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Here's my experience working as a SWE in Australia for about 4.5yrs, mostly in Brisbane and recently in Melbourne. I don't know what is "normal" for SV/SFBA so

Here's my experience working as a SWE in Australia for about 4.5yrs, mostly in Brisbane and recently in Melbourne. I don't know what is "normal" for SV/SFBA so I'll just list everything I can think of. The first three points are mandated by law in Australia. * Maximum of 38hrs per week + breaks (~40hrs). I have never worked or been pressured to work overtime, paid or otherwise. I happily do my 9-5 and everything outside those hours is my personal life, especially the weekend. * 20 days paid-time-off (annual leave) per year. Never tried negotiating for more. * 9.5% on top of base salary contributed by employer to your superannuation (similar to 401k). I believe 17% if you work for government. * Comfortable salary. Definitely not SFBA rates but comfortable for CoL. Fresh grad would be ~$40-60k/yr, going up about $10k/yr for the first few years until you reach a point where years of experience becomes less relevant than the type of experience (~5yrs). Some regional variance to account for CoL. I stupidly started low, but then pushed for more until I felt comfortable that I'm paid average market rates. My history was $40k, at ~6mo $55k, at ~1.5yr $70k, at ~2.5yr $77.5k, at ~3yr $90k, at ~4yr (job change and BNE->MEL) $110k. This is plenty to live off and save for the future, especially if your SO makes similar. * Somewhat flexible working conditions. Some companies are butts-in-seats 9-5 from the office, most will allow some WFH and variance in hours (7-3, 11-7, etc.), some allow full WFH/remote and your own hours. * Pretty easy to find a new job. Each time I've tried interviewing I've received multiple offers within about 1 month. * Sane interview processes. Most places will do a 15-30min phone screen so you can decide if you want to proceed, a take-home technical test that takes 1-2hrs, and then a 1hr onsite, before making an offer. * Offices are mostly open-plan. * Some companies offer small perks on top of all this, e.g. retail discounts, device allowance, phone allowance, personal development allowance, etc.

frfl 8y ago
I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about the Australian industry, but I would think it would be similar in compensation to Canada (relative to US). So $110K seems quite high after ~4 years. What allowed you to get to this point? Was there a general pattern that you noticed that helped you go from 40 to 110 in just 4 years? It's quite impressive actually. Was it being in the right place at the right time, professional growth from what you worked on, personal projects, negotiating hard when the offer was made?
- clusmore 8y ago
  Happy to go into a bit more detail on this. As I said in my first post, I shouldn't have accepted 40 to start with. I had received an offer for 55 at another company that fell through when they had a hiring freeze, so I was getting a bit desperate when I accepted 40. The early raise to 55 after about 6 months made me feel a lot more comfortable. The way the raise process worked at that company, I was never present, never given an opportunity to negotiate or even suggest a number, but I was lucky enough to have a great boss who valued what I did, fought for what he thought he could get for me, and told me to let him know if I was unhappy. I tried to keep an eye on the market (just follow a few recruiters on LinkedIn and it's not too hard), and when I went from 70-77.5 at about 2.5yrs I felt I could get more elsewhere. I was also at a point where I felt like the growth potential there was running out (it was a very small engineering dept.), when I was offered another role internally reporting to the same boss (was a SWE, new role was Product Manager, again very small company though) so I took it and pushed for a raise to go with it. At the same time, I interviewed at a few other companies and ended up getting offers at 75, 80, 85 and 95. The raise came through at 90 so I decided I was comfortable where I was. This is at about the 3yr mark. Note: These were all quite small companies by global standards, but normal for a small city like Brisbane (50-500 employee range, not FAANG etc.). Stayed in that role for about a year until I decided to move interstate. I could have kept my position and worked from our office in the new city, but decided it was time to move on. Being a new market that I hadn't been paying much attention to, I wasn't really sure what was fair, but felt I should take my current salary, add about 10% for another year's experience, and then another 10% for increased CoL. I interviewed at a few companies and asked for 110, and got two offers at 95 and 110. I had already decided on the company that offered 110 so was happy to accept it. I'm not sure I would call this advice, as I don't know how widely applicable it is, but what worked for me was knowing what the market will pay, being confident that you're worth it, then find somebody willing to pay it. If any of this breaks down, fix it. At your current employer, the first step is to get your boss to value you, and my suggestion for this is to understand their job, their pain-points, the things that they're accountable for, and then fix those for them, even if it's not in your job description. Try to get to a point where you are seamlessly interchangeable for them in meetings/dealings with other parts of the business, and actually find opportunities to do this. If they're on your side and the business just can't afford you, as much as it sucks for your boss, it's probably faster to look elsewhere. Hope that helps.

frfl 8y ago

I don't have a whole lot of knowledge about the Australian industry, but I would think it would be similar in compensation to Canada (relative to US). So $110K seems quite high after ~4 years. What allowed you to get to this point? Was there a general pattern that you noticed that helped you go from 40 to 110 in just 4 years? It's quite impressive actually. Was it being in the right place at the right time, professional growth from what you worked on, personal projects, negotiating hard when the offer was made?

clusmore 8y ago
Happy to go into a bit more detail on this. As I said in my first post, I shouldn't have accepted 40 to start with. I had received an offer for 55 at another company that fell through when they had a hiring freeze, so I was getting a bit desperate when I accepted 40. The early raise to 55 after about 6 months made me feel a lot more comfortable. The way the raise process worked at that company, I was never present, never given an opportunity to negotiate or even suggest a number, but I was lucky enough to have a great boss who valued what I did, fought for what he thought he could get for me, and told me to let him know if I was unhappy. I tried to keep an eye on the market (just follow a few recruiters on LinkedIn and it's not too hard), and when I went from 70-77.5 at about 2.5yrs I felt I could get more elsewhere. I was also at a point where I felt like the growth potential there was running out (it was a very small engineering dept.), when I was offered another role internally reporting to the same boss (was a SWE, new role was Product Manager, again very small company though) so I took it and pushed for a raise to go with it. At the same time, I interviewed at a few other companies and ended up getting offers at 75, 80, 85 and 95. The raise came through at 90 so I decided I was comfortable where I was. This is at about the 3yr mark. Note: These were all quite small companies by global standards, but normal for a small city like Brisbane (50-500 employee range, not FAANG etc.). Stayed in that role for about a year until I decided to move interstate. I could have kept my position and worked from our office in the new city, but decided it was time to move on. Being a new market that I hadn't been paying much attention to, I wasn't really sure what was fair, but felt I should take my current salary, add about 10% for another year's experience, and then another 10% for increased CoL. I interviewed at a few companies and asked for 110, and got two offers at 95 and 110. I had already decided on the company that offered 110 so was happy to accept it. I'm not sure I would call this advice, as I don't know how widely applicable it is, but what worked for me was knowing what the market will pay, being confident that you're worth it, then find somebody willing to pay it. If any of this breaks down, fix it. At your current employer, the first step is to get your boss to value you, and my suggestion for this is to understand their job, their pain-points, the things that they're accountable for, and then fix those for them, even if it's not in your job description. Try to get to a point where you are seamlessly interchangeable for them in meetings/dealings with other parts of the business, and actually find opportunities to do this. If they're on your side and the business just can't afford you, as much as it sucks for your boss, it's probably faster to look elsewhere. Hope that helps.