1. As long as your LVR isn’t too high your interest payments on a home loan will probably come in well below what renting an equivalent house would cost. Further rent will generally rise over time with inflation, whereas your interest will decrease to zero over time as you pay down the loan.
2. If you’ve got a home loan with a 100% offset account (very, very common in Australia) then a credit card makes financial sense. I purchase everything on credit and pay the full balance each month. I pay no interest, earn points and this maximises the amount of money in my offset account at any one time.
3. Depending on your usage and tax situation a noveated lease (car lease) can make good financial sense.
The thing worth pointing out that explains how both this, and the person you are replying to are correct is that in Australia we haven't had an unemployment crises since the 1990s.
If you have never seen unemployment, and can't imagine not having a job then arranging your affairs for tax efficiency makes perfect sense, even if it means you are carrying more debt.
https://www.finder.com.au/australias-personal-debt-reported-...
I'm including 'Investment debt' cause who are we kidding? It's all investment properties.
Real estate prices in Sydney and Melbourne are in the million(s), but incomes are ~100+k AUD. Some people earn 200k+ as a principal engineer, but that's pretty much it.
In America you have much more cities where you can find a decent job and different lifestyle. If New York is too expensive, you can move to Raleigh, NC. I don't think that exists in Australia.
There is also a very low degree of innovation in Australia, it's all related to real estate and mining.
Personally I just feel like it's not worth building a life here unless you get a large inheritance, but for an immigrant, America is a much better place to build a future.
Melbourne is pretty decent for high end tech jobs, but not as good as Sydney.
Certainly real estate is extremely expensive and broken, but it's not like New Zealand where the real estate is almost as expensive but the pay is much lower. I had to leave for this reason - New Zealand's housing crisis is much worse in real terms.
How close? let's say AUD 300k (I'm honestly curious, does Optiver/Atlassian/Google even pay that much here?) which is a mind-blowing salary in Australia, tops all kinds of taxes, it converts to USD 220K give or take, adjusted for higher taxes and cost of living, down to about 200k.
So a top earner 0.1% in Sydney makes as much as a strong 3 yoe engineer in America.
Presumably they have to pay taxes and have a high cost of living as well :)
I don’t know how accurate it is but the 2020 SO developer survey puts the median salary for an engineering manager in the US at $152k and an SRE at $140K.
In my experience that’s maybe slightly higher than going rates in Melbourne and probably about the same as Sydney.
On the other hand, AUD300k is a C-level salary here in Australia and way past the start of top tax bracket (AUD180k)
SO numbers are way off comparing to levels'. They're heavily skewed toward the low end. Think about it, who even bothers reporting salary there? I don't even find SO useful in general, these days when I look up an issue I usually end up on github, not SO.
The point is, in AU, making 300k is a really big deal (high rank in FAANG), while it's far from a big deal in the US.
Out of interest I had a look at roles advertised on indeed.com in Atlanta and SF for SREs and data scientists. Estimated ranges seemed to match SO survey results reasonably well.
Maybe both just have bad data.
I don’t doubt that there’s some great tech salaries on offer in the US but I do suspect the massive salaries reported here aren’t necessarily representative. Nor of course is 250k/year in Australia.
Look at property prices in Vancouver and Toronto, New York and San Francisco or London. You're going to find them just as unaffordable relative to the median salary. The difference is that for you personally - a worker in tech, the US will likely pay you a better salary relative to the median than you receive in Australia.
Not FAANG either.
250k for non-contracting is indeed impressive. I'm guessing a trading firm, in that case, they are outliers, curious if they have presence in Brissie though.
We're in Brisbane.
Thought I'd interview because I was getting sick of the old job. Wasn't intending to start actively looking.
External recruiter approached me on LinkedIn, had an interview with her, another 3 interviews with the company. No leet code nonsense. Did do a personality and IQ test though. And a problem solving excercise which involved troubleshooting Python and SQL. The final interview followed by a group chat with the whole engineering team.
Honestly the whole interview process was really enjoyable. I'm stoked to be here.
That said, I've worked for small companies in the past. Two in fact. And they both hold the rungs for second worst and actual worst companies I've worked for. With this new company though they also hold the top! But it's early days. So far so well.
This was all in March/April too. Quite recent.
The bonus break down is:
10% of my salary paid quarterly if I hit my targets and I get around 0.9% profit sharing.
My position title is just SRE. Same rank as the other engineers.
CEO > VP of Engineering > All the SWE/SREs sit here
Targets change quarter to quarter and are what ever I and my Manager/VP decide.
Typically the targets are technically focused. E.g. product needs in the next 12 months require specific SLO/SLI's being met, in addition to some future customers who we're looking to onboard require us to be compliant in certain security standards. Those are my goals for this quarter.
Think of house prices as reflecting the "price of living in Australia".