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Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

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Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#121

Post by de_Selby »

forgetsusername wrote: post #60
lewisl9029 wrote: post #12

As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left. To the Canadian tech industry: How are you…

> Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left. This is what young people do; they adventure. Then, many times, they come back to their roots to settle down. I'm sure there're a few people around these parts with anecdata regarding the joys of finding housing and raising a family in the SF Bay Area.

Anecdata is my new favorite word.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#122

Post by greggarious »

lewisl9029 wrote: post #12

As someone who's lived in Vancouver for more than 10 years, then went to Waterloo for school (and lived in Toronto for most of my co-ops/internships), I think we Canadians should be more worried about highly educated millennials fleeing Canada entirely. Everybody I know from school who were offered the option to work in the US have picked up their Canadian degrees and left. To the Canadian tech industry: How are you…

I agree as an American. I've met some super smart Canadians in SF and DC. They all say basically the same thing: most Canadian cities have a high cost of living, and salaries don't always keep up, so much so that even the Bay Area is attractive over Vancouver, since at least there's tons of jobs to choose from and they can optimize on salary with many offers.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#123

Post by tomp »

raverbashing wrote: post #100
tomp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that Brits feel poor when they come to the US, whereas Americans feel rich when they come to the UK. Sure, PPP (Purchasing Power Parity) comparisions are important (e.g. it's easier to live in Thailand with $1000 per months than in NYC), but absolute values matter as well.

> The difference is that Brits feel poor when they come to the US, whereas Americans feel rich when they come to the UK. Are you sure about that? For a start, converting USD to GBP will make their money go not as further Might be just general British negativity, they probably feel miserable at Disneyland.

> Are you sure about that?

No. I was just going off what parent said. I've seen way too little UK (mainly only London) and US (mainly only NYC) to judge myself.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#124

Post by sterl »

bvanvugt wrote: post #11
voltagex_ wrote: post #3

I really like Victoria and I hope the town does well out of this. I'm sad that I may not be able to afford to live in Vancouver anytime soon, though.

There are actually some really interesting (and young!) startups in Victoria. We have an office there and our team maintains a city-wide startup listing + job board: https://github.com/sendwithus/vic-startup-jobs

Very cool page, it's lacking salaries however that would improve the posts quite a lot. Have you heard of AngelList? Their best feature is likely the public salary data.

In BC, 'competitive salary' ranges from 40-160K for the same role :)

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#125

Post by pwm »

kspaans wrote: post #71
pwm wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not familiar with how things in the US are, but in the UK and specifically in London a lot of senior tech people do contract work which pays considerably more than permanent positions.

Contracting rates != salaried rates. You have to charge more because you don't get any benefits (vacation, sick leave, pension), and have little job security.

Re job security - In reality as long as you produce value it is just as secure as a perm job. Also, psychologically I think it is more "secure", ie. there are no surprises. Companies hire you for a reasonably well defined task and term, hence you are fully aware how much you will earn during this period as well as when you will have to find your next gig.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#126

Post by maxsilver »

ZanyProgrammer wrote: post #112
tallanvor wrote: post #47

I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while. So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the cen…

There was an article a couple of months ago, shared all around urbanist social media, lamenting that rental prices in Seattle were declining because of an increased supply of housing (it was in one of those ubiquitous business insider journal type magazines). For a variety of reasons, it can be hard to increase supply, but that's the best way (barring a recession) to lower the cost of housing.

And it's not even that, rental prices in Seattle haven't declined, just the percent growth rate in rents year-over-year is declining.

Which makes it even more ridiculous to see them lamenting it. They seem to feel like they deserve double-digit rental growth rates every single year, and "falling" to a single-digit growth rate just won't cut it.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#127

Post by kspaans »

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #114
mattlutze wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It works similarly in Germany and other economies with strong social support systems as well, it seems. You're doing really well to break 65,000ish Eur as a developer, but get on the management track and the sky opens up.

Why would "strong social support systems" be connected to this?

Generally speaking, you don't need to be paid as much if you don't have to pay for your own healthcare, pension, schooling for kids, etc. I believe that's what the parent is alluding to.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#128

Post by maxsilver »

jakobegger wrote: post #59
tallanvor wrote: post #47

I see this as a problem all over the world. - San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Vancouver, London, Oslo... Really the list could go on for quite a while. So many of these cities feel like they have to retain their "identity" or the "feel" of the town, so they set restrictions that make it very hard to develop properties that can hold more people. The result is always the same: continually increasing prices in the cen…

I'm not sure if a fix would be so easy. Housing prices have been rising everywhere, even in small cities like my home town, where a decent amount of construction is going on. I think that the biggest reason for growing housing prices are the currently low interest rates. There are two factors that cause rising prices (due to low interest rates): 1) It's more affordable than ever to borrow money, so people are willing…

> I'm not sure if a fix would be so easy. Housing prices have been rising everywhere, even in small cities like my home town, where a decent amount of construction is going on.

Yeah, this doesn't get enough attention. Everyone's so focused on NYC / Boston / San Francisco / Seattle / Denver, that they're missing that this problem is happening almost universally, in the vast majority of markets across the US.

I live in a very small city in flyover Midwest that commonly hits the top ten "affordable places to live" lists, and has the lowest average incomes of any market in the entire US. Despite all of that, even here our costs have skyrocketed. Monthly rents have doubled over the past five years.

It's feels like another housing bubble, but this time everyone is refusing to let it pop.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#129

Post by JPKab »

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #90
mikekchar wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really crazy is that salaries in London aren't that high (unless you are in the financial sector). I am constantly astonished by the low salaries (for qualified programmers) offered in most parts of Britain. I suspect that you could actually get away with building a consulting firm in the country side and getting companies to offshore work from the US.

In the UK you get ahead by going into management. Tech (or sales, or accounting, or whatever) is just a short term thing you do for a few years until you get promoted into management. We don't like to reward people for being clever; we like to reward people who tell others what to do.

I noticed this phenomenon myself. I work in retail data analytics, and deal a lot with both American and British customers, as well as technology companies.

It is mind-blowing to me how huge a disparity there is between the British and US mindsets on technology talent in an identical industry. The American companies, even the more old-fashioned ones, are (or are starting to) treating technical talent the way a sports team treats it's players. The British companies are way, way more 90's style: the techies need to stay in the closet and let the big-boy managers do all the talking. The pay, of course, reflects this. I'm sure there are numerous exceptions in both directions, but within my industry it is pervasively accurate.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#130

Post by mistermann »

wycx wrote: post #65
daemin wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's been a common theme among people talking about the rising house prices in Australia as well. That Chinese people just buy property to park their money overseas. But when someone looked at the numbers the number of houses that were bought by Chinese people were in the low single digit percentages. While this could create some upward pressure on prices it cannot be the only factor. For instance in Australia most…

Prices are set at the margin. A single digit percentage of actors in the market with the objective of not losing 100% of their capital by turning it into a hard asset in another country is sufficient to move the market. In Australia it is the combination of negative gearing AND the 50% capital gains tax concession on investment properties. Average rental losses per negative gearer were reasonably constant and small u…

> Prices are set at the margin.

Do you happen to know if there is any well written economics paper on this topic?

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