TextInputLayout not showing EditText hint before user focus on it

That is a known bug of the Android Design library. It has been accepted and assigned.

So you should have this fixed in the next Android Design library release.

In the meantime, you could watch the issue tracker for a hacky-fix that might get posted there, but I don't know any as of now.

And yes, it only affect Lollipop and above.

Update:

This is a bug that has been fixed in version 22.2.1 of the library.

Original Answer:

As mentioned by @shkschneider, this is a known bug. Github user @ljubisa987 recently posted a Gist for a workaround:

https://gist.github.com/ljubisa987/e33cd5597da07172c55d

As noted in the comments, the workaround only works on Android Lollipop and older. It does not work on the Android M Preview.