Wellington is like a smaller (and much more windy) San Francisco. Having just finished driving 12,000km tip-to-tip, that might be the one spot that's dense enough to amount to something.
I can't emphasize enough how rural the rest of this country is.
New Zealand is a victim of its success in tourism. Everything is geared towards that. Imagine living somewhere like Denver, CO but with SF prices and depressed software salaries. It's a wonderful place but even with all things being equal bureaucracy wise (and they aren't), the list of places ahead of Wellington is two miles long.
Wellington is the most beautiful city I’ve ever lived in, maybe the most beautiful city I’ve been to, and it’s where we assumed we’d be living when my wife and I moved to NZ some years ago. We spent 9 months before giving up and moving to Auckland. The winter was miserable. I’d never considered wind to be something that could make me so miserable in a place.
Kiwis joke that New Zealand starts at the Bombay Hills (the Bombay Hills are just south of Auckland, and so serve as a demarcation between Auckland and the far north and the rest of NZ). I wanted to love Wellington, but I ended up feeling much happier in Auckland.
They have a really odd way to attract tech talent....
I exited my startup in the uk two years ago, successfully, leaving a successful and growing technology business behind. I have several ideas which I am prepared to self-fund up to £0.5M, and want a good environment in which to start a new business. I know coders in NZ, and they’re a talented bunch, we began to hatch a plan.
In short, the NZ gov’t don’t want it. They either want more money invested up front (much, much more), a VC to be involved (not at that stage yet by a long shot), or for me to buy a new property in NZ for > $2,000,000. Apparently having built a business with £10M turnover from nothing isn’t sufficiently good enough entrepreneurship for me to pass.
I’m now looking elsewhere - which is a shame, as I love NZ for many reasons, from the people to the nature, to the family I have there. I’m trying very hard not to be bitter about the repeated rejections, as it’s not fair to tar a nation on the basis of immigration bureaucrats. I’m certainly disappointed - the idea was for a service that NZ needs, that I hit upon while travelling there after my exit for a few months.
All they will attract will be satellite startups owned by megacorporations, as this appears to be how the bars are set.
I'm not in NZ, but seriously considered it as a destination. I agree with you, the article has nothing to do with reality and is just wishful thinking or, more likely, a PR shill paid up by NZ's foreign promotion board or however they're called.
Jacinda Ardern had a strong anti-immigration position during her campaign, she literally promised to cut immigration by 20'000-30'000 per year, from 70'000. No surprise that current government basically dismantled all immigration schemes.
Good luck to them building their own Silicon Valley!
So, despite being an entrepreneur, and having founded several successful and sustainable businesses, I’m one of your “unskilled migrants”. Sure, I’ve been coding since I could walk, I have current and expert systems and web technology knowledge - but I have a bachelors. In physics. Not useful at all, and puts me on the same rung as a golf course management graduate - actually, below, as they have a shortage skill.
One of the hurdles I am repeatedly failing at with trying to emigrate is that I do not have a compsci degree.
It seems that having a bit of paper is much more important than having a track record.
So in fact you're in no way unskilled, and if you're being measured as such there's something fundamentally broken in the way that skills are being measured and something should be done about it.
Nothing ever will be done, and it's a loss for the country.
Isn't New Zealand hugely underpopulated? I fear that their real problem is elsewhere...
Just checked quickly:
* the UK: 65 million people, 242 000 sqkm -> crowded
* Romania: 19 million people, 238 000 sqkm -> not that crowded
* New Zealand: 4.8 million people, 268 000 sqkm -> it's definitely not overpopulated...
Edit: Heh, I also checked the density, it's the 203rd country in the world regarding population density. There's definitely a ton of space for people there, if the government wants it and is diligent about promoting construction of affordable housing.
It's a series of problems that confound each other, some artificial, some organic.
First, we have geography. Auckland is located on an isthmus that ranges from 1 km wide to 10 km wide. It's basically on an island. It's also covered in volcanoes. Wellington is bound by the sea on one side, and hills on the other. It's wedged in the middle. They can, and have, expanded into the sea using land reclamation, but there's only so much of that you can do. There's only so much land you can put buildings on, which is a major problem when growing.
NZ also suffers from NIMBYism. People in NZ don't want to live next door to apartments, and they also don't really want to live in apartments either. Everyone wants to live in a detached house with a back yard. This problem is particularly prevalent in Auckland. The poor state of public transport and congestion on the roads in Auckland also limits how far out you can live if you work in the CBD.
And lastly, the rate of immigration has been so high that they just can't build houses or infrastructure fast enough to keep up.
So these 3 factors have worked together to cause a severe housing shortage in Wellington and Auckland in particular.
Christchurch is the only city where house prices and rents are stable or decreasing. However, the city suffered a major earthquake in 2011 which knocked out a lot of the housing supply. Whole suburbs were razed, and will never be built on again. A lot of houses only needed remedial work, rather than full reconstructions, so the housing supply has bounced back reasonably quickly. Christchurch is also the only city of the 3 main cities in NZ that is built on flat plains. Christchurch has practically unlimited space to grow inland.
Most immigrants move to Auckland though, so Auckland has borne the brunt of this housing crisis.
I live in Christchurch and looking to buy a house here. There were so many dodgy repairs done after the quakes that there's a real risk of buying a lemon.
I have a friend where their foundations were repaired, turned out the builders had basically papered over the cracks. There are countless stories like this one.
I think the market in Christchurch is going to be very odd once the scale of these bad repairs comes out. New houses are definitely at a premium.
Christchurch was where I was looking at starting the business, having visited all of NZ’s major and most of the minor towns and cities - but it seems it’s not really a factor in their decision-making process.
Maybe the property is the route to go - can it be commercial?
Remote hires not an option?
Tech startups seem to be hard to get people to take seriously, however solid the foundation. I've done a lot of consultancy for a UK company whose entire strategy has stalled for years because they can't/won't invest in building out a rewrite of their flagship product.
I've offered to build it out for zero up front cost, just cut me in on a slice of the pie if it sells. They won't even consider it, haven't even begun to discuss the size of the slice and have turned down other contractors trying to make the same offer previously. I'm not sure how the risk could be lower and in the meantime their competitors are booming.
This is lame though to be fair to NZ I've come across similar requirements in other countries too.
Over the years I've happened to be invited to discussions with policy makers in both The Netherlands (2013) and Australia (2016) and as far as I know they came up with similar policies. Further back I recall taking a look at Germany (~2012) and it was also onerous.
The main takeaway I had was that constructing a set of fair requirements that can be effectively assessed/enforced is nigh impossible. Entrepreneurs should be vocal and advocate for changes that improve the system but ultimately play the cards that are dealt and stay focussed on the company mission.
For what it's worth, it's relatively simple for an American to open a business and gain residency in the Netherlands through the Dutch-American Friendship Treaty.
But unless things have changed considerably in the last 5 years, that American will suffer greatly at the hands of the American tax system, which treats any American owned and managed asset outside the US as a tax evasion scheme.
Have you found anything? Singapore also requires a VC; Japan has a startup visa but there you have a quite steep language/cultural barrier... If you're from the UK it seems like your main option is inside the EU (until Brexit at least)
Is this the "Entrepreneur Work Visa"? Because reading online suggests that you would qualify. Of course when it comes to visas it is often hard to know how things actually work without talking to an immigration lawyer or similar.
Yes, it is, and I thought so too from the info available online - but the reality is rather different. I had a hard line of £10k to spend on exploring immigration exploration there including paying a lawyer - and when that money was gone with no progress, I cut my losses.
As to where instead, others have suggested Portugal, Romania, Poland - Portugal is nice, but get talking to locals and there’s a problem with corruption around business ownership and ensuing audits, etc., Romania has a really big corruption problem, and there’s not much happening outside of Cluj and Bucharest, and Poland has the same kind of politics that I’m hoping to leave behind in the UK. Natural beauty and quality of life were big pluses for NZ.
I’ve also explored Latin America to little avail (the ground situation is rather different to the paper one - huge black markets in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, brewing social unrest), and am now looking seriously at Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania- although again, all three are hardening their stance against non-EU migrants, which I will be come March next, and have similar nationalist movements to elsewhere.
It's not necessarily useless. It usually (not always) means that there is a useful product that someone is willing to pay for. Doesn't mean it's sustainable of course.
Just sign up for a degree at a degree mill and you'll get a student visa and an easy route to permanent residency.
New Zealand (and Australia) don't care about quality migrants, just quantity, to keep up demand for housing (both countries have housing-bubble-based economies) and to add extra consumption to national GDP.
The migrants they really want are Indians who can put downwards pressure on wages. Go to Auckland, its basically an Asian city.
Go somewhere like Poland, Romania or Portugal and hire your own workforce. You won't even be in the ass-end of the world like NZ.
There is no way I would choose living in Poland over NZ. Unless you like breathing coal smoke. I actually quite like Poland too, but it isn't even a choice.
Also 'basically an Asian city' sounds, basically, racist.
That's the advice I was given when looking at NZ. At the time I had about 15 years experience in IT but that couldn't be considered as I didn't have a relevant degree.
"Do night classes for a couple of years and get a degree"
Instead I decided to forget about NZ even as a tourist.
My wife and I considered moving to NZ as well; I'm a cloud engineer with 10 years experience (20 total in software/sys admin) in the US, I've worked for startups and enterprises.
NZ won't even acknowledge me because I don't have a silly bachelors degree. Too bad I spent those 4 years getting experience instead of university.
Definitely worth a visit, I'd suggest. It's really a beautiful country.
I have a Bachelor's degree in CS. Nobody will hire me because I don't have experience.
Funny thing is, before I got my degree, they were happy enough with my experience but wouldn't hire me because I didn't have a degree. Even had the same interviewer tell me one of those things on either side of my graduation.
"Get a degree and we'd love to hire you for your experience!"
"Oh, sorry, you're qualified but don't have any experience."
I do have a bachelors, but it’s in physics, so I get the same “well, you don’t know computers, but you do know how to contact spirits. We don’t need spiritualists - rejected”
Jesus, if I had a penny for every time I’ve had to explain that physics and psychics aren’t the same thing I’d be a rich man.
I’m more or less at the point of just giving up on being gainfully productive.
Unless you have lived in Poland, Romania or Portugal, I wouldn't be so sure in suggesting these places. These countries have their own challenges starting from language barrier to inefficient bureaucracy. I don't think either of these countries are well-known for their tech quality either.
I don't know about Portugal, but both Romania and Poland have a well developed tech sector. They're not dumping grounds for projects (think Infosys & co).
But you're right that the bureaucracy is really bad right now...
I work out of a very small studio in Auckland mostly building ecom (cofounder/dev). The reality is NZ is such a tiny market that is has a really funny quality to it (and some really odd stuff in places like an unspoken pay invoices on the 20th of the month rule). Two degrees of separation is the running joke here because just about anyone you hear about has met someone you know. We are doing an increasing amount of overseas work because in many ways it’s just easier, asides from Skyping at odd hours of the day.
I’d love for NZ to be the next Tech hub, but I fear the culture just isn’t there yet. It’s easy to start a company here but it’s very hard to locally source materials or tools at anything like competitive prices thanks to the 100% markup almost any importer puts on anything (if you can get it at all). Software at least doesn’t have that barrier, good developers here are generally very busy. That’s good I guess.
Funny you should say that, the Jrump devs are friends of a friend of mine.
To add to your comment, after several years of going to a regional conference I've got to know so many of the crowd from working with them directly that I struggle to make it around the trade stands.
One of the consequences of this is you can't burn bridges as word will get around (like in a village).
> 100% markup almost any importer puts on anything
This is a big negative of living here, people actually expect to pay a lot and will be suspicious of cheap things. It's a shame that it's often cheaper to buy something from the US/UK. Often you can get things (including shipping) at 50% the cost from overseas.
I'd understand if it's actually something that is locally made but it's pretty annoying when a place like Brazil charges 100% markup tax on something like a video game console, video card, or what not.
It surely makes it difficult for locals to afford computers.
I'm trying to get a job in New Zealand right now. In 2012 I was there on Working Holiday, and did a summer job writing control systems code for Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in Auckland.
By 2014 I'd visited a few more countries and shortlisted destinations: New Zealand (Skilled Migrant Category), Canada (Express Entry), or Australia (subclass 186).
Now I'm trying to apply, but most listings on Seek require already having the "right to live and work in this location". I need the job to get the work visa.
I sent many applications, without success. I updated my LinkedIn, rewrote my résumé several times based on conflicting advice, and asked a recruiter to help - but still no interviews. I posted several side projects here on Hacker News, but they didn't reach the front page. My current contract making microSD cards for OSE in Taiwan lasts until the end of the year, but I can leave earlier.
Please contact me if you have any idea about immigration-friendly employers, recruiters, websites - anything helps.
I'm a kiwi and did the reverse and moved to Scotland. I do know a number of people who were offered jobs in NZ while still abroad. Technical sales, developer, psychiatrist. That's just anecdotal, but it's definitely possible.
However my approach in moving to the UK was to actually show up to look for a job. Seems to me like it's very different having a faceless person send in a CV from the other side of the world, compared to them walking through your front door wearing a suit, shaking your hand and saying 'Hi, my name's Peter'. If you're right there in front of them they know you're serious, not just firing off random speculative applications. And human nature is that you form an opinion of someone within moments of meeting them, so if that opinion is positive you'll be treated very differently to an email sitting in their Inbox. If someone then asks 'Do you have a visa?' then you can explain that if they offer you the job then you will get the visa and have that conversion with them.
I understand that approach may be more difficult to commit to than applying remotely, due to current job, family, financial reasons - but it worked for me.
I tried that in Japan and the Netherlands while I was on my country-visiting tour. After a fruitless month in each, I moved on. The flights and living costs made it an expensive mistake. I'm not rich. The low cost of living in Kaohsiung means I've saved enough to pay for my visa fees, but that's over half my savings. Not to mention flights, food, accommodation while searching. All my previous jobs interviewed over Skype, although sometimes I was introduced by Facebook friends who I do know in real life.
Mentioning your citizenship might help, certain countries look for certain groups (e.g. they have a satellite team in ___ where you speak the language, bonus!).
It's really complicated to explain where I'm from. My passport is British. I was born in Switzerland. My parents live in France. (My dad worked at CERN, if you've been to Geneva you'll understand).
I went to university in the UK, exchange programme in Santa Barbara. I did summer jobs in LA, Switzerland, Taipei, Vancouver, Auckland, Korea, China, and India. I decided I like NZ and Canada the most. I need 3 years prior continuous relevant work experience to get the visa. So I came back to Taiwan to do that. Now I have the academic and work qualifications needed.
I really want to stay and settle down. I don't have a "home" to go back to. If I live with my parents, I'm unable to marry or have kids. Those kids would be stateless because I'm a citizen by descent and can't pass on citizenship. NZ's Skilled Migrant Category can get me Permanent Resident status in 2 years (the fastest). That's my plan, but I need a job to help me do that.
Why wouldn't your kids would get your wife's citizenship in most countries? Also your (future?) wife's country probably has marriage visas and what not.
My girlfriend is Taiwanese. Yes, kids could be Taiwanese, but I can't. Taiwan doesn't allow dual citizenship, and also has conscription (I'm a conscientious objector).
I know a mother and son from church here. She went to NYC, met a Chinese man, got married, had a kid. Moved to Canada. He went on a business trip and cheated, they divorced. Without him, she lost her Canadian residency. The kid had 4 passports (US, Canada, China, Taiwan - dual citizenship is allowed under 18) but he couldn't live with his mum unless they moved to Taiwan.
Aged 15, all his education in English, suddenly expected to study at a local Taiwanese school. Last I knew they were trying to move to Germany.
Taiwanese (and Canadian) permanent residency aren't permanent, because if I leave for more than a couple of years I lose it. NZ PR is permanent. (Or 4 years to Canadian citizenship).
As a UK citizen you should be able to work in NZ for up to 23 months if you are aged <=30 on a working holiday visa. You might be able to find a temp job that way and transition to permanent.
I already did in 2012, and I can't have a second Working Holiday visa there.
The other two options are more hopeful - Canada will allow me a second working holiday (my first was before the rules changed in 2012), and I didn't work in Australia before. But the Aussie visa only lets me work for one employer for 6 months max. NZ needs 3 years continuous relevant work experience, and I really don't want to break the "continuous" part I have now.
Then just apply for Working Holiday in Canada again.
You were already successful to find skilled job before, so you will be able to get it again. And being physically here with open work permit makes things much easier.
Then you can apply for Young Professional which is very little hassle for your employer and you will get 2nd year easily.
And during this 2 years you would apply for Express Entry as soon as you are eligible. You apply for FSW for which you should be eligible already or for CEC when you have 1 year experience in Canada. If you don't have enough points for EE then there are other programs like PNP.
It would be really bad luck if you couldn't get, or be in the process of getting permanent residency during that time. When you have job in IT, it's quite straightforward to get PR.
Also, when looking for job, never mention word "sponsoring". When recruiter asks you about your visa you will say that you have WH for a year, already lined up YP for 2nd year and applying for PR as soon you are employed. Visas are not a problem here.
I’m in New Zealand. My friends are really struggling to get work here. Employers here are really tough on Chinese developers. Immigration is even tougher. I think our government needs to address these issues if we want more skilled workers.
In New Zealand and Australia Indian and Chinese workers are essentially seen as replaceable due to the huge numbers of them migrating to both countries (those countries make up the #1 and #2 sources of migrants respectively).
The whole point of the migration schemes are to get workers for cheap and to put downwards pressure on wages. A very high skill level is not really required, and big companies will just throw bodies at jobs and rotate out anyone who can't make the cut.
The IT contracting shops there are called 'body shops' for this very reason.
There many Indian Australian and Asian Australian developers, but there are also has many Indian and Chinese citizens working in Australia, employed by large contracting firms like TCS, on contacts under _Indian_ labor laws, with worse entitlements and in more vulnerable negotiating positions than their Australia co-workers. Some of these people are very highly skilled, they also get rotated out as they are useful for establishing teams with new clients. I work with many people who who have asked me, and others, to help lobby on there behalf to stay in their jobs, because they have been told by their contracting company that they will be moved, and if they refuse, their contract contains provisions that could force require them quit and pay back the previous three months pay. I struggle to believe this is legal under Australian law, but I am close to one developer who did this and chose to pay back three months pay rather than speak to a lawyer.
Because their big business mates bribe them into doing it. However, Australia is not a corrupt country, so the 'bribe' will mean a high-paid consulting or executive job after their career in politics.
Additionally most of the wages being depressed are actually for entry-level jobs, and the poor have no voice in most democracies since they are not effectively organised.
Its a common scam to get a student visa (often with fake English test results etc) which allows you to enter the country and work 20 hours a week, then to actually work 60 hours and have the boss pay you for 20. This results in payments 1/3rd the level of minimum wage, but this is still attractive enough for poor Indian males to want to come and do it in the hundreds of thousands.
Plus Australia is has very generous welfare for the elderly (aka pensions) and a sub-replacement fertility level, so there is always pressure to maintain that ponzi scheme with more taxable bodies.
Oh, and in addition to all that, the people that are opposing this type of mass immigration are being called racist.
I did mean employers sorry. I’ll admit a sample size of 2 is nothing to go by but I’ve seen Chinese and Indians struggle for months to get interviews while other less talented developer easily get jobs. Admittedly both were poor at self promotion.
> The government believes that 40% of jobs will go [to AI] within the next ten years. I think its going to be a lot faster than that.
It's going to be a lot slower than that. Ten years from now AI will barely have made a dent in the existing job market in the developed world. Maybe in 30 years 10-15% of existing jobs will have been replaced by AI. That's an optimistic outcome. The AI jobs predictions are hilariously wrong. Ten years is a short amount of time, they have the impact time scale wrong as is typical in tech predictions (making the mistake of shuttling the impact far too close to the present).
I think they don't count the numbers the way you do, to rig the statistics they seems to count jobs that are done by machines and wil be done in the future by AI to.
Is this urban legend still taken seriously? I mean, it was a thing 40 years ago, but now there is hardly anyone "with nothing to lose" that can reach anywhere without a good amount of luck.
I've met dozens of people who have made a good living from starting off with nothing. Do they specifically have to be in a garage?
Luck plays a huge role. So does talent, skill, and opportunity. You screw up if you think of it in only one of those terms to the exclusion of the others.
I'm one guy in a home office starting up a new company. The garage would be a terrible alternative.
Been doing it this way since 1996. It's just as much fun as it was then, when you've landed on something that excites you. There's still a vast amount of land to explore.
Shit salaries, overpriced housing, and everything is expensive. Seriously, if you're American name me the last thing you just purchased and I can guarantee it will be at least 25% more expensive here, sometimes double.
If you're an American you'd be crazy to come here unless you've already made your money.
> Shit salaries, overpriced housing, and everything is expensive
You're not kidding. A decade ago I looked at buying Autodesk Maya. It was $US3999 if I were in the US, so how much was it from the local reseller in NZ? $NZ13,000, just because it could be. At the time, that was enough to make a deposit on a house. A group of us started calling it "the New Zealand tax," because we noticed that almost every price for an imported good was 2.5x what it would cost to purchase, ship from another country, and pay tax - often more. HDMI cables were $40, and my friend from Dick Smith (roughly equivalent to Fry's) told me they bought them for $5.
One and a half years ago I migrated to New Zealand from Turkey.
* It was almost my first time abroad, my English wasn't great, and I was new to the culture. However I was amazed that how welcoming and patient people were. I hear the opposite from my friends living in Europe and US.
* I found a job while in Turkey, and the company sponsored me for the visa; and since they were an accredited employer the visa process was painless.
* Job variety is definitely small. I think it is not that hard to find _a_ job since there's usually demand for IT; however they are all pretty similar to each other(big finance/telco companies). If you have a specific interest (FP/Haskell and smaller companies in my case) it would be hard to find a job you like.
* Rent is expensive. Almost every one of my single friends flatshare, but I was able to find a one bedroom flat to live with my partner. I pay about 40% of my salary to the rent.
* However I do not think living expenses are too much. Our weekly shopping are usually cheaper compared to Turkey relative to the income. And most of the stuff we like to do for fun is usually cheap or free.
* People are nice. The city feels safe. Nature is great, lots of great hikes just an hour drive from the city center.
Overall; I can not compare with Europe or US since I've never been there, but I'm glad I am here now. And moving here was not that hard, so I think it has everything it needs to be a Tech hub, other than momentum.
I know a guy who moved to New Zealand from Hungary, with several years experience in broadcast TV. He thought New Zealand was going to be a new start, and got a job at a regional TV station working with a friend of mine.
After about a year of working for that place, he got very angry with it and quit because they were cheap beyond what you can imagine. He ended up doing a lot of overtime to make up for software and hardware problems. A few years ago moved to Auckland to work for a production firm up there, thinking it would be a better job.
Rumor has it that he gave up and went back to Hungary.
I can consider living somewhere else; especially Wellington is a good option as you said. However currently I am happy with my job and living arrangements here, but definitely I will consider them when I want a change.
But honestly, I always thought that those cities had even less variety than Auckland.
Why not reverse the immigration process? Instead of doing tremendous amounts of paper work after which the system takes a guess if you will be able to contribute to the country, run that process backwards instead and lower the threshold for IT professionals to enter NZ significantly and then they get to prove their worth.
Start with a very rudimentary initial screening and after say a 2 year trial period have a selection process based on what the person in question has accomplished. That way people get to prove themselves and what the can contribute with instead.
If you don't contribute, i.e. receive social welfare or similar, you're out. If you contribute by performing in the labour market, start an at least moderately successful business or similar you're in. I don't understand why all immigration systems don't work like this...
This is essentially how freedom of movement in Europe works.
As an EU citizen I was able to move to another EU country, rent a flat, and then within 3 months had to prove that I had income to pay tax/social contributions. On passing that interview you get residency rights and continued access to public services and healthcare; I am still a “guest”, but can effectively stay indefinitely as long as I keep contributing and don't break the law.
That sounds similar to the Working Holiday programme, which offers 1 year work visas with few strings attached.
Most people blow their chance on irrelevant work experience (farm work, café). I got relevant jobs (summer job coding control systems at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in NZ, network administration at Lululemon in Canada).
My mistake was only staying for a few months - I should've spent a whole year there, and then I could add immigration points for working in the country for 1 year.
Now I'm trying to move back, and it's hard. Any suggestions would be helpful.
I think the word "sponsor" scares off the HR department. I'm able to pay all the fees, I just need the company's name (and a commitment to stay in the role for at least a year if I remember right).
You have to understand that it’s not as simple as that for the company.
In order to sponsor your visa they have to demonstrate that they attempted to hire New Zealanders for the role and there was nobody suitable for the role.
That means being able to supply proof that you made a reasonable effort to advertise for the role, and giving lists of NZ candidates who applied but where not suitable because they lacked the technical requirements for the role.
- Who measures the performance and how? How is it scaled to compare a contractor for corps and a dev at a tiny startup?
- Who decides what's the fault of the employer vs employee? If you're either fired or quit due to terrible mismanagement, why wouldn't you use whatever welfare you can while looking for a new job?
- And if you want to get someone out of the country, how do you do that? Where exactly do you send them if they ran out of money and have no support network?
Moving countries has a huge impact on people especially families. Not something you really want to leave people in limbo for - the first year or two can be quite rocky for some (it's usually tougher than people imagine). Realistically it's not a huge amount of paperwork to come to NZ if you qualify and you know with good certainty what your pathway is to residency.
I’m in NZ, and involved in the startup community down here.
Great people, great vibe.
There’s a long history of Innovation down here at the bottom of the planet.
The best example is David Downs book “#8 Rewired” which gives examples of great NZ Innovations such as:
Disposable hypodermic syringe
Manned flight(disputed)
Jet boat
Nanotube
Freeze dried coffee(sorry)
DNA discovery
Splitting the atom(Rutherford)
DNA double helix(Wilkins, the DNA Ringo Starr)
Unfortunaly, outside of Xero(Cloud Accounting) there isn’t much of that awesome innovation scaling down here.
While these things were discovered by kiwis, their place of discovery was the UK or the US. Wilkins did his discoveries at Kings College, Rutherford worked at the Cavendish Lab in Cambridge, Pickering worked on manned flight in the US (California, Jet Propulsion Lab). I don't think you can use that as an example for innovation in NZ
Just today we learned that one of our architects will leave our firm. His old employer made him an offer he can't refuse: 1 year oversees deployment in New Zealand with wife and kids. Sounds hella nice to be honest.
Lovely place. I just wish they would hurry up and invent those hypersonic jets that people have been promising for 20 years so it was only a 2 hour flight away.
I left New Zealand for Australia about 9 months ago, and have no plans on moving back to NZ for at least half a decade.
I love New Zealand and I think it's an amazing country. I really miss it, and if I ever had kids, I'd want to raise them in NZ.
But the money and the jobs just aren't there.
I doubled my wages by moving to Melbourne from Wellington and cost of living is roughly the same. It took me 2 weeks from when I started looking for a job to getting an offer. My salary went from NZ$42k + 3% super and no bonus to AU$75k (NZ$80k) + 9.5% super + bonus. I'm sure I could've landed a better paying job here too, but I was living off my credit card so I took the first job that gave me an offer.
In New Zealand there just weren't many options for someone with 2 years of experience. There's a chronic shortage of senior positions, but for mid level positions, especially if you don't want to work with .NET or Java, there just aren't jobs available. There were about 5 open positions nationwide for a Ruby on Rails dev with 2 or 3 years experience when I was looking to move on from my job, before deciding to jump ship to Australia. In Melbourne, there were so many positions I was qualified for that I didn't even bother applying for most of them. I had recruiters ringing me every morning with new positions that I was perfectly suited for.
If you're trying to start a company, don't expect a lot of investment. Most startups in NZ bootstrap or get investment from family and friends. There just isn't a culture of venture capital in NZ. It seems like a very normal trajectory for an NZ tech startup is to get enough funding and growth that they can migrate to California. Xero is quite unique in that it stayed in NZ, although it's now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The lack of investment in startups is a cultural thing I think, and ties right in with tall poppy syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome. Our humility is both a source of national pride and also something that holds us back as a country. Of course, not everyone wants to start a unicorn, and that's fine, but someone needs to.
It does lead to a very different startup culture. There isn't that rapid growth in companies that you see in the USA, because there's less investment. The startup I worked for had been around for 3 or 4 years and only had 8 employees, the lack of manpower (especially developers) really held the company back. The business idea was solid, we made decent sales, but we were severely undercapitalised. Most startups, due to the investment situation are one or two person shops.
The tech startup scene is weird too, at least in Wellington, as it's so small. It's like this little incestuous community, full of gossip about different people and companies. I actually found it got quite catty at times.
It's a crying shame that I felt I had to leave (although money was only part of the reason), but like fuck I'm going to work for $20 an hour when I can jump on a plane and 4 hours later be earning double. NZ is a beautiful country let down by a low wage economy.
Of course, if you're working in New Zealand you'll have to obey U.S. laws; the NZ government will violate its own laws to seize your property at the behest of a foreign government without due process of any kind. If you don't believe me, ask Kim Dotcom.
Although the initial raid/ arrest was absurd, the NZ courts denied extradition for years. Also that was the previous government, famous for licking us dick
I can't emphasize enough how rural the rest of this country is.
New Zealand is a victim of its success in tourism. Everything is geared towards that. Imagine living somewhere like Denver, CO but with SF prices and depressed software salaries. It's a wonderful place but even with all things being equal bureaucracy wise (and they aren't), the list of places ahead of Wellington is two miles long.