New Zealand aims to recruit 100 of the 'best tech talent' to move to Wellington | Hacker News Reader

New Zealand aims to recruit 100 of the 'best tech talent' to move to Wellington

sfgate.com

I'm from Wellington and love it there. I would move back in a heartbeat but I would be taking a >50% pay cut and the country is now very sadly a worse place to live than when I left five years ago, with increasing poverty, homelessness, trashed environment from dairying, run down health system just scraping by, and an ignored education system.

Really? Because I was thinking of taking them up on the offer. I've heard plenty of complaints about NZ from NZers, but they've tended to be of the "First World complaints" variety. What's so completely terrible?

NZer here.

NZ isn't a great case for a likeness in pay to nearly anywhere else in the world for tech roles. Snr dev for a company specializing in Laravel/Shopify apps. <60k/year NZD

The education system itself is pretty broken, but not for the Early Childhood scene. Wife is doing her degree at the moment, and there is a great honor of a child's family's culture -- Embedding it into the child's learning. Te Whāriki has just undergone a massive update, mind you: http://www.education.govt.nz/early-childhood/teaching-and-le...

In terms of Primary schooling, I've had 2 friends who have decided that the reports they are needing to do on such a deep level and regular basis are to the point of holding back what they can teach and left the teaching industry altogether.

Also from welly and like it. Overseas because there's maybe 10 companies max I could realistically work for (application security engineer).

It's a decent environment for consulting though because after a few years in industry you pretty much know "everyone".

From my point of view there is no shortage of talent in wellington. There are shortages of venture capital and a shortage of opportunities outside corporate that'll pay you enough to be worth the surprisingly punishing cost of living (metro housing in particular).

May I ask what country you're in now that has less trouble with "poverty, homelessness, trashed environment, (and a) run down health system"?

And is Auckland any different?

Another NZer here. Engineer, retired to NZ seaside town after many years in the EU. OK for me but work here, impossible.

This would be funny if it wasn't so sad - I agree with erentz, plus I would add that with spending on R&D a fraction of what is normal in a developed country, it's not going to get better.

Not so bad for outsourcing - very low pay, lack of opportunity, average but adequate education and student debt means quite a bit of programming talent is available.

I wonder what they mean by "tech."

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