Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities • Hacker News Board

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#231

Post by illumin8 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:17 PM UTC

jperras wrote: post #221

illumin8 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If property values were tied directly to incomes, as they are in any normal market, and what you are saying is true about salaries being low, the Vancouver market would not be as hot as it is right now. The market is being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. Don't forget that Vancouver is a very attractive destination for wealthy Chinese multi-nationals. This is the same phenomenon that has wealthy Chinese buyin…

> The market is being artificially inflated by foreign buyers. Citation + data needed?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/business/international/chi...

"...In Canada, they are paying $1 million for modest Vancouver bungalows..."

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#232

Post by ido » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #99

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…

Some do leave, yes. Many come back home later. Amazon opened the Toronto office back in 2011 because there was demand- Canadians who didn't want to live in America anymore- often because of family, friends back home or because they wanted to have kids and not raise them as Americans, culturally. It started with less than 10 people, plus the hiring they were able to do locally. It's now an office of over 300 people, m…

As an outsider, respectfully - what is "culturally American" compared to "culturally Canadian"?

I've been to both countries several times and I would not be able to tell if a person is American or Canadian unless they told me.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#233

Post by stuxnet79 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:18 PM UTC

J-dawg wrote: post #207

JPKab wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a suspicion how this works: As an American, when I was early in my career, and had a baby and wife to support, being underpaid was super painful. Medical care, for instance, was expensive. Being able to be easily and quickly fired without a typical European justification process is another factor. You can find yourself unemployed at any time, with any justification. It all lit a fire under me to demand better…

I think you're overestimating European social support systems a bit. Here in the UK, you can be fired quite easily until you've been in a job for 2 years. After that, you can still be made redundant. IBM are currently laying off a lot of people and only paying them the legal minimum settlement (1 week's pay for every year worked). Our unemployment benefits are very low. Most professional people wouldn't even bother c…

> It's nice to know the NHS is there and I'm not going to go bankrupt if I get cancer, but it's massively overstretched and under-resourced. I'm happier knowing I have private health insurance.

Is the NHS really that bad? I understand there must be some disadvantages to it but it is still pretty damn impressive especially when you consider that Americans spend more per capita on health care but still need to get private health insurance.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#234

Post by illumin8 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:19 PM UTC

pkaler wrote: post #201

illumin8 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't even say it's speculative condo buying - it's more like treating the condo as a piggy bank. It's considered a safer investment because it can be purchased through a shell company (LLC), hiding the true identity of the buyer, and unlike the funds in a bank account, can't easily be seized. There was a well known phenomenon: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/29/business/international/chi... "In London, Chinese i…

There is no such thing as an LLC in Canada. You are either a federal corp or a provincial corp. http://www.canadabusiness.ca/eng/page/2853/

The shell company used to purchase high-end property is mainly a strategy I learned about that is prominent in the Manhattan luxury apartment market. If someone like Brad Pitt is buying a $10M condo, and doesn't want his name in the public property records, he will buy it with an LLC. This trick is also used by foreign buyers to hide their identity, especially if their money is a result of criminal activity.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#235

Post by emodendroket » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

ZenoArrow wrote: post #216

emodendroket wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, frankly, a very small part of the problem. The housing that does tend to get built in these cities is almost universally luxury housing.

Yes, and that won't change until we have something like a land value tax that is based on active use of the land. There needs to be a mechanism in place to stop wealthy investors buying up property they barely use. At the moment luxury property in a large city is seen as a safe investment (for the most part).

Yeah, it's incredible to me that legislators can just throw their hands up and pretend there is absolutely nothing they could possibly do.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#236

Post by sospep » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:28 PM UTC

jb613 wrote: post #227

pkaler wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm standing at my desk in my apartment that I pay $1589/month for. An equivalent apartment in SF or NYC would be $3500 or higher. The problems are two-fold. 1) Vancouver hasn't created a single-family detached home lot since the 1970s. There is an ocean to the west, the US border to the south, Burrard Inlet and mountains to the north. There just isn't any land. The only way to expand is east into the Fraser Valley.…

> "A tech company that can't afford to pay an employee to rent a $1589/month apartment is not a tech company." Tech companies don't have to be in Vancouver. The fundamental component that a tech company requires is talent. There's relatively little distinguishing talent in Vancouver that can't be found in several other comparable jurisdictions within Canada. A tech company that pays higher wages simply because the em…

> Tech companies don't have to be in Vancouver.

Agree with you 100%, but they are. And a good portion of those are in downtown or in the city proper. Why? I can see if your an Amazon or Microsoft and need to hire 100+ developers but the majority of Vancouver startups need nowhere near that many people. Why would you locate your startup in Vancouver?

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#237

Post by simonbarker87 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

tomp wrote: post #74

simonbarker87 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

£35,000 salary in the UK has the same buying power (for want of a better expression as a $60,000 US salary. Adjust for "because London" and you're looking at £45/55K (not hard in London) equating to $75K - $100K. Thinking about it, I know a dozen or so people in the "poor deprived" north east of England earning over £40K who are under 30 years old so we're not all badly paid.

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.

Wrong way round, when I go to the US I generally don't bother looking at the price of things as it's all so cheap. Even if the exchange rate was 1:1 it would be cheap (decent clothes are amazingly cheap, petrol/diesel is laughably cheap and eating out is great) but with the exchange rate being the way it is it's even better. The was a time before the crash when the exchange rate was $2 to the £, so long as you could afford the flights over you could have the best holidays in the US.

This is only true when being a tourist though as you are thinking in your native currency and basing purchasing decisions in that frame of reference, when you actually live and work in the respective country then (ie if you move to another country) then that stops being an issue as you are earning in the new currency.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#238

Post by lewisl9029 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

imrehg wrote: post #26

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 think that's an issue everywhere in the world. I'm living in Taiwan (not from here originally), and the tech scene is really being hollowed out for years if not decades. The really best, brightest, and most motivated people are already working abroad. "Humiliating" is a strong word, but the more I think about it, the more apt it feels, there should be a lot more reward for the good techies here (there are some left…

Yes, this is definitely not a problem unique to Canada, but I feel the effects are felt a bit more strongly here due to the fact that the barrier to entry into the US for Canadian citizens is practically nonexistent (TN Visa) compared to elsewhere in the world (H-1B).

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#239

Post by taurath » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

branchless wrote: post #137

bpyne wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really difficult to generalize the situation in the US due to the size and diversity, in terms of industry and business scales, of the country. In general, I would say that you hit a ceiling in career development within 10 years on a technical track. (Of course, there are exceptions in industry sectors and a small number of geographic locations. But, I'm looking at the aggregate.) However, management is no panac…

Also IMHO management is risky because you become specialised to your companies systems. One downsizing later you find yourself with 10 years of experience in working around limitations in the stationary ordering system at NowBustCompany. Welcome to the scrap heap. By contrast in IT you can stay fresh more easily and be in demand should you need to move on.

The same thing can certainly happen in IT. How many IBM folks specializing in lotus notes are being laid off as we speak? Its one of the bigger problems working at BigCo's - you can end up only knowing internal people and internal systems. The only place you can conceivably jump to is companies nearby founded by other ex-BigCo people (in many cases nowadays, the primary competitors are overseas - capital has free trade to move freely but humans do not).

If you don't maintain some semblance of connection with the outside world you can get stuck. The scariest thing in the world to me is a job that is only internal facing.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#240

Post by lewisl9029 » Wed, Mar 16, 2016, 6:56 PM UTC

sospep wrote: post #199

zeemonkee3 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the question that Canadian companies genuinely can't pay more, or just that they won't, for whatever reason?

Why would they pay more? As long as they can fill the seats they have open, paying "Canadian" rates, why not? Sure, they are aware that some talent is leaving for greener pastures southward, but there is no "shortage" of talent available in the Vancouver market. When/if enough of the developer supply has exited, that filling those seats becomes difficult, salaries will increase. I wouldn't hold my breath.

This definitely looks like a tragedy of the commons type situation. Companies act in self-interest by paying as low as they possibly can, with no regards for the damage being done to the Canadian talent pool.

It honestly feels rather hopeless for the Canadian tech industry at this point.