My wife and I considered moving to NZ as well; I'm a cloud engineer with 10 years experience (20 total in software/sys admin) in the US, I've worked for startups and enterprises. NZ won't even acknowledge me because I don't have a silly bachelors degree. Too bad I spent those 4 years getting experience instead of university.

Definitely worth a visit, I'd suggest. It's really a beautiful country.

I have a Bachelor's degree in CS. Nobody will hire me because I don't have experience.

Funny thing is, before I got my degree, they were happy enough with my experience but wouldn't hire me because I didn't have a degree. Even had the same interviewer tell me one of those things on either side of my graduation.

"Get a degree and we'd love to hire you for your experience!" "Oh, sorry, you're qualified but don't have any experience."

It's like my degree reset me to zero.

I do have a bachelors, but it’s in physics, so I get the same “well, you don’t know computers, but you do know how to contact spirits. We don’t need spiritualists - rejected”

Jesus, if I had a penny for every time I’ve had to explain that physics and psychics aren’t the same thing I’d be a rich man.

I’m more or less at the point of just giving up on being gainfully productive.

I'm not sure if that's really sad, or very funny, but you made me smile and I appreciate that.