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

241–250 of 272 posts

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#241

Post by jb613 »

sospep wrote: post #236
jb613 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

apparently those corporations can find the people willing to work at those salaries. It's up to the tech workers to decide whether the location is worth the lower bank account.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#242

Post by sospep »

ido wrote: post #232
mabbo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

American: huh, guns are great, healthcare IF you can afford it, language #2 = spanish, hockey is a sport they play in Canada, worlds most powerful military, Trump, avg. American knows little about Canada, metric system - who needs that, good universities

Canadian: eh, no guns allowed, healthcare FREE for all, language #2 = french, hockey is the 2nd most popular religion, neighbors with country with worlds most powerful military - they'll have our back, no Trump, avg Canadians knows a little about America, metric system, good universities - taxpayer subsidized

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#243

Post by Tiktaalik »

run4yourlives2 wrote: post #204
Tiktaalik wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vancouver has various restrictions just like any town, but in general it would be incorrect to state that they restrict construction or don't build high density buildings. Comparing a photo of 1990s downtown Vancouver to now it is shocking how many glassy residential towers there are now. Vancouver and its satellite cities are constantly building new condo buildings. I suppose you can always argue that a city can bui…

Actually, we do restrict construction particularly in the "view corridor" that is downtown. It's not that we don't build buildings, it's that they are all under 40 stories, whereas a typical city of our size would have buildings of the same type pushing 100 stories easy. For a sense of scale, here is Vancouver's tallest building compared to the world leaders: http://i.imgur.com/YcCozCE.png?1

Right of course but my point is that view cones and other restrictions on the form of housing are not a dominant factor when you compare how much housing supply they would bring versus the level of housing being created elsewhere.

Vancouver is upzoning the entire corridor along Cambie street and is planning on building significant residential parcels at Oakridge (~2000 units) and Pearson Dogwoods (~3000 units). If you go out further to Burnaby, New Westminster and Coquitlam they're building tons. Burnaby just announced their long term plan for a redevelopment of Lougheed Mall that will create 11,000 units.

Basically adding further height downtown isn't really necessary and the gains are minor in comparison with the gains achieved by rezoning low density single family houses and low density commercial to higher density forms.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#244

Post by cuddlybacon »

sospep wrote: post #236
jb613 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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?

Vancouver has lower tax rates for businesses compared to the surrounding suburbs.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#245

Post by toomuchtodo »

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.

I have private medical insurance in the US. I can still go bankrupt if I go to the emergency room and whomever is providing care isn't covered by my insurance plan.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#246

Post by ZenoArrow »

emodendroket wrote: post #235
ZenoArrow wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's sad, but with the level of corruption in many governments, the only way to get change that serves the people is to educate the people so that they can see through their misinformation. Once the population is highly informed about the issues, they can't pull their usual tricks without a high risk of losing their job.

I realise that the general population should have an active role to play in all democracies, but sometimes you'd wish they'd just do the right thing without needing to be micromanaged through it.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#247

Post by jbarham »

branchless wrote: post #70
jbarham wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Montreal? Calgary? Edmonton? Halifax? St. John's? Winter.

Montreal is great. I recommend it. Yeah it's a bit cold but it's dry so not damp cold. Would you rather be a bit cold or working like a dog for some US company where your healthcare could vanish overnight because your boss was in a bad mood?

> Would you rather be a bit cold or working like a dog for some US company where your healthcare could vanish overnight because your boss was in a bad mood?

Neither. That's why I moved from California to Australia five years ago. Don't regret it.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#248

Post by branchless »

taurath wrote: post #239
branchless wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 tra…

Agreed. I think this is easier to do in middle management but agree with your general fear!

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#249

Post by lewisl9029 »

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.

> This is what young people do; they adventure.

I think this is a rather unfair, and possibly dangerous, attitude, to simply dismiss this phenomenon as typical young people "adventuring". Is it really adventuring if it's a decision made after countless hours of carefully weighing different employment options and coming to the conclusion that the US offers far more opportunities and far better rewards for our careers?

I have nothing but anecdotes to support that the brain drain is actually happening at any significant scale, but it's certainly not difficult to imagine why young people who are offered a US position would come to these same conclusions, given the sorry state of the Canadian tech industry today.

RE: Settling down. Seattle, which is a 3 hour drive from Vancouver, offers about double the average Vancouver salary with comparable housing prices. Needless to say, I'm not planning on going back until the situation improves dramatically.

Re: Millennials Flee Vancouver for More Affordable Cities

#250

Post by ido »

sospep wrote: post #242
ido wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

American: huh, guns are great, healthcare IF you can afford it, language #2 = spanish, hockey is a sport they play in Canada, worlds most powerful military, Trump, avg. American knows little about Canada, metric system - who needs that, good universities Canadian: eh, no guns allowed, healthcare FREE for all, language #2 = french, hockey is the 2nd most popular religion, neighbors with country with worlds most powerf…

But there are plenty of Americans that fit most of your Canadian stereotypes (see sanders's popularity among young Americans for example) and probably vice versa too.

I suspect 2 US states that are far from each other will have more cultural differences than a US state and Canadian province that are adjacent.

Post reply on HN