[stephenr]

Where are you from? Most visa laws are related to the applicant's country of citizenship.

A few points:

- Australia is a great place to live (I am Australian, lived there till my late 20s), but be aware that it's expensive compared to e.g. USA.

- While you can apply for a PR (permanent resident) visa from within Australia, it's much cheaper to do it from outside the country.

From a more general view I see two points here: You want to work as a developer on cool projects, and you want to live somewhere nice.

To me, those are not necessarily related to each other. Remote working is real, and often the nicest places to live (IMO) are the places where it isn't convenient to commute to a 'regular' office every day.

I first got into remote working through X-Team [1], and while I've moved on to my own company now, I would still recommend them to anyone who wants to work on amazing projects without being tied to an office in NYC, London or SV.

[1] http://x-team.com

[visawoes]

I am from India.

Sydney does seem quite expensive, but I'm okay with it.

You want to work as a developer on cool projects, and you want to live somewhere nice.

That sums it up. I have been traveling and working remotely for 2+ years now. It was fun a while, but I don't see myself doing it in the long run.

[stephenr]

I guess it depends what sort of lifestyle you want.

Remote working doesn't necessarily mean travelling. I've been "remote" working since 2009, and in that time I've lived in 4 houses in two cities (2 in Melbourne, and we've just moved into our second place since being in Thailand)

One thing to keep in mind is that the 'startup' industry is much less active in Australia, and in my experience salaried tech jobs (as opposed to contracts/b2b consultant type work) in Australia in general are quite low, unless you're doing doing "enterprise" stuff for government/banks/etc.

[sanswork]

I just got my AU PR(partner) and the people from India had multiyear waits for their applications to be processed. Are you eligible for a working holiday?

[viraptor]

> While you can apply for a PR (permanent resident) visa from within Australia, it's much cheaper to do it from outside the country.

This doesn't sound right. You apply for a PR visa. That's it. The visa application cost doesn't change depending on where you live.

Unless you meant the cost of living here without work?

[stephenr]

> This doesn't sound right. You apply for a PR visa. That's it. The visa application cost doesn't change depending on where you live.

I've done some more research. For the type of visa the OP wants (sponsored) it seems you're right, there is no difference. For partner visas there was absolutely a difference in price (because it's actually a different pair of visas depending on where you apply from) until recently, when all the prices increased to the same price.

http://www.border.gov.au/Trav/Visa/Fees/previous-versions-of...

[jklein11]

I'm wondering if the OP also factored in the increased cost of living?