Brisbane isn't quite as painful, and there's plenty of work in SEQ with excellent salaries. Though I'm biased: I love it here!

Aside from that, and this isn't Australia specific, but the acceptance of WFH over the last year across industries is quite exciting, with regards to reducing CoL.

Biggest problem with Brisbane is due to being a smaller market, there is there a fewer jobs available for less popular languages. Python & Go are finally seeing decent growth, but proportionally local roles are much more focused on JS, Java, C# & PHP.

For sure, though one perhaps small saving grace is in my experience the companies that are using those less popular languages were already accepting of remote work, which has meant I get the best of both worlds. That and I usually end up introducing Nim to whatever company I'm working at anyway ;) [I'm only partly joking]

for some reason I have the impression that there are more cloud/infrastructure companies there, but of the top of my head I only know Redhat and AWS

I read the comment this way too, but the OP is actually agreeing with you.

They are saying that Silicon Valley salaries are much higher than Sydney, and the cost of living in SV isn't anywhere near double (as you point out, it's probably cheaper than Sydney).

I'm sure SF is more expensive, not sure about Mountain View, Palo Alto, etc.

Indices Difference

Info

Consumer Prices in San Francisco, CA are 7.55% higher than in Sydney (without rent)

Consumer Prices Including Rent in San Francisco, CA are 39.86% higher than in Sydney

Rent Prices in San Francisco, CA are 91.12% higher than in Sydney

Restaurant Prices in San Francisco, CA are 22.48% higher than in Sydney

Groceries Prices in San Francisco, CA are 18.67% higher than in Sydney

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

You are correct and other cities can be checked if anyone cares to do so.

I find that hard to believe. Do you perhaps mean compared to local wages?

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

As a Sydney-sider, these numbers are not matching my lived experience.

Also from Sydney, felt they were fairly accurate. Which numbers did you feel were unrealistic?

I don't wish to refute your central point, but I've been told in the past that numbeo.com is not a reliable source.

I live in Silicon Valley and my wife is an Australian ex-pat. Sydney is cheaper than Silicon Valley. Period. End of story.

She regularly looks at house prices in Sydney and dreams of selling our house and moving to Sydney but frankly I would never move there. I would visit, but I would not move there.