[JusticeJuice]

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]

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.

[latentsea]

> 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.

[JusticeJuice]

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.

[te_chris]

It's a slightly weird one, but Octopus Energy (UK) have setup a new utility in NZ and it also covers off-hours support.

[kavalg]

How does it compare to e.g. Eastern Europe? What is the typical salary of a senior developer or architect in NZ?

[sitharus]

Depending on skillset $150k-$230k is common. You do have to balance this against the cost of living though, we definitely don’t have Eastern Europe’s cost of living advantage.