While that's an improvement and a welcome one, Sydney (and even Melbourne) seem to still be lagging in cost-of-living terms.

But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.

> But, more importantly, Big Tech senior engineer total comp is rapidly pushing to $US500K+.

Is it really though? I'm looking on glassdoor and it's saying average is $130k with high at $180k. And yes I realise that just salary not total comp.

GlassDoor is like asking your grandma.

levels.fyi is widely known to be accurate.

levels.fyi does not agree with you. I feel we are making more software engineers than jobs that are available. Many are offshoring product development to India.

The replies to you seem a bit off to me. $1000 a day is plenty to live on in Brisbane.

I do fear that housing here is going to end up like the other major Aus cities though. I think Brisbane house prices are rising at like $500 a day or something. An amount I couldn't have fathomed paying in rent weekly when I first moved to Sydney.

Yeah agreed. $200k a year is more than enough to live on. Heck, I'm saving 80% of my pay cheque -- specifically to save enough to offset this crazy property price capital growth.

But a simple example that shows how lucky I and others are: I can rapidly, from $0 (if I was silly enough to have no savings for this exercise) save up a deposit within a year or two, less if one has a partner.

Any of my friends and acquaintances, unless they also went into high-paying jobs and industries here in SEQ, or unless they have parents well-off enough to help them, are writing off being able to enter the property market for years or decades.

Its worrying, for sure.

1000 AUD is about 100 USD an hour. That's laughably low for any Brisbane sized city in the states. Not nuts at all.

You have to remember that tax regimes are different in different places. In the UK I’ve been on about $120 an hour, equivalent after tax to a salary of about $200k, and your health care is already paid.

Comparatively it seems like contractors in the USA get punished by the tax system.

1. Tax matters 2. COL matters 3. AUD-USD conversions aren't that straightfoward when discussing this.

$1200 a day puts you into the top few percent of salaries here in Australia. I don't really care what a "brisbane sized city in the states" might be doing, because moving there means I have to live in a country that I'm not a good fit for culturally.