Amazon plans to hire 1000 people for their new office. Despite the claim that they only do interview but not hiring I think that's misinformed. They _are_ hiring people. I know a few people who work there and have a friend who's friend was hired there not too long ago. They have private invite sessions once in a while too.
Microsoft said that they're hiring 400 people for their new Vancouver HQ. They also had a private invite sessions around the end of 2014. The recruiter stated that they're hiring 120 people within a year, and more to come. Sounds like they will do this in phase.
Body shop like Facebook and Twitter pointed out up-front that they only do training and only hire fresh-grad to be shipped to the USA.
Salesforce is ACTIVELY hiring in Vancouver. They poached my co-worker last year. I've been hearing that their offer is in the range of 120-140k for intermediate engineer.
90k is the minimum current rate for intermediate engineer for mid-size to BigCo (Salesforce being the outlier). Small-to-mid offers around 70k to high 80k with laid-back/better work-life balance and frequent to work from home. Source: recruiters, I know some of them and have maintain good relationship.
SauceLabs is recruiting with 4 current "seed" employees for their Vancouver branch.
I know someone tried to recruit a Vancouver-based OpenDNS employee where the requested salary is between $110k-120k. I can only guess OpenDNS paid their employee here probably around 90k or more.
A Thinking Ape (YC backed) is here. Mozilla has a medium-sized presence here. The list goes on. So whether the pay is low, I'd say that's relative. I don't know the compensation for the rest of the USA cities except SF and Seattle.
Seattle is nice but damn... the food, the outdoor, the culture, the diversity are below Vancouver (I spent a short stint in MS). The commute is also bad.
Also don't forget we have basic health insurance and probably "saner" government.
Let's go over the real-estate a little bit:
I've been scouting and am invited to a few "VIP sessions" for apartments and townhouses (the kind of estate that none of these rich Chinese would probably buy since it's below their range; they only buy fancy houses no?) hold by the developers. Most of the sessions I went to usually managed to sell 100% of their "phase one" development and 70% of their "phase two" development. Somehow there seems to be an influx of buyers and NO, they're not dominated by mainland Chinese people.
A friend of mine recently purchased a townhouse (3 floors, 3br, 2.5 bath, super small backyard, 1400sq ft finished, brand-new, new appliances, etc) for $599k in the suburb, very close to the train station (10 mins walk), 20 minutes via train to Downtown core. This location is quite ideal too: near the biggest mall in Vancouver, relatively good suburban area, close to food and entertainments.
My manager came from Down Under (Oz) and said that at least he can afford an apartment in the downtown area that does not blow a huge hole on his wallet compare to Sydney (NSW).
Rent is definitely cheaper compare to the big cities (Sydney, NYC, SF, LA): 1400-1500 1br in downtown area, a wee bit more expensive in the posh-downtown area or near the Coal Harbour. 1200 for decent size 1-br apartment near the biggest Mall in GVRD (Greater Vancouver District).
Do keep in mind that the public transportation is pretty good compare to most cities I've ever been to (except Singapore, HK, NYC, or London). The buses and trains are well maintained despite a few occasional service hiccups. I've taken BART in SF before, smelly, dingy, weird people, and slightly more complex fare calculation. I've taken Sydney (NSW) train before, still manual (operated by human), not frequent, more expensive.
Vancouver also has an "express" train (different path/route than the main stream) that connects the downtown core and some of the further suburbs. The city keeps improving and expanding the train services further east to cover more area. A few years ago the city just wraps up the line that connects the airport to the end of the Downtown core where the Cruise sails, where the startup/hip/US-branch companies have offices. The path takes about 30 minutes trip.
And whenever someone said "40 minutes driving" from downtown core, that's 40 minutes via REGULAR street/road not Highway like in the USA. In the States, the default is almost always "Highway" if you're coming from the 'burbs. In Vancouver, it's just a normal street which means distance wise is not that far.
Crime rate is very low around here.