Sure there’s exceptions everywhere, but unless you’re self employed and contract in other industries, tech is still where it’s better.
NDIS work also pays similar to construction.
You will struggle to find tech wages that match that for the majority of available work. Techs over saturated with employees and as software improves you need less workers to do more IT work erryday. Meanwhile it still takes the same amount of workers to lay a slab or stand a house frame as it did 20 years ago.
I think construction is an underrated profession by a lot of folks in the U.S, but it doesn't really compare to software for effort vs. reward. It's a favorable alternative for folks who would otherwise work retail or push paper around in non-tech office jobs.
Most offers peaked at 85k. I did a half dozen interviews and had a few offers. Got a good mate who is a data analyst with a fair wack of experience, he struggles to find much available at 120k per annum let alone higher.
Job security in IT hasn't been great to me either. Prior to starting my own company I never had a role last >12 months due to some external factor deleting my job(e.g. company loses support contract). Meanwhile the whole time I've had constant offers to get back into construction. I'm not ticketed or anything I'm just reliable and turn up.
IT is even worse, I work for a company that has >10K employees and we have 50 external IT staff which seems to be enough. The cattle side has won over in the "Pet vs cattle" analogy. After the initial setup, most SMEs will have a guy who comes in once a week.
I've done outside work in Australia and Canada, -40C and +40C, and remote IT not only pays better but means I live in a city and am walking distance from 4+ coffee shops and lunch options.
That said, if I could make IT wages bartending I'd totally be slinging drinks. Hard work, margins on booze are better than food but still tight, and brutal on your liver...
$200k AUD roles are rare in Australia. They do exist but hard to come by.
Most $200k+ AUD devs I know will be working at Atlassian, Amazon, Goggle, not many options in AU, tech is quite narrow, not much variety. It’s also the RSU’s that push them in to the $200k+ bracket.
For "big tech" in Australia, ~$160k is pretty much the starting compensation for graduate/entry level SWEs.
The grass might seem greener on the other side (like that "if architects had to work like programmers" article the other day), but there really isn't any industry that's as easy to work in and high paying as tech is. That might be a bubble that'll pop eventually (I suspect it might) but right now that's the reality.