The primary motivation for those I know who have moved to the Bay Area isn't the pay (although that certainly is part of it), it's finding more interesting work and being in the SF/SV culture.

Personally, I don't like the start-up culture, and I happen to work at a place that does interesting things already, so I'm quite happy staying in Canberra.

I would like to point out to those unfamiliar with Canberra, that if you live in one of the older suburbs with overhead powerlines (and not even on the radar for NBN), you can get Transact, which will supply dead stable 60 mbit VDSL2 fibre connection for ~AUD150/month on a business plan i.e. static IP.

Plus, the weather and traffic in Canberra is way better than Melbourne. (Longing for the weather to remain constant for more than 20 minutes...)

I'm seriously considering upgrading my home link from ADSL2+ to VDSL2 now that I've discovered it's available in my area. It's not a sustainable long-term national infrastructure plan, but for my personal needs it'll serve me for at least a few more years.

And you're right about the traffic - Canberra is very nice in that regard.

I moved to NYC.

NYC's tech scene is bigger than all of Australia's scenes added up.

The Bay Area is bigger than all of Australia's scenes multiplied.

Aren't you at IBM? I thought they stopped doing interesting things in the 80s

Apparently mentioning the word "Canberra" magically summons people in comment threads

To answer your question, we still do interesting things :)

I was here first :P (see above)

I'm in Canberra too - contact me if you'd like a coffee.

What is the name of the company you work for?