1. Aus has a much smaller population than the US or UK so given the constant emigration to Aus of qualified, experienced IT professionals, you should probably be more surprised that it pays as well as it does !

2. Rather than compare 'inter', it probably makes more sense to compare 'intra'. By that, I mean that a good IT job in Aus can pay very, very well compared to other professions where more study and slower career/salary progression is involved.

3. You quoted 60k for London. At the current 1.56 ex rate, that is less than 100k AUD. Haven't you indicated you can get 114k in Sydney ?

4. Living in US/UK/AUS are 3 very, very different experiences. As a qualified, experienced professional, you should stress less about the monetary figure you can expext to earn (I agree that is easier said than done) and consider more each country itself from an overall perspective.

Good Luck !

I think this is one good example of what makes the transition certainly tougher on the guys coming from India. That cultural attitude/expectation is based around immediacy and 'me me me'. A far more productive approach is to target the job that provides for regular and ongoing results oriented remuneration and as long as the initial package is fair (based on your market research for your role/experience) you don't have to start making the employer chuckle at you with your 'demands' ;-)

I think it's best to take what ever you are offered first.

Get some "Aussie" on the CV is step one.

Well, it is not an expectation more of an attempt to understand how the industry works and what is acceptable and what is not. I never had any Australian projects\people to work with hence, I have no clue about the industry so trying to learn and comply with it. lot of people say here that living in OZ is very expensive and I understand that job hopping by screwing the previous employer is tough and I am not intending to quit jobs easily (unlike in India where I can hop easily) so trying to get the right package and begin without whining much about the package and concentrate on building on my career in OZ. Again I understand that my choices would be limited given the fact that I dont have any OZ experience.

the only reason I have chosen to be in OZ is the liveability and weather compared to here in UK as getting a visa to UK is far more easier and being in UK already makes it more simpler to stay here rather than quitting and moving to OZ.

Thanks for your posts!!

My understanding is that it's easier to hop jobs here in Aus than India. Indian colleagues of mine have mentioned that if they quit a job in India they are often contractually obliged to pay back some of the previous years pay rise! That doesn't happen here.

Yes, you are right there are usually contracts that states that you need to either provide 1-3 months notice before quitting or pay for the time that they dont provide the notice for. However, we can ask the new employer to pay the amount and also, the fact is the new employer would not call the old one to verify the background checks(they do call background checks to the process wherein agencies call up the friends or colleagues using the board line and the number is provided by us)

Ahmed,

I can speak from personal experience working in NYC. The salaries look high but you get hit with city tax, county tax, state tax, social security and medicare( which as a work visa holder-you cannot avail those benefits).

I as a Network Engineer with 8 yrs experience working in the US would think Sydney or Oz in general is expensive for somethings and cheaper for others..

My personal opinion though..maybe wrong

scaria197

I reckon you'd be lucky to find anything that is cheaper in Oz than in the USA? This is my experience at least in California and Americans think it's an expensive state!

I've never had to pay city or county income tax either, just Federal and State, ss, etc.

I work in this field (less technical perhaps) and have lived in the UK, US and Aus.

As a really general rule, the US pays the best salaries, across the board (ie not just IT). Technical competence is also more rewarded there.

UK pays the lowest, in my experience, and in Europe generally technical competence is certainly less-well rewarded. The one exception to this is the financial sector in London and SE. There you can do very well. But UK business generally is pretty conservative when it comes to IT skills and salary.

Aus from what I have seen so far pays very well. There is a shortage of good people in many areas, and good tech consultants with your background and good soft skills (very important) can certainly earn 120-150k (Syd or Melb). In the UK you'd be lucky to get GBP50K from my experience.

I find that it's very difficult to comment accurately on salaries of somewhere you haven't lived for a while although we often try and guess what we might hypothetically be earning.

I've just had a friend from London visiting...we did the same IT postgrad course about 10 years ago and we both started work in London / SE in 2000. I started on 25k and him 22k - he told me he earned 76k last year! He doesn't work in financial services, nor the City but in fact an IT role in a retail company...I was pretty surprised by the number.

yeah NYC is different. You get hit by those taxes. I am currently not in NYC and dont pay those.

I've just spent come from the UK though, and I certainly know what I was getting paid there v US and Aus for example :-) And given it was part of the salary structure of a large global company I'd been with for 14 years, I had a pretty good benchmark.

This company always maintained good competitiveness with market rates, but always struggled to pay good technical people a good wage (management-oriented salary ladder etc).

In most non-financial sectors in the UK, it is extremely difficult for experiened IT technical staff to get paid a competitive wage.

Sound advice, lots of people start with a short term contract

Yeah true commodities are cheaper in the US. We have promised not to do the conversion/comparison when we reach Oz

I was browing through catalogues for "Kmart" and "target" in AU and honestly, nothing seemed to make me jump compared to what we pay. US prices do not include the 7-9% sales tax that gets added.

Coke is expensive though...good as I am tried of the Double cheese burger and Diet Coke drive thru I eat a few times in a month. Time to drink water and walk a little more.

Yeah i heard it's $280 a gram!!!!