5 ms·

I think you're underselling Sydney a bit there - there is a google campus, Atlassian, and a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but p

I think you're underselling Sydney a bit there - there is a google campus, Atlassian, and a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close. Melbourne is pretty decent for high end tech jobs, but not as good as Sydney. Certainly real estate is extremely expensive and broken, but it's not like New Zealand where the real estate is almost as expensive but the pay is much lower. I had to leave for this reason - New Zealand's housing crisis is much worse in real terms.

nsonha 5y ago
> a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close. How close? let's say AUD 300k (I'm honestly curious, does Optiver/Atlassian/Google even pay that much here?) which is a mind-blowing salary in Australia, tops all kinds of taxes, it converts to USD 220K give or take, adjusted for higher taxes and cost of living, down to about 200k. So a top earner 0.1% in Sydney makes as much as a strong 3 yoe engineer in America.
- LilBytes 5y ago
  SRE's in Sydney are on $250,000K for Google, + equity.
- jeeeb 5y ago
  I’m not overly familiar with US salaries but it looks to me like you’re comparing net salary for a high paid job in Sydney, to gross salary for a FAANG role in SF. Presumably they have to pay taxes and have a high cost of living as well :) I don’t know how accurate it is but the 2020 SO developer survey puts the median salary for an engineering manager in the US at $152k and an SRE at $140K. In my experience that’s maybe slightly higher than going rates in Melbourne and probably about the same as Sydney.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    200k is like a low base for FAANG, and there are other great companies that pays well not just them. It is a good salary in America but not that impresive, as you can get that by just being an individual contributor. On the other hand, AUD300k is a C-level salary here in Australia and way past the start of top tax bracket (AUD180k) SO numbers are way off comparing to levels'. They're heavily skewed toward the low end. Think about it, who even bothers reporting salary there? I don't even find SO useful in general, these days when I look up an issue I usually end up on github, not SO.
    - dannyw 5y ago
      Senior engineers at Google Australia can make AUD 300k total comp. You don't have to be C-level.
      - nsonha 5y ago
        doesn't seem to be ordinary level though, on levels > Australia, the number of entry points above 300k fits in the first page (10 people). The point is, in AU, making 300k is a really big deal (high rank in FAANG), while it's far from a big deal in the US.
    - jeeeb 5y ago
      I dunno looking at the SO developer survey most respondents were reporting 5+ years experience. Out of interest I had a look at roles advertised on indeed.com in Atlanta and SF for SREs and data scientists. Estimated ranges seemed to match SO survey results reasonably well. Maybe both just have bad data. I don’t doubt that there’s some great tech salaries on offer in the US but I do suspect the massive salaries reported here aren’t necessarily representative. Nor of course is 250k/year in Australia.

nsonha 5y ago

> a lot of finance companies offering high salaries. Not SV level, but pretty close. How close? let's say AUD 300k (I'm honestly curious, does Optiver/Atlassian/Google even pay that much here?) which is a mind-blowing salary in Australia, tops all kinds of taxes, it converts to USD 220K give or take, adjusted for higher taxes and cost of living, down to about 200k. So a top earner 0.1% in Sydney makes as much as a strong 3 yoe engineer in America.

LilBytes 5y ago
SRE's in Sydney are on $250,000K for Google, + equity.
jeeeb 5y ago
I’m not overly familiar with US salaries but it looks to me like you’re comparing net salary for a high paid job in Sydney, to gross salary for a FAANG role in SF. Presumably they have to pay taxes and have a high cost of living as well :) I don’t know how accurate it is but the 2020 SO developer survey puts the median salary for an engineering manager in the US at $152k and an SRE at $140K. In my experience that’s maybe slightly higher than going rates in Melbourne and probably about the same as Sydney.
- nsonha 5y ago
  200k is like a low base for FAANG, and there are other great companies that pays well not just them. It is a good salary in America but not that impresive, as you can get that by just being an individual contributor. On the other hand, AUD300k is a C-level salary here in Australia and way past the start of top tax bracket (AUD180k) SO numbers are way off comparing to levels'. They're heavily skewed toward the low end. Think about it, who even bothers reporting salary there? I don't even find SO useful in general, these days when I look up an issue I usually end up on github, not SO.
  - dannyw 5y ago
    Senior engineers at Google Australia can make AUD 300k total comp. You don't have to be C-level.
    - nsonha 5y ago
      doesn't seem to be ordinary level though, on levels > Australia, the number of entry points above 300k fits in the first page (10 people). The point is, in AU, making 300k is a really big deal (high rank in FAANG), while it's far from a big deal in the US.
  - jeeeb 5y ago
    I dunno looking at the SO developer survey most respondents were reporting 5+ years experience. Out of interest I had a look at roles advertised on indeed.com in Atlanta and SF for SREs and data scientists. Estimated ranges seemed to match SO survey results reasonably well. Maybe both just have bad data. I don’t doubt that there’s some great tech salaries on offer in the US but I do suspect the massive salaries reported here aren’t necessarily representative. Nor of course is 250k/year in Australia.