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Good luck. With real estate prices being the highest in north america in vancouver, i don't know if i should blame facebook or the candidates for taking what's less than market wage.

we can speculate for what reasons facebook opened an office in vancouver, but from what i was told is that it's all about simplifying the visa/foreign worker issue, and opening doors to more candidates/talent (e.g. western canada & beyond).

Honestly though. Unless if you have no experience in the real world, $50-$60k seems a bit low... ESPECIALLY in Vancouver.




> Good luck. With real estate prices being the highest in north america in vancouver, i don't know if i should blame facebook or the candidates for taking what's less than market wage.

I can say that in the Microsoft area, wages go up, house prices go up, rent prices go up.

When MS did their huge salary bump, apartment prices shot up 20%-30%. House prices went from 600k to 800k. Blech.


I'm curious to know if there is a single employer in Vancouver that could do that. I think given the city's layout, it would be very difficult for one single employer to have that sort of effect. (e.g. if EA Games boosted salary 20-30%, I doubt you'd see much impact locally, though maybe a pct pt or two citywide... maybe)


Microsoft has about 60k of employees in Redmond alone back in the 2007. They can influence the economy of that city.


Pretty sure EA games closed up shop in Vancouver. Median salary is $70k for a developer here, usually less for junior devs. Keep in mind you'll be paying at least $15k income taxes so now your salary is $55,000.


Burnaby office still exists with 2k employees. Not technically Vancouver, but Vancouver for all intents and purposes.


> House prices went from 600k to 800k. Blech.

Meanwhile, many of my friends who work in Redmond and live on the east side are still underwater.


Vancouver wasn't that expensive of a place to live before the Chinese started buying up all of the real estate. Also, many of these offices were planned before 2008, when the Canadian dollar was much weaker than today. Also, Vancouver IS a nice place to live, it has mild climate, nice mountains, and its quite a bit more international than the bay area (i.e. large Chinese and Indian populations). Where else can you live in North America where China Town is basically everywhere?


Probably nowhere.

Vancouver is a delightful place to live, though personally I don't see the "Chinatown everywhere" as a merit. It's just a beautiful, cultured city that is very livable.


We're talking about fresh-grads who know nothing about TDD, best practices, or trade-offs, or had read pragmatic programmer or code complete.

Some of them might be smart, as in raw talent, but giving 80k up-front and expect them to get up to speed in 1 year is like instant noodle.

Would love to know which companies, and how many are they, that are willing to pay at least 70k for UBC grad with co-op experience.

I mean, if we're talking just one or two companies, they are anomaly.


All of the "A-tier" companies pay $100K+ for undergrads with co-op experience. This is Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, among many others.

As a Canadian expat, Canadians who stay in Canada frankly get royally fucked in salary. The curve doesn't exactly close up either - I'm a few years out of school now and the gap between me and a salary I could command in Vancouver/Toronto is still about 100%.


See that's the thing, I believe you. What I don't believe is the kind of salary like that in Vancouver as MAGZine stated.

The good news is that Vancouver salary is either close or at the same level with Toronto. That was not the case a few years ago.

The bad news is that Vancouver housing price is, we all know about this, awful.




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