[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.

[ehnto]

South Australia is moving toward that, which is largely desert despite it's temperate climate south eastern region and coastlines.

They recently started putting together an interstate connector to other states, which allows the state to export excess power from renewables. In part to help offset grid reductions as NSW brings some of it's fossil fuel plants offline. They already have had some 100% renewable days, but plan to be 100% renewable by 2030.

Another quirk of SA's energy history was Elon Musk offering to help solve grid costly instability with a battery solution within 100 days or it was free. Odd tactic, but it happened and they have a 100MW battery reserve in Hornsdale that is set to expand to 150MW.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/840032197637685249

[hx87]

In order to crack water, you need water, which is in short supply in the desert. Desalination + massive pumps and pipelines from the ocean would soak up any increase you get in price efficiency compared to batteries or even compressed air.

[Retric]

That’s taking a huge efficiency hit over using batteries while costing more money. What’s the goal?

[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.