[Gllug] [Long] Down-under response. Was: File On 4 on waste inGovt computing projects

[Walter Stanish]

> I have a Kiwi colleague, working in London, he could not find a job
> down under and had to come back to the UK for work, he said the

Couldn't resist chiming-in on this one, and the post grew...

Quick work background: Australia (3 years), China (8 years),
                       UK (1 year).

Being from down under and have always felt that both the number of
opportunities and the salaries are much lower there than the UK.
I think it's fair to say that NZ is generally a further (small)
step down in salary compared to Australia, though I don't know
about demand over there.

London is simply ridiculous for salaries, though it's largely
offset by the crap weather and living conditions.  Australia and
New Zealand have brilliant living conditions, preferable weather
and enough space so that you don't have to see/hear your 
neighbours (cramped London 'studio' apartment, anyone?)

As a new arrival to London in early 2009, I was offered literally
2x the salary in GBP for work here than comparable opportunities
on the mainland (Holland, Spain), which was my main motivator to
choose London.

Having said that, the last year I worked in Oz was 2001 and even as
a youngster (19 at the time) I was able to travel extensively across
the region (India, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, etc.) on business,
which was very lucky and interesting way start a career.

The Australian IT professionals I know tend to travel or relocate
extensively, to places like the US, France, Turkey, Japan, etc.

About competition...

I don't think there is necessarily that much direct competition
Between NZ/Australia and Asia at the moment.  Places like Singapore
and Hong Kong are very expensive to maintain a physical presence
in (otherwise everyone would do it - Hong Kong has great income
tax laws, and Singapore has great corporate tax laws). Secondly,
Singapore is not particularly sought after as a location for
living.  (Fact: many of the locals hate it and find it hideously
expensive to live in - which has led the government to directly
to the interesting policy of paying people who have children!)

In terms of software 'offshoring', I think the hype around this
trend has started to die out as businesses begin to recognise
that cost savings come with strings attached, and that dependable
and technically competent management are an absolute must.

By way of example, last year in London I interviewed for a role
at a very significant web-based business that pretty much owned
a particular vertical market.  Their systems had been developed
via 'offshoring' in the Philippines over the course of years.  
During this time, the codebase had gone from ample and rapidly
delivered to unmaintainable, unresponsive mess on which 
they were inextricably dependant.  Having established positive
cashflow and made a fair amount of money, the management now
wanted someone to build and manage a team to rewrite the whole
thing from scratch in London.  Looking back, I'm glad I didn't
take that job.  Why had it failed?  Disconnection of technically
competent management from the real business, and perhaps failure
to adequately communicate between the technical and management
teams.  In this very real case, it is important to note that
the standard of English for programmers in the Philippines,
relatively speaking within the region's dominant offshoring
locations, is *extremely* high, with competition perhaps only
from India.

In China I managed some small-scale offshore development for
desktop software aimed at the European market, which would have
been literally impossible to do with Chinese developers if I
had not spoken decent Chinese and actually lived there awhile.
That's not to say that there are no Chinese developers with 
brilliant English (far from it, though to generalise I think
it's fair to say that the bulk younger educated Chinese have
limited fluency) just that the cultural tendency towards 
working in groups with close management (vs. working 
more independently) does not lend itself to remote management
of software projects.  This can be overcome, but it's a
real factor.  Interestingly, in that case the end client was
French! The point of this example is that many 'offshoring'
Locations tend to have both language and culture barriers.

Then of course, there's infrastructure reliability concerns,
timezone issues, etc., etc.

Back to Australia to end my rant: We have a very high 
representation in FOSS as well as software, computing
and science in general relative to our population.  Some
qiuck examples: Samba + rsync (Andrew Tridgell), and 
netfilter (Rusty Russel), enlightenment (rasterman),
heartbeats/clustering/HA Linux (Simon Horman), some of
the early core VMWare developers, and I have often pondered
why this is.

I think it may be that the availability of high
quality education, decent internet connectivity, an 
economy that provides realistic career options for those
entering computing, enough physical space to maintain
peace of mind, and finally to risk a bit of a political 
statement: social security (Tridge initially wrote Samba
on social benefits, my taxes well spent!!!!).  There's
probably a lot of other factors, too.  One might even
say "all hail Kevin Rudd, great helmsman!"

In closing to demonstrate the sincerity of my 
tongue-in-cheek politicking, the next stop for me
(leaving in two weeks) is the GOVERNATOR's great
socialist heartland of Los Angeles!  Social security
for the rich and famous.

- Walter

PS: Sorry I can't make the meeting on the 18th, would have
    been great to meet some more of you than the last time,
    but my flight's on the 17th.

PPS: The above is full of rough generalisations from my own
     Experience ... please take them as such!
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