[mwd_]

I've chosen to stay in Vancouver for personal reasons. I like it here but it's not much fun to see friends find only mediocre opportunities locally and then end up in Mountain View making ~six figures. Unfortunately as mentioned above this creates a sorting process where the best and brightest leave.

There is a growing startup scene here, but the cost of living hurts -- this is the land of $60-70K salaries and million dollar houses. Real estate costs are such that the startups mostly seem to end up around the drug-addled Downtown Eastside, which can be interesting to say the least. Vancouver's a nice city but it's also kind of crazy.