7 ms·

>Most of the good devs with half an inkling go overseas No they don't. Because not everything is about money. Life in Australia is just better than some war zo

>Most of the good devs with half an inkling go overseas No they don't. Because not everything is about money. Life in Australia is just better than some war zone in California.

s5300 6y ago
Where exactly is this war zone in California...? Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my paragliding ocean bluffs overpacked with people. :P
- femiagbabiaka 6y ago
  sssshhhhhh
- anonymoushn 6y ago
  I lived near 5th and Market and walked to a tech company I love very much near Giants Stadium. This is a short walk. One place I regularly walked by was the site of a random slaying by a person who had been released from prison after being arrested for randomly assaulting people in the same place years before.
- flukus 6y ago
  > Where exactly is this war zone in California...? No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it. We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.
  - rxhernandez 6y ago
    I have lived in LA county for more than 25 years and lived in East Hollywood ~1 year. I have never heard gunfire anywhere in LA. I'm sure it happens in the worst areas but I've never heard it and I've been around plenty of recreational gunfire (outside of LA). Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      > I'm sure it happens in the worst areas I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime
- ironmagma 6y ago
  People in San Francisco will threaten you with violence just for wearing a nice-looking jacket. Nothing about that is healthy.
- InvertedRhodium 6y ago
  While I agree that the other poster was being a bit dramatic, it's no stretch to say that California performs objectively poorer in a number of areas that people tend to pay attention to. Just take one crime - the murder rates in California are 4.3 per 100,000 and only 0.8 in Australia. I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.
  - ALittleLight 6y ago
    Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California. Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1] California 430 assaults per 100k [2] So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing. 1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report/37b4538d-f4c9-4880-a7d0-1871c7ba488e#:~:text=Violent%20crime%20in%20Australia%20is,these%20are%20alcohol%2Drelated%20incidents https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report.... 2 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=Prior%20to%20the%20pandemic%2C%20California's,residents%20between%202018%20and%202019.&text=In%202019%2C%2060%25%20of%20reported,%2C%20and%201%25%20were%20homicides https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/....
    - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
      An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary. The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, but it's in here: http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ under Assault - Non Domestic. At the end of the day though - people tend to consider being murdered a significantly more disruptive event than getting punched in the face.
      - nostromo 6y ago
- deminature 6y ago
  Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neighborhood.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    It's grodey and depressing but hardly a "war zone".
    - deminature 6y ago
      Last time I was there, someone was openly defecating in front of city hall, next to multiple people shooting heroin. I had to step over someone who had collapsed apparently from drug use, in front of a restaurant entrance, and nobody seemed to care. It's about as close to the third world as exists in the west. I recognize there's extremely nice parts of SF, but most out of state/international guests stay around Tenderloin/SOMA and would never know that.
      - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
        I stayed in Tenderloin and was shocked when walking back to hotel people having sex on the footpath in front of their tent, while a few tents down someone shooting up. Then what looked like a 14 year old (at most) prostitute soliciting at the corner. I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
    - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
      I'm not sure if you appreciate how utterly surreal that visage is to someone who is 3 hours off a flight from Sydney. It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.
- monkeycantype 6y ago
  The poster was being hyperbolic. I love California, but as on outsider I didn’t have the sense of which areas were or weren’t dangerous, and to be honest just couldn’t read it, and got myself into dangerous situations. That would never happen in Australia because I can read people and places in ways, and it surprises me that this is true, that I seemed to be culturally blind to in the US. I’m still confused about Compton, to my eyes it read as an easy going middle class neighborhood, is it? - was Dre exaggerating all this time? . In both LA and Oakland (where I mostly lived) there were nights where there was extended gunfire. To be honest this happens in Australia too, but I assume that it’s people out hunting. Oh hang on - I take that back the Proudlock brothers used to shoot each other with air rifles.
bonjourmr 6y ago
I agree personally that it's not about money, but It's an individual scale I guess
dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago
That's extremely subjective. It's entirely dependent on what your preferences are. Even an objective comparison cannot account for individual tastes.
Niksko 6y ago
There are plenty of places that aren't California that still pay double or triple the salary that devs make in Australia
- deminature 6y ago
  NYC is one of them. Still requires you relocate 10000 miles away from your friends and family, which isn't for everyone.
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    NYC is the only place in the US I was actually impressed by, and if I was a single guy with no family I could consider living there. Everywhere else I traveled was meh.
    - DubiousPusher 6y ago
      Where did you go though? I mean it's kind of a huge place.
      - jay_kyburz 6y ago
        I mean Manhattan, the touristy parts.
  - busterarm 6y ago
    Williamsburg has a large population of Australian expats. The Australian dev we just relocated already had a good 10 friends there.
- aesthethiccs 6y ago
  that's cool but you can't fix all the problems in usa with triple salary. > healthcare > unlimited homelessness, in one day in la i saw more homelessness people then in my entire life in australia, this was only eclipsed by san fran. now i get why devs are leaving california, i wouldn't raise a family there. > gun violence > political instability > terrible pre-12 education system. > general shitty american population (why do you need to clap and chant so much)
sunsipples 6y ago
I have been offered increase in pay to work in LA/SanFran/NY/UK/SouthAmerica/UAE and each time I knock it back because each time I have visited those places I could not wait to leave them. UAE was twice the money. The cost and conditions of life in Au are so much better.
TheButlerian 6y ago
What warzone you fucking retard?
mythz 6y ago
Can concur, as an Aussie expat having spent 7 years in NYC/NJ returned to a much better lifestyle in WA before my kids ever have to go to a school in the US. No longer have to worry about gun violence, surprise bankrupting medical bills & an anti-intellectual population prolonging the devastation of a virus that's killed >500k of the fellow population. There's going to be better opportunities to work for mega tech conglomerates in the US but I'd expect great devs will be able to get hired remotely, although the salary for IT professionals is pretty decent in Australia as well.
- diob 6y ago
  Definitely agree. I've had the opportunity to visit and work in Australia (Melbourne in particular, love that city). Everyone is so much friendlier than in the USA. No one understands the weird cultural shit we (USA) have around guns / healthcare. The big cities in Australia have lots of cultures melting together, great food, even better coffee, and decent transit. What more could you want?
DubiousPusher 6y ago
> war zone in California What? I mean, I don't live there and I don't really like it there (except the central coast region) but that characterization is a bit much.
- alfiedotwtf 6y ago
  I used to think Skid Row was just a band name. Then I read this whole article and then noped out of LA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles
intothemild 6y ago
Aussie eng here.. life in Norway is amazing.
- bogantech 6y ago
  How does the pay compare? I got paid twice as much in Aus vs Sweden & got better health care down under too
DevoidSimo 6y ago
Plus, you can get great money working at one of the FAANGs that are here. It's not quite at the level of the US, but higher than the companies the GP was referring to from what I've heard of their comp.

>Most of the good devs with half an inkling go overseas No they don't. Because not everything is about money. Life in Australia is just better than some war zone in California.

s5300 6y ago

Where exactly is this war zone in California...? Growing up in the sticks I'd heard so much about it and had hilariously low expectations when I went out for an internship, but then I found out that it's a fucking amazing place. I swear there's got to be a decades long campaign to make outsiders think the place is terrible in an attempt to keep density down. Honestly, I'd be perfectly happy if so. Don't want my paragliding ocean bluffs overpacked with people. :P

femiagbabiaka 6y ago
sssshhhhhh
anonymoushn 6y ago
I lived near 5th and Market and walked to a tech company I love very much near Giants Stadium. This is a short walk. One place I regularly walked by was the site of a random slaying by a person who had been released from prison after being arrested for randomly assaulting people in the same place years before.
flukus 6y ago
> Where exactly is this war zone in California...? No idea how universal these things are in all of California, but nearly every Australian that visits LA and a few other areas come back with stories about hearing gunshots from the hotel, accidentally ending up in a seedy/crime ridden part of town or something similar. This is very alien to us and more in line with what we'd see on the news from Somalia. Statistics like homicide rates and gun crime show there's at least some truth it. We're also a fairly egalitarian society, so much more likely to judge other nations on how well off the poorest are and not the richest.
- rxhernandez 6y ago
  I have lived in LA county for more than 25 years and lived in East Hollywood ~1 year. I have never heard gunfire anywhere in LA. I'm sure it happens in the worst areas but I've never heard it and I've been around plenty of recreational gunfire (outside of LA). Do you think it's possible they're mistaking gunfire with fireworks? There are plenty of fireworks here.
  - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
    > I'm sure it happens in the worst areas I think the fact that those areas exist comes as a shock to Australians, who are used to gun control and probably never heard let alone seen a single gun in their lifetime
ironmagma 6y ago
People in San Francisco will threaten you with violence just for wearing a nice-looking jacket. Nothing about that is healthy.
InvertedRhodium 6y ago
While I agree that the other poster was being a bit dramatic, it's no stretch to say that California performs objectively poorer in a number of areas that people tend to pay attention to. Just take one crime - the murder rates in California are 4.3 per 100,000 and only 0.8 in Australia. I can see why some people could see a 450% increase in the likelihood of being murdered as a comparitive warzone.
- ALittleLight 6y ago
  Looks like (from a quick googling, may be something I'm not taking into account here) violent crime is actually more common in Australia than in California. Australia 692 violent assaults per 100k [1] California 430 assaults per 100k [2] So, you'd also be trading more of a rare really bad thing for less of a relatively common bad thing. 1 - https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report/37b4538d-f4c9-4880-a7d0-1871c7ba488e#:~:text=Violent%20crime%20in%20Australia%20is,these%20are%20alcohol%2Drelated%20incidents https://www.osac.gov/Country/Australia/Content/Detail/Report.... 2 - https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/#:~:text=Prior%20to%20the%20pandemic%2C%20California's,residents%20between%202018%20and%202019.&text=In%202019%2C%2060%25%20of%20reported,%2C%20and%201%25%20were%20homicides https://www.ppic.org/publication/crime-trends-in-california/....
  - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
    An obvious flaw is that it's comparing an entire country to a singular (and disporoprotionately wealthy) state. If you expanded the rate to America in general the violent crime rate is around 800 per 100k, and if you reduced "Australia" to "New South Wales" then you also see a similar drop - but the site doesn't provide an easy to consume summary. The web app doesn't seem to support direct linking to query results, but it's in here: http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ http://crimetool.bocsar.nsw.gov.au/bocsar/ under Assault - Non Domestic. At the end of the day though - people tend to consider being murdered a significantly more disruptive event than getting punched in the face.
    - nostromo 6y ago
deminature 6y ago
Market St in SF is what most Australians see when attending conferences. The homelessness, human waste, open drug use, and visibly serious mental illness is pretty confronting for anyone not used to it, and that's at daytime - it gets significantly scarier at night if you make the mistake of walking back to your hotel. I've never understood why all the hotels international guests stay in are in by far the worst neighborhood.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  It's grodey and depressing but hardly a "war zone".
  - deminature 6y ago
    Last time I was there, someone was openly defecating in front of city hall, next to multiple people shooting heroin. I had to step over someone who had collapsed apparently from drug use, in front of a restaurant entrance, and nobody seemed to care. It's about as close to the third world as exists in the west. I recognize there's extremely nice parts of SF, but most out of state/international guests stay around Tenderloin/SOMA and would never know that.
    - alfiedotwtf 6y ago
      I stayed in Tenderloin and was shocked when walking back to hotel people having sex on the footpath in front of their tent, while a few tents down someone shooting up. Then what looked like a 14 year old (at most) prostitute soliciting at the corner. I’ve spent a lot of time on the depths of the Philippines, and never saw anything that bad... and that was during a single stroll to the hotel!
  - InvertedRhodium 6y ago
    I'm not sure if you appreciate how utterly surreal that visage is to someone who is 3 hours off a flight from Sydney. It honestly feels like a scaled down version of the slums you see in South Africa butting right up against typical suburban homes.
monkeycantype 6y ago
The poster was being hyperbolic. I love California, but as on outsider I didn’t have the sense of which areas were or weren’t dangerous, and to be honest just couldn’t read it, and got myself into dangerous situations. That would never happen in Australia because I can read people and places in ways, and it surprises me that this is true, that I seemed to be culturally blind to in the US. I’m still confused about Compton, to my eyes it read as an easy going middle class neighborhood, is it? - was Dre exaggerating all this time? . In both LA and Oakland (where I mostly lived) there were nights where there was extended gunfire. To be honest this happens in Australia too, but I assume that it’s people out hunting. Oh hang on - I take that back the Proudlock brothers used to shoot each other with air rifles.

bonjourmr 6y ago

I agree personally that it's not about money, but It's an individual scale I guess

dkjaudyeqooe 6y ago

That's extremely subjective. It's entirely dependent on what your preferences are. Even an objective comparison cannot account for individual tastes.

Niksko 6y ago

There are plenty of places that aren't California that still pay double or triple the salary that devs make in Australia

deminature 6y ago
NYC is one of them. Still requires you relocate 10000 miles away from your friends and family, which isn't for everyone.
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  NYC is the only place in the US I was actually impressed by, and if I was a single guy with no family I could consider living there. Everywhere else I traveled was meh.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    Where did you go though? I mean it's kind of a huge place.
    - jay_kyburz 6y ago
      I mean Manhattan, the touristy parts.
- busterarm 6y ago
  Williamsburg has a large population of Australian expats. The Australian dev we just relocated already had a good 10 friends there.
aesthethiccs 6y ago
that's cool but you can't fix all the problems in usa with triple salary. > healthcare > unlimited homelessness, in one day in la i saw more homelessness people then in my entire life in australia, this was only eclipsed by san fran. now i get why devs are leaving california, i wouldn't raise a family there. > gun violence > political instability > terrible pre-12 education system. > general shitty american population (why do you need to clap and chant so much)

sunsipples 6y ago

I have been offered increase in pay to work in LA/SanFran/NY/UK/SouthAmerica/UAE and each time I knock it back because each time I have visited those places I could not wait to leave them. UAE was twice the money. The cost and conditions of life in Au are so much better.

TheButlerian 6y ago

What warzone you fucking retard?

mythz 6y ago

Can concur, as an Aussie expat having spent 7 years in NYC/NJ returned to a much better lifestyle in WA before my kids ever have to go to a school in the US. No longer have to worry about gun violence, surprise bankrupting medical bills & an anti-intellectual population prolonging the devastation of a virus that's killed >500k of the fellow population. There's going to be better opportunities to work for mega tech conglomerates in the US but I'd expect great devs will be able to get hired remotely, although the salary for IT professionals is pretty decent in Australia as well.

diob 6y ago
Definitely agree. I've had the opportunity to visit and work in Australia (Melbourne in particular, love that city). Everyone is so much friendlier than in the USA. No one understands the weird cultural shit we (USA) have around guns / healthcare. The big cities in Australia have lots of cultures melting together, great food, even better coffee, and decent transit. What more could you want?

DubiousPusher 6y ago

> war zone in California What? I mean, I don't live there and I don't really like it there (except the central coast region) but that characterization is a bit much.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago
I used to think Skid Row was just a band name. Then I read this whole article and then noped out of LA https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skid_Row,_Los_Angeles

intothemild 6y ago

Aussie eng here.. life in Norway is amazing.

bogantech 6y ago
How does the pay compare? I got paid twice as much in Aus vs Sweden & got better health care down under too

DevoidSimo 6y ago

Plus, you can get great money working at one of the FAANGs that are here. It's not quite at the level of the US, but higher than the companies the GP was referring to from what I've heard of their comp.