There are plenty of wellknown tech/software companies originating in Australia. Xero, Freelancer, Canva, REA Group, MYOB, Airtasker, BigCommerce, Afterpay...
Many foreign software companies have development teams in Aus as well. Google, Zendesk, Square, Squarespace spring to mind.
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/technology/the-top-50-tech-c...
But when looking at living there, the wages/housing prices seemed like a poor trade off even compared to California. Although of course it’s a great place to live in many other ways.
I’ve heard of some of those but haven’t looked up their pay bands, not sure Afterpay has a moat though…
> Google Maps first started as a C++ program designed by two Danish brothers, Lars and Jens Eilstrup Rasmussen, and Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, at the Sydney-based company Where 2 Technologies. It was first designed to be separately downloaded by users, but the company later pitched the idea for a purely Web-based product to Google management, changing the method of distribution.[9] In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google Inc.[10] where it transformed into the web application Google Maps.