I'm not American, so I have less insight than you perhaps, but I'd say America is much more affordable than Australia. In Australia most jobs are in Sydney and Melbourne. Perth is mostly for mining and Brisbane doesn't have many tech jobs.
Real estate prices in Sydney and Melbourne are in the million(s), but incomes are ~100+k AUD. Some people earn 200k+ as a principal engineer, but that's pretty much it.
In America you have much more cities where you can find a decent job and different lifestyle. If New York is too expensive, you can move to Raleigh, NC. I don't think that exists in Australia.
There is also a very low degree of innovation in Australia, it's all related to real estate and mining.
Personally I just feel like it's not worth building a life here unless you get a large inheritance, but for an immigrant, America is a much better place to build a future.
Is it possible you don't like living in Australia and that may be making you a bit myopic? You are talking about Australian's cavalier attitude towards debt and issues with housing affordability in the two most expensive cities in the country whilst imagining other anglophone countries being better.
Look at property prices in Vancouver and Toronto, New York and San Francisco or London. You're going to find them just as unaffordable relative to the median salary. The difference is that for you personally - a worker in tech, the US will likely pay you a better salary relative to the median than you receive in Australia.
Except that Australia doesn't have a broken migration system so actually getting a visa is much easier. Also no broken healthcare system, gun laws or student loan crisis. I'd rather raise a family in Australia than America.
Australia is not too bad as an expat, but I'd never encourage anyone to become a citizen here. It's basically the only developed country without a bill of rights. America has many issues, but at least it has freedom.
Ironically, Australians have access to a special kind of visa that allows them to migrate very easily to the US, with work rights for your spouse and everything!
I think you're underselling Sydney a bit there - there is a google campus, Atlassian, and a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close.
Melbourne is pretty decent for high end tech jobs, but not as good as Sydney.
Certainly real estate is extremely expensive and broken, but it's not like New Zealand where the real estate is almost as expensive but the pay is much lower. I had to leave for this reason - New Zealand's housing crisis is much worse in real terms.
> a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close.
How close? let's say AUD 300k (I'm honestly curious, does Optiver/Atlassian/Google even pay that much here?) which is a mind-blowing salary in Australia, tops all kinds of taxes, it converts to USD 220K give or take, adjusted for higher taxes and cost of living, down to about 200k.
So a top earner 0.1% in Sydney makes as much as a strong 3 yoe engineer in America.
I’m not overly familiar with US salaries but it looks to me like you’re comparing net salary for a high paid job in Sydney, to gross salary for a FAANG role in SF.
Presumably they have to pay taxes and have a high cost of living as well :)
I don’t know how accurate it is but the 2020 SO developer survey puts the median salary for an engineering manager in the US at $152k and an SRE at $140K.
In my experience that’s maybe slightly higher than going rates in Melbourne and probably about the same as Sydney.
200k is like a low base for FAANG, and there are other great companies that pays well not just them. It is a good salary in America but not that impresive, as you can get that by just being an individual contributor.
On the other hand, AUD300k is a C-level salary here in Australia and way past the start of top tax bracket (AUD180k)
SO numbers are way off comparing to levels'. They're heavily skewed toward the low end. Think about it, who even bothers reporting salary there? I don't even find SO useful in general, these days when I look up an issue I usually end up on github, not SO.
I dunno looking at the SO developer survey most respondents were reporting 5+ years experience.
Out of interest I had a look at roles advertised on indeed.com in Atlanta and SF for SREs and data scientists. Estimated ranges seemed to match SO survey results reasonably well.
Maybe both just have bad data.
I don’t doubt that there’s some great tech salaries on offer in the US but I do suspect the massive salaries reported here aren’t necessarily representative. Nor of course is 250k/year in Australia.
SREs are usually higher, up to about 180k last I checked, with the market getting really hot in the past 12 months, I would not be surprised if that number's passed the 200k mark now.
250k for non-contracting is indeed impressive. I'm guessing a trading firm, in that case, they are outliers, curious if they have presence in Brissie though.
props for your employer to build a lean bussiness that can sustain paying bank to engineers, and for sharing the profit. This is a reminder for myself not to overlook companies like yours
I was as shocked as you are when we started talking salaries.
Thought I'd interview because I was getting sick of the old job. Wasn't intending to start actively looking.
External recruiter approached me on LinkedIn, had an interview with her, another 3 interviews with the company. No leet code nonsense. Did do a personality and IQ test though. And a problem solving excercise which involved troubleshooting Python and SQL. The final interview followed by a group chat with the whole engineering team.
Honestly the whole interview process was really enjoyable. I'm stoked to be here.
That said, I've worked for small companies in the past. Two in fact. And they both hold the rungs for second worst and actual worst companies I've worked for. With this new company though they also hold the top! But it's early days. So far so well.
Targets change quarter to quarter and are what ever I and my Manager/VP decide.
Typically the targets are technically focused. E.g. product needs in the next 12 months require specific SLO/SLI's being met, in addition to some future customers who we're looking to onboard require us to be compliant in certain security standards. Those are my goals for this quarter.
