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Comment by kyllo | Hacker News Reader

I like the near suburbs of Seattle. Cheaper than B.C. and also home to a lot of tech talent and some VCs and incubators. Also a lot of tech jobs at established companies to fall back on if your startup fails. WA also has great schools and lots of family/outdoor activities.

I honestly don't understand how anyone can afford to live in B.C. Victoria is beautiful, but I don't see how there are enough high-paying jobs to support the prices there. Unless the locals somehow pay much less for everything than tourists do.

Vancouver, fuhgeddaboutit. The Chinese investors have driven the prices for formerly middle class homes into the millions.

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There aren't enough high paying jobs here. Which is why everyone leaves (or works remotely). I know nearly a dozen people who have moved away because of the culture and cost of living.

Victoria has a few main industries all extremely hostile to innovation, but do overpay unskilled workers - retirement (and trust fund kids), government, tourism, military(navy) and shipbuilding.

Edit: Victoria might be a great place to patio11 those industries with tools to service those businesses. But it wouldn't be the sort of place you'll grow the next Google, Xerox Parc, Microsoft* or Facebook.

* Yes, I know Microsoft is setting up a games studio. They won't be doing engine development here though. Which is the point - we're a satellite office town at best.

OT: "patio11 v: to make money off of a complacent industry via consulting, software and generous amounts of A/B testing"

No, I meant the provide a useful service to an industry and automate the hell out of it for a nice income stream.

> "we're a satellite office town at best"

This, sadly, describes almost all of Canada, not just Victoria. Even vaunted Toronto has few homegrown software companies and an ocean of satellite offices of American corporations.

As an expat I frequently wonder how I'll ever go home. Doing so not only means taking an enormous pay cut (>50% at this point) but also giving up my front-row seat in the industry. My ego can deal with the different paycheque, but my passions will never square with the rest.

"Edit: Victoria might be a great place to patio11 those industries with tools to service those businesses. But it wouldn't be the sort of place you'll grow the next Google, Xerox Parc, Microsoft* or Facebook." Total myth that's perpetuated by not looking at the history of great "start ups". Take some time to read about the history of extremely successful companies in the US and you will see locations such as Armonk, New York and Schaumburg, Illinois. Massive incredibly wealthy companies managed somehow to be created and continue to generate billions without paying California tax rates. Not only that but these companies are high tech and leaders in the fields. It's especially ironic that the field itself espouses mobility and connectedness on a global (not national) scale and yet, its followers all feel they need to live in the same city to get anything done.

One big factor to consider when looking at US vs. Canada is health insurance. I can get my entire family insured for $133CDN/month (base insurance, no extended). I hear that this could be 10x higher in the US. With the base insurance I can have babies for free, and I can keep my burn rate low.

Yes, and this is a huge reason why older adults with families are more reluctant to do startups, compared to fresh-out-of-college 20-somethings who might not think they even need health insurance.

Yes, definitely not Vancouver. Any house here is $1M starting even if it's small and crappy. An apartment with 700 square feet or so will set you back $400k.

On top of that, there isn't really a tech scene here. Many small startups, but mostly ones you don't really hear about. A few large companies are here, but with fairly small offices.

Hootsuite, A thinking ape, indochino, unbounce, just to name a few doing well. There's only ONE bay area ... but Vancouver ain't doing bad. I've run an internship program placing top 1% Canadian University students for 4~8 months in the bay area and SFU, UBC and Uvic are pumping out great engineers. Only Waterloo is better. SF is a super short flight away, and Vancouver is the type of city you can actually recruit people to MOVE to. There's not many cities like it.

As a guy who grew up in Victoria, went to UVic, lived in Seattle and then moved to the bay area, Seattle can pretty much beat Vancouver & Victoria on all of those metrics. On top of it you can recruit all of those BC engineers with TN visas, and home is just a few hours drive (or boat) away.

Why live & work in Vancouver when you can live & work in Seattle for half the price and twice the income? Literally.

I hadn't seen any numbers on the apartment side. Although by extension it makes sense, nonetheless, good grief!

P.S. If you have any sense of this, how far out must one move before the numbers start to drop off appreciably? Is there a significant commuting culture, then?

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