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Companies are only meant to use the visa to fill a need/gap where there are no local workers to fill a job. The minimum wage for the visa is $40,000 USD ($53k
by lysp 10y ago
Companies are only meant to use the visa to fill a need/gap where there are no local workers to fill a job.
The minimum wage for the visa is $40,000 USD ($53k AUD).
What companies are doing however, is hiring foreign workers (typically from India for IT based roles) and paying them $40k rather than the local average wage of $75-100k.
They are using the visa as a method to decrease wage costs to almost half of what a local worker would cost.
I believe companies are complaining as there is a possibility that there will be less access to cheap foreign labour and they'll have to start paying true costs for workers.
- sanswork 10y agoI'm guessing you haven't had to try and hire devs in Australia before if cost of developers is what you think the main problem is.
- xiphias 10y agoCan you explain?
- sanswork 10y agoIt's really hard to find intermediate to senior devs in Australia and has been for nearly a decade. It's even harder now with a few big companies like Atlassian grabbing them up enmasse whenever they become available.
- cynix 10y agoSounds like they're simply expensive to hire, not necessarily hard to find.
- sanswork 10y agoSay you need a senior developer and there are none on the market so you offer mine a 10% increase and free chocolate bars to come work for you. You now have a senior developer and I'm now in need of one but there are none of the market. When you suggest someone pay developers more to hire them away from the competition you aren't solving the problem you are just moving it to another company.
- empressplay 10y agoWages go up, people flood into the field -- I'm not sure what the problem is there? Don't we collectively want software development to become more financially attractive so that more students choose to study it?
- sanswork 10y agoYou seem to fail to understand the difference between a junior and an intermediate to senior dev and think they are interchangeable. A bunch of new people flooding into the field are zero use to companies that need higher level employees to grow. And will be zero use for a number of years. I get planning for the future is good but it doesn't solve the current problem at all.
- brokenmachine 10y agoThe current problem is that companies are unwilling to pay what they need to to get what they want. I understand your point about there not being enough senior devs locally, but I'm still iffy about that being true. I would accept that argument if the wages had doubled in the past few years or so, but that hasn't happened. The companies aren't trying hard enough.
- sanswork 10y agoSo I'm guessing you have found your attempts to hire senior devs in Australia to be easy?
- brokenmachine 10y agoI'm not a hirer but a lowly employee. See my recent edit. I keep an eye on the market and I haven't seen any crazy wage increases. I'm not against being convinced of the point but atm I'm just not convinced that there's no senior devs to find, at the right price. Also, how long have these visas been going on for? It's kind of a chicken-and-egg problem I guess. Because of the band-aid fix of the visas, the wages never go up and there's no extra incentive for people to become devs. edit: I can't reply any more, I guess because it's become too deep. You say I don't know the problem, but I am actually intermediate-level IT, and atm I have little incentive to move up because the wages are not commensurate with the extra responsibilities in my opinion. So I feel I do have some knowledge of the problem at least anecdotally, as I would personally be applying for those positions if I felt I would be fairly paid for the extra stress/time/responsibility.
- technion 10y agoI've had quite a few friends pack up and move to the US, frustrated that it seemed to be the only option for growing their development work. I guess this all depends where your perspective sits.
- sanswork 10y agoThe two aren't mutually exclusive. A lot of the top talent will go to the states because there are more opportunities for them there further draining the pool in Australia. The companies that choose to remain in Australia then are handicapped by an inability to find good talent and either limit growth or move overseas. The later ones make the above developers choice even easier since there are now even more jobs over there.
- technion 10y agoVery good point.
- pasquinelli 10y agoAn inability to find intermediate and senior australian devs -- (but apparently not entry level) -- sounds like a failure of tech employers to grow talent. Shipping people in from overseas works around that problem, and so the problem goes unfixed. If the industry got that problem fixed, they could drive down labor costs for all intermediate and senior devs, not just foreign ones.
- sanswork 10y ago>sounds like a failure of tech employers to grow talent I see this a lot but people making this argument never seem to consider the fact that demand can increase substantially in a field over a very small amount of time. You blame it on companies not training talent but haven't even considered that the numbers just aren't there. Again costs aren't an issue so driving down costs is at best a tertiary goal.
- hackits 10y agoBtw I'm one of those intermediate and senior australian devs. Looking at changing jobs if you're interested.
- empressplay 10y agoNow it becomes the responsibility of the industry to encourage students to study computer science in uni...
- sanswork 10y agoAnd those students might be helpful for these roles in a decade. So do you expect these companies to survive just cooling their heels until then?
- empressplay 10y agoThat's a bit of a gotcha argument. Besides, it's my experience there are plenty of senior devs to go around.
- sanswork 10y agoYour experience is apparently going to a meet up to help a friend find a job. I'm not sure your experience is reality.
- hiram112 10y agoToo bad for these companies. They gamed with basic supply and demand. Lot of industries which don't abuse foreign labor as much have a steady pipeline of candidates because these grads saw your company - shitty wages, awful working conditions, no future - and bailed the fuck out and into a other career path. Now these companies, dependent on cheap visa labor, may have to pay back some of the fat cash they've gained by screwing their own nations' workforce for the last two decades.
- sanswork 10y agoTech doesn't need a steady pipeline there has been a huge increase in demand. Where after you looking with shitty wages and awful working conditions? And what other career paths do you think these people bailed out into that have better pay?
- weeksie 10y agoTo be fair, anecdotally at least, a ton of seniors/intermediates just migrate elsewhere. The pay for dev work in the US is _WAY_ higher than in Oz, especially at that level. Though, I've been away for almost ten years so maybe that has changed.
- catmanjan 10y agoAs sanswork said, easy to get new devs, but as soon as they've put in a few years it's very easy to go out on your own or go overseas.
- hiram112 10y agoSo what? You'll have to compete? You've gotten so used to your cheap labor, indentured workforce,that you can't even contemplate employees participating in a free market?
- sanswork 10y agoThere are 10 people working that can do the job there industry needs 15. How do you get the extra 5 just by increasing salaries?
- catmanjan 10y agoThat's globalization I guess, an extreme example is: would you blame a nation in poverty struggling for existence in the modern world for not attracting good techos? As for contractors, all's fair in the free market except when contracting to government who are blind to /real/ value due to a range of bureaucratic reasons.
- empressplay 10y agoI've recently had a pretty good look at the Melbourne software dev market and there are seemingly plenty of senior devs looking for work, companies here appear to have the "pick of the litter" when hiring. Maybe you're just in the wrong part of Australia?
- sanswork 10y agoWhen you say you had a pretty good look at the market what do you mean?
- empressplay 10y agoI mean I helped someone look for a new role and got to see the major local players and the talent pool they're hiring from (if they hire at all, lots of places seem to advertise but are in no hurry to actually hire anyone.) There are plenty of fish in the sea, at least around here. All you have do is go to a meetup group or two to see that.
- sanswork 10y agoHow did you see the talent pool they are hiring from if you were helping someone look for a job and not helping someone hire for a job? Did you ask companies to see their applicant lists and CVs or something? Any of the meetups I've been to in Australia are mostly employed people(half only there to try and find other devs), recruiters and uni students or recent grads. Which meetups did you go to it would likely be worth adding them to my list for next time I'm in Melbourne.
- catmanjan 10y agoI think he's implying that there should be more poaching... Personally I find it a strange concept which seems confined to sales and tech jobs (especially in America)
- ZvG_Bonjwa 10y agoMelbourne is a positive outlier and not at all representative of the rest of Australia. Finding senior devs in Brisbane is an insanely arduous process and its not uncommon to see positions take 6+ months to fill (at least at the places I've worked at). Even when companies start throwing money around like crazy, the talent just isn't there. I've heard that Sydney isn't so great either. Once devs hit seniority they run along to join a hip Melbournian startup, get gobbled up by Atlassian, or just migrate to Silicon Valley.
- pyrophane 10y agoSo, essentially this parallels the H1-B situation in the US. We are NOT (at least many of us) opposed to immigration. We want more Americans. What we don't want is a class of temporary workers to out-compete domestic workers because they 1) can't switch jobs and 2) are cheaper.
- zik 10y agoYes, Australian "457 visas" are the equivalent of US H1-B visas.