Ask HN: New Zealand Tech Scene

2 points by lamchob 5 years ago | 2 comments

Hi HN,

right now I'm at a point in my life where I'd like to move abroad for a while. Next year I'll finish my PhD and would like to go somewhere new. I was travelling through the northern half of NZ a few years back and loved the land and the people.

How is the tech scene in NZ? I guess Auckland and Wellington are the biggest places, with the most opportunities? Can anyone share experience moving to NZ? And what are the salaries like? Enough to build a nest egg in a few years?

Thank you :)

tomhoward 5 years ago |

NZ has an excellent tech scene.

The combination of environment and culture has long made it a haven for developers and entrepreneurs. Plenty of top open-source developers are based there, and there are many good companies, large and small to work for, as well as good universities.

It's only 3-5 hours time difference (depending on the time of year) from California, so it's easy enough to work remotely for a Silicon Valley company from there.

The complication is that it's likely to be hard to get into for the next few years.

It's successfully managed to control the coronavirus, and has just lifted all internal restrictions.

But it will be tightly controlling its border until the global risk has completely subsided, and in the meantime, many of the best developers in the world will be wanting to move there.

See this recent interview with Naval Ravikant for more thoughts about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sd_PQoR7OI

gnat 5 years ago |

NZ has a variety of different sized software companies, most of whom were hiring at the start of the year so will resume hiring if Covid doesn't kill their customers. Look at: xero.com, vendhq.com, asktimely.com, soulmachines.com for a start.

NZ has a number of agtech businesses (Halter, for example) doing techy things in the agriculture/horticulture space. Attend Fieldays to see what's going on there: https://www.fieldaysonline.co.nz/

And there's a mixture of other high-tech (e.g., RocketLab) with a solid backbone of niche weird engineering businesses that seem to do well here.

For a "full" (or, at least, substantial) list of NZ startups, visit: https://new-zealand.globalfinder.org/

Auckland and Wellington are the big dogs. RocketLab is off the Mahia peninsula on the east coast. Halter and AgTech tend to be Hamilton or Palmerston North. Dunedin has some software businesses, Christchurch has some engineering ones.

Everyone speaking English is deceptive! I moved back after 10 years away and it was a bit of a culture shock after America: Kiwis are British and tend to avoid conflict until they explode, and don't like to say "no" to your face (though it's not as strong as in some Asian cultures), so come across as passive-aggressive to Americans. Vice-versa, Americans can come across as loud and aggressive because they dive straight to the point. Read https://ask.metafilter.com/55153/Whats-the-middle-ground-bet... and you'll get be able to adapt. Allow a year of bumpiness before you start to figure things out.

Salaries in software let you live well, and you could save. You could earn NZD100k+ and spend NZD60k living comfortably but not in luxury or travelling internationally. Salaries in some other forms of tech (bio) are more meh (NZD60k+). See seek.co.nz (jobs site) and the jobs section of trademe.co.nz to see what's available.