Day-rate contracting can get you very close if the last minute renewals are something you can deal with. The telcos are currently going through a hiring period and I’ve seen 1250/day plus super offered a few times recently. For perm roles, it’s certainly much harder, and I’ve only seen one IC role offered in market at over $220k at the firms I’ve worked at, but the flip side is I’ve seen a few higher ones offered to recommended candidates off market.

The old adage still applies, the jobs you want aren’t advertised and the candidates you’re looking for aren’t on job boards looking.

> The old adage still applies, the jobs you want aren’t advertised and the candidates you’re looking for aren’t on job boards looking.

For someone new-ish to Sydney without much of a network, where should I be looking, if not the usual job boards?

If it's anything like Europe, presenting at meetups and contributing to industry-relevant open source software opens doors both for hiring and being hired.

It's a lot of work though.

As sibling comment says, meetups and conferences are a great way to get your name out there. Working closely with vendors when the opportunity comes up in your organisation can also help build a relationship and reputation if managed properly. Anything to establish yourself as a person of some authority in the area such that when a need is identified, your name comes up as a ‘we should see if x is looking around’

Job boards can still give decent results? They just don't give you the best possible results and have a lot of real trash (sorry, employers, but offering 70k for someone with 4 YOE in software is a not-so-amusing joke and I shudder to think of what working for you is like).

Canva, Square, AWS, Atlassian, Palantir, Google.

If you’re senior ex-FAANG you can easily get $250+

$300+ is probably staff level and above.

Surprised to see Square and Canva in the list there. I’m currently staff level elsewhere but semi-regularly get approached by them with offers lower than $200k for senior roles. Would you say the salaries mentioned are fairly common there or fairly niche?

They would be very rare unless he’s talking total compensation (inc. super, stocks, bonuses) at the larger companies. Even then I’d expect the average to be low $200k for a senior depending on how they define senior.

What does super mean in this context? Thanks

In Australia, we have compulsory employer contributions to a retirement account called superannuation. Similar to the American concept of a 401k but mandatory.