Ding ding ding. We have a winner. While I've never ever considered moving to Vancouver, I get recruiter emails several times a month for companies in Vancouver looking for Senior programmers to move there and only offering 80k to 110k CAD at the most. That is not nearly enough money to live in Vancouver. Enough to exist but not enough to live.
The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occupied by children of mega rich people from Asia (mostly China) who are rich enough to not care what rent costs which drives rent up for everyone else. There's such a huge l mismatch between housing costs and salaries in Vancouver.
I know a company that pays fresh-grad $70k-$75k base salary with 10-15% bonus almost guaranteed base on company performance (there's a calculation behind it but the bonus amount is part of your package).
Microsoft, Amazon, starting salary was 85-90k to 100k+ 2-3 years ago for 2 years - 5/7 years of experience.
Salesforce Intermediate/borderline Senior SDET (SDET typically make less than SDE) starts from 100k base with a bunch of plus plus that can boost their income to 120k-140k.
OpenDNS lurking well above $100k as well for intermediate developer.
Mogo.ca pays their front-end dev $100k base and this is a small-medium size company.
It's not the norm but thanks to US-based companies, salary is moving up and up.
Unfortunately, Vancouver housing is being driven by international currencies. A low Canadian dollar makes houses in Vancouver a bargain for outsiders and even more unaffordable for anyone earning Canadian dollars.
Those GlassDoor salaries are cash. Stock and bonus add another 50-100%. My anecdotal experience with Vancouver is that some employers will throw you 15%, on a good year.
Microsoft pays a bit less, but also employs ~30,000 people in the area.
Yes, Amazon and Microsoft HQ are both in the Seattle area. Google has 2 locations here in Fremont and Kirkland. $200K+ for senior engineers sounds about right from people I've known who went to those companies.
Housing is getting expensive, but you can still buy a small 3br for about $400K in my neighborhood just south of Bellevue, so saving $100K does sound plausible.
The problem as I understand it is that a ton of Vancouver's housing is occupied by children of mega rich people from Asia (mostly China) who are rich enough to not care what rent costs which drives rent up for everyone else. There's such a huge l mismatch between housing costs and salaries in Vancouver.