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Comment by lubujackson | Hacker News Reader

I know several kiwis and my wife has traveled there extensively. The biggest issues seem to stem from "island culture" which means:

- Most things are expensive and lower quality than you are used to. Furniture, housing, food, etc. Simply because of isolation and logistics. - Poor job market, terribly poor for most people. - Which leads to rules making it much harder to move to NZ long term. Unless you meet some high bars (several million dollars in the bank or married to a kiwi, etc.) it is hard to get permanent residence there.

On the other hand, it is one of the most beautiful and rugged countries in the world. An unlike Australia, every plant and animal is not actively trying to kill you.

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I lived in Dunedin.

Items there were charged at rates suitable for wealthy tourists. Pay rates were legal minimums, although the added extras you had to provide for your work were well outside any legal rights employers have. For my last job, I used my PC and other personal equipment just to do my job, while my employer sat back and raked in the cash. (Almost literally, they would pay $6k in wages and $0 for equipment while billing $60+k for a job. One guy I know who took a similar role in the business has had a verbal warning for not doing his job properly, so he's providing his own equipment.)

A friend of mine lives in Auckland. A year or so back, he explained that his rent had more than doubled in a single day. (He was on a fixed term lease that expired, he went to renew it, and the rent went up but his income didn't.)

> Which leads to rules making it much harder to move to NZ long term. Unless you meet some high bars (several million dollars in the bank or married to a kiwi, etc.) it is hard to get permanent residence there.

You forgot the 3rd option - be on a skills shortage list. We hire many developers/testers from overseas and they have no issue obtaining PR or citizenship.

> Poor job market, terribly poor for most people.

Define 'poor' - our unemployment rate is slightly above the US unemployment rate, and in my area (Canterbury, main city Christchurch), unemployment is 3.7%.

We do have a "low wage" economy thanks to a neoliberal government crushing the unions in the 90s, but this doesn't really apply to developers.

> every plant and animal is not actively trying to kill you

It's the opposite here. There are no harmful animals anywhere. You can go walking through the wilderness bare foot (which I have done many times) without fear

> Most things are expensive and lower quality than you are used to

With offshore manufactured things, yes. With handmade stuff, which is more expensive, I'd have no doubts rating it very highly.

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