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I mostly agree with everything here but will point out that SE salaries have risen quite dramatically over the past 10 years in Aus. If you are a (genuinely) se

I mostly agree with everything here but will point out that SE salaries have risen quite dramatically over the past 10 years in Aus. If you are a (genuinely) senior engineer you should be on $170k+. In a place like Brisbane (if you can handle the summers) that's a reasonably liveable salary. But yeah - I fear it's going to end up like the rest of the country fairly quickly... One of my major gripes is that education here is not at all egalitarian. > Property in Australia is like a game of musical chairs but the music stopped in Sydney in 1978 Can you explain this analogy?

brezelgoring 5y ago
The ones that got chairs back then got them, its not feasible to get property now unless you cheat or someone else gives it to you. At least that's how I interpret it.
cletus 5y ago
The central premise of musical chairs is that there are less chairs than people but every round everyone gets an opportunity to get a seat. So in my analogy, the last round ended in Sydney in 1978 meaning if you weren't sitting then then you didn't get another chance at a seat. I remember seeing property shows in the 2000s and there'd be a young couple in their mid-20s with a baby looking at houses that were up to $800K. You'd really need to be earning $200k+ then to afford that or, more realistically, $250k+. Not a lot of jobs in Australia (even Sydney) paid that then (and still don't for the record). So how were such people affording houses? The Mum and Dad Bank is how. Their parents who were sitting down in 1970s were now sitting on considerable unrealized property wealth and this gets passed along to the children.
- BrissyCoder 5y ago
  Ahhh right... I didn't realise Sydney got so unnaffordable that long ago which is what I think threw me off.
  - cletus 5y ago
    Some important context here: this applies to probably every Australian city but is particularly prevalent in Sydney I feel. And that is that the notion of what Sydney in keeps changing. So when I say Sydney became unaffordable in the 1970s, I mean what people viewed as Sydney back then, which is inner Sydney, the North Shore and coastal suburbs. But these have now been so out of reach for people who aren't wealthy for so long that people don't think of them as Sydney anymore. Now when people talk about the affordability of Sydney they're talking about the areas where "normal" people buy. Sydney has expanded far to the West, basically to the Blue Mountains (eg Penrith). It's also expanded south (eg Campelltown). But somewhere like Mosman isn't part of the normal person's mental picture of Sydney property where it was 40+ years ago. This reminds me of something that happened to me in university. I mentioned to someone the suburbs I'd be staying in over the summer when university was out and they literally said "la di da" like it was fancy. To them it was because they were part of a newer generation who lived very far north (I remember they took 3 buses to get to university). To me, it was just where my grandparents lived and had done so for 40-50 years. When they bought that house it was literally the edge of the city, as in the other side of the street was bushland. You see it on the train too. When I went to university the one where all the students and twentysomethings lived was 5 stops from the CBD. 15 years later it was 8-9 stops.
girvo 5y ago
As another senior SE in Brisbane I can 100% back up what BrissyCoder here is saying. Its even more so right now, if you're up for contracting. $1000+ a day is common. Kind of nuts, but hey its been good for my wallet.
- cletus 5y ago
  While that's an improvement and a welcome one, Sydney (and even Melbourne) seem to still be lagging in cost-of-living terms. But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.
  - sreeramb93 5y ago
    levels.fyi does not agree with you. I feel we are making more software engineers than jobs that are available. Many are offshoring product development to India.
  - BrissyCoder 5y ago
    > But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+. Is it really though? I'm looking on glassdoor and it's saying average is $130k with high at $180k. And yes I realise that just salary not total comp.
    - pb7 5y ago
      GlassDoor is like asking your grandma. levels.fyi is widely known to be accurate.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago
  1000 AUD is about 100 USD an hour. That's laughably low for any Brisbane sized city in the states. Not nuts at all.
  - Nursie 5y ago
    You have to remember that tax regimes are different in different places. In the UK I’ve been on about $120 an hour, equivalent after tax to a salary of about $200k, and your health care is already paid. Comparatively it seems like contractors in the USA get punished by the tax system.

brezelgoring 5y ago

The ones that got chairs back then got them, its not feasible to get property now unless you cheat or someone else gives it to you. At least that's how I interpret it.

cletus 5y ago

The central premise of musical chairs is that there are less chairs than people but every round everyone gets an opportunity to get a seat. So in my analogy, the last round ended in Sydney in 1978 meaning if you weren't sitting then then you didn't get another chance at a seat. I remember seeing property shows in the 2000s and there'd be a young couple in their mid-20s with a baby looking at houses that were up to $800K. You'd really need to be earning $200k+ then to afford that or, more realistically, $250k+. Not a lot of jobs in Australia (even Sydney) paid that then (and still don't for the record). So how were such people affording houses? The Mum and Dad Bank is how. Their parents who were sitting down in 1970s were now sitting on considerable unrealized property wealth and this gets passed along to the children.

BrissyCoder 5y ago
Ahhh right... I didn't realise Sydney got so unnaffordable that long ago which is what I think threw me off.
- cletus 5y ago
  Some important context here: this applies to probably every Australian city but is particularly prevalent in Sydney I feel. And that is that the notion of what Sydney in keeps changing. So when I say Sydney became unaffordable in the 1970s, I mean what people viewed as Sydney back then, which is inner Sydney, the North Shore and coastal suburbs. But these have now been so out of reach for people who aren't wealthy for so long that people don't think of them as Sydney anymore. Now when people talk about the affordability of Sydney they're talking about the areas where "normal" people buy. Sydney has expanded far to the West, basically to the Blue Mountains (eg Penrith). It's also expanded south (eg Campelltown). But somewhere like Mosman isn't part of the normal person's mental picture of Sydney property where it was 40+ years ago. This reminds me of something that happened to me in university. I mentioned to someone the suburbs I'd be staying in over the summer when university was out and they literally said "la di da" like it was fancy. To them it was because they were part of a newer generation who lived very far north (I remember they took 3 buses to get to university). To me, it was just where my grandparents lived and had done so for 40-50 years. When they bought that house it was literally the edge of the city, as in the other side of the street was bushland. You see it on the train too. When I went to university the one where all the students and twentysomethings lived was 5 stops from the CBD. 15 years later it was 8-9 stops.

girvo 5y ago

As another senior SE in Brisbane I can 100% back up what BrissyCoder here is saying. Its even more so right now, if you're up for contracting. $1000+ a day is common. Kind of nuts, but hey its been good for my wallet.

cletus 5y ago
While that's an improvement and a welcome one, Sydney (and even Melbourne) seem to still be lagging in cost-of-living terms. But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.
- sreeramb93 5y ago
  levels.fyi does not agree with you. I feel we are making more software engineers than jobs that are available. Many are offshoring product development to India.
- BrissyCoder 5y ago
  > But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+. Is it really though? I'm looking on glassdoor and it's saying average is $130k with high at $180k. And yes I realise that just salary not total comp.
  - pb7 5y ago
    GlassDoor is like asking your grandma. levels.fyi is widely known to be accurate.
LAC-Tech 5y ago
1000 AUD is about 100 USD an hour. That's laughably low for any Brisbane sized city in the states. Not nuts at all.
- Nursie 5y ago
  You have to remember that tax regimes are different in different places. In the UK I’ve been on about $120 an hour, equivalent after tax to a salary of about $200k, and your health care is already paid. Comparatively it seems like contractors in the USA get punished by the tax system.