In my experience the average tenure of an Aussie developer is 3 years (excluding contractors who have the same mercenary attitude as a US engineer).
The average tenure of a Bay Area engineer is 15 months. The market is so hot here right now that most engineers are commanding salaries double what they were only a year ago. And their options demands here are high. If you don't have an options pool or you have an Aussie option pool you're flat out of luck. We're about to setup a new engineering team back in Brisbane AU because we are a much more attractive proposition to a brissy boy than a San fran guy and I'm not competing with Zynga (who are hiring 10 engineers a day) or facebook (the hottest company to have on your CV). Also a lot of brissy engineers see the option of travelling regularly to and possibly relocating to the US to be a MAJOR plus. And the costs are generally about 85-90% of US employee (all things accounted for e.g. Health, super, payroll etc). Plus on top of all that we expect to get 2-3 years tenure out of them which is an unfathomable gain. So run the math.... It's a no brainer regardless of the exchange rate. The engineers here are not that much better than Australia on average for most of our startup needs. However if you have a niche or super hard problem (e.g. One that needs 10 machine learning engineers) then you're more likely to find them here (they all hang out at google and yahoo) and they're easy to attract to a startup (cause they all want to leave there :). But you're still competing with zynga and facebook. My 2c Patrick. Sent from my iPhone On Apr 19, 2011, at 4:29 PM, Jon Tirsen <j...@tirsen.com> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 20, 2011 at 1:58 AM, kimheras <kimhe...@gmail.com> wrote: >> What I'm wondering is whether or not the Atlassian model (as an >> example) - where you maintain a base in Australia and support the >> local industry while having the necessary offices across other key >> markets you operate in is what we should be pointing to as an example >> of how it should be done - or whether that's an aberration and trying >> to replicate that model is a losing strategy for local startups and >> the local industry as a whole. > > Things were very different when Atlassian started out. The USD was > strong and the AUD was weak. If you could sell in USD and spend in AUD > you were golden. As it is now having your cost base in Australia will > be a huge drain on your business. This could be fatal until you have > solid revenue. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach > Australia mailing list. > > Guidelines on discussion: > http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den > > No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. > > To post to this group, send email to > silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. To post to this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to silicon-beach-australia+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
