Andrew, I'm from the US and have worked in Boston, San Francisco and Seattle doing Rails since Rails was in beta. Before that I was a windows .net Borg but resistance proved far from futile and I split that collective the second Rails was viable. I've been at this game for about 20 years. I've researched working in Europe (less jobs, gobs of immigration rules), South Africa (way less money), NZ (less money, very few jobs, harder immigration) and Brazil (less money - pretty much required to live in São Paulo) but haven't made that jump yet. Here's my take on working in Australia vs the US
* Less money (and given the cost of living in Sydney that'd be __much__ less money). I moved here taking a modest pay cut (about $30K) which I thought wouldn't be a big deal. I failed to factor in cost of living... oops. Cost of living in Sydney is a non-trivial factor. All things considered I'd say I make about 1/2 what I did in the US. If money is your motivator I'd hop a plane to San Francisco - although visa's in the US can be challenging (that's putting it politely). I'm most likely moving elsewhere in Oz soon ... I'm barely surviving financially in Sydney and that's getting old. * Much smaller scene - especially in regards to startups. Seems like more jobs here are consulting/corporate than in the US where the Rails scene is very startup focused. * Demand seems to be about the same though - in terms of ease of finding work... maybe less opportunities here but, there are also fewer devs. * Working in Oz was simple for me - I'm on a 457 sponsored visa with reInteractive.net. It has limitations though - I can only work for my sponsor - if things don't work out I have 28 days to leave the country. After 2 years I can apply for residency. Because the US doesn't have nationwide health coverage I also get no health coverage here and am required to have 3rd party health insurance ($$$). If you're on a visa from a civilized nation though (UK, Canada, EU, etc.) I think you get health coverage here with your visa. * Community: RoRo actually has much better attendance than the Seattle.rb group... I'd say Oz has the community thing down - better than the US from what I've seen. And - RailsCamp - that's a very cool Oz/NZ thing. * Corporate - it's the same Dilbert madhouse in every country afaik (unlike national culture, corporate seems to be devoid of differences world-wide). Only notable exception in Sydney is dress code (which Seattle hasn't heard of yet). Corporate rails/open-source adoption here seems a bit behind the US although Mikel has been doing an awesome job opening corporate eyes to using Rails in traditionally windows shops. Bottom line - if cube farms are your goal there seems to be plenty of opportunities here :) * Freelancing - I'm not technically allowed to do this here (see 457 visa) but there seems to be fairly frequent opportunities (I get approached maybe once a month and I'm not advertising or looking) * Working environment... well - at reInteractive - it's pretty chill. We mostly work from home, not required to live in Sydney (or even NSW), set our own hours, have a minimum of rules/policies, etc. It's a pretty cake scene as far as consulting goes. The one stint I did in corporate here (CDB - Sydney) was the usual 9-5, typical corporate rules, firewalls on the internet, etc. Not my scene but, as far as corporate goes seemed about the same as the gigs I had in the US. Hope that helps. -ben On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 6:42 PM, Andrew Grimm <[email protected]>wrote: > I've been invited to give a 5-10 minute talk about what it's like > being a Ruby dev in Oz. It'll be at a pre-RubyKaigi meetup in Tokyo, > which will have a fair number of Japanese and non-Japanese people. > > As far as I can tell, most of the capital cities have Ruby meetups, > and possibly meetups on JavaScript, functional programming or iOS > programming. And Sydney also has hack nights. I'll also talk about > Railscamps, and RubyConf Australia. > > I'm also asked about work in Australia. Is Ruby-based work mainly > based in small startups and/or freelancing, with more mainstream > languages required for larger corporations? What is the work > environment like? What kind of hours are expected? What is the pay > like compared to the cost of living in Australia? > > I've heard a few grumbles about what it's like working in a large > corporate, but is that more about what tools and processes are used, > rather than how they treat you? > > Oh, and I suspect there's a few grumbles about getting permission to > work in Australia. But is that more of a PITA rather than a > show-stopper? > > Thanks, > > Andrew > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en. > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby or Rails Oceania" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rails-oceania?hl=en.
