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Vancouver has its pros and cons. It all depends on what your lifestyle is. It's been called the No Fun City due to archaic liquor laws, restaurant/bar hours, and other things. Not a big deal to me personally.

Check out the threads on http://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver, there are a ton about people asking to move there. Recommendations about neighbourhoods, etc. Check out http://www.bctechnology.com/ if you are looking for a job in high tech.

I wouldn't be concerned about having to hide the fact that you are an American citizen, this city is full of immigrants and we generally get along quite well.

Be prepared to be shocked by real estate prices. They are insane around here. http://www.mls.ca/ has Canada wide listings.

I disagree here. I've never found a job through the Canada Job Bank, and for that matter, have never even seen a decent job posted there (maybe it's changed since then).

There is no 'definitive place' to look for jobs in Canada, as each region has their own quirks, peculiarities, and preferences. The biggest site I know of for actual job postings (many of them highly technical, like Linux kernel development) is T-Net Jobs. That said, I've found all of my jobs through Craigslist, oddly enough (and I make pretty good money), with one exception (where a recruiter called me for job that I didn't apply for through them).

Honestly, a lot of the local companies that are recruiting talent (as opposed to 'hiring employees') can be found on Craigslist. Same goes for apartments and cheap couches.

In Vancouver, you can find a lot of the jobs on T-net. I've had this recommended to me many times after moving to Vancouver, and while I didn't get any of my jobs through it, that's largely because I'm not as qualfiied as the high-end candidates.

http://www.bctechnology.com/scripts/search_form.cfm

A couple of people have commented about the importance of sorting out the work visa situation. I'll second that, with emphasis on getting it completed before you enter the country. Most nations, including Canada, you can't apply from within the country. Of course, this creates a Catch 22 in which the strongest justification for issuing the visa comes from having a prospective employer write a letter of offer. And that rarely happens without an interview, or two, or sometimes three, in person. So yeah, it may be necessary to come here for a couple of months ahead of time to do interviews.

I've been trying out recruiters lately. I can recommend a couple, if you want to contact me privately. I can also list several that have, for me at least, proved to be a complete waste of time. Odds are, you can do far better looking on your own. In Vancouver, check out the BC Techlology website: http://www.bctechnology.com/frameset_emp.html

The other comment I'd like to make is that, at least acccording to my experience, there is not much that can be generalized about how employers interview, what they look for, or what you can expect to find after accepting a given position. I think we're generally honest people here in Canada, but it's a young industry in a young culture, and so every organization makes up its own rules and expectations. The interview process is almost entirely directed at finding out about you. Except for a few bare facts, you won't learn much about the organization or the people you'll be working with. What you do learn is designed to make the organization look good, rather than to disclose what sort of challenges and difficulties you can expect from the position. And given the high degree of variability that I mentioned, you really won't know what you've gotten yourself into until the first day on the job. I'm sure this is true the world over, but it has a particular flavor on the west coast of Canada. On one hand, we're bound by Canadian politeness and a mild social reserve that can be hard to break through. On the other hand, we aspire to some form of American entrepreneurialism and the frankness that goes with it. I'm delighted by our West coast liberalism and our tolerance for different cultures, but if I may say so, we're not yet as fully evolved as we think we are. You have an advantage as an Aussie, I think, in that you have lived within a similar cultural paradox. Ours ends up perhaps a bit less tolerant of people being outspoken.

... as a software developer. Some of the comments about "work product" instead of certifications refers more to developers, not network techs. bctechnology.com's career pages are your friend.

This last quarter, the Canadian economy contracted by 0.1% but grew by 1.7% if you take the ailing auto industry, joined at the hip with the ones in the US out of the numbers. I suspect the central bank may soon do things that are good for Ontario and bad for everyone else but for now that has not happened.

I'm not sure what you meant about "hoops". Of course you need to get a "work visa", "landed immigrant status" or be a citizen, to start with but more than that...?

Were you planning on drifting from contract to contract or settling down at some company? There are a number of companies in the Greater Vancouver area that will want your skills in either case and you should be able to find a good placement with or without the help of an agent. On being hired full-time, you may find yourself routinely on three month probation but after that, short of incompetence or a business downturn, your place should be pretty secure. If you are laid off ("made redundant") you should get a pay-out of a fortnight's (or more usually a month's) pay per year of service. (If you get less, a lawyer can be of assistance unless there just ain't no more blood in that stone.)

Greater Vancouver includes North Vancouver, West Vancouver, Burnaby, New Westminster and Burnaby, as sort of an "inner ring". That's where most of the jobs are, and that's where housing is more expensive. Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, Maple Ridge, Pitt Meadows, Surrey, Langley, Delta and White Rock are all still technically inside Greater Vancouver, and some jobs (many of them with local government agencies) are out there along with more affordable housing.

Personally, I commute from Langley to Burnaby and have done so in the past by bus. After a recent move, I'm out beyond the pale for transit, so I do it by car and have had mixed success pooling. Fortunately, my employer is quite flexible about work-at-home and I do that several days per week. I know another guy at work took a 20% pay cut to work four days a week some years ago and the company went with that as well.

I have been in the developer market for over twenty years and have had tenures from 10 months through 7 years, mostly depending on market conditions (1992 and 2001 were particularly bad years).

All these things can be managed and juggled pretty well. Welcome to BC and maybe we'll cross paths eventually.

cheers...ank

Manufacturers should build this into the hardware or the bios.

They do, apparently. The press release says IBM/Lenovo ThinkPads have it in the BIOS. It can survive image reloads and hard drive swaps.