11 ms·

IT workers struggling in New Zealand's tight job market

84 points by MarcoDewey 1y ago

alephnerd 1y ago
Tbf, NZ had been in a recession until this past quarter, and NZ was never that hot of a tech hub compared to a number of hubs in Australia, let alone the rest of APAC. And this article appears to be about the immigrant Chinese community in NZ, who would probably be at a further disadvantage as they would require additional sponsorship from employers.
- latentsea 1y ago
  > And this article appears to be about the immigrant Chinese community in NZ, who would probably be at a further disadvantage as they would require additional sponsorship from employers. Not only do they require sponsorship, but as part of the application process for sponsoring I think they're required to prove or make a case that they couldn't find any local talent to fill the position. I have worked on teams in NZ that had people where the company sponsored their visas, so it does happen.
jmyeet 1y ago
Everyone in New Zealand is struggling unless you've been there for 10-20+ years (when you could still afford a house) or you're an immigrant who sold a house in your home country and thus you can afford a house. The average wage in NZ is NZ$61k and the average house price is NZ$908k. This is absolutely unsustainable. This same pattern is playing out to various degrees in Australia, the UK, pretty much anywhere in Europe (certainly Western Europe), Scandanavia any any large city in the US. And as far as I can tell there's absolutely no serious political opposition to any of this happening in any of these countries. None. Your political choices are between the extreme neoliberalism with lots of racism and the slightly milder neoliberalism with slightly less overt racism. This is all capitalism working as intended. Every part of this is a series of intentional policy changes designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra-wealthy. Housing is being hoarded and artifically constrained in supply. People are being loaded up with student debt, medical debt and mortgage debt where we careen ever closer to the South Asian brick kilns.
- reactordev 1y ago
  So what you’re really saying is NZ is for sale…
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    All countries are if you're VHNWI ($5-7M minimum) or on a skilled visa. Plenty of options open up for skilled visas with somewhat expedited naturalization.
    - wordofx 1y ago
      No. Most of Asia can’t be bought. Foreigners cannot own property in lots of Asian countries.
  - hcfman 1y ago
    Yeah sure, didn't Peter Thiel buy a chunk of it ?
- lotsofpulp 1y ago
  > Every part of this is a series of intentional policy changes designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra-wealthy. No, it is a transfer from those who don’t own land to those who already own land. Roughly correlates to young/poor/immigrant classes transferring wealth (or maintaining wealth disparity) to older/richer/beneficiary classes. That is why it is politically popular. Low and flat land value tax rates have always enabled this, but their effects were temporarily masked by the population boom allowing a lot of upward movement in the lower (non land owning) classes due to broad economic growth.
- energy123 1y ago
  It's got little to do with the ultra-wealthy, who have their wealth in equity. The problem is the upper middle class who have their wealth in land. They are 30% of the population and command election outcomes against anyone who tries to change the status quo. To them, the housing crisis is a housing bonanza and they plan on keeping it that way. I also take issue with buzzword "neoliberal", as if leftists would be any better with their rent control, NIMBY tendencies, and ideological hostility to supply-side policy (see Dean Preston in US, Zohran Mamdani in US, Adrian Ramsay in UK, Chandler-Mather in AU). In my estimation, they would be worse than any "abundance neoliberal", who at least have Austin, Texas as a successful case study they can point to, and who have ideas that make logical sense. The problem is not their policy ideas but the political reality they exist in where they're constrained in what they can do by a politically active plurality (landowners) that wish to persist the status quo.
creakingstairs 1y ago
We are heading back to New Zealand soon and the situation does seem pretty grim from what I hear from friends. Ideally, we’d like to settle down in NZ but it’s looking like we may end up in Australia instead.
- jp0d 1y ago
  To be honest, we Australians aren't doing so well either. But you're correct, it's a comparatively bigger economy. There are more opportunities. But we've hundreds if not thousands applying for the same job.
- jemmyw 1y ago
  There are quite a few remote work opportunities around with US and AU companies. It might not be what you're looking for, but it seems to work pretty well with an NZ lifestyle.
- bigfatkitten 1y ago
  AU market isn’t too crash hot either, at the moment.
- apatheticonion 1y ago
  As a kiwi living in Australia and working for mini FANG, the thought of moving to Southeast Asia and living off savings for a couple of years in the hope that I might wait out this jobs/rental crisis has crossed my mind.
  - FlyingSnake 1y ago
    What is a MiniFANG?
    - beachy 1y ago
      In Aus could be Atlassian
      - miffy900 1y ago
gsf_emergency 1y ago
According to a study promoted by Financial Times, it's a known downside of this one weird effect https://archive.ph/YjX1w https://archive.ph/YjX1w
- alephnerd 1y ago
  NZ's business culture is very different from that of the US (which that FT article from the weekend was about). IMO, it's much more scelrotic and makes Australia's old boy's club look dynamic.
  - gsf_emergency 1y ago
    I'm saying it's due to NZs very clean air and water compared to even OZ, did you even click (Don't get me started on BRICS)
    - alephnerd 1y ago
      I read it this weekend. It was dumb then, and it's dumb now. Correlation does not imply causation - this is taught in the first week of high school statistics. The significant amount of superfund sites also confounds with mass industry, which can make the epigenetic theory moot.
      - gsf_emergency 1y ago
        It makes a falsifiable prediction tho: compared to the other BRICS China is gonna tank
        alephnerd 1y ago
        Ever heard of an RCT?
        gsf_emergency 1y ago
        Defo not heard of one that tests national economies :)
Nekhrimah 1y ago
The framing of this story right from the start is disingenuous. The Microsoft job losses are explicitly reported as "part of a broader strategy to streamline operations and accelerate its AI initiatives." Immediately followed by reporting that Health NZ (rebranded from Te Whatu Ora) is cutting a third of its IT staff. The implication being that it's the same reason. It's not. The current NZ government is working through the "Starve the Beast" strategy; intentionally underfunding ministries and services so they can be punished or sold off later for "underperforming". RNZ's service to the right wing side of the political spectrum hasn't saved them though, they're having funding cut too [0]. [0] https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360698953/funding-cut-rnz-minister-issues-challenge-improve-reach-trust https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360698953/funding-cut-rnz-m...
- foxglacier 1y ago
  > intentionally underfunding ministries and services so they can be punished or sold off later for "underperforming". Do you have a source for that or is it just a conspiracy theory?
  - jpalawaga 1y ago
    A source that what? That says Right wing/small government parties generally tend to make the government smaller by privatizing services? There’s no conspiracy theory, it’s literally their MO.
  - dijit 1y ago
    https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/1789041783 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/... NHS is the National Health Service in the UK and this book was Co-Authored by the Minister for Health of the UK (before he got that post). It details this strategy clearly.
    - foxglacier 1y ago
      That's a different government. From yours and the other replies, I see it is just a conspiracy theory. Of course it's possible for a government to reduce funding for departments to save money without the goal of privatizing them.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
teruakohatu 1y ago
I can confirm this is the case when my organisation advertises roles they get inundated with applications. But paradoxically there is simultaneously a lack of top tier within New Zealand. I the past year I have turned down an unsolicited job offer and I am also aware of two or three roles in two organisations that are not being advertised for due to lack of available talent. New Zealand has a *lot* of potential, but this potential eventually ends up in Australia, London or the USA. Countries should aspired to be an anode, not a cathode. The politicians [1] I have spoken to about this issue generally don't consider it to be a pressing matter and are happy for New Zealand firms to move the HQ overseas if they are employing kiwis locally, in much the same way US firms might open an office in Asia to take advantage of lower wages. [1] One nice thing about New Zealand is that you can get face to face time with a Member of Parliament easily, and Cabinet Minister if you are persistent.
- droopyEyelids 1y ago
  Hard to make it an electricity analogy, when the anode is actually the source of electrons! But i got your point and agree
  - irjustin 1y ago
    Such is my pet peeve. Soap box - Analogies simply don't help. They invariably have some flaw and rarely aid in actual understanding as is the case with the anode/cathode reference. I know 100% of readers understand that countries want to attract talent, but <100% of people understand anode+cathode functions. It gets worse when others attempt to build off the analogy and so it becomes flawed on top of flawed. At some point, semantic arguments begin, i.e. source of electrons, and now we're quite far from countries+talent. STOP USING ANALOGIES
    - malux85 1y ago
      You're making a huge assumption yourself - that the goal of communication is to appeal to the greatest number of readers. This is not always true and often deliberately not always true.
JusticeJuice 1y ago
I worked in the nz tech startup market for 8 years before moving overseas. To say nz tech is a tiny market is an understatement, when the population of the country is the size of most cities, there’s just that not that many opportunities. It does mean for many people the only way for career growth is to go elsewhere. When I left nz my salary 3x’d. The opportunity here is that there is many talented tech workers who choose to stay in NZ for lifestyle reasons. Foreign companies can compete so easily on salaries, it’s easy to just buy the top of the market for half the price. You will need local recruitment help though to find them. The time zones are rough, you need to be a company that’s embraced async working, and are able to give a team a clear brief and just let them do it. But the hiring opportunities are there.
- imadethis 1y ago
  Are there many people involved in follow the sun support or SRE roles there? I know my company only has an engineering presence in Aus and Japan because of the large coverage gap between the US west coast and the EU. Seems like low wages + native English* could be a nice win for companies. * For some definitions of native. I've had to work as a translator for a Kiwi and an American, both native English speakers.
  - JusticeJuice 1y ago
    I know that aws has a few reliability engineers in Wellington, but that’s just to support their aus servers. There really isn’t that many foreign companies outsourcing support to NZ.
  - latentsea 1y ago
    > Seems like low wages + native English* could be a nice win for companies. It's not always native English. It's always at least proficient enough, but a good chunk of the workers in the tech sector speak English as a second language. NZ has very diverse population.
  - te_chris 1y ago
    It's a slightly weird one, but Octopus Energy (UK) have setup a new utility in NZ and it also covers off-hours support.
hcfman 1y ago
35 ??? Holy crap! I guess the reasons I left New Zealand more than 35 years ago are still true.
- latentsea 1y ago
  This 35 thing referred to in the article is a phenomenon present in the Chinese tech market, not the NZ one. There's no such thing in the NZ one, and I pity the Chinese with their 996 and curse of 35. What an awfully structured tech industry they have. NZ is in general much better, but there is definitely fewer positions lately.
kmarc 1y ago
Switzerland has something similar these days (UBS-CS merger, big tech layoffs, too expensive local workforce) I applied to 39 jobs (mostly through LinkedIn) Out of which 29 in Switzerland, the rest mainly fully remote in Europe and US. I got in total around 6 companies' 20-something interviews. Exactly ONE interview ouf of those was in Switzerland. Crazy (I might just not be enough for this competitive market, I know. Eventually I ended up with a consulting job within the EU, obviously for lower daily rate, which is fine) Fun thing is, the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  I remember reading around here about how many companies in Switzerland like Roche, offshore a lot of mid-tier tech jobs (like web dev) out to places like Poland due to much better performance/cost. IIRC, Acronis also has most of their devs in Bulgaria now. I also remember reading a few years ago an interview with a Swisscom exec about offshoring their devops jobs to the Netherlands on the claim they can't find local devops talent. Now I'm not in Switzerland and even I'm not buying that reason at face value, but it's clear that offshoring is an issue in most high-CoL countries in the post WFH era as a lot of tech jobs became more of a commodity in the post ZIRP era. So I can imagine the jobs not moving out of Switzerland are those "management" type of jobs where the job itself is having coffee and networking with the other managers on how to further reduce costs and increase profits while relocating engineering jobs to cheaper countries. Due to this, it seems that Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now. >the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly This explains some of the absurd arguments I often hear from delulu googlers on this board and how out of touch they are with the real world. The sad thing is they have little introspection to realize it and would rather die on their hill.
  - kmarc 1y ago
h4kunamata 1y ago
That is everywhere including Australia. I did an interview the other day, the roles had like hundreds of applications. The naked truth is that if you don't know recruiters, you are fcked!! Why??? 1. Big companies have fired people by the thousands. Many from which were hired during COVID gold era but the market now shrank; 2. The IT market has way too many high skilled folks from those big techs, some John Doe also; 3. Many places have adopted AI tools so unless your resume looks exactly that it is looking for, you are automatically denied; 4. Many roles are a mess, the role is DevOps but somehow the role descriptions is for a Network Engineer, go figure; 5. Social problems like hiring people based on weird ideology like wokeness and not based on skill and experience. You won't get in no matter how good you are and to be honest, you don't wanna be in such toxic culture anyway so a win-win. 6. Ghosted, very hard to avoid this. 7. AI: This is affecting more developers in some way. You cannot have or trust AI to manage infra/network yet. I could go on and on, in short words, companies can afford to do whatever now. During COVID, my last two jobs required one interview only and I was in, now?? 4 interviews and you are ghosted. Don't waste your time applying for jobs online, instead, focus on recruiters that hire folks based in your experience. The recruiter that got me at my current job ( I know him for 3 years now) is the same one that got me an interview with that company with hundreds of applications within days not even weeks. But still, there are two major problems you cannot avoid: 1. Companies can afford to wait, if you don't have experience on every single goddamn thing, it makes it very hard to get in. 3-4 interviews are the new normal now. It is becoming normal now to require you to know everything if you are within DevOps, Platform, DevSecOps space. 2. Ghosted: Some recruiters themselves are just dogsh*t, they ghost you, others have no experience at all, just scripted so you will just waste time; Companies ghost you while trying to find the perfect candidate after you have 4 interviews. Yup, 4 interviews, the company disappeared only to show up a month later saying they found somebody better :) Online applications is even worse (AI, your name it) If you wanna somehow find a job, hunt recruiters, not job. Have a decent resume that doesn't look a kids homework haha You will stress less, you will avoid applying for a 100 places where 99% of them will never read your application. Let him/her do their thing.
HenryBemis 1y ago
> "When an employer was initially interested, they often backed out once they realised I was based in Beijing." Yes, of course. You/that person may be the best & nicest on the planet, and/but we 'have decided' that 'China is the enemy and cannot be trusted'. So of course your CV will be discarded. Also.. you pull something (criminal/damaging) off, where will they find you and keep you accountable? China will never extradite you to any country to be imprisoned. Is this a joke? Doesn't the person realize this at all? Is this person naive/5yo or just says shit for the clicks and the LOLs?
- decimalenough 1y ago
  This is not specific to China, any foreigner's application will likewise end up in the bin. (Australians are excepted, because they have reciprocal work rights.) Few companies want to go through the uncertain and expensive hassle of sponsoring visas, waiting for them to relocate etc unless they really have no other options.
- janstice 1y ago
  Or rather; the candidate didn’t have a visa, the employer would need to jump through a bunch of hoops, then a multi-month wait, OR can just hire one of the many on-shore candidates available on the market. I think previously these sorts of offshore people were picked up by big bodyshop contractors, who could reliably place someone (and afford to have someone on the bench for a few weeks if needed) - since a massive bunch of government contracts were cancelled over the last few years this mode has dried up.
solardev 1y ago
How does Grinding Gear Games (who makes Path of Exile) do it? Is it only because they have Tencent funding? They seem to have a couple of openings... https://grindinggear.com/?page=careers https://grindinggear.com/?page=careers I've often thought of moving there specifically for those jobs, but they specify "only apply if you currently reside in New Zealand/AUS and are a citizen" =/ Too bad.

84 points by MarcoDewey 1y ago

Tbf, NZ had been in a recession until this past quarter, and NZ was never that hot of a tech hub compared to a number of hubs in Australia, let alone the rest of APAC. And this article appears to be about the immigrant Chinese community in NZ, who would probably be at a further disadvantage as they would require additional sponsorship from employers.

latentsea 1y ago
> And this article appears to be about the immigrant Chinese community in NZ, who would probably be at a further disadvantage as they would require additional sponsorship from employers. Not only do they require sponsorship, but as part of the application process for sponsoring I think they're required to prove or make a case that they couldn't find any local talent to fill the position. I have worked on teams in NZ that had people where the company sponsored their visas, so it does happen.

jmyeet 1y ago

Everyone in New Zealand is struggling unless you've been there for 10-20+ years (when you could still afford a house) or you're an immigrant who sold a house in your home country and thus you can afford a house. The average wage in NZ is NZ$61k and the average house price is NZ$908k. This is absolutely unsustainable. This same pattern is playing out to various degrees in Australia, the UK, pretty much anywhere in Europe (certainly Western Europe), Scandanavia any any large city in the US. And as far as I can tell there's absolutely no serious political opposition to any of this happening in any of these countries. None. Your political choices are between the extreme neoliberalism with lots of racism and the slightly milder neoliberalism with slightly less overt racism. This is all capitalism working as intended. Every part of this is a series of intentional policy changes designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra-wealthy. Housing is being hoarded and artifically constrained in supply. People are being loaded up with student debt, medical debt and mortgage debt where we careen ever closer to the South Asian brick kilns.

reactordev 1y ago
So what you’re really saying is NZ is for sale…
- alephnerd 1y ago
  All countries are if you're VHNWI ($5-7M minimum) or on a skilled visa. Plenty of options open up for skilled visas with somewhat expedited naturalization.
  - wordofx 1y ago
    No. Most of Asia can’t be bought. Foreigners cannot own property in lots of Asian countries.
- hcfman 1y ago
  Yeah sure, didn't Peter Thiel buy a chunk of it ?
lotsofpulp 1y ago
> Every part of this is a series of intentional policy changes designed to transfer wealth from the poor to the ultra-wealthy. No, it is a transfer from those who don’t own land to those who already own land. Roughly correlates to young/poor/immigrant classes transferring wealth (or maintaining wealth disparity) to older/richer/beneficiary classes. That is why it is politically popular. Low and flat land value tax rates have always enabled this, but their effects were temporarily masked by the population boom allowing a lot of upward movement in the lower (non land owning) classes due to broad economic growth.
energy123 1y ago
It's got little to do with the ultra-wealthy, who have their wealth in equity. The problem is the upper middle class who have their wealth in land. They are 30% of the population and command election outcomes against anyone who tries to change the status quo. To them, the housing crisis is a housing bonanza and they plan on keeping it that way. I also take issue with buzzword "neoliberal", as if leftists would be any better with their rent control, NIMBY tendencies, and ideological hostility to supply-side policy (see Dean Preston in US, Zohran Mamdani in US, Adrian Ramsay in UK, Chandler-Mather in AU). In my estimation, they would be worse than any "abundance neoliberal", who at least have Austin, Texas as a successful case study they can point to, and who have ideas that make logical sense. The problem is not their policy ideas but the political reality they exist in where they're constrained in what they can do by a politically active plurality (landowners) that wish to persist the status quo.

creakingstairs 1y ago

We are heading back to New Zealand soon and the situation does seem pretty grim from what I hear from friends. Ideally, we’d like to settle down in NZ but it’s looking like we may end up in Australia instead.

jp0d 1y ago
To be honest, we Australians aren't doing so well either. But you're correct, it's a comparatively bigger economy. There are more opportunities. But we've hundreds if not thousands applying for the same job.
jemmyw 1y ago
There are quite a few remote work opportunities around with US and AU companies. It might not be what you're looking for, but it seems to work pretty well with an NZ lifestyle.
bigfatkitten 1y ago
AU market isn’t too crash hot either, at the moment.
apatheticonion 1y ago
As a kiwi living in Australia and working for mini FANG, the thought of moving to Southeast Asia and living off savings for a couple of years in the hope that I might wait out this jobs/rental crisis has crossed my mind.
- FlyingSnake 1y ago
  What is a MiniFANG?
  - beachy 1y ago
    In Aus could be Atlassian
    - miffy900 1y ago

gsf_emergency 1y ago

According to a study promoted by Financial Times, it's a known downside of this one weird effect https://archive.ph/YjX1w https://archive.ph/YjX1w

alephnerd 1y ago
NZ's business culture is very different from that of the US (which that FT article from the weekend was about). IMO, it's much more scelrotic and makes Australia's old boy's club look dynamic.
- gsf_emergency 1y ago
  I'm saying it's due to NZs very clean air and water compared to even OZ, did you even click (Don't get me started on BRICS)
  - alephnerd 1y ago
    I read it this weekend. It was dumb then, and it's dumb now. Correlation does not imply causation - this is taught in the first week of high school statistics. The significant amount of superfund sites also confounds with mass industry, which can make the epigenetic theory moot.
    - gsf_emergency 1y ago
      It makes a falsifiable prediction tho: compared to the other BRICS China is gonna tank
      - alephnerd 1y ago
        Ever heard of an RCT?
        gsf_emergency 1y ago
        Defo not heard of one that tests national economies :)

Nekhrimah 1y ago

The framing of this story right from the start is disingenuous. The Microsoft job losses are explicitly reported as "part of a broader strategy to streamline operations and accelerate its AI initiatives." Immediately followed by reporting that Health NZ (rebranded from Te Whatu Ora) is cutting a third of its IT staff. The implication being that it's the same reason. It's not. The current NZ government is working through the "Starve the Beast" strategy; intentionally underfunding ministries and services so they can be punished or sold off later for "underperforming". RNZ's service to the right wing side of the political spectrum hasn't saved them though, they're having funding cut too [0]. [0] https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360698953/funding-cut-rnz-minister-issues-challenge-improve-reach-trust https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/360698953/funding-cut-rnz-m...

foxglacier 1y ago
> intentionally underfunding ministries and services so they can be punished or sold off later for "underperforming". Do you have a source for that or is it just a conspiracy theory?
- jpalawaga 1y ago
  A source that what? That says Right wing/small government parties generally tend to make the government smaller by privatizing services? There’s no conspiracy theory, it’s literally their MO.
- dijit 1y ago
  https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/1789041783 https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Dismantle-Easy-Steps-second/dp/... NHS is the National Health Service in the UK and this book was Co-Authored by the Minister for Health of the UK (before he got that post). It details this strategy clearly.
  - foxglacier 1y ago
    That's a different government. From yours and the other replies, I see it is just a conspiracy theory. Of course it's possible for a government to reduce funding for departments to save money without the goal of privatizing them.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

teruakohatu 1y ago

I can confirm this is the case when my organisation advertises roles they get inundated with applications. But paradoxically there is simultaneously a lack of top tier within New Zealand. I the past year I have turned down an unsolicited job offer and I am also aware of two or three roles in two organisations that are not being advertised for due to lack of available talent. New Zealand has a *lot* of potential, but this potential eventually ends up in Australia, London or the USA. Countries should aspired to be an anode, not a cathode. The politicians [1] I have spoken to about this issue generally don't consider it to be a pressing matter and are happy for New Zealand firms to move the HQ overseas if they are employing kiwis locally, in much the same way US firms might open an office in Asia to take advantage of lower wages. [1] One nice thing about New Zealand is that you can get face to face time with a Member of Parliament easily, and Cabinet Minister if you are persistent.

droopyEyelids 1y ago
Hard to make it an electricity analogy, when the anode is actually the source of electrons! But i got your point and agree
- irjustin 1y ago
  Such is my pet peeve. Soap box - Analogies simply don't help. They invariably have some flaw and rarely aid in actual understanding as is the case with the anode/cathode reference. I know 100% of readers understand that countries want to attract talent, but <100% of people understand anode+cathode functions. It gets worse when others attempt to build off the analogy and so it becomes flawed on top of flawed. At some point, semantic arguments begin, i.e. source of electrons, and now we're quite far from countries+talent. STOP USING ANALOGIES
  - malux85 1y ago
    You're making a huge assumption yourself - that the goal of communication is to appeal to the greatest number of readers. This is not always true and often deliberately not always true.

JusticeJuice 1y ago

I worked in the nz tech startup market for 8 years before moving overseas. To say nz tech is a tiny market is an understatement, when the population of the country is the size of most cities, there’s just that not that many opportunities. It does mean for many people the only way for career growth is to go elsewhere. When I left nz my salary 3x’d. The opportunity here is that there is many talented tech workers who choose to stay in NZ for lifestyle reasons. Foreign companies can compete so easily on salaries, it’s easy to just buy the top of the market for half the price. You will need local recruitment help though to find them. The time zones are rough, you need to be a company that’s embraced async working, and are able to give a team a clear brief and just let them do it. But the hiring opportunities are there.

imadethis 1y ago
Are there many people involved in follow the sun support or SRE roles there? I know my company only has an engineering presence in Aus and Japan because of the large coverage gap between the US west coast and the EU. Seems like low wages + native English* could be a nice win for companies. * For some definitions of native. I've had to work as a translator for a Kiwi and an American, both native English speakers.
- JusticeJuice 1y ago
  I know that aws has a few reliability engineers in Wellington, but that’s just to support their aus servers. There really isn’t that many foreign companies outsourcing support to NZ.
- latentsea 1y ago
  > Seems like low wages + native English* could be a nice win for companies. It's not always native English. It's always at least proficient enough, but a good chunk of the workers in the tech sector speak English as a second language. NZ has very diverse population.
- te_chris 1y ago
  It's a slightly weird one, but Octopus Energy (UK) have setup a new utility in NZ and it also covers off-hours support.

hcfman 1y ago

35 ??? Holy crap! I guess the reasons I left New Zealand more than 35 years ago are still true.

latentsea 1y ago
This 35 thing referred to in the article is a phenomenon present in the Chinese tech market, not the NZ one. There's no such thing in the NZ one, and I pity the Chinese with their 996 and curse of 35. What an awfully structured tech industry they have. NZ is in general much better, but there is definitely fewer positions lately.

kmarc 1y ago

Switzerland has something similar these days (UBS-CS merger, big tech layoffs, too expensive local workforce) I applied to 39 jobs (mostly through LinkedIn) Out of which 29 in Switzerland, the rest mainly fully remote in Europe and US. I got in total around 6 companies' 20-something interviews. Exactly ONE interview ouf of those was in Switzerland. Crazy (I might just not be enough for this competitive market, I know. Eventually I ended up with a consulting job within the EU, obviously for lower daily rate, which is fine) Fun thing is, the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly

deleted 1y ago
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FirmwareBurner 1y ago
I remember reading around here about how many companies in Switzerland like Roche, offshore a lot of mid-tier tech jobs (like web dev) out to places like Poland due to much better performance/cost. IIRC, Acronis also has most of their devs in Bulgaria now. I also remember reading a few years ago an interview with a Swisscom exec about offshoring their devops jobs to the Netherlands on the claim they can't find local devops talent. Now I'm not in Switzerland and even I'm not buying that reason at face value, but it's clear that offshoring is an issue in most high-CoL countries in the post WFH era as a lot of tech jobs became more of a commodity in the post ZIRP era. So I can imagine the jobs not moving out of Switzerland are those "management" type of jobs where the job itself is having coffee and networking with the other managers on how to further reduce costs and increase profits while relocating engineering jobs to cheaper countries. Due to this, it seems that Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now. >the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly This explains some of the absurd arguments I often hear from delulu googlers on this board and how out of touch they are with the real world. The sad thing is they have little introspection to realize it and would rather die on their hill.
- kmarc 1y ago

h4kunamata 1y ago

That is everywhere including Australia. I did an interview the other day, the roles had like hundreds of applications. The naked truth is that if you don't know recruiters, you are fcked!! Why??? 1. Big companies have fired people by the thousands. Many from which were hired during COVID gold era but the market now shrank; 2. The IT market has way too many high skilled folks from those big techs, some John Doe also; 3. Many places have adopted AI tools so unless your resume looks exactly that it is looking for, you are automatically denied; 4. Many roles are a mess, the role is DevOps but somehow the role descriptions is for a Network Engineer, go figure; 5. Social problems like hiring people based on weird ideology like wokeness and not based on skill and experience. You won't get in no matter how good you are and to be honest, you don't wanna be in such toxic culture anyway so a win-win. 6. Ghosted, very hard to avoid this. 7. AI: This is affecting more developers in some way. You cannot have or trust AI to manage infra/network yet. I could go on and on, in short words, companies can afford to do whatever now. During COVID, my last two jobs required one interview only and I was in, now?? 4 interviews and you are ghosted. Don't waste your time applying for jobs online, instead, focus on recruiters that hire folks based in your experience. The recruiter that got me at my current job ( I know him for 3 years now) is the same one that got me an interview with that company with hundreds of applications within days not even weeks. But still, there are two major problems you cannot avoid: 1. Companies can afford to wait, if you don't have experience on every single goddamn thing, it makes it very hard to get in. 3-4 interviews are the new normal now. It is becoming normal now to require you to know everything if you are within DevOps, Platform, DevSecOps space. 2. Ghosted: Some recruiters themselves are just dogsh*t, they ghost you, others have no experience at all, just scripted so you will just waste time; Companies ghost you while trying to find the perfect candidate after you have 4 interviews. Yup, 4 interviews, the company disappeared only to show up a month later saying they found somebody better :) Online applications is even worse (AI, your name it) If you wanna somehow find a job, hunt recruiters, not job. Have a decent resume that doesn't look a kids homework haha You will stress less, you will avoid applying for a 100 places where 99% of them will never read your application. Let him/her do their thing.

HenryBemis 1y ago

> "When an employer was initially interested, they often backed out once they realised I was based in Beijing." Yes, of course. You/that person may be the best & nicest on the planet, and/but we 'have decided' that 'China is the enemy and cannot be trusted'. So of course your CV will be discarded. Also.. you pull something (criminal/damaging) off, where will they find you and keep you accountable? China will never extradite you to any country to be imprisoned. Is this a joke? Doesn't the person realize this at all? Is this person naive/5yo or just says shit for the clicks and the LOLs?

decimalenough 1y ago
This is not specific to China, any foreigner's application will likewise end up in the bin. (Australians are excepted, because they have reciprocal work rights.) Few companies want to go through the uncertain and expensive hassle of sponsoring visas, waiting for them to relocate etc unless they really have no other options.
janstice 1y ago
Or rather; the candidate didn’t have a visa, the employer would need to jump through a bunch of hoops, then a multi-month wait, OR can just hire one of the many on-shore candidates available on the market. I think previously these sorts of offshore people were picked up by big bodyshop contractors, who could reliably place someone (and afford to have someone on the bench for a few weeks if needed) - since a massive bunch of government contracts were cancelled over the last few years this mode has dried up.

solardev 1y ago

How does Grinding Gear Games (who makes Path of Exile) do it? Is it only because they have Tencent funding? They seem to have a couple of openings... https://grindinggear.com/?page=careers https://grindinggear.com/?page=careers I've often thought of moving there specifically for those jobs, but they specify "only apply if you currently reside in New Zealand/AUS and are a citizen" =/ Too bad.