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The whole situation in Australia is infuriating at the moment. I feel like I'm in a reasonable position for a young professional but I have zero chance of getti

The whole situation in Australia is infuriating at the moment. I feel like I'm in a reasonable position for a young professional but I have zero chance of getting any sort of housing security with the way things are now. Between bills and rent at the moment it would take me years to save the amount needed for a deposit, and even then I'd only be able to borrow enough money for a house more than an hour and a half's commute from work each way, which totally defeats the point. I've been willing to forgo a short travel time for a reasonable place to live for years, and it's really starting to get to me. Sadly, remote work is also out of the picture thanks to the sad state of my 'ADSL2' that tops out at 2mbit/s... It's just not a great place to be right now

adventured 11y ago
Does Australia have other nice but lower cost markets that off-set the high cost areas like Sydney or Melbourne? What kind of trade-offs does that require?
- Sir_Substance 11y ago
  >What kind of trade-offs does that require? With only a few notable exceptions, some dying fast (mining jobs), the cost of living in Australia but not Melbourne or Sydney is any chance at meaningful career advancement. Adelaide, Darwin, Perth, Cairns and to a lesser but still noticeable extent Brisbane offer only small firms. Let's not talk about Hobart.
  - reinhardt 11y ago
    How about Canberra?
    - jbarham 11y ago
      Depends on how you feel about working for the government.
    - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
      Ex-canberran here: you've got several issues: 1. Higher than average wages mean higher than average prices. It's not much different to Melbourne in terms of house prices. Two full time prof incomes is the norm. Cost of living is higher. Quality is lower. 2. Fed gov is pretty backward and hard to get into (I voluntarily left after 5 years and no real prospect of job progression while still effectively taking below market wages at my org, while non-technical unskilled bureaucrats at other departments got paid 10-20k more, and I was politely informed if I wanted to progress, I would have to become non-technical/non-expert). Job cuts in recent years, promotion based on whether the person above you has died/left yet, and a policy of redeployment rather than competitive rehiring means it's really hard for young people. 3. You have to live in Canberra. Don't get me wrong, you really can make a career of it, and if you and your SO want to plop down, live in suburbia, have a child, and not worry about merit/skills/culture/tech/life while carrying a mortgage for 25 years, I can think of worse places to try to pull it off.
      - spangry 11y ago
        Heh, I am also a 5 year Canberra public servant and am pretty close to my breaking point. I've heard it said that Canberra is a good place to settle down and die. When you're on the outside, you figure all the clever folks in the 'central agencies' have got it figured out; they're tweaking their models and pulling the right policy levers at the right time. When you get in, the horrible realisation hits you: no-one actually knows what the f* they're doing. There's no plan, no coherent goal, just a bunch of people doing....stuff. It's like you've wandered into the cockpit of a commercial aircraft, only to discover that no-one is flying the plane. Are you a techie/IT person? It's a criminally under-valued skill-set in the public service.
        ACow_Adonis 11y ago
        Hi. :) I never worked in the "IT" streams (backend databases/helpdesk/hardware is kinda what I'm thinking of when I say that), but worked doing analytics for the ABS. Which at least at the time was one of the worse paying agencies in terms of the levels at which tech staff are employed, and by tech staff, i mean, people with specialist skills who actually do work (APS 4 - 6, with a handful of competent techie EL1 - EL2 old timers who are still there mixed in with the incompetent APS 6 - EL 2 rusted-ons). But it was also one with the smartest workforces (if I might say so) and had highly skilled requirements. I found my time there quite intellectually stimulating at times, and left for a variety of reasons. Part of which was Canberra itself and the public sector attitude. Part was because they were trying to phase out the higher skilled positions and enforce a mangement-aucracy: only managers get paid high, and we should get rid of EL1/EL2 non-supervisor specialist roles and subsequently they weren't willing to match pay to demand/productivity but had to try to fit everything into the public service predefined heirachy. And part was a crackdown on social media posts and commentary that was happening at the time. And part was questions of whether the government would try to claim intellectual property over anything I worked on during a side project, meaning I had some risk of them not letting me do challenging stuff at work any more, but claiming rights over it if i subsequently did it on the side. Anyway, a whole host of issues. Good luck, hope its managable where you are :)
    - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
      Oh, and if you aren't in bed with one of the parties or politically savvy, I would advise you against every speaking out on any issue ever. Especially on social media. That's not to say you can't, and many do, but you're taking your employment/job into your own hands if you do...
  - girvo 11y ago
    >noticeable extent Brisbane offer only small firms Though, for me personally this is brilliant and one of the reasons why I still live in Brisbane. The small firms have some big clients, and salaries are high if you're good at negotiating as there is a massive lack of talent in Brisbane/SEQ!
  - assocguilt 11y ago
    Still looking for closure...
    - Sir_Substance 11y ago
      Try your local church. They usually take confessions :)
      - assocguilt 11y ago
        You should lose your career for saying that.
- PebblesHD 11y ago
  The trade offs are present even where I'm living now, long commute times and poor infrastructure even for very new areas (built in the last 15 years) make it harder to get anything done. Even so, in this more reasonable area, I'm spending almost 60% of my weekly income on my house and a further 25% on food and bills.
  - sien 11y ago
    What is your reasonable area?
    - PebblesHD 11y ago
      I'm living in western Sydney at the moment, it takes 1:20-1:30 each way to get to my office in north Sydney. I can live with this because the distance means my rent gets me a house with a garage instead of a one bedroom flat in inner sydney. By reasonable I just meant that for the money id say where I am is the best value in terms of house size and area where I live.
      - sien 11y ago
        This reminds me why I don't live in Sydney. Even Melbourne is better than that. Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra all have IT jobs as well where you commute will be a small fraction of that.
- fratlas 11y ago
  Probably 90% of tech jobs (well, jobs which any professional would actually want) are located in Syd/Melb. Tech is just not strong in general in Aus.
- shard972 11y ago
  I just recently moved to Perth from Sydney. House prices here are much better and there is a decent tech industry here. Not as big as east coast but big enough.
mahyarm 11y ago
If your a software engineer: Come to Seattle. Reasonable housing costs, cheaper everything else and high american software engineering salaries. SF has crazy housing costs, higher salaries, better weather and a bit higher cost of everything. As an Australian a work visa is significantly easier for you than lets say a British citizen.
- OJFord 11y ago
  > As an Australian a work visa is significantly easier for > you than lets say a British citizen. Why so? (British, and not planning on it, just surprised.)
  - jpollock 11y ago
    Australia negotiated kick-ass awesome work visas as part of their free trade agreement with the US. For example, spouses can work on the visa.
    - ank_the_elder 11y ago
      Is that with the E1 visa?
      - nedwin 11y ago
        yes or e3
- thejosh 11y ago
  Yeah, but the US benefits work + personal suck compared to Australia :).
sien 11y ago
Move to Canberra. Get a 80K job and get a 2 bedroom townhouse with a 15 minute commute to work for 400K.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- reality_czech 11y ago
  Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a fucking startup in San Francisco that drops vowels out of its name and ends in "io". Choose a NoSQL database that doesn't support joins, and a constantly crashing backend that the founder wrote in a weekend in the trendy web framework of the week. Choose a starter apartment in the Tenderloin that's smaller and smellier than the carboard boxes the homeless live in on Market Street. Choose a fucking "unlimited vacation" plan that means that the first employee who tries to take a vacation gets a permanent one. Choose a facial hair style that makes you look like a Confederate general, and granny glasses. Choose an open plan office with no walls or dividers that's noisier and more distracting than a call center in Bangladesh. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?
  - throwaway_2016 11y ago
    I'm going to get down-voted into oblivion but this is the best thing I've read all week. Well done.
  - sien 11y ago
    Dude. That's great.
  - deadfish 11y ago
    Trainspotting fan? https://noputhyfooting.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/choose-life.jpg https://noputhyfooting.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/choose-li...
nikdaheratik 11y ago
About the same situation for me in Aus. only I'm living in a rental that's 1-1.5 hrs out. At least I've got NBN. I'd like to blame it all on zoning, debt etc., but I suspect some of it is all that Chinese and other foreign money looking for a safe place offshore. Still the jobs market beats the pants off of Midwestern U.S. when it comes to software dev.

adventured 11y ago

Does Australia have other nice but lower cost markets that off-set the high cost areas like Sydney or Melbourne? What kind of trade-offs does that require?

Sir_Substance 11y ago
>What kind of trade-offs does that require? With only a few notable exceptions, some dying fast (mining jobs), the cost of living in Australia but not Melbourne or Sydney is any chance at meaningful career advancement. Adelaide, Darwin, Perth, Cairns and to a lesser but still noticeable extent Brisbane offer only small firms. Let's not talk about Hobart.
- reinhardt 11y ago
  How about Canberra?
  - jbarham 11y ago
    Depends on how you feel about working for the government.
  - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
    Ex-canberran here: you've got several issues: 1. Higher than average wages mean higher than average prices. It's not much different to Melbourne in terms of house prices. Two full time prof incomes is the norm. Cost of living is higher. Quality is lower. 2. Fed gov is pretty backward and hard to get into (I voluntarily left after 5 years and no real prospect of job progression while still effectively taking below market wages at my org, while non-technical unskilled bureaucrats at other departments got paid 10-20k more, and I was politely informed if I wanted to progress, I would have to become non-technical/non-expert). Job cuts in recent years, promotion based on whether the person above you has died/left yet, and a policy of redeployment rather than competitive rehiring means it's really hard for young people. 3. You have to live in Canberra. Don't get me wrong, you really can make a career of it, and if you and your SO want to plop down, live in suburbia, have a child, and not worry about merit/skills/culture/tech/life while carrying a mortgage for 25 years, I can think of worse places to try to pull it off.
    - spangry 11y ago
      Heh, I am also a 5 year Canberra public servant and am pretty close to my breaking point. I've heard it said that Canberra is a good place to settle down and die. When you're on the outside, you figure all the clever folks in the 'central agencies' have got it figured out; they're tweaking their models and pulling the right policy levers at the right time. When you get in, the horrible realisation hits you: no-one actually knows what the f* they're doing. There's no plan, no coherent goal, just a bunch of people doing....stuff. It's like you've wandered into the cockpit of a commercial aircraft, only to discover that no-one is flying the plane. Are you a techie/IT person? It's a criminally under-valued skill-set in the public service.
      - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
        Hi. :) I never worked in the "IT" streams (backend databases/helpdesk/hardware is kinda what I'm thinking of when I say that), but worked doing analytics for the ABS. Which at least at the time was one of the worse paying agencies in terms of the levels at which tech staff are employed, and by tech staff, i mean, people with specialist skills who actually do work (APS 4 - 6, with a handful of competent techie EL1 - EL2 old timers who are still there mixed in with the incompetent APS 6 - EL 2 rusted-ons). But it was also one with the smartest workforces (if I might say so) and had highly skilled requirements. I found my time there quite intellectually stimulating at times, and left for a variety of reasons. Part of which was Canberra itself and the public sector attitude. Part was because they were trying to phase out the higher skilled positions and enforce a mangement-aucracy: only managers get paid high, and we should get rid of EL1/EL2 non-supervisor specialist roles and subsequently they weren't willing to match pay to demand/productivity but had to try to fit everything into the public service predefined heirachy. And part was a crackdown on social media posts and commentary that was happening at the time. And part was questions of whether the government would try to claim intellectual property over anything I worked on during a side project, meaning I had some risk of them not letting me do challenging stuff at work any more, but claiming rights over it if i subsequently did it on the side. Anyway, a whole host of issues. Good luck, hope its managable where you are :)
  - ACow_Adonis 11y ago
    Oh, and if you aren't in bed with one of the parties or politically savvy, I would advise you against every speaking out on any issue ever. Especially on social media. That's not to say you can't, and many do, but you're taking your employment/job into your own hands if you do...
- girvo 11y ago
  >noticeable extent Brisbane offer only small firms Though, for me personally this is brilliant and one of the reasons why I still live in Brisbane. The small firms have some big clients, and salaries are high if you're good at negotiating as there is a massive lack of talent in Brisbane/SEQ!
- assocguilt 11y ago
  Still looking for closure...
  - Sir_Substance 11y ago
    Try your local church. They usually take confessions :)
    - assocguilt 11y ago
      You should lose your career for saying that.
PebblesHD 11y ago
The trade offs are present even where I'm living now, long commute times and poor infrastructure even for very new areas (built in the last 15 years) make it harder to get anything done. Even so, in this more reasonable area, I'm spending almost 60% of my weekly income on my house and a further 25% on food and bills.
- sien 11y ago
  What is your reasonable area?
  - PebblesHD 11y ago
    I'm living in western Sydney at the moment, it takes 1:20-1:30 each way to get to my office in north Sydney. I can live with this because the distance means my rent gets me a house with a garage instead of a one bedroom flat in inner sydney. By reasonable I just meant that for the money id say where I am is the best value in terms of house size and area where I live.
    - sien 11y ago
      This reminds me why I don't live in Sydney. Even Melbourne is better than that. Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth and Canberra all have IT jobs as well where you commute will be a small fraction of that.
fratlas 11y ago
Probably 90% of tech jobs (well, jobs which any professional would actually want) are located in Syd/Melb. Tech is just not strong in general in Aus.
shard972 11y ago
I just recently moved to Perth from Sydney. House prices here are much better and there is a decent tech industry here. Not as big as east coast but big enough.

mahyarm 11y ago

If your a software engineer: Come to Seattle. Reasonable housing costs, cheaper everything else and high american software engineering salaries. SF has crazy housing costs, higher salaries, better weather and a bit higher cost of everything. As an Australian a work visa is significantly easier for you than lets say a British citizen.

OJFord 11y ago
> As an Australian a work visa is significantly easier for > you than lets say a British citizen. Why so? (British, and not planning on it, just surprised.)
- jpollock 11y ago
  Australia negotiated kick-ass awesome work visas as part of their free trade agreement with the US. For example, spouses can work on the visa.
  - ank_the_elder 11y ago
    Is that with the E1 visa?
    - nedwin 11y ago
      yes or e3
thejosh 11y ago
Yeah, but the US benefits work + personal suck compared to Australia :).

sien 11y ago

Move to Canberra. Get a 80K job and get a 2 bedroom townhouse with a 15 minute commute to work for 400K.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
reality_czech 11y ago
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a fucking startup in San Francisco that drops vowels out of its name and ends in "io". Choose a NoSQL database that doesn't support joins, and a constantly crashing backend that the founder wrote in a weekend in the trendy web framework of the week. Choose a starter apartment in the Tenderloin that's smaller and smellier than the carboard boxes the homeless live in on Market Street. Choose a fucking "unlimited vacation" plan that means that the first employee who tries to take a vacation gets a permanent one. Choose a facial hair style that makes you look like a Confederate general, and granny glasses. Choose an open plan office with no walls or dividers that's noisier and more distracting than a call center in Bangladesh. Choose your future. Choose life... But why would I want to do a thing like that?
- throwaway_2016 11y ago
  I'm going to get down-voted into oblivion but this is the best thing I've read all week. Well done.
- sien 11y ago
  Dude. That's great.
- deadfish 11y ago
  Trainspotting fan? https://noputhyfooting.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/choose-life.jpg https://noputhyfooting.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/choose-li...

nikdaheratik 11y ago

About the same situation for me in Aus. only I'm living in a rental that's 1-1.5 hrs out. At least I've got NBN. I'd like to blame it all on zoning, debt etc., but I suspect some of it is all that Chinese and other foreign money looking for a safe place offshore. Still the jobs market beats the pants off of Midwestern U.S. when it comes to software dev.