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My town, Sydney is not expensive because there is a handful of Googlers like me live around here. Google here because Sydney is the kind of place that people p
by adrianratnapala 10y ago
My town, Sydney is not expensive because there is a handful of Googlers like me live around here. Google here because Sydney is the kind of place that people pay lots of money to stay in. And so I have to pay too much rent.
I love Sydney, it is (spiritually) my home town. But I wish the company would move to Wagga Wagga. I mean the place even looks like Mountain View.
- yitchelle 10y agoEx-Aussie here. I wish that Australia would adopt a more de-centralise strategy on tech hubs. I live in Germany now and have seen multinational companies setup their European HQ is small cities or towns. This is equivalent to having Atlassian setting up their HQ in Bathurst.
- adrianratnapala 10y agoI don't think it has much to do with strategy or tech hubs. The Australian population is just very centralised -- it makes sense given our geography and demographics. In Europe "far" away from any big town can mean as little as 50km. Especially in Germany, you are never very far from some mid-size city which once dominated a independent principality. Rhode & Schwarz, B/H/S and Siemens all have HQs within about 10 minute bike ride of where I used to live in Munich. Other companies in small towns were a somewhat more arduous bike ride away. The companies I dealt with that were more than 100km from any big city were more into heavy industry. They are the Aussie equivalent of Newcastle or Gladstone, only with many more companies to go around.
- yitchelle 10y agoYou're absolutely right. Far away travel in Australia is measured in days, where as it is measured is hours in Germany. The extremely Australian population density does not help at all.