Why is it so hard to run a tech company in Australia? Some days it feels like I either need to start my own company to find out or just leave this country to find job with a career.
Part of 2K Australia's problem was that we grew very big when the Aussie dollar was low, then when it came back up we were a very expensive studio. We had very little turnover and a lot of well paid, senior developers made us look even more expensive per head.
We were working closely with 2K China who were a lot cheaper per head.
We always had the impression somebody far up the chain would be looking at the spreadsheet and thinking about where they want to invest further. It may have been our imagination.
In fact, now that I think about it, probably the opposite was happening because a lot of effort when into growing the Marin Studio in California which I'm sure would have been even more expensive per head than us.
Then they try to introduce business practices that only work in the U.S. and consequently fail. I've seen it time and time again.
Ripping out existing support and sales structures and adding U.S.-centric ones that piss off local customers and lost them sales.
Management hoisted that we had to do stand ups over video chat daily. It was done 9PM EST, and 5AM their time. The time was picked to match my managers PST schedule. There was also the weekly backlog grooming, biweekly poker plannning, etc.
Working with that team, a European Sales team and on site European vendors. The two things I've seen is our meeting culture grates on them. Secondly my American team mates, I don't want to say looked down. But consistently commented, on lack of devotion and effort of other counterparts.
A number of reasons, I think. Our terrible internet, the lack of support from the state governments (and the lack of _understanding_ of our industry for those governments that are trying; see: QLD), an investor base that (after spending the last 7 years navigating it) appear to be desperately afraid of B2C start-ups, and don't quite get B2B start-ups either... the list goes on, really.
Not going to stop me trying, though!
Very similar to the Australian film industry, really.
Disclaimer: I work for PwC's Nifty Forms team, which helps SMBs in Australia with these programs.