I lived there for four years and I had a very tough time with the lack of sun. It can be very oppressive. Vancouver has a lot of things going for it (as you mentioned) but I think it's unfair to gloss over the overcast weather.
Vancouver - 1835
London - 1460
Tallinn - 1753
Amsterdam - 1568
Stockholm - 1973
San Francisco - 3037
Honestly it's not that bad.
This map[1] might be of interest.
Vancouver: 160+ rainy days per year
San Francisco: ~50-60 would be typical (with 250+ sunny days per year). It had 66 rainy days last year for example. And just 42 in 2013.
Vancouver gets 1900 hours of sunlight a year. That's not a lot. Compare to Seattle (which is considered gloomy) at 2170 hours and SF at 3000 hours.
Are you talking about sunlight or sunshine? I think these are different. The city where I live gets apparently between 1500 and 1800 hours of sunshine, is a bit South of Vancouver (but in Europe) and not particularly known for not being sunny. So the amount of sunshine could actually increase for immigrants, not coming from California.
March or April. We've had an exceptionally harsh winter this year (snow on the ground in Vancouver for weeks on end -- happens about once a decade) but usually around now people are admiring the cherry blossoms on their way to the beach.
Whistler/Blackcomb has a perfectly skiable alpine through to the end of April, and you can ski past that if you want (but I wouldn't personally recommend it).
These are exactly the temperatures tons of people in this thread are saying is cold when referring to San Francisco. They actually correspond with March in SF.
Everybody's perspective is different...
I visited SF for the first time in December and at first I didn't realize why people were complaining about the cold when it was rather nice weather outside (I'm from 60 degrees north) and the weather was in the 60-70 Farenheit range (20 celsius) which I consider to be nice and temperate climate.
But after a week it hit me. It's cold as hell indoors! I have warmer in my house now than I had in my hotel room or office and it's snow and ice outside.
Vancouver does get a lot of concentrated rain, but summers are sunnier than most cities in North America. 90% of that 1900 hours is between June and September.
Sure, further from the equator makes your days shorter in the winter, but they're longer during the summer. It's awash.
If the gloominess happened during long days, you'd really see a drop in mean sunshine hours.
Between May and October, basically half of the year, you'll have very comfortable T-shirt weather, and blue skies I'd say 70% of the time!
Between December and March it's gloomy, but you'll have awesome snow in the mountains, just 30 min from downtown :) from our office we can see the slopes. Just went skiing with the team 2 months ago.
Vancouver is one of the few cities you can ski in the morning and lie on the beach in the afternoon, grilling BBQ and play beach volleyball.
Life's not that bad! I've been here 5 years :)
BTW, if anyone is in town for the YC interviews, I'd love to show you a good time!