Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand

https://www.reseller.co.nz/article/708342/tech-salaries-largely-unchanged-as-skills-shortages-continue/

by pg_1234 • 3 years ago

262 341 3 years ago

reseller.co.nz

shinythrowaway• 3 years ago

Reminder that there is no skills shortage. There's a shortage of suckers.

anotherhue• 3 years ago

Some of these are just laughable: 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.

CoastalCoder• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

most principal engineers I know at average corporations make $200k-$225k USD

alexjplant• 3 years ago

As 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.

pcthrowaway• 3 years ago

130,000 NZD is about 77,860 USD

Which is actually more than I was earning as a lead at a recent job in Canada

doctor_eval3• 3 years ago

This 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.

scarface_744• 3 years ago

Outside 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

eli_gottlieb• 3 years ago

Laughably low or laughably high?

omgwtfbyobbq• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

As 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• 3 years ago

is it because NZ has immigration program inviting IT professionals?

do you know if there is big influx of IT immigrants in NZ?

sien• 3 years ago

As an Australian I'd like to say thank you to NZ Universities.

It's really true. We see a lot of New Zealanders applying for jobs in Australia and they are often good candidates.

xyzzy123• 3 years ago

I am also an economic migrant NZ -> Australia. Salary for me was something like 30% - 50% better with housing / cost of living about the same.

I still love NZ but to keep progressing in my career I felt it was really helpful to be able to access a bigger market.

verve_rat2• 3 years ago

As a Kiwi still living here I didn't feel like I was getting a fair deal until I started working remotely for a US company paying AU rates.

Making the move from an NZ employer to (essentially) an AU employer got me a ~40% pay rise.

I'm now afraid I've priced my self out of the NZ market and will have a rude landing if I'm forced back into the NZ market (you never know, things happen).

But it is frankly ridiculous how far NZ employers have their heads in the clouds. If remote work stays around and more US companies don't mind a few hours overlap with the West Coast timezone to get access to a native English speaking, Western culture, talent pool... well, I think those NZ employers will start banging the immigration drum a lot harder.

yodelshady3• 3 years ago

There'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.

autotune9• 3 years ago

Here 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.

explaininjs10• 3 years 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.

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• 3 years 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.

sarchertech6• 3 years ago

You 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.

osigurdson• 3 years ago

> wouldn’t want to have a family right now…

People had families during economic downturns, wars and famines. It is also a long term commitment so there are going to be bad times no matter when you decide to take the plunge.

dcolkitt• 3 years ago

Good thing housing prices have at least come down with these high interest rates!

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

Yeah the growth story hasn’t come back so most places aren’t aggressively hiring to meet future demand right now. We’re sort of in a consolidation phase right now. Use this time to improve your skills so when we begin to shift back into growth you’ll be ahead of the curve.

autotune9• 3 years ago

Learning TypeScript, Pulumi, and Argo Rollouts and such and reading every scifi book I can get my hands on while waiting. Moved back in with the parents so going homeless isn't an issue it's just extremely embarrassing given I had 10 years of career and financial independence before this. Ugh.

ryandrake3• 3 years ago

Yeah the growth story hasn’t come back so most places aren’t aggressively hiring...

Dumb money (and unimaginative executives) waits for someone else to tell a "story" in order to act. Smart companies should be hiring like crazy, sucking up all the great talent these dummy companies are shedding. Tech companies, more than at any time I can remember, seem to have no ideas--they're just watching their competitors and aping whatever they are doing. Competitors are laying off? We're laying off! Competitors are returning to the office? We are returning to the office! Competitors are getting into AI? We are getting into AI. Everyone is chasing each other's tail and sniffing each other's farts and there isn't even a spark of creativity left.

sarchertech6• 3 years ago

You regularly do multiple interviews a week?

autotune9• 3 years ago

Did. Did multiple interviews per weeek. Not these days.

jh00ker3• 3 years ago

I have at least one LinkedIn connection at nearly every company for which I'd like to work / for which I've been tracking open roles. In the past, getting a referral would almost guarantee a recruiter screen (vs just applying online).

Now, I get cold-rejected via automated email, even with a personal referral from someone I worked with directly, about 85% of the time.

I'm seeing 600+ applicants for a Bay Area FAANG+ EM role listed on LinkedIn, 2 weeks after posting the JD. That doesn't include those that applied directly on the company's career page...

Job market rn is wack, yo.

edit: specifically front-line EM roles managing ICs

whimsicalism8• 3 years ago

Don’t conflate EM and IC prospects, EM are going to be considerably worse for the immediate future as companies try to slim up on middle management

The job market many of you all are describing seems to have been standard for new grads for the last few years

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

IT employers

Idk what EM means, but IT is looking for admins. Try Kansas.

vunderba• 3 years ago

Sorry to hear you're struggling. Anecdotally, this hasn't been my or my friends experiences, but none of us are dev ops, we're all senior backend devs (mix of C# and Node) - all located in the U.S.

I wish we could get a more granular breakdown on demand in the tech world. There's a vast difference in skills, requirements and pay scale for strict DevOps positions versus more traditional software developer roles.

samstave• 3 years ago

I. The tech world we need:

Less AI hype

Less HR personnel

Less restrictions on where tech work may be performed

Better hours for on call staff

Less spending on fancy HQ offices (from an aesthetic)

Hot-desks

Lower executive pay

Better transparency in business costs which companies hide in their compensation considerations based on their money

Etc etc etc

el_benhameen• 3 years ago

I also do mostly backend, mostly C#. I’m curious what kind of companies and projects you and your friends work on if you’re willing to share. Don’t need to name names or anything, I’m not fishing for a referral. I’ve just been in the same niche market for a long time and I’m curious what else is out there.

autotune9• 3 years ago

https://layoffs.fyi about as granular as it's going to get unfortunately and that is overly broad, but we can at least see it's been happening for mid 2022-2023 so far and it's not just me.

victor22• 3 years ago

Dude, I don't even live in the US but I've worked with PR before (huge firm) and as soon as I started reading this my bullshit radar went off, this is clearly reads like a PR fake story, and when that happens it's always 1) to sell you a product or 2) to plant a fake idea on your head. Since there's no clearly a product, yeah, this article is clearly a psy0ps. Side note: when they report "...72% expects easier jobs..." they are talking about their expectations, while hiding employment data (which probably says otherwise). That's another cheap old "dark pattern" in lying PR article. They call it "soft data" (instead of real data, so you can lie easily. It's like Marlboro would tell you "...72% of smokers expects health improvements due to smoking...

crummy• 3 years ago

What is the goal of this PR piece then?

bandyaboot3• 3 years ago

Wrong things, often ridiculously wrong things get written all the time. It doesn’t mean it’s the result of a “psyop”. Here’s a roughly accurate flowchart for determining if you’re currently being subject to something that could non-ironically be termed a psyop: “is this a psyop?”—>”no”.

xupybd9• 3 years ago

I live in NZ. Hiring is not easy at the moment.

Also our wages are low. Look at the current job postings. https://www.seek.co.nz/Software-Developer-jobs

Then take into account that $1 NZD is equal to 0.59742741 US Dollars. So if you are earning $100k in NZD that is not even $60k USD. Our national average house price is $888,999. It's much higher in big cities. Our food costs are rapidly increasing as well. I pay over $1,000 NZD for power and gas.

Smart developers are leaving.

ehnto• 3 years ago

You are probably right but this is about NZ. I can also attest to it being really difficult to find good hires in Australia at the moment. We have what you might call a grass roots tech scene, not heaps of startup activity, most work is in established businesses or new but bootstrapped going concerns. Sydney and Melb might have a bit more startup activity.

Wages here are good for the area, but not SV level good, and I think that makes it slightly less attractive but also less inflammatory. More sustainable as wages are pegged to real dollars in and out of a business.

snoman2• 3 years ago

Honest question: do you have resources or materials that you could refer me to so that I could learn more about how this part of the pr/publishing industry works?

I don’t doubt you, and it sounds like one of those “seedy underbelly of the industry” kinds of things that I’d be interested in knowing more about.

QuantumG3• 3 years ago

How's the contract scene?

There's a difference between hiring staff and getting a job done. Most companies choose one or the other, but they're peanut butter and chocolate!

twodave3• 3 years ago

IME consulting is where you can really win in a market like this. Especially moonlighting. If you can find an extra 10 hours per week reliably to work on something you can easily supplement your income by $60k or more. It’s not guaranteed to be interesting work, but there’s no shortage of people just trying to get a new thing over the finish line or an keep an old thing afloat for a bit longer. It’s a good value for the company because they don’t have to hire a “whole” developer, and it’s easier for especially smaller organizations to bucket all your hours into either CapEx or OpEx based on the project.

quickthrower23• 3 years ago

I suspect in the US there has been a shock effect of interest rates causing the big source of money for high tech salaries to fall off a cliff. Everywhere else VC is not as much of a big thing. You typically work for a bootstrapped company (all of mine have been, or taken their first investments at the $1bn valuation level) or a large bank or public sector job. These sorts of jobs are not impacted. You need a global crisis type recession like 2001 or 2008 to cause this.

You are slashing $80k. Over here (rest of the world, $80k is the TC typically, and often much less!)

This is going to be bad for SF real estate I suspect. People will leave to adjust to their new salaries.

autotune9• 3 years ago

$180k -> $100k -> ??. Not FAANG level salary from the outset, not going to be able to reach a comfortable retirement at this rate while retaining my financial independence.

WWLink2• 3 years ago

This is going to be bad for SF real estate I suspect. People will leave to adjust to their new salaries.

Everyone disagrees with me, but I believe we're already seeing it. I moved down to the Los Angeles area after college, as I took a job down here. The houses here that used to rent for $3000 10 years ago currently rent for $5000+. Meanwhile in the Bay Area, I can still find a number of comparable houses for $4000 or less. Granted, those are more like - outer sunset, fremont, concord, etc...

But those are still pretty nice areas!

If I moved right now I'd have to pay $1000/mo more in rent - at least. Probably more. The housing market in SoCal is basically stuck because nobody can afford to move, and so nobody's moving unless they have to lol. And that drove the prices up.

As far as I can tell, the rent market is still fairly healthy in the Bay. So the prices haven't escalated quite the same.

paulddraper• 3 years ago

Having to slash like $80k on my previous salary prospects

Reading in between the lines, these were mostly just prospects and they were also 2021 numbers which were aberrations.

Manuel_D3• 3 years ago

Slashing 80K from what baseline? 160k dropping to 80k is very different from 500k dropping to 420k.

storyinmemo• 3 years ago

Good heavens I'm feeling this. With my last few employers being acquired by private equity or having layoffs my resume doesn't scream, "Will grow in the role," anymore... and it didn't have the chance to do so.

Things are rough out there for sure.

idunno246• 3 years ago

I've talked with a few people actively interviewing the past couple months, including myself, and fairly consistently people are passing hiring bar, having done the entire battery of interviewing and the company wanting to hire, but there not being any job which to hire them into. 'wait til next quarter maybe more headcount will free up'

mrala2• 3 years ago

What companies are spending time doing full rounds of interviews without a open role available these days?

jeron• 3 years ago

You might be suffering from too much experience for DevOps? I am in the market for devops roles in SF and I’ve had about 2 interviews a week for roles from devops, SRE, and product engineering. I’m at 3 yoe

hiddencost• 3 years ago

My compensation has been the same for the last 3 years... But the stock price and inflation mean that I'm making 25% less in real terms.

irrational4• 3 years ago

This has been my experience too. My son is starting college and was planning on studying software development. I’ve started encouraging him to look at other majors or consider the trades instead. It doesn’t feel like tech is going to be a good career path going forward.

zigbap22pity• 3 years ago

I think that's probably because "tech" was never a career path. Just think about the word itself, what does it even really mean? I suppose most people would answer with something about making new technology, but then you've really got your work cut out for you, because damn near any company can make that sort of claim.

In my view, tech just means IT but you've got a ping pong table at work and can wear jeans. IT isn't going anywhere and can be a good career path still, but the wild salary increases were clearly driven by speculation, and there was absolutely a lot of hiring of less than qualified people going on, which will probably take another year or two to wash out.

If it were my son, I would tell him to do what he likes, and if that's computer stuff then that is still a better than average career path. That being said, I'd make sure they really understand that what they are really probably getting into is IT, i.e. its highly unlikely he will end up working at a startup that is going to make it big and change the world with some hot new invention. The reality is, you are probably going to be working at a bank or something at some point, and that's okay if you didn't get your expectations way out of wack.

10g1k3• 3 years ago

People are doing short certifications for security and immediately earning more than people who racked up $100K debts over 4 year computer science degrees. Everything you need to work in IT (except actual science and engineering roles) can be learned through the Internet and experience, for free. There's no value in a university debt for such.

adamesque• 3 years ago

“Tech” is very broad but it’s still a field where the impact of a single individual’s effort scales disproportionately, because for the most part it’s all 1s and 0s over a wire. That’s fundamentally why tech salaries are high imo.

berkle4455• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34163233

7 months ago you got a new gig in two weeks and making bank. Now you're unemployed and can't find a single job?

mrala2• 3 years ago

Based on their post history[1], I would wager the poster’s job prospects have dried up due to their own circumstances rather than the state of the devops hiring market. They also claimed to be job hopping every six months during the pandemic.

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37116238

autotune9• 3 years ago

My employment history has been a mess of 6 month gigs since the start of the pandemic. I'd say it was just me due to additional circumstances but I did a poll of my LI network to see if anyone else was feeling it, most everyone said they were. Surprised some on HN aren't but these are additional data points to consider.

eru• 3 years ago

Keep in mind that what you are experiencing is related to the compensation change you get when changing jobs. The article isn't completely clear on this, but I sounds like they are talking about the salary for all jobs, including people staying in existing jobs. That one changes much more slowly, especially when people don't change jobs.

Also I expect to see minor cuts to compensation for existing jobs to first come in the form of slashing of bonuses, yearly raises and promotions. For various, mostly social, reasons employers are reluctant to cut the nominal salary of existing employees, even more so than they seem reluctant to fire people.

Since the article brought up NZ, and so we are already talking about 'weird' job markets: here in Singapore the market is also supposed to be down, but I'm still getting pitched good jobs left and right by recruiters for my particular speciality.

standardUser7• 3 years ago

The idea that programmers should make $200k or $300k or $400k is irrational and unsustainable, only sustained for the time being by a tiny number of massive, hyper-profitable companies and an endless stream of easy venture capital cash that allows some startups to spend their money like complete idiots. We all know that most tech workers make less than $200k as base salary, just as we know that all skilled professionals typically make less than $200k. If you took an $80k paycut and are still living a comfortable life, consider yourself lucky to have collected as much cash as you did in the previous job and maybe accept that rational, sustainable salaries are the future for most tech workers.

gaganyaan• 3 years ago

Programmers should make what the market will offer, I'm not sure why you think otherwise. If there's easy money floating around on dumb projects, good on labor for capturing as much of that as possible, instead of it going towards another yacht.

iraqmtpizza3• 3 years ago

Citizenship used to mean that you had privileged access to your birth country's job market.

plandis• 3 years ago

Honestly I’m not seeing much point in even living nowadays with prospects so bad. I’ll give it like maybe another month or two but after that I’m out. The amount of suffering being laid off has caused me in my life is just not worth it.

keenmaster• 3 years ago

Hey man, that’s never worth it. Please don’t. There are so many levers you can pull to get to a better place and you might just not be seeing that clearly now.

mushbino• 3 years ago

Yeah, the article is ridiculous. In the past 15 years I've never seen it this bad for me or anyone else I know.

cm20123• 3 years ago

Silicon valley salaries are way down but average dev salaries are about the same.

throwaway59592• 3 years ago

In 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• 3 years ago

yeah probably so. tough time to be making a career change back into tech after 8 years out lol

bluedino• 3 years ago

The 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• 3 years ago

The 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.

asd882• 3 years ago

…in New Zealand

asd882• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

I think it really depends, and for many unique and lucky individuals they won't feel this.

jamesvnz• 3 years 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.

iraqmtpizza3• 3 years ago

Skills 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.

QuantumG3• 3 years ago

It means not being able to find available people with the needed skills. Typically this results from locking talent into exclusive arrangements.

nicbou5• 3 years ago

This 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.

suryong3• 3 years ago

You 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

stale2002• 3 years ago

Comments like this miss the point.

Literally every "shortage" regarding any good in the world follows the same pattern you described which is "well it is a just a shortage at this low of a price. If price increases then there wouldn't be a shortage!"

So you describing literally every shortage ever for any good, but doing it in this weird moralizing way isnt particularly useful.

iraqmtpizza3• 3 years ago

There are no 50-plus-year skill shortages in market economies. The point is that there is lying going on. Which is not surprising, but that doesn't mean it's not the primary problem or that it somehow goes without saying. It needs to be said early and often.

If you redefine shortage to mean literally anything that people wish was cheaper, then it becomes entirely detached from reality and economics. But if you think it's the appropriate definition, then let's make sure everyone is on the same page. We don't want half the population thinking that shortage means something acute, negative, and resolvable.

DevKoala3• 3 years ago

When 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_D3• 3 years ago

A 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.

DevKoala3• 3 years ago

I 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.

lijok3• 3 years ago

Had a look, NZ tech wages are laughable. 140k for a tech lead in Welligton, where a 2 bed rent is 3k/mo?

spamizbad• 3 years ago

A 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.

nicbou5• 3 years ago

In 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• 3 years ago

Tech salaries in West and South Europe indicate that there is no shortage.

gumballindie2• 3 years ago

Huh? Salaries in tech are lower in south europe than in east europe. Assuming there are any tech jobs in south europe.

suryong3• 3 years ago

Same 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• 3 years 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.

abigail953• 3 years ago

This is the point of higher interest rates. It means monetary policy is working.

It's meant to lower growth and investment.

robocat4• 3 years ago

Germany is about to dramatically lower the residence permit and citizenship requirements

Time to buy a house if you can afford it. Immigration of skilled workers drives house prices up!

AuryGlenz2• 3 years ago

Immigration of any sort does. Whether it’s a house or a run down apartment it’s all the same supply pool.

FirmwareBurner15• 3 years ago

If you couldn't afford a house before, you defiantly can't at these rates, and if you can't afford a house now, you definitely won't after the immigration boom.

mmarq2• 3 years ago

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 immigration system in Germany is peculiarly hostile, getting visas is very hard, interacting with the local bureaucracy is a nightmare, there are so many catch-22 that either you pay an agency or… God knows how they do it. If you are not an EU citizen, it may take months to complete all the paperwork even to the perfect immigrant.

Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody, it would just make the lives of some people less miserable.

Consider that Germany has an almost endless reservoir of potential immigrants in southern Europe (and to some extent in Turkey), it has been there for the past decades and salaries keep going up.

FirmwareBurner15• 3 years ago

getting visas is very hard

Compared to US visas, it's a walk in the park.

Streamlining this system and lowering the requirements for a skilled visa won’t hurt anybody

It will defiantly hurt the housing market because Germany doesn't build enough.

smfjaw4• 3 years ago

Kiwi 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.

rr8082• 3 years 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.

astrange6• 3 years ago

Only in the Anglo countries. Other countries build enough housing.

(And it's not true in the US, only some coastal regions.)

standardUser7• 3 years ago

There is no city in America where a single individual cannot afford a comfortable lifestyle in a nice neighborhood on a $150k salary. is this not true in most of Europe? I feel like most of my European friends make well south of $150k and do just fine.

StopHammoTime• 3 years ago

Aussie here. Similar, we’re a bit higher but it’s about the same.

I will highlight one difference between the US and Oceania - our currencies are at least a third less than the USD. So $150k in NZ is probably closer to $100k and in Aus it’s $110k.

smfjaw4• 3 years ago

Yea, I thinking of jumping the ditch in the next year. Housing is ridiculous here in nz, until that gets fixed it's not a very attractive place to live if you're trying to build wealth

PlunderBunny• 3 years ago

As a NZ developer that a lives in his own apartment with a salary less than $150k, I disagree. Yes, it's expensive and yes, our salaries are lower than our colleagues in some other countries, but it's too much to say that you can't afford to put down a deposit on an apartment after a few years of saving.

smfjaw4• 3 years ago

That's true, it's definitely not impossible. It's just relative to other countries we seem to be a bit worse off on the housing front

crtified2• 3 years ago

I agree. It is not easy to hear a person whose income is triple his country's national median refer to independent living as untenable. Even if only purely from a perspective of "if even they are struggling, then... how is the average person in that country even still alive??".

And if a country has plenty of land, and food, to go around - then for scarcity to become a norm, something(s) must have their hands pretty deep in the cookie jar.

standardUser7• 3 years ago

I don't know the details of life in NZ, but I live in a highly desirable part of Manhattan and make just north of $150k. I eat out all the time, travel often, and ultimately feel very few financial constraints (aside from not saving as much as I'd like). What in NZ is driving up costs so high that $150k can't sustain a single individual in a nice urban apartment?

bacon_waffle3• 3 years ago

I suspect you're in USD and they're in NZD. At the moment, 150NZD = 90USD, 150USD = 250NZD.

diogenescynic• 3 years ago

Are you single? Do you have room mates? Did you buy several years ago and now have a locked in mortgage at a low rate? I think circumstances change things. I make north of $150k in California, but I'm married and have two kids. It doesn't feel like it goes that far after rent, childcare, groceries, and all your other bills like a car, insurance, utilities, etc.

TapWaterBandit2• 3 years ago

He's bsing or after extremely desirable places. Even Auckland is affordable for a single on $150k pa.

robocat4• 3 years ago

Tech Immigrants outnumbering local techs happens in many countries.

I was doing a job in Australia in the 90s and I remember the ratio there being high. In my job in NZ there was also significant immigrant numbers (although tended to be immigrants from English speaking countries at that time due to NZ immigration laws).

taocoyote• 3 years ago

Outside of Auckland you can do quite well on 150k.

billybuckwheat3• 3 years ago

I make less than $150K, am in my late 40s, and live in Auckland. My partner and I own our apartment (well, most of it -- we still have just under $20K left on the mortgage). She works part time, and while we don't have a lavish lifestyle we have enough money for a comfortable life. So, yeah, if you're making $150K or more and can't afford to live on your own (even renting) then you have to take a closer look at where your money's going.

spicymapotofu• 3 years ago

I don't mean to engage in whataboutism, but by saying you're above 40, you suggest you may have bought into your mortgage at the much more affordable times in the past. Did you purchase in the last few years?

satvikpendem• 3 years ago

Interesting 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• 3 years ago

That's my skillset and I'm not getting these messages daily anymore. Maybe monthly at this point.

snoman2• 3 years ago

I 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.

suryong3• 3 years ago

Here 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

astrange6• 3 years ago

This 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.)

FirmwareBurner15• 3 years ago

That's not how it works.

Joel_Mckay2• 3 years ago

Vertical 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, =)

abigail953• 3 years ago

Do 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_Mckay2• 3 years ago

The 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, =)

l0b0• 3 years ago

As 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• 3 years ago

This week, I talked to a friend from MIT’s machine learning grad program who said the job market sucked.

That’s when I believed.

gumballindie2• 3 years ago

Machine learning doesnt pay high salaries, at least not in the uk.

10g1k3• 3 years ago

Where 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• 3 years ago

Skills 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• 3 years ago

Specifically 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• 3 years ago

It’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• 3 years ago

The 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• 3 years ago

Train new people ! That is the only long term sustainable option.

Tech workers remain some of the highest paid in New Zealand

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