I can't emphasize enough how rural the rest of this country is.
New Zealand is a victim of its success in tourism. Everything is geared towards that. Imagine living somewhere like Denver, CO but with SF prices and depressed software salaries. It's a wonderful place but even with all things being equal bureaucracy wise (and they aren't), the list of places ahead of Wellington is two miles long.
Kiwis joke that New Zealand starts at the Bombay Hills (the Bombay Hills are just south of Auckland, and so serve as a demarcation between Auckland and the far north and the rest of NZ). I wanted to love Wellington, but I ended up feeling much happier in Auckland.
I exited my startup in the uk two years ago, successfully, leaving a successful and growing technology business behind. I have several ideas which I am prepared to self-fund up to £0.5M, and want a good environment in which to start a new business. I know coders in NZ, and they’re a talented bunch, we began to hatch a plan.
In short, the NZ gov’t don’t want it. They either want more money invested up front (much, much more), a VC to be involved (not at that stage yet by a long shot), or for me to buy a new property in NZ for > $2,000,000. Apparently having built a business with £10M turnover from nothing isn’t sufficiently good enough entrepreneurship for me to pass.
I’m now looking elsewhere - which is a shame, as I love NZ for many reasons, from the people to the nature, to the family I have there. I’m trying very hard not to be bitter about the repeated rejections, as it’s not fair to tar a nation on the basis of immigration bureaucrats. I’m certainly disappointed - the idea was for a service that NZ needs, that I hit upon while travelling there after my exit for a few months.
All they will attract will be satellite startups owned by megacorporations, as this appears to be how the bars are set.
Jacinda Ardern had a strong anti-immigration position during her campaign, she literally promised to cut immigration by 20'000-30'000 per year, from 70'000. No surprise that current government basically dismantled all immigration schemes.
Good luck to them building their own Silicon Valley!
I don't imagine that any restrictions on immigration would significantly impact skilled workers.
That said, I don't understand why we would possibly have a requirement of VC involvement when the already money is there to actually do the work.
Remote hires not an option?
Tech startups seem to be hard to get people to take seriously, however solid the foundation. I've done a lot of consultancy for a UK company whose entire strategy has stalled for years because they can't/won't invest in building out a rewrite of their flagship product.
I've offered to build it out for zero up front cost, just cut me in on a slice of the pie if it sells. They won't even consider it, haven't even begun to discuss the size of the slice and have turned down other contractors trying to make the same offer previously. I'm not sure how the risk could be lower and in the meantime their competitors are booming.
And they're not government employees.
Over the years I've happened to be invited to discussions with policy makers in both The Netherlands (2013) and Australia (2016) and as far as I know they came up with similar policies. Further back I recall taking a look at Germany (~2012) and it was also onerous.
The main takeaway I had was that constructing a set of fair requirements that can be effectively assessed/enforced is nigh impossible. Entrepreneurs should be vocal and advocate for changes that improve the system but ultimately play the cards that are dealt and stay focussed on the company mission.
Have you found anything? Singapore also requires a VC; Japan has a startup visa but there you have a quite steep language/cultural barrier... If you're from the UK it seems like your main option is inside the EU (until Brexit at least)
As to where instead, others have suggested Portugal, Romania, Poland - Portugal is nice, but get talking to locals and there’s a problem with corruption around business ownership and ensuing audits, etc., Romania has a really big corruption problem, and there’s not much happening outside of Cluj and Bucharest, and Poland has the same kind of politics that I’m hoping to leave behind in the UK. Natural beauty and quality of life were big pluses for NZ.
I’ve also explored Latin America to little avail (the ground situation is rather different to the paper one - huge black markets in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, brewing social unrest), and am now looking seriously at Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania- although again, all three are hardening their stance against non-EU migrants, which I will be come March next, and have similar nationalist movements to elsewhere.
I dont understand why people quote turnover. It is a useless number.
New Zealand (and Australia) don't care about quality migrants, just quantity, to keep up demand for housing (both countries have housing-bubble-based economies) and to add extra consumption to national GDP.
The migrants they really want are Indians who can put downwards pressure on wages. Go to Auckland, its basically an Asian city.
Go somewhere like Poland, Romania or Portugal and hire your own workforce. You won't even be in the ass-end of the world like NZ.
Also 'basically an Asian city' sounds, basically, racist.
I'd say that Portugal is a great choice.
That's the advice I was given when looking at NZ. At the time I had about 15 years experience in IT but that couldn't be considered as I didn't have a relevant degree.
"Do night classes for a couple of years and get a degree"
Instead I decided to forget about NZ even as a tourist.
I’d love for NZ to be the next Tech hub, but I fear the culture just isn’t there yet. It’s easy to start a company here but it’s very hard to locally source materials or tools at anything like competitive prices thanks to the 100% markup almost any importer puts on anything (if you can get it at all). Software at least doesn’t have that barrier, good developers here are generally very busy. That’s good I guess.
Funny you should say that, the Jrump devs are friends of a friend of mine. To add to your comment, after several years of going to a regional conference I've got to know so many of the crowd from working with them directly that I struggle to make it around the trade stands. One of the consequences of this is you can't burn bridges as word will get around (like in a village).
> 100% markup almost any importer puts on anything
This is a big negative of living here, people actually expect to pay a lot and will be suspicious of cheap things. It's a shame that it's often cheaper to buy something from the US/UK. Often you can get things (including shipping) at 50% the cost from overseas.
It surely makes it difficult for locals to afford computers.
By 2014 I'd visited a few more countries and shortlisted destinations: New Zealand (Skilled Migrant Category), Canada (Express Entry), or Australia (subclass 186).
Now I'm trying to apply, but most listings on Seek require already having the "right to live and work in this location". I need the job to get the work visa.
I sent many applications, without success. I updated my LinkedIn, rewrote my résumé several times based on conflicting advice, and asked a recruiter to help - but still no interviews. I posted several side projects here on Hacker News, but they didn't reach the front page. My current contract making microSD cards for OSE in Taiwan lasts until the end of the year, but I can leave earlier.
Please contact me if you have any idea about immigration-friendly employers, recruiters, websites - anything helps.
However my approach in moving to the UK was to actually show up to look for a job. Seems to me like it's very different having a faceless person send in a CV from the other side of the world, compared to them walking through your front door wearing a suit, shaking your hand and saying 'Hi, my name's Peter'. If you're right there in front of them they know you're serious, not just firing off random speculative applications. And human nature is that you form an opinion of someone within moments of meeting them, so if that opinion is positive you'll be treated very differently to an email sitting in their Inbox. If someone then asks 'Do you have a visa?' then you can explain that if they offer you the job then you will get the visa and have that conversion with them.
I understand that approach may be more difficult to commit to than applying remotely, due to current job, family, financial reasons - but it worked for me.
I went to university in the UK, exchange programme in Santa Barbara. I did summer jobs in LA, Switzerland, Taipei, Vancouver, Auckland, Korea, China, and India. I decided I like NZ and Canada the most. I need 3 years prior continuous relevant work experience to get the visa. So I came back to Taiwan to do that. Now I have the academic and work qualifications needed.
I really want to stay and settle down. I don't have a "home" to go back to. If I live with my parents, I'm unable to marry or have kids. Those kids would be stateless because I'm a citizen by descent and can't pass on citizenship. NZ's Skilled Migrant Category can get me Permanent Resident status in 2 years (the fastest). That's my plan, but I need a job to help me do that.
Can you elaborate on this? I'm just curious.
The whole point of the migration schemes are to get workers for cheap and to put downwards pressure on wages. A very high skill level is not really required, and big companies will just throw bodies at jobs and rotate out anyone who can't make the cut.
The IT contracting shops there are called 'body shops' for this very reason.
It's going to be a lot slower than that. Ten years from now AI will barely have made a dent in the existing job market in the developed world. Maybe in 30 years 10-15% of existing jobs will have been replaced by AI. That's an optimistic outcome. The AI jobs predictions are hilariously wrong. Ten years is a short amount of time, they have the impact time scale wrong as is typical in tech predictions (making the mistake of shuttling the impact far too close to the present).
Is this urban legend still taken seriously? I mean, it was a thing 40 years ago, but now there is hardly anyone "with nothing to lose" that can reach anywhere without a good amount of luck.
Luck plays a huge role. So does talent, skill, and opportunity. You screw up if you think of it in only one of those terms to the exclusion of the others.
Been doing it this way since 1996. It's just as much fun as it was then, when you've landed on something that excites you. There's still a vast amount of land to explore.
It was also a game company in New Zealand.
When I saw that part of the article it seemed like an odd coincidence.
If you're an American you'd be crazy to come here unless you've already made your money.
You're not kidding. A decade ago I looked at buying Autodesk Maya. It was $US3999 if I were in the US, so how much was it from the local reseller in NZ? $NZ13,000, just because it could be. At the time, that was enough to make a deposit on a house. A group of us started calling it "the New Zealand tax," because we noticed that almost every price for an imported good was 2.5x what it would cost to purchase, ship from another country, and pay tax - often more. HDMI cables were $40, and my friend from Dick Smith (roughly equivalent to Fry's) told me they bought them for $5.
* It was almost my first time abroad, my English wasn't great, and I was new to the culture. However I was amazed that how welcoming and patient people were. I hear the opposite from my friends living in Europe and US.
* I found a job while in Turkey, and the company sponsored me for the visa; and since they were an accredited employer the visa process was painless.
* Job variety is definitely small. I think it is not that hard to find _a_ job since there's usually demand for IT; however they are all pretty similar to each other(big finance/telco companies). If you have a specific interest (FP/Haskell and smaller companies in my case) it would be hard to find a job you like.
* Rent is expensive. Almost every one of my single friends flatshare, but I was able to find a one bedroom flat to live with my partner. I pay about 40% of my salary to the rent.
* However I do not think living expenses are too much. Our weekly shopping are usually cheaper compared to Turkey relative to the income. And most of the stuff we like to do for fun is usually cheap or free.
* People are nice. The city feels safe. Nature is great, lots of great hikes just an hour drive from the city center.
Overall; I can not compare with Europe or US since I've never been there, but I'm glad I am here now. And moving here was not that hard, so I think it has everything it needs to be a Tech hub, other than momentum.
After about a year of working for that place, he got very angry with it and quit because they were cheap beyond what you can imagine. He ended up doing a lot of overtime to make up for software and hardware problems. A few years ago moved to Auckland to work for a production firm up there, thinking it would be a better job.
Rumor has it that he gave up and went back to Hungary.
Start with a very rudimentary initial screening and after say a 2 year trial period have a selection process based on what the person in question has accomplished. That way people get to prove themselves and what the can contribute with instead.
If you don't contribute, i.e. receive social welfare or similar, you're out. If you contribute by performing in the labour market, start an at least moderately successful business or similar you're in. I don't understand why all immigration systems don't work like this...
As an EU citizen I was able to move to another EU country, rent a flat, and then within 3 months had to prove that I had income to pay tax/social contributions. On passing that interview you get residency rights and continued access to public services and healthcare; I am still a “guest”, but can effectively stay indefinitely as long as I keep contributing and don't break the law.
https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/explainers/what-eu-fr...
Most people blow their chance on irrelevant work experience (farm work, café). I got relevant jobs (summer job coding control systems at Fisher & Paykel Healthcare in NZ, network administration at Lululemon in Canada).
My mistake was only staying for a few months - I should've spent a whole year there, and then I could add immigration points for working in the country for 1 year.
Now I'm trying to move back, and it's hard. Any suggestions would be helpful.
- Who measures the performance and how? How is it scaled to compare a contractor for corps and a dev at a tiny startup?
- Who decides what's the fault of the employer vs employee? If you're either fired or quit due to terrible mismanagement, why wouldn't you use whatever welfare you can while looking for a new job?
- And if you want to get someone out of the country, how do you do that? Where exactly do you send them if they ran out of money and have no support network?
Not perfect but is fair and reasonable.
Great people, great vibe.
There’s a long history of Innovation down here at the bottom of the planet.
The best example is David Downs book “#8 Rewired” which gives examples of great NZ Innovations such as:
Disposable hypodermic syringe Manned flight(disputed) Jet boat Nanotube Freeze dried coffee(sorry) DNA discovery Splitting the atom(Rutherford) DNA double helix(Wilkins, the DNA Ringo Starr)
Unfortunaly, outside of Xero(Cloud Accounting) there isn’t much of that awesome innovation scaling down here.
Discovery yes, scaling not so much.
I should have separated NZ Innovations from NZ Innovators, or been a bit more clear about it.
#8 Rewired is chicken full of NZ innovations.
Unfortunately, I’m away from home and my copy.
The electric stock fence comes to mind.
Here’s a link:
http://www.no8rewired.kiwi/nz-inventions/
Some really good ones as well as cringeworthy ones(Martin Jet Pack).
Also flying taxis, lol
All the design and most of the build (except the engine, due to American rules) is done in NZ.
I love New Zealand and I think it's an amazing country. I really miss it, and if I ever had kids, I'd want to raise them in NZ.
But the money and the jobs just aren't there.
I doubled my wages by moving to Melbourne from Wellington and cost of living is roughly the same. It took me 2 weeks from when I started looking for a job to getting an offer. My salary went from NZ$42k + 3% super and no bonus to AU$75k (NZ$80k) + 9.5% super + bonus. I'm sure I could've landed a better paying job here too, but I was living off my credit card so I took the first job that gave me an offer.
In New Zealand there just weren't many options for someone with 2 years of experience. There's a chronic shortage of senior positions, but for mid level positions, especially if you don't want to work with .NET or Java, there just aren't jobs available. There were about 5 open positions nationwide for a Ruby on Rails dev with 2 or 3 years experience when I was looking to move on from my job, before deciding to jump ship to Australia. In Melbourne, there were so many positions I was qualified for that I didn't even bother applying for most of them. I had recruiters ringing me every morning with new positions that I was perfectly suited for.
If you're trying to start a company, don't expect a lot of investment. Most startups in NZ bootstrap or get investment from family and friends. There just isn't a culture of venture capital in NZ. It seems like a very normal trajectory for an NZ tech startup is to get enough funding and growth that they can migrate to California. Xero is quite unique in that it stayed in NZ, although it's now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The lack of investment in startups is a cultural thing I think, and ties right in with tall poppy syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome. Our humility is both a source of national pride and also something that holds us back as a country. Of course, not everyone wants to start a unicorn, and that's fine, but someone needs to.
It does lead to a very different startup culture. There isn't that rapid growth in companies that you see in the USA, because there's less investment. The startup I worked for had been around for 3 or 4 years and only had 8 employees, the lack of manpower (especially developers) really held the company back. The business idea was solid, we made decent sales, but we were severely undercapitalised. Most startups, due to the investment situation are one or two person shops.
The tech startup scene is weird too, at least in Wellington, as it's so small. It's like this little incestuous community, full of gossip about different people and companies. I actually found it got quite catty at times.
It's a crying shame that I felt I had to leave (although money was only part of the reason), but like fuck I'm going to work for $20 an hour when I can jump on a plane and 4 hours later be earning double. NZ is a beautiful country let down by a low wage economy.
No thank you.
