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Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand
- throwaway5959 3y agoIn the US the market has dried up considerably in terms of open reqs. Probably won’t pick back up until interest rates ease.
- Gibson_v1 3y agoyeah probably so. tough time to be making a career change back into tech after 8 years out lol
- shinythrowaway 3y agoReminder that there is no skills shortage. There's a shortage of suckers.
- anotherhue 3y agoSome of these are just laughable: https://web.archive.org/web/20230719150950/https://boards.greenhouse.io/propublica/jobs/4252949006 https://web.archive.org/web/20230719150950/https://boards.gr... Principal Engineer, DevOps The expected salary range for this position is $130,000 to $155,000.
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- CoastalCoder 3y agoI wonder if read that the same as others. It sounds like they want someone 35+ years old, with top-tier skills, who doesn't prioritize a good night's sleep?
- MuffinFlavored 3y agomost principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD
- bushbaba 3y agoEven that seems low. New college grad going to a large tech firm can make 200k these days.
- nicechianti 3y ago[dead]
- bagacrap 3y agoI think that's only true if you pretend the equity grant all vests in year one. In reality it takes some time, so you won't get that amount until after several years at the company.
- dmoy 3y agoI think it depends on if it's like Facebook or Amazon. FB probably is paying $200k or close to it for first year vesting only. Amazon, probably not.
- scarface_74 3y agoAmazon has a back heavy vesting schedule and the first two years you get a large prorated signing bonus to get market rates.
- whimsicalism 3y agoyou’re wrong about that
- explaininjs 3y agoMSFT starting TC is ~250k.
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- alexjplant 3y agoAs I've so fond of pointing out on HN "Principal" means two different things depending on the culture of the company. In SV/BigTech "Principal" is a step above Staff. In many other companies, however, it just means "non-junior employee"; these are the same companies that also have titles like "Lead Architect" and "Systems Administrator". Without context "Principal" is meaningless.
- aledalgrande 3y agoI've found Staff having very different qualities depending on the company.
- lijok 3y agoMy god, sysadmin has become a meme title?
- wwtdtgotiatl 3y agoReally starting to feel old here because to me that's one the most legitimate and accurate titles in the industry.
- lijok 3y agoThere will be riots in nursing homes when they find out
- smolder 3y agoI want to know where all the Webmaster roles have gone, personally.
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- sarchertech 3y agoPrincipal means above staff or at the very least above senior in every company I’ve ever encountered it. Senior may have diluted to just mean “non-junior employee”, but I’ve never heard someone using principal for that.
- pcthrowaway 3y ago130,000 NZD is about 77,860 USD Which is actually more than I was earning as a lead at a recent job in Canada
- doctor_eval 3y agoThis is taken way out of context. 1. It’s ProPublica - “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.” Such a job is likely to appeal to someone who, despite the salary, is looking to make a wide social impact. 2. the job also states: > This is a good faith estimate of what we expect to pay for this position. The final salary figure will take into account a person’s experience, accomplishment and location. ProPublica is committed to paying its staff equitably, and these ranges should not be considered career salary limits or caps. 3. It is not in NZ: > This job is full time and includes benefits. ProPublica is headquartered in New York, but we have offices across the country and will consider remote applicants.
- whimsicalism 3y agoGood points. This estimate also looks like it is just base salary
- chank 3y agoThey're still looking for a sucker. That's what they expect to pay someone coming into that role. They likely had the last sucker at that salary and hope to find another. It's possible you can expect to take a hit when going "social impact" roles, but who's willing to take $100k reduction just for that. Either that or they're inflating the title a lot and really just want a Sr. Dev. who again would be taking a salary hit at todays rates.
- doctor_eval 3y agoSo is $250K the salary for every location in the US or just for SV/NYC? Honest question; my lair is a remote beach paradise.
- seneca 3y ago$250k is about right for a Principal "DevOps Enginner" for a company in a major city. Principal engineers are well paid, and SREs (what people often mean when they say DevOps eng) are often the highest paid engineers at a company. You wouldn't get this in small or midsized towns in the US.
- scarface_74 3y agoOutside of the tech bubble, this is the average range of salaries for most tech workers in most major cities in the IS outside of the west coast. It might be off on the high end by $20K
- yawgmoth 3y agoYeah, in Michigan I really can't find anything over 165. Remote has me above that, but not too much. There is wage fomo or insecurity that I am a sucker, but I do not dwell on that thought too much. Have to live with the cards in your hand at some point.
- scarface_74 3y agoI’ve been on both sides of the compensation divide since 2020 - enterprise dev vs BigTech. In the beginning of 2020 I was making $150K and entertaining offers making $165K as an experienced developer with cloud experience. Then I fell into a role working at AWS ProServe making - a lot more working remotely. I knew going in that it wasn’t going to be a long term thing and that Amazon was going to Amazon. I made my money, paid off debt, built savings, decreased my fixed expenses, built my network, learned a lot of soft skills and now I’m looking at very senior/team lead roles on the enterprise architect side making $170K - $185K. I’m actively interviewing and I am sure I will have something in two weeks (found opportunities based on my network at smaller companies). On one hand, emotionally I have the same FOMO. But logically I know our expenses are $1000 less per month than they were 3 years ago and I moved and I’m also paying $700 less in taxes than I was then. I’m also having a lot of fun working remotely. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
- eli_gottlieb 3y agoLaughably low or laughably high?
- omgwtfbyobbq 3y agoI wouldn't compare that to a position with a similar title at a tech company. It's not uncommon for tech roles on non-tech/IT teams to have some title inflation so they can match compensation better based on the pay-scale of their business unit.
- nz_king 3y agoAs someone who graduated as a SWE from an NZ university; around 50% of my cohort moved over to Australia and around 20-30% somewhere else; I can count the number of friends I have left in the country on one hand (four year degree). NZ salaries are actually laughable compared to overseas where you're earning at least 25% more for the same work and a probably lower cost of living
- slt2021 3y agois it because NZ has immigration program inviting IT professionals? do you know if there is big influx of IT immigrants in NZ?
- rodgerd 3y agoThe majority, perhaps even super-majority of the people I work with are immigrants. It's not a problem. The problem is that New Zealand employers are absolutely allergic to paying their staff; they are cruising on the idea that "New Zealand is a great place to live, it doesn't matter if you're paid less, the lifestyle benefits make up for it".
- klipt 3y agoI assume manny immigrants work just long enough to get a NZ passport then use the freedom of movement granted to work in Australia? Then once they get an Australian passport, they can use it to work in the US on an E-3 visa :-)
- 0xADEADBEE 3y agoYou don’t even need to do that. Once you have Residency (distinct from Permanent Residency and Citizenship - the one with the passport) you are allowed to start your own company which you can use to contract yourself out to Australian companies for annual amounts double those of a lot of NZ roles. (My last role paid 240-250K NZD depending on exchange rate; the local role prior to that: 120K NZD) Didn’t know about E3 visa route. Very interesting, thank you
- yodelshady 3y agoThere's an excess of frauds. Large amounts of money will obviously attract them. JFC, if you have "an idea for an app, bro", but you can't build the product, and you can't raise the honest VC necessary to build or acquire the team that builds the product, YOU DON'T HAVE A PRODUCT. I don't know how these people get to go around without being challenged on the obvious fact that, for there to be seniors, there has to be someone training juniors. The level of hypocrisy and greed are beyond words, and the fact that every two-bit podcaster and reporter doesn't call these people out loudly and repeatedly is worse.
- autotune 3y agoHere in the US I find this largely untrue. My job prospects have plummeted, almost everyone else in my network is also feeling the burn. I have had one interview in 3 months where I used to have multiple in a given week. Life ain't breezy any more from what I can tell, and I'm in DevOps for 10 years as mid-level/senior, which used to be highly in demand. Having to slash like $80k on my previous salary prospects just to get in the interview pipeline again.
- explaininjs 3y agoSame, there have been a few positions I've applied to with a 100% match for the needed qualifications and even "nice to have"s, with basically a 0% response rate. At a point where I'm happy if they even bother to shoot a "we've had some many great candidates, no thanks!" email. Compare to a ~year ago when I was easily making in the low single digit (1/N) millions. Damn interest rates, I tell myself. Luckily I saved enough in bigtech to give me a few solid years of runway for working on things myself. Wouldn't want to have a family right now, that's for sure. Lately it's been seeming my best career option is to enlist in the armed forces. They seem to be the only ones with an actual "skills shortage" around.
- rqtwteye 3y ago"Same, there have been a few positions I've applied to with a 100% match for the needed qualifications and even "nice to have"s, with basically a 0% response rate. At a point where I'm happy if they even bother to shoot a "we've had some many great candidates, no thanks!" email. " Feels like 2003. Back then I went from getting an interview whenever I wanted to not getting any response for almost a year.
- sarchertech 3y agoYou were making the in the low single digit millions and are now considering the military? You could have saved in one year what you’d make in 10 years in the military.
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- astrange 3y agoIt's true, Australia has famously terrible quality of life with all those NZ immigrants. (Immigrants increase your wealth because they are people and the economy is made of people. There is no such thing as taking your job. Nothing except falls in demand has ever or will ever take your job.)
- nemo44x 3y agoIt’s funny you mention that NZ expats are ending up in Australia. You would think this article would suggest they have a problem with brain drain in NZ and should solve it by local companies raising pay to keep talent at home. But alas, the solution to brain drain is to import labor from somewhere with lower standards, accelerating the brain drain if anything as it suppresses local incomes. To your last note - immigrants increase supply which is fine when measured, as it is in places like Australia with brutally restrictive immigration policy and remoteness that makes refugees unlikely. But as supply grows then demand shrinks and if you’re importing supply at the same rate as demand then wages are flat and if faster then wages drop. Immigrants can increase the wealth of all yes, but they can also decrease the wealth of most at the benefit of the few when run rampant. But again, Australia is incredibly restrictive with immigration (they literally put many people on an island pending review) so it’s not currently what the CEO in this article is saying. He’s saying more and faster.
- astrange 3y ago> But as supply grows then demand shrinks and if you’re importing supply at the same rate as demand then wages are flat and if faster then wages drop. No, this is the lump of labor fallacy. People /are/ demand and you can't treat them like commodities. What matters are if immigrants have complimentary skills to natives, which they generally do. > Australia is incredibly restrictive with immigration 1/3 of Australia's population are immigrants! They can be restrictive relative to their starting population and amount of land sure, but in absolute terms that's still a lot.
- cm2012 3y agoSilicon valley salaries are way down but average dev salaries are about the same.
- bluedino 3y agoThe recruiters that reach out daily on LinkedIn are still there, but the rates seem to have dropped back down 25% or so. During COVID they shot up so I guess it's just returning to normal. Which is good in a way, I saw too many very unqualified people making way more than I would have expected. I know we haven't been hiring for many roles at all and very reluctant to replace people that have been retiring etc.
- klardotsh 3y agoThe recruiters in my inbox are mostly offering enormous downgrades from my current role - 50-70% salary, usually some form of an in-office component (hard dealbreaker), lots of synchronous meetings and explicit timezone requirements (I have exactly three standing meetings a week in my current role, the rest of my schedule is async and the team is distributed), and often title de-leveling. So I mean, sure, for mid-levels with low standards/expectations, or for folks who just have to take any job they can (trust me I've been there, folks, this isn't a dig on you), the market is still bumpin. For senior to staff (and beyond) folks with strong work-life balance or team layout opinions, this market is still laughably atrocious in the "I guess I should probably start prepping a consulting outlet so I'll have it ready in case anything happens to my job in the coming year or two, huh?" kind of way.
- asd88 3y ago…in New Zealand
- asd88 3y agoI made this comment when the submission title was “Tech salaries largely unchanged as skills shortages continue”. It seems like the title is more accurate now.
- urda 3y agoI think it really depends, and for many unique and lucky individuals they won't feel this.
- glass1209 3y ago[flagged]
- jamesvnz 3y ago> The survey was conducted in January and February 2023. As an NZ based CTO - I feel things have slowed quite a bit since the start of the year. That said, the market is more buoyant than the US based on comments from others here. I think things will pick up in the new year again.
- iraqmtpizza 3y agoSkills shortage means "We could make so much more money if skilled labor was cheaper. Our countrymen are so greedy. Can we please undercut them by importing more desperate and compliant people? Can we get some taxpayer spending to push more young people into this field with the promise of low pay and low job security by claiming there is a shortage? Can you tell them that they will be in high demand and well-respected?" PhDs get paid nothing and yet there's been a "shortage" for half a century.
- QuantumG 3y agoIt means not being able to find available people with the needed skills. Typically this results from locking talent into exclusive arrangements.
- nicbou 3y agoThis is happening in Germany at the moment. The government will dramatically lower the work immigration requirements to compensate for a labour shortage and find new tax payers at a discount. As a work immigrant myself I can't complain, but it's hard to ignore the cold calculation behind it. We're meant to be cheap labour that shows up pre-trained, and leaves before they get old.
- suryong 3y agoYou are basically meant to prop up the pension ponzi-scheme because they are running out of payers and the amount the boomers paid was quite little relative to now
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>You are basically meant to prop up the pension ponzi-scheme Also the housing Ponzi scheme. Germany says they're desperate for workers but actually is lacking the housing for them and puts no real effort in building more because it has Co2 caps in places (lol). You got a new job in Berlin? Great, now good luck finding an apartment. Germany housing prices are completely out of whack. Munich land prices are similar to SF but wages are 1/3 those in the Bay. So yeah, you're just cannon fodder for the German economy. Great time to be an employer or landlord in Germany though.
- DevKoala 3y agoWhen I was hiring in Q422/Q123, I saw plenty of big tech candidates (Google/Amazon/Facebook/Microsoft) applying to the few roles I had open, and on average, they were willing to sign for $100k less than what you see on sites like levels.fyi given their experience. Also, I was hiring in CA, so I doubt the data was biased.
- Manuel_D 3y agoA lot of levels.fyi salaries are skewed because people report their current equity comp value instead of the value at the time of their offer.
- DevKoala 3y agoI agree, but still, you could tell a couple of these candidates had been affected by layoffs and were willing to sign for $100k less than what they were previously making. As a hiring manager, I definitely felt the shift. It was a complete opposite from my hiring experience pre-pandemic.
- Manuel_D 3y ago> were willing to sign for $100k less than what they were previously making My point is that after tech stocks dropped, they probably weren't making that much money anymore. They were likely already making $100k less, or would have been if they were still employed there, because their equity is no longer as valuable.
- DevKoala 3y agoI see, that is a fair point, people will report their compensation at peak. Nevertheless, I was still seeing 50+ candidates per job opening. Just by ranking resumes and discarding those to whom we couldn't give an interview due to time constrains, I was eliminating some amazing candidates to whom I'd have given an interview in a different situation.
- lijok 3y agoHad a look, NZ tech wages are laughable. 140k for a tech lead in Welligton, where a 2 bed rent is 3k/mo?
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- spamizbad 3y agoA bunch of engineering departments got told to work to a budget, and that budget was built on the assumption there'd likely be a recession in 2023. I could very well see things get out of the funk by 2024. The halcyon days of COVID tech job market are over tho and aren't coming back, but we could see something that looks like it did in 2014-2015.
- nicbou 3y agoIn Germany, two job board owners I know reported a marked drop in job listings. There are just as many job-seekers, but fewer employers that are hiring. All of my friends are either reporting layoffs or belt tightening at work. It's hitting recent graduates and retrained workers really hard. On the other hand, Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements, as it panicks about its aging population. This might further depress the wages. The skilled worker shortage (Fachkräftemangel) is constantly in the news, although the worker response is the same as in other Western countries: have you tried paying more? Relaxing job requirements? Training people?
- bobolino123 3y agoTech salaries in West and South Europe indicate that there is no shortage.
- gumballindie 3y agoHuh? Salaries in tech are lower in south europe than in east europe. Assuming there are any tech jobs in south europe.
- suryong 3y agoSame in Finland, the employer side constantly screaming about worker shortage, but I have been in several interviews where when I presented my salary request, I could see the person grin because they thought it is too high but it was just little higher than my current... Luckily, I got a new job in Hong Kong with decent salary and lower tax rate. They want to saturate the market with massive immigration so the salaries never rise, but when there are too many developers, they can actually push them down. If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary.
- randomdata 3y ago> If there would be real shortage, they would increase the salary. Technically, a shortage occurs when an external mechanism prevents price from rising. Think price gouging laws as once such mechanism. Where I am from, doctors are prevented from raising their prices in an effort to give equal access to all, rich and poor alike, which would allow for a doctor shortage to transpire. But a real labour shortage outside of such unique situations would be unheard of.
- smfjaw 3y agoKiwi developer here, we have immigration laws that create a false scarcity of tech workers and low amount of skilled local graduates. Among the teams of developers there's usually only one or two nz born team members with the majority being on working visas or in the process of permanent residency. It may look like a good thing for locals as pay stays high but it brings down the overall efficiency of the country. Saying that we generally trail the US market on these things by 3-6 months and we've had some decent lay offs so the worst may be over for us. NZ salaries are also pretty laughable, even if you're on $150k you can't really afford to live on your own (even an apartment is a stretch) as housing and living expenses are so high. It's only really good if you're in your early twenties and can find flatmates or live with parents and save.
- rr808 3y ago> even if you're on $150k you can't really afford to live on your own (even an apartment is a stretch) as housing and living expenses are so high That's pretty standard outside the USA too.
- astrange 3y agoOnly in the Anglo countries. Other countries build enough housing. (And it's not true in the US, only some coastal regions.)
- rr808 3y agoI know people in their 20s in Sweden, Italy, Singapore, Greece and they're all struggling and/or living with their parents. The main point though was that developers dont earn loads in those countries.
- astrange 3y agoYes, Sweden (Stockholm) at least is similar. I think Italy and Greece's problems are more just that they're poor and underdeveloped, so it's more like poor areas of the US than rich areas. But they don't have nearly the self-defeating housing planning systems of the UK. I'm told Greece has some interesting housing typologies (polikatoikia): https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-design-history-of-athens-iconic-apartments https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-15/the-desig...
- satvikpendem 3y agoInteresting dichotomy of responses here that reinforce my belief that dev salaries are bimodal or even trimodal. I'm still getting recruiters daily in my inbox and LinkedIn for web development in React, Node and TypeScript. I guess full stack still is in vey high demand because it's the actual skill that is for building the core product while devops and the like are not as important, as they could be deferred once product market fit is reached or even maintained initially by full stack engineers.
- epicureanideal 3y agoThat's my skillset and I'm not getting these messages daily anymore. Maybe monthly at this point.
- snoman 3y agoI wonder if it’s the engineering roles drying up or the amount of spammy recruiters has decreased. Anecdotally, I know a number of recruiters (some were even good ones) that got cut in recent years.
- suryong 3y agoHere in Finland they are screaming WORKER SHORTAGE too, but when you talk about salary, suddenly there is no shortage. It's interesting view of the market that when there is a shortage, they should be able to import more and more workers from the outside so they don't have to increase the salaries, but when there is less demand, the salaries should also go down. By this logic they should never increase
- astrange 3y agoThis is a lump of labor fallacy - importing workers increases your salary because immigrants, being prime-age consumers with complementary skills to the natives, increase labor demand more than supply. (They don't have complementary skills to themselves, so they're more likely to suppress wages of other immigrants - so you could say the rational thing would be for them to shut each other out and you to encourage it.)
- FirmwareBurner 3y agoThat's not how it works.
- astrange 3y agoDo you have something to add?
- Joel_Mckay 3y agoVertical movement in most tech companies has stalled for 25 years, and there are several reasons why. However... in general, it is easier to transition into a more lucrative position at another firm, than try to negotiate with people/agencies that think employees can be outsourced for 20 cents to the dollar. FAANG colluded to prevent labor organization on several occasions, and political critters saw an opportunity to make a quick buck. There is likely no real STEM shortage, but rather a shortage of people willing to work in poverty domestically. I would argue we need more politicians, CEOs, and investment bankers willing to work for just standard wage rates... think of the investor profit margins. Best of luck, =)
- abigail95 3y agoDo you in FAANG...? You know there are plenty of high level engineers under 45 so I'm not sure how you see a stalled vertical movement. 25 years ago was 1998.
- Joel_Mckay 3y agoThe probability a Division Manager was purely internally sourced approaches <0.001%... given the vast majority of Jr people are burned out... then churned out in less than 3 years. It actually was a joke tradition at Apple, where engineers tended to leave at the exact same position they started. If you want to grow in tech, than expect to hop companies every 2 years. Good luck, =)
- maya_undefined 3y ago[dead]
- l0b0 3y agoAs a tech worker in NZ, the headline is absolutely right (I just skimmed the article). It's weird to see companies offering the same rates as six years ago, and crazy that research institutions offer a junior salary for a senior job. And don't get me started on mid-level developers looking at spending 50% of their net earnings on paying even a small mortgage, even with the small price drop happening right now.
- iambateman 3y agoThis week, I talked to a friend from MIT’s machine learning grad program who said the job market sucked. That’s when I believed.
- gumballindie 3y agoMachine learning doesnt pay high salaries, at least not in the uk.
- 10g1k 3y agoWhere I used to work, IT staff were treated like garbage. The HR folks and project managers all got huge pay increases, while the increases for tech staff was always less than the increase in cost of living. So I left, started contracting, and now I'm making more than the directors in that old place. I drive a luxury car with very available option, but just to keep me in my place, I just went outside and found a flock of about 60 billion birds have crapped all over it. Stupid universe. /shakes fist
- ryanSrich 3y agoSkills shortage? What a load of shit. There’s a massive oversupply of qualified tech workers in the US. There’s a shortage of tech workers willing to work for what employers want to pay. But that’s an entirely separate issue. You don’t even need to look hard to see how many people are out of work. Simply post a job on LinkedIn and you’ll get nearly 1,000 applicants in a few weeks. It’s genuinely alarming how many people need work right now. I’m not sure how it ends, but there’s no way at it ends well.
- stevev 3y agoSpecifically in the US, for the past 5 years there has been an influx of code schools and boot camps grads entering the workforce. I want to say that we have an oversupply of non-traditional tech workers that were from these schools that couldn’t or didn’t sustain a job. Now when companies are trying to find qualified individuals, there’s a challenge weeding out these from actual skilled and experienced individuals. Combat this with experienced non-US tech workers who are willing to work for lower wages, makes locals finding jobs a challenge. For companies looking to hire US-only workers, too many people are applying drowning out actual qualified individuals.
- aplummer 3y agoIt’s honestly ridiculous how poorly paid SWEs are in Aus / NZ. Seriously consider working in the states for a few years if you can get an E3 visa, and if you don’t like it head home in 4-6 years with a million bucks.
- lancewiggs 3y agoThe article states the median income for tech warders is static since 2021, but it is perhaps more insightful to look to New Zealand's official quarterly employment statistics, which show "Information media, and telecommunications" earnings have increased by 8.4% in the 12 months June 30, and 13.4% over the two years to June 30.
- kuahyeow 3y agoTrain new people ! That is the only long term sustainable option.
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