terms.

[madeofpalk]

Probably the same as anywhere else. Many people want to live in a limited area, house prices go up. People who can afford them buy them, which keeps house prices there.

[pentae]

It's one of the few places in the country where the climate is just perfect.

[kazinator]

> The median salary in Vancouver is substantially lower than Sydney, and its property values are similar.

Not that you actually own that property value in Vancouver. If you run away and go work somewhere else for a year, and don't rent it, you owe Vancouver a hefty empty home tax.

[8note]

ideally you'd be taxed at a higher rate than that just as property tax, regardless of whether it's empty, being rented, or lived in

[CountSessine]

You still have to pay property tax - but you also have to pay an empty home tax on top of that.

[pesfandiar]

> see what money laundering has done to the Vancouver housing market.

It's inconclusive at best, and misidentifying the major causes in this complicated crisis could hurt any effort to alleviate housing pains.

Money laundering does happen in BC, and some of the proceeds do go into higher end housing. One can argue the restrictive zoning and ever-increasing costs and hurdles to new developments are orders of magnitude more influential on the market than the hot money. We have heavily left-leaning councilors in Vancouver that vote down any rental property project, solely to prevent private parties from making any profit.

[thisisnico]

I'm a tech worker in Canada and can agree that the tech salaries are nowhere close to the US. Housing is pretty high as well. The better paying jobs are in government.

[dmurdoch]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'd like some numbers to back up the government comment. I live in Ottawa, my SO works for government as does many many friends. I make more then all of them. If you speak french, then maybe this is true as you can move up to director etc. but the VAST majority of the people I know in government do not make more than devs I know.

[blaser-waffle]

I'm a USA-ian in Canada, working remotely. I'm in a big Canadian city, we have a hockey team.

The average IT salaries where I live are in the ballpark of 70-100k Canadian Dollars (CAD) -- at least according to Indeed.ca, LinkedIn, and Glassdoor. Given a 20-30% currency difference that's capping out at around $80K US Dollars (USD). Not terrible by US national standards, but not impressive for tech; i.e EMC offered me $66k USD out of college in 2008.

Meanwhile, on Reddit's r/networking, or r/sysadmin, where they have periodic salary surveys, network engineers in NoVA or Chicago are pulling $105k-115 USD with only 5 years experience and a CCNA -- and that's just an average, you can often do way better.

In Calgary the highest salaries were related to oil companies, and for tech they seemed to cap out at around $150K CAD for SCADA devs, instrumentation specialists, etc. I'm sure there are higher paying gigs available, but you're getting into specialized, only-found-by-word-of-mouth roles.

I've been lucky to be remote for the past 5 years, working for US firms, but if I wasn't it would probably be close to a 50% pay cut, on top of a higher cost of living. The COL wouldn't shock someone from NoVA or Seattle or Chicago but it's higher than you'd think.

Re: Ottawa -- I'd assume that, like Washington DC, the government contracting and federal bureaucracy are effectively their own mini employment universe that plays by their own rules, and doesn't reflect the rest of the country (e.g. security clearances mean your job can't be outsourced to India). Source: am from DC originally.

[jrs95]

Yeah that doesn’t seem great I make 25% more than that with 5 years experience and no degree in the Midwest. Salaries here have risen so a large number of mid level people are making 6 figures. Even at some banks and retail/e-commerce companies that are a lot more corporate and old school.

[iamspoilt]

I am also a tech worker and I second that. Currently paying 2000 per month in rent for a small 1bhk in downtown Toronto. 29 years of age with 4+ years of experience and a masters in CS from one of the top schools in Canada. I am making just north of 100k per year and not at all content with it. Interviewed at several companies in Toronto but failed negotiating something better because what I am being paid is above median for Data Engineer position here. I know I can make it much better in the States by all means and might consider moving there in future.

[hylaride]

>The better paying jobs are in government.

Not in Toronto.

[starfallg]

>Not to mention the lousy winters.

The winters of the few years I spent living in Vancouver were the best in my life. I still go back (from the UK) now and then to enjoy it.

[deepGem]

More than anything I didn't get a tech vibe in Toronto. I was at UofT and the surroundings all the time, yet it felt like the town is mostly devoid of tech. Not the same vibe you get in Seattle or Redmond or SV for that matter.

May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.

[wenc]

> More than anything I didn't get a tech vibe in Toronto. I was at UofT and the surroundings all the time, yet it felt like the town is mostly devoid of tech. Not the same vibe you get in Seattle or Redmond or SV for that matter.

Toronto is more of a finance town, with tech tacked on. NYC is similar.

> May be it's my bias but Toronto doesn't feel all that multi cultural. Sure you see people of different nationalities but something feels lacking.

Curious, what cities around the world feel multicultural to you? I've lived in many multicultural cities and my criteria may be different from yours, so genuinely interested to hear your thoughts.

[deepGem]

One of the most diverse and mutli-cultural cities that I have lived in, is London, followed by New York City. I have lived in Singapore and Toronto as well but they don't match London or NYC.

[wenc]

I think I would agree with you. London and NYC have been immigrant destinations for much longer than Toronto has. London of course draws its immigrants from Commonwealth countries. NYC draws immigrants from all over.

Toronto's immigrants are much newer and Toronto's reputation for multiculturalism is actually only a few decades old (there hasn't been time for a deep multicultural identity to emerge). Multiculturalism entered the national conversation in 1971. In the decades prior to that, Toronto was very much still a stodgy Anglo-Saxon enclave, with Montreal being the multicultural hub of Canada.

That said, certain large global demographics are underrepresented in London (east Asians for instance, but not south Asians). Hispanics are underrepresented in Toronto.

I feel NYC is the only city in the world where most of the world's major demographics are on balance well-represented.

Singapore is actually not that multicultural (there are only four major races/cultures). I would say it's more international than multicultural, because the residual diversity come from people who are expats rather than immigrants.

[omarhaneef]

I've heard this complaint -- that the property prices are high -- however, isn't there an opportunity to put a tech hub right on the border with Seattle? Make the commute even smaller and set up a whole border town? Just wondering why a developer doesn't make it a great place to live bring cafes, housing etc.

[chrchang523]

Seattle is too far from the Canadian border.

[msie]

Saying that money laundering solely affected the Vancouver housing market is simplistic and the press is successful in pushing this narrative. How about other factors like lots of people want to move to Vancouver (only major Canadian city on the west coast) and the effect of major tech companies setting up shop here? Also the greed of condo developers and landlords?

[brailsafe]

Ya but nobody is renting at $5650. Living costs and scarcity are a real problem, but more likely to be around $1300 to $2800 depending on area and size.

[gumby]

This is how the film industry moved to California from New York. Back then it was far enough away not to worry about Edison patent lawsuits. By the time the rail improved and the patents expired, Hollywood (they tried Fremond and Tanforan first) was entrenched.

There's really nothing like working in the Valley but not everyone likes it and if there's a solid alternative I suspect that Vancouver and Toronto will continue to prosper no matter what the US policies end up being.

[lotsofpulp]

> This is how the film industry moved to California from New York.

I would think the great weather for filming and access to many kinds of terrain would is benefit New York can’t offer.

[gumby]

I believe weather is why the industry moved south to the then minor city of Los Angeles, but many early films were filmed on stage sets anyway. Plus NYC had financing, actors, culture, etc unlike the boondocks of California

There’s a lot of historical analysis of this.

[omarhaneef]

I wonder if the subject matter changes to match the weather. It goes from Film Noir, dark rainy detective scenes to Westerns with expansive outdoor scenes.

[tssva]

Film Noir's heyday was the 1940s and 50s. Almost all film production had moved to Hollywood by the early 1930s with most having moved well before then. Some of the classics of American Film Noir are actually set in LA.

Even before the move to Hollywood the center of the US film industry wasn't New York, but just across the river in Fort Lee, NJ.

[xsmasher]

I just learned about the Niles Film Museum a few weeks ago; I think it was on the bay area podcast?

http://nilesfilmmuseum.org

Edit: "Bay Curious" podcast https://www.npr.org/podcasts/500557090/bay-curious

[amatecha]

Yup, most ppl I know who've moved here for a tech job have no desire to move to the US for a similar role, even if it pays more.

[LadyCailin]

I went the opposite way. Native US, but moved to Europe, cause the living conditions are better. Pay is worse, and cost of living is higher, but my standard of living has gone way up. Funniest thing is, I still work for an American company anyways.

[Tiktaalik]

I'd echo this as a Vancouverite. People coming here from elsewhere are here for Vancouver itself. It's not a stopping point on the way south.

In fact in the last few years I've even been seeing young people coming up from the USA to live here for lifestyle reasons.

IMO the dominant thing propelling tech in Vancouver forward isn't the immigration law situation, but rather the low Canadian dollar makes our companies cheap to work with for SF giants.

[zerr]

I view Canada as mix of good things from US (spacious streets, houses, landscape, partly English-speaking) and Europe (universal healthcare, education). If only it had a better climate... :)

[wenc]

> If only it had a better climate... :)

Well, the climate in the populated parts of Canada parallels the northern United States, i.e. Chicago (9.5m in metro area) and Toronto (6.4m in metro area) have similar climate, as well as Vancouver and Seattle.

There are huge populations in these areas who are used to northern climate and have no trouble with it. I live in Chicago and really love the four seasons, prefer the cold to the heat and would never move to anywhere south of say North Carolina.

Climate preferences can vary quite a bit, I would say.

[petre]

Also better healthcare. My parents have friends that moved from the US to Canada due to this and the very competitive job market in the US with virtually no employee rights. They weren't working in tech but banking/services.

[amatecha]

In some ways, perhaps. The fact we frequently have to pay for prescribed medication is mind-blowingly ridiculous. Even with medical insurance (through your employer or paying for the plan yourself), you're usually forced to use generic medications if you want coverage - even when your doctor signs a Special Authority[0] form to have your medication covered. And yes, there can be pretty substantial differences between name brand and generic.

[0] https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/health/practitioner-profe...

[TheSpiceIsLife]

> substantial differences between name brand and generic

I was under the impression generics are molecular identical? How do they differ when the name brand version says on the pack, for example, temazepam 10mg, and the generic version says the same thing?

[throw63835]

Lolwut? Two products produced by two different companies, expected to be of the same caliber? Nonsense. Utter nonsense.

Look into the "Warning Letters" database for generics producers vs. branded. It's ridiculous the amount of things generics producers get away with (contaminated product, improper facility maintenance, improper purity and potency oversight, poor quality control).

They're not the same thing. No matter how many laymen -- or worse actual medical professionals who think they know pharma just because they sell pills -- parrot the "fillers causing side-effects" bullshit.

The only thing generics providers need to do is establish a very loose bioequivalency through self-tested experiments (the FDA doesn't conduct the experiments or oversees them, only reviews the results and methodology). Once accepted, shady decisions are easy to cover up, since the FDA only does visits infrequently.

It's like buying on Amazon. You could get the original brand's product or some knock-off. Except in this case, the knock-off is state-supported.

[Scoundreller]

> The only thing generics providers need to do is establish a very loose bioequivalency through self-tested experiments (the FDA doesn't conduct the experiments or oversees them, only reviews the results and methodology)

Though buying brand may not protect you from this. Brand name companies change up plants, processes, API suppliers, etc. without notifying end-users. They just do the same kind of testing a generic supplier may.

They have the same pressures to reduce cost as much as a generic manufacturer does.

[mehrdadn]

Layman here, but I recall reading their inactive ingredients can make a difference. (Inactive != unimportant)

[refurb]

Not sure why you’re being downvoted, but this true. For most people the inactive ingredients have no impact, but for some people they do.

[Scoundreller]

Pretty much nothing most of the time.

There are optical isomers and such that could make a difference. But even the brand names may change this up from time to time.

Then there's the whole 99% pure thing, but that 1% could be made up of highly carcinogenic nitrosamines in the microgram doses that aren't as closely tracked as they should be. But buying brand may not protect you from this, or could be worse.

[briandear]

Working for a Silicon Valley tech company, you typically have extremely good health insurance and a vastly higher salary than anything in Canada. Salaries north of the border are a pittance compared to what you could earn in even a mid-tiered US city. I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour. And a non-lead was paying $C25 per hour. Ridiculous. And Toronto isn’t a cheap city. I made triple that working remotely for a Kansas City company.

Canada is a nice place, live there if you want, but “competitive compensation” is definitely not a reason.

[aprdm]

Using a single experience to invalidate a whole country as a place to have a competitive compensation is a bit unfair. Am sure you can find people paying even less than that for lead web developers in the USA.

If you look at levels.fyi Amazon seems to be paying around 180k TC for SD2 in Vancouver. I would rather live in Vancouver with 180K than in the US with 250k.

(Am talking local currencies as when I am living in a country I spend the money in local currency.)

[bawolff]

I live in canada. While its true there is less money here than usa, those numbers sound pretty low. Maybe that employer was just trying to screw you over?

[hylaride]

> I remember about 3 years ago being offered a “senior” “lead” rails developer position in Toronto paying $C30 per hour.

That is ~$62k/year and is absurdly low in Toronto unless it was an early-stage startup.

[rayhendricks]

That ($25CAD) is less than $2.50USD more than Seattle minimum wage (16.39USD)..

[Polylactic_acid]

Eventually most people work out there is value in not being stabbed for the $5 in your wallet and having to walk around in shit covered streets.

[toephu2]

Yes, because every tech worker in SF gets stabbed for $5 in their wallet and everyday they walk through poo on their way to work.

On a more serious note, you should learn about how the media works.

One person gets stabbed in SF for $5 and it makes the news, and then people like you believe that every one of the 884k people living in SF get stabbed.

You probably also believe that all Teslas easily catch on fire? Cause you saw it on the news?

Please learn about statistics and sensationalist media.

[refurb]

Have you been to East Hastings in Vancouver? It rivals anything I’ve seen in SF.

[jammygit]

The really important thing would be if more Canadian founders were able to create massive companies successfully. The jobs are certainly welcome but I want to hear about more successful companies owned by Canadians

[Maximus9000]

There have been a few big Canadian success stories - Shopify being the latest.

[52-6F-62]

Of all places there are a few rather successful companies coming out of Saskatoon.

[blaser-waffle]

I wish SaskTel was nationwide.

[agilebyte]

Owned by Canadians and registered in Canada are two different things. There's a lot more investment in US hence why a lot of the companies are registered there and you see them as "American".

[brailsafe]

Vancouverite also here. I am happy to see regular salary listings at much higher than they used to be, and if this is the reason, that's cool with me! I believe Microsoft and Amazon are opening huge secondary locations here soon.

[pitterpatter]

Microsoft has long since had offices in Vancouver. It's only a few hours drive from headquarters down in Redmond. And another choice for employees that lose the H1B lottery.

[brailsafe]

They are opening new offices in Van alongside their existing ones.

[ripley12]

This is a strange comment to read as a Vancouverite. Amazon’s has thousands of employees for years now, they had 600 jobs open last I checked. Microsoft’s main downtown office has one of the most prominent locations in the city, plus a huge sign. Those huge secondary locations are already here.

[brailsafe]

I meant secondary to the offices that you mentioned. So two main Vancouver offices and two Amazon Vancouver offices total.

[ripley12]

Ah. Amazon has had multiple offices downtown for a long time, and Microsoft has 2 large ones (the City Centre one and the Yaletown one near BC Place). But yes, they are still expanding.

[brailsafe]

I'm not too familiar with that, but I'm thinking in particular of Microsoft's new Mt. Pleasant office (I think) and the Amazon office going into the old Canada Post building at a large scale.

[sampo]

How's the housing policy in Vancouver and Toronto? If new tech companies and new tech workers keep coming, are the cities willing to allow for construction of lots of new homes? Or are there signs that the housing policies would turn as anti-growth and hostile to newcomers as happened in the Bay Area?

[agilebyte]

The demand outpaces supply currently in Toronto (where I live), Vancouver, and the prices are high. Everyone talks about affordability and so far it's been tackled by extending rent control and adding a foreign buyer tax.

[throw0101a]

> How's the housing policy in Vancouver and Toronto?

Toronto has more construction towers (120) than any other city in North America (49 in SFO and LAX):

* https://canada.constructconnect.com/dcn/news/economic/2019/0...

It's still not keeping up with demand.

[Tiktaalik]

Vancouver and Toronto both build quite a bit. Some will argue not enough, and there is the usual NIMBYism, but it's not comparable to the disfunction of SF.

[teunispeters]

It's cheaper and easier to build in SF than Vancouver BC and region now. Hoping that to change - I moved to Saskatchewan to get away from that. (Alberta wasn't far enough - real estate there is effected too by the ease of international tax evaders and money launderers to buy property to "hold" their assets).

[tathougies]

I can't imagine the political shit show if the United States attempted to set up a points-based migration system like Canada.

[commandlinefan]

> the U.S. immigration situation is helping the Canadian tech scene

Well, India and China have even fewer immigration restrictions on Indian and Chinese workers than Canada does... why would Vancouver take San Francisco’s place rather than Mumbai or Shanghai?

[unishark]

Shanghai is practically topped-out already, there's a huge amount of VC funding being spent and it's quite hard to emigrate there. Though I don't think it's about US policy so much as just good success at reproducing the Hong Kong business environment.