[Computeiful]

UKite here, active in the London fintech scene. Everything I say is based purely on my perception of the situation.

Anecdotally, I see more people in this sector moving to places such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand than to the USA. I think there is a perception here that while salaries might be higher in the USA, there are hidden costs both financially and socially (such as health insurance payments, getting to grips with the American "way of life" etc). The American "way of life" in particular is not seen as "glamorous" (again anecdotally) and I think most view it as a bit of a step down, while the other countries I mentioned are viewed as a step up.

Afaik, there are more UK citizens living in Australia than all the rest of Europe combined.

[tiew9Vii]

Unless you are a Data engineer, or React Developer a career move to Australia is career suicide. Just go to LinkedIn and search the variety of jobs and salaries across all of Australia compared to the UK, it doesn't even come close. Salaries are one thing but it's also the variety off work that depresses me more. NZ would be even worse.

I came to Australia and had a good four years but now want to leave after the honeymoon period has worn off. I see all my UK friends doing nice interesting work and I'm stuck doing Python ETL sorry big data / data engineering as that's the demand that pays the bills. My partner is Aussie and want's to stay in Australia so I have some tough choices ahead, career or accept the Australia job market and stay with my partner. I know a few developer immigrants in Australia and they all seem to be over it work wise, COVID and not being to leave Australia to see family has been a big decision changer for most of them.

All my old UK friends and colleagues are now contracting. It seems full time salaries are low in the UK but if you are a contractor things are reasonably ok.Haven't been keeping in touch much but I think there's been recent IR35 changes so not sure how that's changed the contracting landscape. On the lower salaries it does look like they are now higher than when I left a few years ago but when you compare to USA it is still night and day.

[GlennS]

I had a really different experience. Sydney is full of jobs, and they're much higher paying than any I had in the UK. I never lived in London though.

[tiew9Vii]

What are you doing out of curiosity?

I see lots of frontend React jobs, bunch of NodeJS jobs then lots of Python/Spark jobs. Full-time probably around $150-160k average or contracting $1k a day.

Outside of that I see C# or Java using Spring Boot for < $150k but the companies themselfs are a bit meh, fairly non descriptive and closer to the $120k mark than $150.

I don't mind Java but the stuff out here I have done and used is so meh, Spring for everything when there's so much more than Spring. Java 17 was released last week and half the places have only just started using 11.

Even a lot of the cloud/devops stuff here it seems way behind what I was doing a decade ago in the UK.

Recently I've been asking myself maybe I just got lucky and had some good jobs in the UK for forward thinking companies using cloud from the early days at large scale, and my first 4 years in AU I also got lucky before the work changed, so maybe that's poisoned my views. But then I speak to other friends/collages in AU who are not from AU and they express the same problems as me, the choice of jobs isn't great and they feel bit of a step back from what they have done before. I also know people who have left AU completely because of feeling the same.

When i do speak to friends in the UK who careers where lagging behind mine and I was moving way ahead off it seems they're jobs gone from strength to strength where as I get paid a fairly good salary, 30% more than average speaking to recruiters but doing the least interesting, least rewarding work of my life and feeling like the career has gone backwards as now my options are Python/Javascript or take a significant paycut to use some tech I enjoy for a company culture I enjoy.

The more interesting work I have seen has always been overseas companies opening up in AU.

[GlennS]

I think this may be a matter of different expectations.

When I moved to Sydney 3 years ago and picked up a job within a week writing JavaScript at $130k + super (£80k then, £70k now the exchange rates have shifted a bit), I was very happy to be paid >2.5x what I'd been earning in the UK.

If you're already on $180k + super (£95k), then you're already extremely well paid almost anywhere outside the USA.

Regarding technologies: JavaScript/Python/C#/Java, well, you've just listed the most common programming languages that everyone uses everywhere? If you want to do Clojure or F# or something exotic then you probably want a Fintech.

I share your pain about Spring though. Life's too short for that nonsense.

> The more interesting work I have seen has always been overseas companies opening up in AU.

That is where I ended up. But now I'm a Django developer which I suspect isn't what you mean by interesting.

[glenngillen]

I might be reading more into you brief analysis than I should, but one interpretation I could make from what you just said is:

- there’s a bunch of companies that are using technologies that are a decade or more old, doing work that seems like it was maybe relevant and exciting a decade ago, and they are paying toward the lower end of the market - there are companies using newer technologies/more modern problems, paying more

Maybe the solution here is to reskill/reposition yourself to be able to work for the companies that interest you? There’s quite a few companies doing very interesting things in AU these days. Admittedly the salaries aren’t close to the Bay Area, especially if you want a very early stage startup, but IMO there’s no shortage of exciting opportunities. If you want to optimise for income though you’re probably going to have to make a compromise somewhere.

[tiew9Vii]

Don't get me wrong I like paying with technologies, especially keeping up to date. In fact as a consultant that's why I'm brought in, to deliver the new thing the org doesn't yet have experience with. My list and breadth of experience is more than most from the CV's i've seen and the roles I perform going in as a consultant to some very large company's. In most cases up until recently due to job market shift I've been an early user. I've worked across frontend, backend and platform/devops for large flagship brand names and at a smaller scale and i've worked across all three in depth not just touching on them

The re-skilling for me to get employment with a good salary/maintain current salary from my point of view is to do what I was doing 10-15 years ago as a junior. So it's not re-skilling, I know and use/have used these things, it's lowering my expectations on the type of work i'm doing. Meanwhile I'm still on some UK agencies dial lists and there's a bunch of jobs i'd snap up and say yes to instantly. Same for jobs I see in the EU and US. Remote is an option but the timezones are pretty bad for AU, I have a friend who has ended up working overnight for a US company.

[eldudebrother]

What would be an interesting role for you? There must be some companies in Sydney using Rust/Golang or similar if Python ETL isn't what you like doing.

[toyg]

> Java 17 was released last week and half the places have only just started using 11

That's not Australia, that's just Java. Most companies who bet on Java 10 years ago did so because it was a stable and conservative platform; they were not going to accelerate their development practices just because the vendor started telling them to.

Most friends and colleagues in Java shops are all in the same boat: they're barely done migrating from 8 to 11 and they don't really know when they'll move further (although it should be easier). Maybe they have the occasional greenfield project on a newer release, but the bread and butter is always on the old workhorses.

[dzonga]

for someone trying to get into the aussie tech scene ? where can I peruse some of these listings ?

[mmerlin]

https://www.seek.com.au

[versteegen]

> NZ would be even worse.

The difference between Aus and NZ is night and day... there's so much more choice for interesting work in Aus. However I think that's changing; in just ~2 years there seems to have been a huge increase in tech startups in NZ, due to VC finally arriving. I think there are easily 4x more NLP startups than before.

[zz865]

I moved to the US from the UK and I think it was a mistake. The first 5 years were great now my kids have settled I feel kinda stuck. I didn't mind working non stop and dedicating life to work, but its a drag.

[dboreham]

Become a freelancer/consultant. Also perhaps consider moving to a different part of the US. I moved from the lower peninsula to small-town Montana 20 years ago and much prefer it here.

[refurb]

Find a better job that respects work-life balance? There are plenty in the US if you aim for them.

In my in the bay area you'd be ridiculed if you checked in during a vacation, I took 5 continuous weeks off no problem and emailing off-hours is frowned upon.

[mixmastamyk]

When you get some experience and seniority is usually isn’t too bad. All my jobs would extend vacation when I asked, even if some portion were unpaid.

[ackbar03]

>The American "way of life" in particular is not seen as "glamorous" (again anecdotally) and I think most view it as a bit of a step down

I'm actually a bit curious about this cultural perception. Could you elaborate a bit more about what the perceived American "way of life" is and how it differs from that of the UK, and why it's a step down? I've only had the chance to study for a bit in the US and never really been to the UK so I'm quite curious

[willyt]

I think a lot of American TV and movies that we see from a young age tend to portray America as some combination of violent, corrupt, venal, frenetic, a struggle. For every thoughtful film or show where no-one brandishes a gun there must be hundreds more the opposite. We get everything you make here as fire hose of content all in the original language in Britain and even though it’s all make believe and most Americans are living normal lives just like most Brits, I think it must have some affect at some level. It’s your brand perception, if you like. I think it probably affects Americans as well but you can’t rationalise it as something that happens somewhere else.

[pertymcpert]

Comparing life in the Bay Area to life in London: London is a world class capital city with everything that comes with that.

The Bay Area is mostly shithole of strip malls.

[mmerlin]

Perth has the highest per capita percentage migration from the UK, compared with the eastern states of Australia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perth#Ancestry_and_immigrati...

[iso1210]

Perth feels a lot nearer to the UK (especially with the non-stop flight from London, 17 hours vs 24 with a layover to Sydney) than the rest of the continent. It's 7 hours ahead rather than 9 which I think makes a difference too.

[dukeyukey]

And the immigration system. I'd love to move to the US but the family-focused immigration system makes it real tricky compared to Australia (could get a visa in 6 months WITHOUT a job offer) or Canada (working holiday visa gives me 3 years working access no problem).

[wdb]

That's true and the need to be able to drive a car is also a hard stop to move to the USA. I had a job offer but they wanted me to move from the UK to the US.

I didn't get the feeling you can live in the US without a car. Public transport is non-existent or very limited. Maybe my picture of the US or California is wrong

[thinkingemote]

It's only really in some compact cities like SF or Manhattan with good public transport that you don't need a car. Car clubs are useful for local trips. But SV and other towns and cities you'd need one. I'd say in Manhattan having a car is a liability!

[wdb]

My feeling was that it's difficult to travel outside those areas?

[ta988]

It may, however getting a driving license is really easy compared to most countries. And rentals are not to expensive (ok these days are a bit different due to agencies selling all their cars and being stuck not able to buy new ones now).