Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 272 posts

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#181

Post by tonyarkles »

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…

It's fascinating, in Saskatoon we've got a pretty neat little tech community. Some people leave, but there's a few companies that identified that people were leaving or contracting remotely and increased their salaries to be sufficiently enticing to keep people here.

There's still some people who leave (apparently there was a thing for a while at Apple where people would hang their Saskatchewan license plates on their cubes), but as a whole there's a lot of people staying and making good money here. In the last 10 years or so since I've graduated, entry-level salaries are up probably 50-70% and intermediate-experience salaries around $90-100k/yr aren't unheard of.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#182

Post by nbrempel »

huhtenberg wrote: post #25
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.

Victoria is nice, but it is a small city and being on the island it's pretty isolated. While you do have direct access to the said island, there's a limit to how much "nature" activities one can do. Diversity Nanaimo (another city) is utterly unremarkable. Tofino is very nice, but it's 4-hour drive away. Everything else is even farther and unremarkable. Getting to anywhere outside of the island is a major hassle. Vic…

Pretty accurate except YYJ does have direct flights to SF. It's been getting better in recent years.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#183

Post by [deleted] »

VLM wrote: post #111
toomanybeersies wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that Canada or anywhere else in the world has humiliatingly low salaries, it's just that the USA has such strong regulations on skilled immigration, that the wages for developers are artificially inflated. Most other countries, when faced with a shortage of workers in an industry, prioritise them over everyone else. In New Zealand, you need a certain amount of points to immigrate, and being in a high demand…

"the wages for developers are artificially inflated" The wages are reasonable given extremely strict "culture fit" requirements. Must be male, must be white, must be under 30 with precisely 1-3 years experience never more or less, must be an ivy grad or close equiv, must perform well in hazing rituals like the whiteboard interview, must tolerate sweatshop working conditions, etc etc etc. I mean, if you want to hire d…

[deleted]

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#184

Post by st3v3r »

jungturk wrote: post #89
pjc50 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think that housing prices would naturally fall if interest rates went up. The problem is that falling house prices put people "underwater", and rising interest rates put people on variable rate mortgages in arrears. This inflicts a huge amount of pain on middle class floating voters.

Well that's the downside of variable rate, yes, but that's more of a feature than a bug. Locking in the interest rate costs a little bit more (in the form of a higher fixed rate), so perhaps the folks taking the variable rate weren't financially prepared to handle those terms in any case?

Doesn't matter. The end result would still be that middle class voters would feel the pain, and would likely try to vote people out because of it.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#185

Post by st3v3r »

kspaans wrote: post #83
pjc50 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think that housing prices would naturally fall if interest rates went up. The problem is that falling house prices put people "underwater", and rising interest rates put people on variable rate mortgages in arrears. This inflicts a huge amount of pain on middle class floating voters.

I think one way to soften the blow could be to make all property sales, even your first home that you live in full-time, fully capital-gains taxable. Homes need to be seen less as investment vehicles.

No, not your primary home. The last thing we want is a bunch of old ladies being hit with a huge tax bill on the home they've lived in for 40 years.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#186

Post by OldSchoolJohnny »

wmeredith wrote: post #164

How the hell is autoplaying video still a thing in 2016?

spend some time on that page and it gets worse, in the middle of reading the article it just refreshes the page losing your place for no apparent reason and then starts autoplaying the video again.

Maybe they do it to fake more views for more ad$?

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#187

Post by sospep »

Serow225 wrote: post #132
mathattack wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to the article real estate costs in Vancouver are half that of San Francisco. Are salaries half too?

That estimate of real-estate/rent cost for Vancouver seems low to me.

Your right. For a typical 1 Bedroom unit, in the city, you would be looking in the $1500 ballpark, a 2 Bedroom unit closer to 2K. For a 3 Bedrooom unit, well good luck with that.

Even with the cost/affordability, the bigger problem is the lack of availability of rental units. The current vacancy rate in the city is at 0.8% and heading downwards.

Sad thing is, there is LOTS of empty condo's!

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#188

Post by guyzero »

kspaans wrote: post #67
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…

Disclaimer: grew up in Ontario, studied at UWaterloo, then worked at BB, then worked in London, UK for 2 years, and now moving to Silicon Valley on a TN visa. I wouldn't worry _too_ much about the brain drain. Sure the US is more lucrative for young people, but I would say Canada is more lucrative for families. Consider the public schools in Canada vs in the US, and cost of a UW degree vs a comparable university degr…

Nope. I left Canada 8 years ago with two school-age kids who are now finishing high school. They'll probably go back to Canada for university, but honestly higher pay solves a lot of problems.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#189

Post by kspaans »

st3v3r wrote: post #185
kspaans wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one way to soften the blow could be to make all property sales, even your first home that you live in full-time, fully capital-gains taxable. Homes need to be seen less as investment vehicles.

No, not your primary home. The last thing we want is a bunch of old ladies being hit with a huge tax bill on the home they've lived in for 40 years.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic, but the whole point of making the changes to the capital gains taxes is so that it only affects people who sell. The old ladies will simply be earning less profit when they _sell_ their homes, there would be no "huge tax bill" while they are still living in them.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#190

Post by dvdcxn »

cmdkeen wrote: post #105
peanut_merchant wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a similar problem in Scotland, I know a lot of people would love to have continued living in Scotland but can make >2 times the salary as a developer by making the move down to London. The cost of living in London is higher, but the increase in pay more than makes up for this. Granted, this is a move within the UK so it's not really a drain on the UK's economy but it leads to a more London-centric economy and…

Odd - I'm ~6 years out of a Scottish university with a CS degree. Everyone of my class who stayed in Scotland owns their own property and has a much higher disposable income than those in London. They're in Edinburgh mind you, why anyone would choose to live in Glasgow is beyond me... Edinburgh recently topped the stakes for average disposable income in the UK - £800 per month compared to £300 in London.

>why anyone would choose to live in Glasgow is beyond me

Glasgow is a really fun city though. I'm staying here cause I like it, I don't really care that I could earn more living in that other city.

Post reply on HN