> Switzerland $95,753
Australia $85,167
Denmark $73,017
United States $71,858
This is a bit misleading taken at face value as the US has loads of smaller cities with far lower cost of living whereas almost all of Australia's software jobs are in Sydney, Melbourne and smaller capitals. The Silicon Valley wages are at least twice as good as Sydney and nowhere near a proportional cost of living increase.
I read the comment this way too, but the OP is actually agreeing with you.
They are saying that Silicon Valley salaries are much higher than Sydney, and the cost of living in SV isn't anywhere near double (as you point out, it's probably cheaper than Sydney).
Brisbane isn't quite as painful, and there's plenty of work in SEQ with excellent salaries. Though I'm biased: I love it here!
Aside from that, and this isn't Australia specific, but the acceptance of WFH over the last year across industries is quite exciting, with regards to reducing CoL.
Biggest problem with Brisbane is due to being a smaller market, there is there a fewer jobs available for less popular languages. Python & Go are finally seeing decent growth, but proportionally local roles are much more focused on JS, Java, C# & PHP.
For sure, though one perhaps small saving grace is in my experience the companies that are using those less popular languages were already accepting of remote work, which has meant I get the best of both worlds. That and I usually end up introducing Nim to whatever company I'm working at anyway ;) [I'm only partly joking]
I live in Silicon Valley and my wife is an Australian ex-pat. Sydney is cheaper than Silicon Valley. Period. End of story.
She regularly looks at house prices in Sydney and dreams of selling our house and moving to Sydney but frankly I would never move there. I would visit, but I would not move there.
The UK value translates to just above £29k as an average annual salary. That might just about be an average annual new graduate starting salary across the whole of the UK, but even there it seems low. In terms of all software engineers it is most definitely off by several grand.
Twice as good? It can be 3x or more. A senior at a top global company in Sydney can make AUD$200k (USD$154k), where a senior in Silicon Valley can make USD$350k+. Additionally, the US has levels above senior that Australia simply doesn't have, or has very little of.
Silicon Valley pays USD$500k to staff engineers. CTOs for relatively large companies in Australia don't make that kind of money.
Those salaries numbers alone would be enough to put me off of using this platform as an employer or an employee. They clearly are scraping the bottom of the barrel.
$71k is just barely above what the BLS reports as the 10th percentile for software developers in the US[1]
Do you know what is a real shame? This statistic doesn't really correlate with the highest quality output.
Most of them who stay put in Australia never really get to put their skills to good use. Our digital landscape is quite conservative & somewhat arguably boring, consisting of mainly traditional finance/banking & insurance - and we all know how these companies work internally (digital as a cost centre).
Don't get me wrong, there are a few startups floating around who are growing up e.g., Canva, Campaign Monitor, Atlassian (for which I'd argue is a US company), but even the bigger ones only hire a couple of thousand on-shore devs a piece. Most of the good devs with half an inkling go overseas when they finish Uni to earn good coin and work on far more shaping stuff.
I think we are risk-averse in Australia due to life being pretty good on average here (so what's the point?), which is fine, but more jarringly; the Government do very little to assist or incentivise entrepreneurs. I wish they did more, we'd see way more talent remain here and plenty of more ideas come to life!
To be fair we have it far easier in Sydney than over in Silicon Valley. For example most (but not all) Sydney Googlers choose to stay in Sydney even though they have the chance to relocate to e.g. Mountain View or Sunnyvale for more than double the comp. This is because of the work life balance and culture here in Sydney compared to over there.
In Sydney It's generally fine to arrive at 9 and leave at 5 as long as you produce reasonable output. In SV I noticed almost everyone worked way over 40 hours per week, overtime was the expectation and the norm.
I would assume this is not across all teams in all cases, just my first hand experience and also second hand anecdotes from colleagues.
Interesting. I would have thought things at Google would be relatively chill. People on /r/cscareerquestions who work at FAANG usually say they work less than 40hrs a week.
I would be shocked if that sub wasn't thoroughly astro-turfed. The constant influx of new devs and repetitive questions, the relative lack of experienced devs and the potentially large payoff make it the ideal breeding ground for manipulation.
There are quite a few regulars, and funnily enough most people on the sub are quick to call out possible astro-turfing. It seems unlikely that it's thoroughly astro-turfed.
Apart from Sydney having almost perfect weather and being one of the most stunning cities in the world there are the political aspects.
Free healthcare, basically no gun crime, far less polarisation, more family friendly, far less homeless, a more successful multiculturalism environment, strong societal bonds i.e. we were able to get most of the country to agree to large scale lockdowns and mask wearing.
Mateship and community are embedded in the DNA of the country whereas in the US it's freedom and individuality. And those different styles permeate through everything.
But then S/V has the incredible IT and startup community which is unparalleled anywhere in the world.
US FAANG health insurance is better and cheaper than (Australian) Medicare, which doesn't cover dentists/therapists/psychiatrists/etc. Universal systems are of course better once you're too sick to keep your job.
Also, Sydney's cost of living and housing crisis is apparently even worse than SV, though I don't understand how that's possible. We're very dedicated to making housing expensive here.
I was actually just looking at this and our benefits in AU seem to be A$3000 a year allowance towards a private plan. That doesn't seem like a lot, but maybe it's enough.
I'd be inclined to bank the 3k/year and insure yourself - PHI in Australia is a borderline scam and half the time you'll end up in the public system anyway.
Yes and no - if I was in real trouble I’d want to end up in the public system (where I work and where the care is the best) but PHI is great for the things you never know are going to happen. Generally your life will be fine without it though
Private health insurance in Australia is quite cheap - my silver extras plan is $480/quarter (dentistry and basically anything else that could happen to me)
There seems to be a double standard in every company that I applied to where the perks are more generous for US staffs. My friend works for an Australian unicorn expanding to the US who offers RSU for US staff but only share maching for Australians.
Dentists are covered by Medicare and are basically free (bulk billed).
And Sydney doesn't really have a housing crisis anymore than Manhattan does. It's just that people want to live inner city without having to pay for it. You can find plenty of reasonably priced property if you go further out.
I’m not sure if you’re thinking of somewhere else, but Medicare does not cover dentistry - some health services have dentistry but it basically takes care of those who are having poor Health outcomes due to poor dentition (my housemate at Med school was studying dentistry and used to do a couple days out at westmead a week drilling on these people).
IIRC dentistry is only covered in fringe cases for health related reasons i.e. you need this done or you will get very sick or die. Also under some concession schemes. Otherwise, regular check ups, cleaning, fillings, and basic extractions are not covered at all for the general population.
Yeah maybe FAANG health insurance IS better and cheaper, I don't know. But I do know the general populous is better off with their insurance in Aus than the US. It's not just about your insurance, but about everyones. Less homeless, less poverty etc.
The homelessness is a West Coast thing caused by not having enough housing and banning cheap fixes like SROs. A lot of other things like mental health problems too, but many of those are caused by homelessness rather than causing it.
Even NYC doesn’t have as much of a homeless problem because they’re better about putting the people in homes.
Australian Medicare almost covers nothing, I've always used private healthcare for things like dental and optical. It's a system designed to help people who are unable to afford private healthcare, which I have no problem with.
Agree with parent completely. Also, maybe this is a rationalisation for not moving to SV but our software dev salaries are more than enough to live a very comfortable lifestyle. Sure, we're not going to retire in 5 years and cruise around on our yachts, but if you're beyond chasing material goods for status then living and working in Sydney in this industry is pretty great.
> Apart from Sydney having almost perfect weather and being one of the most stunning cities in the world there are the political aspects.
The first thing that comes to mind of many people when thinking about Australia: what about the scary snakes and spiders? How many encounters will I have with them while living in Sydney 'burbs and is it more than zero? What is the chance of randomly waking up with a giant spider on my face?
Yeah, I touched on the lifestyle here being good, I completely relate - I just think it creates a conundrum.
Given this reality, we'll continue to be safe/slow followers to the rest of the world. Which is sad given this statistic! It is a huge wasted opportunity where we could be leaders in ideation, creations, thoughts, inventions etc.
I don't want life to change, but in the bigger picture, I don't want us to fall behind in the pack.
Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my paragliding ocean bluffs overpacked with people. :P
I lived near 5th and Market and walked to a tech company I love very much near Giants Stadium. This is a short walk. One place I regularly walked by was the site of a random slaying by a person who had been released from prison after being arrested for randomly assaulting people in the same place years before.
> Where exactly is this war zone in California...?
No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it.
We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.
I have lived in LA county for more than 25 years and lived in East Hollywood ~1 year. I have never heard gunfire anywhere in LA. I'm sure it happens in the worst areas but I've never heard it and I've been around plenty of recreational gunfire (outside of LA).
Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime
While I agree that the other poster was being a bit dramatic, it's no stretch to say that California performs objectively poorer in a number of areas that people tend to pay attention to. Just take one crime - the murder rates in California are 4.3 per 100,000 and only 0.8 in Australia.
I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.
Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California.
Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1]
California 430 assaults per 100k [2]
So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing.
An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary.
> An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular state.
California has a much larger population and twice the economic output of Australia. It seems much more reasonable to compare Australia to one state than to compare it to the entire US.
Why would you compare it to the US? The US has an order of magnitude more people. California is comparable in population. The right thing to do would be to compare the locales where you would spend time in each place, e.g. the violent crime rate in your neighborhood or would-be neighborhood matters most, then city, and maybe state.
That assumes assaults in the US are reported the same way. Murders probably are because there is a body. I doubt I her crime is given the weird incentives in the US system.
This is one case in which crime metrics are completely useless for getting an image of what it actually “feels” like to live in a city. American cities are incredibly segregated by economic and racial class. Crime is everywhere, but largely centered in a few especially poor areas. Outside of the core economic centers (and I’m talking neighborhoods), large swaths of the people who work and live in SF are living predictable and safe lives.
Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neighborhood.
Last time I was there, someone was openly defecating in front of city hall, next to multiple people shooting heroin. I had to step over someone who had collapsed apparently from drug use, in front of a restaurant entrance, and nobody seemed to care. It's about as close to the third world as exists in the west. I recognize there's extremely nice parts of SF, but most out of state/international guests stay around Tenderloin/SOMA and would never know that.
I stayed in Tenderloin and was shocked when walking back to hotel people having sex on the footpath in front of their tent, while a few tents down someone shooting up. Then what looked like a 14 year old (at most) prostitute soliciting at the corner.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
Sure I do. I'm from picturesque, rural Montana. My first visit to LA in the 90s was quite shocking. But a war zone implies a level of lawlessness that doesn't apply. Most of what is going on, people using drugs, using the bathroom on the street, etc, it isn't good but it doesn't really affect you. In a war zone, you have high odds of being maimed or killed any second for no good reason. It's a poor analogy. I think the homelessness is a problem we need to desperately to address but this kind of militant rhetoric doesn't help at all. In fact for several decades here it has made things worse.
The poster was being hyperbolic. I love California, but as on outsider I didn’t have the sense of which areas were or weren’t dangerous, and to be honest just couldn’t read it, and got myself into dangerous situations. That would never happen in Australia because I can read people and places in ways, and it surprises me that this is true, that I seemed to be culturally blind to in the US. I’m still confused about Compton, to my eyes it read as an easy going middle class neighborhood, is it? - was Dre exaggerating all this time? . In both LA and Oakland (where I mostly lived) there were nights where there was extended gunfire. To be honest this happens in Australia too, but I assume that it’s people out hunting. Oh hang on - I take that back the Proudlock brothers used to shoot each other with air rifles.
NYC is the only place in the US I was actually impressed by, and if I was a single guy with no family I could consider living there. Everywhere else I traveled was meh.
that's cool but you can't fix all the problems in usa with triple salary.
> healthcare
> unlimited homelessness, in one day in la i saw more homelessness people then in my entire life in australia, this was only eclipsed by san fran. now i get why devs are leaving california, i wouldn't raise a family there.
> gun violence
> political instability
> terrible pre-12 education system.
> general shitty american population (why do you need to clap and chant so much)
Gun violence exists only on media outlets. However 600k/year deaths from cancer is very real and the US healthcare won't miss a chance to bankrupt those people before they die.
In a life in Australia I got shot at once by a guy who thought I was a kangaroo and apologised, in five years in the us, I had guns drawn on me 5 times twice by police on one occasion at least five guns, twice by strangers unprovoked threatening to kill me, and once more or less abducted. I love California, I really really love it, but gun violence and the threat of it is not a media beat up. The difference in the feeling of threat in us v Australia is quite different, on average, there are places in Australia that are not safe, and in the end I believe the causes are the same, there are places in both countries where the inequality is brutal, and where the sanctioned violence that maintains economic disparity is on clear display
The risk of being shot in the US is below obscure kidney problems. Guns is a microscopic problem in the US that looks big only under the media's microscope. The real elephant is cancer.
I agree with you. But I also think that there is threat of potential violence that is unfamiliar to people from quiet little countries like Australia.
I never got shot and killed in the US, not even once. But the fear of gun violence is real, not just as a subjective experience but as a tool, Switzerland has more guns, but the US is unusual in that it is both a democracy and has so many guns on display.
The standard response to this from my side of politics is to say that the US needs gun control. My feeling is that the US is different because the US is different, it’s bigger, more complex and there are greater and more numerous tensions and conflicts than the other Anglo/euro democracies. Americans relationship to their government and the culture around personal responsibility and political participation is very different to the disconnected disinterest in my own country. So I don’t want US gun culture exported, and I don’t want my kids living in it.
But when you read things like:
It seems there is an intimate connection between the generative political culture of the United States, that doesn’t shy away from conflict in pursuit of ideals, and gun culture, that cannot be easily separated. I believe there is something in American culture that calls people to intervene, that urges facing into conflict, even violence in pursuit of higher ideals that is both useful and destructive, even if we could never tally the full cost, in short order we can produce horrific numbers, but I believe this same imperative drives vital movements like feminism, gay rights, anti racism that inspire required changes in my country. So I both agree with you and think you’re missing the point.
Cancer, heart disease, dementia are numerically vastly greater killers, but as an outsider from Australia coming to the US the underlying conflict in the society is hard to come terms with, it is much better hidden in Australia. I think my experience is common, I will always regret leaving the US. I adjusted to that sense of threat that personally, and I think I would have tolerated it if I had stayed and had children there, but I can’t bring myself to move my children there.
The fear of gun violence is imaginary. The media instills the fear because, quoting the Chomsky propaganda model, "when people fear, they accept authority". Most people in the US wouldn't know gun ownership is a thing, because most of them will never see a gun unless they go to a range.
My hypothesis as to why the new US administration is so fixated on gun control is that they really need to import big piles of migrants to do the low rung labor, but if that new underclass gets guns, things will go downhill. So their plan is to pack the supreme court with anti-gun judges (to bypass the bill of rights) and take the guns. They seem to be trying the Australian scenario where a possibly manufactured shooting was used as an excuse to ban guns.
Hang on are you suggesting Port Arthur was a a 'false flag' operation?
If that is what you are saying? I have to ask whether you have done sufficient investigation to make such a claim. It is a statement that has potential to deeply offend and hurt, shouldn't be said lightly without robust evidence. I think you're seriously over estimating the organisational capacity of the Australian government and intelligence services (if you want to see the abysmal record of the Australian Intelligence services, look up hilton hotel bombing) and seeing shadows of the US political landscape in the Australian landscape - they aren't the same. The government in power in Australia at the time was conservative, and they did not want to introduce gun control. We don't have the same gun culture here, in a large part because right or wrong people don't believe the government has the competency and capability to pull off tyranny.
I have been offered increase in pay to work in LA/SanFran/NY/UK/SouthAmerica/UAE and each time I knock it back because each time I have visited those places I could not wait to leave them. UAE was twice the money. The cost and conditions of life in Au are so much better.
Can concur, as an Aussie expat having spent 7 years in NYC/NJ returned to a much better lifestyle in WA before my kids ever have to go to a school in the US.
No longer have to worry about gun violence, surprise bankrupting medical bills & an anti-intellectual population prolonging the devastation of a virus that's killed >500k of the fellow population.
There's going to be better opportunities to work for mega tech conglomerates in the US but I'd expect great devs will be able to get hired remotely, although the salary for IT professionals is pretty decent in Australia as well.
Definitely agree. I've had the opportunity to visit and work in Australia (Melbourne in particular, love that city). Everyone is so much friendlier than in the USA.
No one understands the weird cultural shit we (USA) have around guns / healthcare.
The big cities in Australia have lots of cultures melting together, great food, even better coffee, and decent transit. What more could you want?
Plus, you can get great money working at one of the FAANGs that are here. It's not quite at the level of the US, but higher than the companies the GP was referring to from what I've heard of their comp.
Melbourne based here and definitely agree with this. It's pretty hard to find a startup that's working on cutting edge stuff. Lack of VC funding here also doesn't help. The only thing Australians want to sink money into is real estate.
I guess if you plan to retire early and come back then earning a lot of money makes sense. Personally, the comments make me rather want to relocate to Australia.
This is exactly my plan. Another 6-7 years in London, then back to Australia. I love London and my life here - I’ll be able to move back to Australia when I’m 40, have a high quality of life and be in a strong financial position relative to my peers.
This, and Google in Sydney vs London for the same role certainly does not pay 5-7x. Sydney L5 SWE is around 300-350K AUD total comp. If an L5 SWE in London gets 1.5M I'll eat my hat :)
Well, I see some of my friends who just chill and make 400k for some FAANG and living pretty sad and pathetic lives. They are content with mediocrity. They have good jobs and make good money but will never earn great money and will never have great jobs. However, they are happy and content, which is more than I can say.
But then, sometimes I think I am the sad one, because I always want more and will never be happy with anything I have.
I've meet people who totally agree with my mindset and those that agree with my friends mindset, it really does seem to be a fundamental difference among people.
> But then, sometimes I think I am the sad one, because I always want more and will never be happy with anything I have.
I can relate to the concept and have to work hard on taking time to appreciate what I have - I call that mindset 'inherent dissatisfaction' and personally found it poisonous, but realise that's probably not the case for everyone.
Saying 400K isn't great money is indicative of the massive wealth that the tech bubble has. Y'all are priveledged. I can't wait for remote work to spread those salaries across the globe. I will out work your friend for less that half that price. And I know countless more like me.
Not at all. I see it as a great thing! But I love London, and actually enjoy being career-focused right now. It satisfies me in a way that Australia did not. I definitely plan to move back in 6-7 years, and will be in a strong financial position when I do. Win-win.
> Most of them who stay put in Australia never really get to put their skills to good use.
What's the definition of 'good use' here?
I've had plenty of offers to go work in the US but have always chosen to remain closer to my family and maintain an enjoyable work/life balance while still being able to travel internationally for projects as required.
I'd consider that an excellent use of my skills, though I admit a certain amount of bias.
> Most of them who stay put in Australia never really get to put their skills to good use.
I'm curious what you mean by this, and didn't get a full picture from the sentences afterwards.
I might not work in B2C "world changing" stuff, but the work I have done over the past decade runs infrastructure that the actual world is changed by. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, which is likely.
Edit: Well, I guess I said something wrong. Disparaging an entire country's developers as "never really getting to put their skills to good use" is acceptable, but pointing out that that simply isn't the case universally, and being proud of the work I've done isn't.
At first I wanted to disagree as I have worked on some pretty awesome stuff and for work at least, I would rather work here than the US. That moderate economic landscape you mention is the reason working on software is so reasonable here. No ridiculous hours, sensible but good pay and a lot of mature technology choices since risk is avoided or at least calculated first.
As an average entrepreneur you are incentivised to play it safe by bootstrapping into existing industries, and because our market is so small the potential for hockey stick growth isn't there so investment isn't an attractive option either.
So I think you raise some good points but they may be aimed at people interested in the fast paced investment fueled software industries, and there are plenty of entrepreneurs and developers who much rather the moderate and grounded pace Australia offers.
I also agree that we have a lot of latent opportunities that can't be realised in that same environment, we are at an apex of cost and availability that makes it really difficult to pull off big risky projects so that leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.
I am wildly suspicious of this data. How could it possibly be audited? The presenter of the data has obvious ulterior motives to make something up where the data is inadequate or flat out lie to support their business.
The hook got them in here (that's not a dev test, that's a dev test), so well played. But shouldn't we just dismiss all of this as yet more BS until they can show otherwise. It's far, far too clean.
I think their motive is to create buzz for their platform. You have a clickbaity article that will put people against each other, people will share it with snark remarks on reddit and so on. Not much reason to lie on the data though, it could very well be just pulled from some internal dashboard for less work.
Me as well, if I understand this too 5 list per country lots of Dutch companies are hiring from Kenya. I’ve been to meetups, I’m on LinkedIn and I’ve never seen anyone from Kenya. I’ve seen a lot of people from all over Europe and India.
> 94% of developers finished the coding test sent to them for recruitment purposes, up from 93% last year. This shows that candidates who are sent a relevant, stack-specific coding test are taking them more seriously than ever before.
This could also say that they are now choosing to send tests to more desperate candidates than before. Either way, I see no way for stats like this to not suffer from selection bias, and after scanning the article I wouldn’t take the numbers too seriously.
I doubt these tests means anything, Autralian companies use standard tests way less than US companies, there is no reason for Australian devs to just be good at these spontaneoysly.
Born and bred Australian here. In my ~10 year career I've never worked with nor worked for anyone who didn't advocate for (close to) complete code coverage.
I'm not taking about that kind of test, I'm talking about coding tests for interview. Majority of mine has been either light pairing or take home, not the "standard" leetcode type.
> In other words, only 10% of developers from the given country scored higher in their coding tests than the results you see below. We made this change because the mean score includes outliers that often influence averages and skew results.
"australian developers score the highest on coding tests administered by companies in new zealand that refer to all software development as IT and are most popular amongst people who run windows and work for IT outsourcing companies like thoughtworks" - should be the title.
australians actually do cool stuff, they invented and commercialized the cochlear implant! as mentioned in comments here though, a lot i think get relegated to consulting or IT type stuff to support existing business.
As a ThoughtWorker I can confirm that the IT space here is pretty heavily influenced by strong coding principals. The quality of work I do on a day-to-day basis is under high (but very open and friendly) scrutiny that I've learned to love.
Please also note that German software engineers have much less money comparing to almost any other country.
The average salary is 4900 Euro and after tax this will be 2900 Euro !!! Even software engineers in a poor country like Ukraine make more money after tax than that and they also have much lower expenses comparing to Germany.
So why someone living in Germany will spend a lot of time for study, learning all the technologies etc if you will only earn 15% more money than a cleaning guy without any education and who can spend all his free time with friends instead of improving qualification?
So Germany is a failed state for software developers.
100% agree. unless you get a fully remote job, you need to really really love germany to stay there as a software developer. A friend of mine topped out at 90k with 10y experience working in a bank (which tradtionally already pay higher salaries) and that is a number for which I could find exactly zero skilled developers here in California. It would be perceived as a borderline insult. And no, that money isn't eaten by healthcare. I paid far more for healthcare for my family in Germany than I do here in the US.
> Please also note that German software engineers have much less money comparing to almost any other country.
It's hilarious to me that most people in European countries will think this about their own country. I should know, as a Belgian having lived in Sweden with friends all over.
A 40% overall tax rate is among the highest, but about the same level as Belgium or Denmark as far as I understand. 4900€ gross as an average definitely isn't bad, though - that would probably be more like 3500€ here.
As to your conclusion of a "failed state": am I correct in assuming that like in Belgium, France, Holland and to a minor degree Sweden, the valuation of management types is much higher than any technical functions (i.e. engineers, programmers, devops) in Germany?
I can only talk about Hungary. SWE salaries doubled in the past couple of years. Entry level job salaries went from around 1000 EUR to 2000 EUR, but they are way less than in Germany
maybe don't "spend a lot of time for study, learning all the technologies etc" just to be financially better than someone. If you like your job and it pays enough what is wrong? You like to live in a society when there are people (the cleaning guys) who don't make enough and have to feel inferior for their job?
AND, these day jobs are fluid, just because someone works a mundane job does not mean that's their only job/contribution to society. In fact, the fact that they work a low demand job can enables them to be more entrepreneurial/creative/commit to their community/family, as opposed to some devs who spend every awaking moment perfecting their craft, only to use that skill to help some corporate sell people things they don't need.
AND, you're paying taxes for all the social services/safety net you're entitled, so you don't have to live in constant fear and save like crazy like people from Ukraine or Asia where I'm from.
Combine all of that with a major housing crisis that makes it hard to find a good apartment...and if you're in Berlin, the locals resenting you for the gentrification...I'm really puzzled why so many of my friends have left the States to go work there.
This comment is super flagrant self promotion, but if you are an Australian developer who wants to stay in Australia and work at a scale only usually available in the US.
We work with companies like Doordash, Atlassian, Sonos and Dream 11 running some of their most important databases at massive scale.. and these are just the ones we can mention.
On top of that we are in Canberra :) Though if you wanna stay in Sydney or Melbourne that's cool to!
This statistic actually says nothing at all about 90% of the people who took the test so the headline is pretty misleading.
You can’t really talk about “Australian developers” (or indeed any other nation’s) and ignore 90% of the distribution !
It’s a bit absurd to say you’re not using the mean because you’re worried about the effect of outliers and then instead choose a statistic that largely focuses on outliers! Why not use the median?
As a fellow Australian I have to agree with some of my fellow countrymen when they say that compared to the US, our tech industry is much more conservative and focused on banking, insurance and real-estate.
From my perspective, we have a number of great developers, its just that most of us (myself included), don't work in places where our tech and work is announced almost like an advertisement. Something that, at least for me, is a weird thing to watch happen so often from US tech companies.
I think a big contributing factor to such a conservative tech industry comes from a general lack of investment in start-up businesses either due to a lack of interest from the government, or from risk-adverse investors who would rather put their money into safe bets like real-estate.
I run an engineering group at Microsoft in Australia, we have a reasonable though not (IMO) difficult screening / interview process.
However despite this, we find it hard to get candidates through our pipeline - even to the point where interviewers have been told "I have 15 years of programming experience, why do you expect me to code now". Now, I'm positive we could improve the screening and process we have in place for this - but by the same token it's not terrible... Yes, MSFT is not a FAANG and maybe there is some selection bias in the people who apply - but we also do manage to attract and retain good people who get through the process.
We also offer a competitive package for Sydney, with the ability to take that and work remote from anywhere in Australia, if anyone is looking for a SWE role :)
If you have 10-15 years experience you probably also have commitments outside of work that preclude you from wanting to sink multiple hours into doing toy problems and practicing STAR responses to behavioral questions. Most whiteboarding is just a legal, thinly veiled age filter.
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[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 226 ms ] threadThis is a bit misleading taken at face value as the US has loads of smaller cities with far lower cost of living whereas almost all of Australia's software jobs are in Sydney, Melbourne and smaller capitals. The Silicon Valley wages are at least twice as good as Sydney and nowhere near a proportional cost of living increase.
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
They are saying that Silicon Valley salaries are much higher than Sydney, and the cost of living in SV isn't anywhere near double (as you point out, it's probably cheaper than Sydney).
Info
Consumer Prices in San Francisco, CA are 7.55% higher than in Sydney (without rent)
Consumer Prices Including Rent in San Francisco, CA are 39.86% higher than in Sydney
Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.12% higher than in Sydney
Restaurant Prices in San Francisco, CA are 22.48% higher than in Sydney
Groceries Prices in San Francisco, CA are 18.67% higher than in Sydney
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...
You are correct and other cities can be checked if anyone cares to do so.
Aside from that, and this isn't Australia specific, but the acceptance of WFH over the last year across industries is quite exciting, with regards to reducing CoL.
She regularly looks at house prices in Sydney and dreams of selling our house and moving to Sydney but frankly I would never move there. I would visit, but I would not move there.
The UK value translates to just above £29k as an average annual salary. That might just about be an average annual new graduate starting salary across the whole of the UK, but even there it seems low. In terms of all software engineers it is most definitely off by several grand.
Silicon Valley pays USD$500k to staff engineers. CTOs for relatively large companies in Australia don't make that kind of money.
$71k is just barely above what the BLS reports as the 10th percentile for software developers in the US[1]
[1] https://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-technology/...
Kind of a joke, but for the devs who are on the receiving side of this platform, maybe not really.
Most of them who stay put in Australia never really get to put their skills to good use. Our digital landscape is quite conservative & somewhat arguably boring, consisting of mainly traditional finance/banking & insurance - and we all know how these companies work internally (digital as a cost centre).
Don't get me wrong, there are a few startups floating around who are growing up e.g., Canva, Campaign Monitor, Atlassian (for which I'd argue is a US company), but even the bigger ones only hire a couple of thousand on-shore devs a piece. Most of the good devs with half an inkling go overseas when they finish Uni to earn good coin and work on far more shaping stuff.
I think we are risk-averse in Australia due to life being pretty good on average here (so what's the point?), which is fine, but more jarringly; the Government do very little to assist or incentivise entrepreneurs. I wish they did more, we'd see way more talent remain here and plenty of more ideas come to life!
(I worked at Google Sydney for 5 years)
I would assume this is not across all teams in all cases, just my first hand experience and also second hand anecdotes from colleagues.
Free healthcare, basically no gun crime, far less polarisation, more family friendly, far less homeless, a more successful multiculturalism environment, strong societal bonds i.e. we were able to get most of the country to agree to large scale lockdowns and mask wearing.
Mateship and community are embedded in the DNA of the country whereas in the US it's freedom and individuality. And those different styles permeate through everything.
But then S/V has the incredible IT and startup community which is unparalleled anywhere in the world.
Also, Sydney's cost of living and housing crisis is apparently even worse than SV, though I don't understand how that's possible. We're very dedicated to making housing expensive here.
And Sydney doesn't really have a housing crisis anymore than Manhattan does. It's just that people want to live inner city without having to pay for it. You can find plenty of reasonably priced property if you go further out.
Even NYC doesn’t have as much of a homeless problem because they’re better about putting the people in homes.
The first thing that comes to mind of many people when thinking about Australia: what about the scary snakes and spiders? How many encounters will I have with them while living in Sydney 'burbs and is it more than zero? What is the chance of randomly waking up with a giant spider on my face?
Given this reality, we'll continue to be safe/slow followers to the rest of the world. Which is sad given this statistic! It is a huge wasted opportunity where we could be leaders in ideation, creations, thoughts, inventions etc.
I don't want life to change, but in the bigger picture, I don't want us to fall behind in the pack.
The statistic is about devs doing well on coding tests, not about any of the creative, innovative things you list.
Perhaps they are inversely related.
Great people and great experience overall.
No they don't. Because not everything is about money. Life in Australia is just better than some war zone in California.
Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my paragliding ocean bluffs overpacked with people. :P
No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it.
We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.
Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime
I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.
Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1]
California 430 assaults per 100k [2]
So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing.
1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report....
2 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/....
The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, but it's in here: http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ under Assault - Non Domestic.
At the end of the day though - people tend to consider being murdered a significantly more disruptive event than getting punched in the face.
California has a much larger population and twice the economic output of Australia. It seems much more reasonable to compare Australia to one state than to compare it to the entire US.
But isn't that true of most of the U.S. We have more crime everywhere than most the rest of the world. And especially violent crime.
I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.
> healthcare > unlimited homelessness, in one day in la i saw more homelessness people then in my entire life in australia, this was only eclipsed by san fran. now i get why devs are leaving california, i wouldn't raise a family there. > gun violence > political instability > terrible pre-12 education system. > general shitty american population (why do you need to clap and chant so much)
Well, one of these things is most definitely not like the others.
I never got shot and killed in the US, not even once. But the fear of gun violence is real, not just as a subjective experience but as a tool, Switzerland has more guns, but the US is unusual in that it is both a democracy and has so many guns on display. The standard response to this from my side of politics is to say that the US needs gun control. My feeling is that the US is different because the US is different, it’s bigger, more complex and there are greater and more numerous tensions and conflicts than the other Anglo/euro democracies. Americans relationship to their government and the culture around personal responsibility and political participation is very different to the disconnected disinterest in my own country. So I don’t want US gun culture exported, and I don’t want my kids living in it. But when you read things like:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Coalfield_War
It seems there is an intimate connection between the generative political culture of the United States, that doesn’t shy away from conflict in pursuit of ideals, and gun culture, that cannot be easily separated. I believe there is something in American culture that calls people to intervene, that urges facing into conflict, even violence in pursuit of higher ideals that is both useful and destructive, even if we could never tally the full cost, in short order we can produce horrific numbers, but I believe this same imperative drives vital movements like feminism, gay rights, anti racism that inspire required changes in my country. So I both agree with you and think you’re missing the point. Cancer, heart disease, dementia are numerically vastly greater killers, but as an outsider from Australia coming to the US the underlying conflict in the society is hard to come terms with, it is much better hidden in Australia. I think my experience is common, I will always regret leaving the US. I adjusted to that sense of threat that personally, and I think I would have tolerated it if I had stayed and had children there, but I can’t bring myself to move my children there.
My hypothesis as to why the new US administration is so fixated on gun control is that they really need to import big piles of migrants to do the low rung labor, but if that new underclass gets guns, things will go downhill. So their plan is to pack the supreme court with anti-gun judges (to bypass the bill of rights) and take the guns. They seem to be trying the Australian scenario where a possibly manufactured shooting was used as an excuse to ban guns.
No longer have to worry about gun violence, surprise bankrupting medical bills & an anti-intellectual population prolonging the devastation of a virus that's killed >500k of the fellow population.
There's going to be better opportunities to work for mega tech conglomerates in the US but I'd expect great devs will be able to get hired remotely, although the salary for IT professionals is pretty decent in Australia as well.
No one understands the weird cultural shit we (USA) have around guns / healthcare.
The big cities in Australia have lots of cultures melting together, great food, even better coffee, and decent transit. What more could you want?
What? I mean, I don't live there and I don't really like it there (except the central coast region) but that characterization is a bit much.
Most Australian tech companies are mundane and boring. They lack ambition because the base quality of life is just so damn good.
Do you really see this as a negative?
But then, sometimes I think I am the sad one, because I always want more and will never be happy with anything I have.
I've meet people who totally agree with my mindset and those that agree with my friends mindset, it really does seem to be a fundamental difference among people.
I can relate to the concept and have to work hard on taking time to appreciate what I have - I call that mindset 'inherent dissatisfaction' and personally found it poisonous, but realise that's probably not the case for everyone.
https://bemorewithless.com/the-story-of-the-mexican-fisherma...
What's the definition of 'good use' here?
I've had plenty of offers to go work in the US but have always chosen to remain closer to my family and maintain an enjoyable work/life balance while still being able to travel internationally for projects as required.
I'd consider that an excellent use of my skills, though I admit a certain amount of bias.
uber, but for dogs
Not Hot Dog
I'm curious what you mean by this, and didn't get a full picture from the sentences afterwards.
I might not work in B2C "world changing" stuff, but the work I have done over the past decade runs infrastructure that the actual world is changed by. Unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean, which is likely.
Edit: Well, I guess I said something wrong. Disparaging an entire country's developers as "never really getting to put their skills to good use" is acceptable, but pointing out that that simply isn't the case universally, and being proud of the work I've done isn't.
As an average entrepreneur you are incentivised to play it safe by bootstrapping into existing industries, and because our market is so small the potential for hockey stick growth isn't there so investment isn't an attractive option either.
So I think you raise some good points but they may be aimed at people interested in the fast paced investment fueled software industries, and there are plenty of entrepreneurs and developers who much rather the moderate and grounded pace Australia offers.
I also agree that we have a lot of latent opportunities that can't be realised in that same environment, we are at an apex of cost and availability that makes it really difficult to pull off big risky projects so that leaves a lot of opportunity on the table.
The hook got them in here (that's not a dev test, that's a dev test), so well played. But shouldn't we just dismiss all of this as yet more BS until they can show otherwise. It's far, far too clean.
This could also say that they are now choosing to send tests to more desperate candidates than before. Either way, I see no way for stats like this to not suffer from selection bias, and after scanning the article I wouldn’t take the numbers too seriously.
Can I ask where you've learned this?
That feels risky?
australians actually do cool stuff, they invented and commercialized the cochlear implant! as mentioned in comments here though, a lot i think get relegated to consulting or IT type stuff to support existing business.
The average salary is 4900 Euro and after tax this will be 2900 Euro !!! Even software engineers in a poor country like Ukraine make more money after tax than that and they also have much lower expenses comparing to Germany.
So why someone living in Germany will spend a lot of time for study, learning all the technologies etc if you will only earn 15% more money than a cleaning guy without any education and who can spend all his free time with friends instead of improving qualification?
So Germany is a failed state for software developers.
It's hilarious to me that most people in European countries will think this about their own country. I should know, as a Belgian having lived in Sweden with friends all over.
A 40% overall tax rate is among the highest, but about the same level as Belgium or Denmark as far as I understand. 4900€ gross as an average definitely isn't bad, though - that would probably be more like 3500€ here.
As to your conclusion of a "failed state": am I correct in assuming that like in Belgium, France, Holland and to a minor degree Sweden, the valuation of management types is much higher than any technical functions (i.e. engineers, programmers, devops) in Germany?
Central European companies seem to outsource so much development work to Barcelona. You'd think that salaries would start increasing there by now.
AND, these day jobs are fluid, just because someone works a mundane job does not mean that's their only job/contribution to society. In fact, the fact that they work a low demand job can enables them to be more entrepreneurial/creative/commit to their community/family, as opposed to some devs who spend every awaking moment perfecting their craft, only to use that skill to help some corporate sell people things they don't need.
AND, you're paying taxes for all the social services/safety net you're entitled, so you don't have to live in constant fear and save like crazy like people from Ukraine or Asia where I'm from.
Check out https://www.instaclustr.com/careers
We work with companies like Doordash, Atlassian, Sonos and Dream 11 running some of their most important databases at massive scale.. and these are just the ones we can mention.
On top of that we are in Canberra :) Though if you wanna stay in Sydney or Melbourne that's cool to!
You can’t really talk about “Australian developers” (or indeed any other nation’s) and ignore 90% of the distribution !
It’s a bit absurd to say you’re not using the mean because you’re worried about the effect of outliers and then instead choose a statistic that largely focuses on outliers! Why not use the median?
Well done AusDevs!
But the more interesting metric is, is this correlated with having the highest pay?
Cost of living normalized of course.
From my perspective, we have a number of great developers, its just that most of us (myself included), don't work in places where our tech and work is announced almost like an advertisement. Something that, at least for me, is a weird thing to watch happen so often from US tech companies.
I think a big contributing factor to such a conservative tech industry comes from a general lack of investment in start-up businesses either due to a lack of interest from the government, or from risk-adverse investors who would rather put their money into safe bets like real-estate.
For instance, Germany and France, colors vs. percentages, don't make sense to me. Are my eyes the problem?
It would be kind of ironic that it was a bug.
However despite this, we find it hard to get candidates through our pipeline - even to the point where interviewers have been told "I have 15 years of programming experience, why do you expect me to code now". Now, I'm positive we could improve the screening and process we have in place for this - but by the same token it's not terrible... Yes, MSFT is not a FAANG and maybe there is some selection bias in the people who apply - but we also do manage to attract and retain good people who get through the process.
We also offer a competitive package for Sydney, with the ability to take that and work remote from anywhere in Australia, if anyone is looking for a SWE role :)
When a candidate flat out refuses to, then this is a huge red flag.
It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the best one we have.
I don’t agree with your whiteboarding assertion.