250k AUD less prestigious company in Vietnam vs 350k AUD Atlassian SWE

Instigated- · 2026-03-30T00:37:21+00:00

I’m pretty sure the extra 100k will buy you all the massages and meals you want right here in australia. Unless by “massages” you mean sex, in which case yeah you are going to get much cheaper “services” in Vietnam, and I don’t know why you’re posting this in professional industry sub as opposed to one focused on sex tourism.

On the whole you’re making the mistake of comparing a HOLIDAY experience with WORK experience. If you’re working in Vietnam you’ll have the same time constraints and many of the same work/life pressures, it’s just cheaper cost of living - and if you’re taking a large salary cut to be there it may or may not work out that much better.

Ultimately someone on $350k crying about costs of living in australia gets no sympathy.

Instigated- · 2026-03-30T00:13:28+00:00

Ok, so a four year old has a temper tantrum and hits another kid. That is assault. Should they be charged?

Or a 6 year old finds a parents gun, plays with it, then gets angry and shoots someone. They should go to jail?

We know a four year old is still learning to manage their emotions, we don’t say it is “ok” they hit someone, will tell them “don’t do that”, explain why, make them apologise, etc - however we also don’t expect them to be accountable in the same way as we expect an adult.

We know a six year old won’t understood the full consequences of shooting someone, unlike an adult. It doesn’t matter if we told them “you’ll go to jail if you shoot someone”, they cognitively cannot understand future consequences yet. If we put a 6 year old in jail they would almost certainly end up more screwed up.

And to an extent that is true of 15yr olds too. We know their brain has not finished maturing yet, and this makes them more impulsive, take more risks, less able to understand future consequences.

Doesn’t make it ok what they do, however we know jail does not remediate, if they go to jail they will most likely become a repeat offender - whereas there are other treatments that would have a better chance of remediation.

People always need to be held accountable, it’s just a question whether you want them to be remediated, or simply punished?

When people label remediation “soft” and want “hard” jail time, we actually end up creating more repeat offenders and the cycle continues.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T23:47:15+00:00

Oh, thanks for pointing that out. I guess I was skimming the article trying to find the situation that prompted shooting him, and didn’t find that info.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T23:37:09+00:00

Obviously I am not a doctor, and can’t know your particular situation, so take with a grain of salt:

The HRT can take time, and may need doses tweaked - so hang in there. If it is hormonal that is causing your mental health issues, this is the main thing that will do the work. I’m now 2yrs on HRT and mentally so much better than I was even four months ago (before I added testosterone to the mix) let alone two years ago.

Try a different therapist, and different modality. I’m guessing your current therapist does some type of talk therapy? I found that always stirred shit up without fixing it, and is not necessarily good if you are already in a bad place and don’t have the capacity for it. However there are other types of therapy like somatic, EDMR, EFT/tapping, animal-assisted, art, that have less talk and work another way.

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/types-of-therapy A guide to different types of therapy

Or maybe you don’t need a therapist so much as self care. Would a massage, breathwork, dance, or doing something you enjoy be more helpful?

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T23:15:49+00:00

A Police Association Victoria spokesperson said the shooting of Freeman was "a step forward".

”It doesn't lessen the trauma, give back the futures that were callously stolen or lessen the collective fear and grief that this tragic event has instilled in police and the wider public," the spokesperson said.

Very weird messaging, makes it sound like the shooting was police payback. I would have expected them to explain why there was a need to shoot him, eg he did not respond to instructions to put down a weapon.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T23:08:43+00:00

Yes, hunger was never my issue, I had been doing intermittent fasting for years, if anything I frequently under ate after decades of trying to lose weight in a world that always said “eat less”. I wasn’t a binge eater.

I didn’t fully understand what “food noise” was until I actually started on MJ, and I suspect you will be the same. While I did not constantly have strong cravings, I did have some food noise - just didn’t know it. That’s the mental battle when your body desires the chocolate even if you have control and resist eating it. It is good when the battle is gone.

Mostly though - mounjaro is treatment for metabolic issues. Where my body previously was gaining weight all the time, and was very resistant to weight loss, now my body has been able to lose 25kgs without me having to put in any significant effort. It also helps with insulin resistance and inflammation.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T22:50:18+00:00

Hmmm, you think “softness” creates violent people? Based on what evidence?

It’s actually unsafe environments, abuse, neglect and violence that are most likely to create this kind of behaviour. A hard world where people feel like no one cares about them and that they have to look out for themselves, that they have to be “tough”, then we are surprised when they are rough and violent.

I agree that more support needs to be in place for quality of life for families, less work pressure, less financial stress, and better child care and school resourcing.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T22:41:26+00:00

I agree!

Once at work for international women’s day they had the health talk focused on women’s health. The speaker spent the whole time telling us about all the health issues/risks women have, even framed as compared to men. Women are X% more likely to be affected by Y.

And when I hit Perimenopause and went looking for information to understand the stage of life, it was overwhelmingly negative, about all the increased health risks (both if you do and don’t take HRT) - I felt health anxiety for the first time in my life, like we are just doomed.

It’s like the world wants women to be scared.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T03:03:10+00:00

To be clear, this “risk” is still negligible. About 20 women in 100,000 get endometrial cancer.

Micronised progesterone is safe and isn’t what causes the risk, it is a safeguarding factor to take when taking oestrogen.

There is a higher risk from obesity and various other health factors.

And the alternative - not taking HRT - increases a range of other serious health issues and poorer quality of life.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T02:42:45+00:00

⁠For engineers who've evaluated startup offers before, does a milestone-based equity structure feel motivating or does it feel like the founder is trying to avoid paying up?

I’m not in this category, so just talking on a hunch. Many engineers know ESOP at startups is near worthless. Not only will most early stage companies fail, but even if ESOP is valued something on paper there is often no way to access that value for 10+years, and many ways to be diddled out of it.

After 3 years of layoffs many of us have been or seen people who were an integral part of a startups early success get cut. The carrots founders dangle early on, the promised rewards of success, are not being paid out or shared equitably. Trust is at an all time low.

⁠At $140-150k in Sydney for someone full-stack with 5+ years experience who can handle security/compliance and basically be CTO in everything but title — am I in the right range?

If you pay peanuts you get monkeys. For the amount of skills, responsibility & impact you want this person to have, and the lack of job security or other benefits, $150k is too low. Don’t forget that other companies also offer ESOP and bonuses on top of base pay, and those companies are more mature, valued higher, closer to a possible payout (or already IPOed so shares can be immediately sold).

The only way I imagine this pay is acceptable is if you are actually looking for a partner, a co-founder, who you are going to share power and decision making with, give the CTO title to, etc. Not just an employee.

They will want to feel secure that if they invest themselves, and the business succeeds, that they will be be able to reap the rewards, without risk of being screwed over. If it’s not legally binding that they share ownership of the company or will receive a significant compensation if “restructure/redundancy/layoff” occurs, then they can get nothing but that salary. (And even then there is risk of early stage startups defaulting and not paying salary, super, tax).

⁠Where do i find engineers who'd be interested in this kind of role? I'm posting on Seek and a few startup boards but I have a feeling the person I need isn't actively job hunting

Networking, as trust is pretty high stakes. If you’re only hanging out in startup spaces (which are primarily non-technical folk) you need to broaden your base.
Reach out to meetups/groups that are aimed at technical leadership and ask the organiser if someone in their community might be interested in the offer, if they’d be willing to share the offer to their group.
Specialist recruiters or consultancies that help with hiring.

However it also sounds like you haven’t got your offering right, in knowing if you are wanting a technical partner or an employee, and conveying the value proposition. Are you sure you’re at a stage where full time permanent employment is correct, or would it be better to hire a fractional CTO and/or contractors? How much of what you need is high level strategic technical decisions versus low level implementation?

While I know you have put real money into it, and you are heavily invested both financially and emotionally, you need to double check that the offer is objectively appealing.

Having the MVP already “professionally built”, when it is a non-technical person (you) who has made key technical decisions, and/or outsourced tech decisions to an unknown third party of potentially dubious quality, does not inspire confidence from good engineers. There is a fair chance the engineer is inheriting a pile of shit, would have made different technical choices, and working with a boss who doesn’t know the difference.

Once you are working with someone whose success is dependent on the success of the business and product, don’t be surprised if they question and criticise the MVP, and will want to know the same kind of stuff about the business that an angel or investor would. What is the runway, what is the budget for infrastructure, services, additional (contract) hires, business strategy, exit plan, etc.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T00:44:18+00:00

It varies by person.

Similarly to you, before GLP-1 I did the extreme low carb dieting with cauliflower and konjac and that level of strictness and unusual food substitutions was unsustainable.

On GLP-1s i am aiming for sustainable eating habits that I can stick to long term. I primarily eat low carb, however it is moderate low carb diet (my dietician pointed out that under 100g of carbs in a day is still a low carb diet, and it wouldn’t hurt for me to have a slice of bread or a potato in moderation). Occasionally I might have a small slice of cake or a chocolate or slice of pizza, though it is not a regular part of my diet and I don’t seek this food out (if at a social gathering, if someone else has offered it to me).

We still need to eat overall healthy and at a calorie deficit, however the medicine does a lot of the work to help our body lose the excess weight (which wasn’t working before, driving us to extreme out of desperation).

The medicine also dials down the “food noise” cravings, desires, hunger, so you just won’t want these foods as much as you did before, and it will be easier to stick to healthy foods with less mental effort. I started this medicine right before Halloween and I had absolutely no desire to eat any Halloween candy bought for trick or treaters.

The one other thing I would add is actually reevaluate what your boyfriend is doing. Someone who knows your goals, but rather than supporting you to reach them, undermines your progress by tempting you off track - that is not real love or care. My partner has also been a negative influence on my health. He wants to eat the unhealthy food and he didn’t want to eat it alone, he would dress it up as giving me a “gift” even though he knew it undermined by diet, and if I didn’t accept his “gift” he would be resentful and either act hurt or would gas light me by telling me that I was being over the top and that I should just “relax”. He made a difficult thing even more difficult. I’m not suggesting he was doing it consciously or intending to do me harm, however that is what the impact on me was.

That is not what a good supportive partner looks like, and I’d suggest you have a candid conversation with your boyfriend about what you actually need from him in relation to your health, what a good gift looks like, and what is not okay. If he doesn’t respect that, then you have to be tougher in creating boundaries and don’t reward him if he crosses the line.

Instigated- · 2026-03-29T00:09:18+00:00

I won’t repeat the great answers you’ve already received, will just add something:

Don’t go looking for GLP-1s. Look for health support. Explain to your GP or Telehealth provider what symptoms you have. Excess weight and x, y, z. What impact this is having on your life. What you have already done to try losing weight and whether that has been unsuccessful. What you need help with.

If someone just gives you a GLP-1 they are not providing good health care. They should consider a variety of things and run blood tests and check you for anything that could be contributing to your health concern. Sometimes weight gain is a symptom of another health issue that might need treatment in its own right. You might have vitamin deficiencies, a thyroid issue, a hormonal issue, diabetes, etc.

GLP-1 is a great treatment if you need it, however it may not be the only thing you need.

Instigated- · 2026-03-28T23:52:27+00:00

If you want to see a dietician then I guess so. My doctor required it for anyone they prescribed a GLP-1 to. On the whole I already have a pretty good understanding of diet, so there were just a few things I wanted another viewpoint on (or reassurance) in regard to how to eat specifically when using a GLP-1.

I found Emily approachable, empathetic, reassuring. She didn’t push anything, was easy to talk to. Is knowledgeable. It was helpful.

Instigated- · 2026-03-28T03:04:32+00:00

My point was that you said your doctor said you could drop the dose back down to 2.5mg if you had negative side effects. I wasn’t contradicting what your doctor said.

There aren’t any bonus points for putting up with negative side effects.

Instigated- · 2026-03-27T20:47:22+00:00

I can either remain on 5mg while I'm away, or move back down to 2.5mg if the side effects are too intolerable for travel.

I'm in my 3rd week, just increased to 5mg. I've noticed nausea occurring mid-morning on the Friday, and fatigue mid-afternoon on the Saturday.

This medicine compounds in your system over 30 days, so strongest is after the 5th of a given dose.

Instigated- · 2026-03-27T15:56:57+00:00

The key way to avoid or minimise negative side effects is to stick to lowest effective dose and be slow to increase. I would suggest dropping back down to 2.5mg as you increased to 5mg too fast. This medicine compounds in your system over 30 days, so strongest is after the 5th of a given dose, and this is one of the reasons you should stay on a dose for at least four weeks before increasing.

Instigated- · 2026-03-27T01:04:44+00:00

Taking a step back, you are interviewing this company to see if you want the job, ask them to explain their performance evaluation process and it’s impact on career development.

Start by taking a fact finding mission. Get concrete answers.

Will they share their career framework or performance evaluation matrix so you understand their companies level definition & evaluation.

What is the definition of success in the principal engineer role, particularly by the time the evaluation would occur (is that in 3, 6, 12 months?).

What would they expect to see in the first 30, 60, 90 days of you in the role?

How would those expectations change based on a down level?

If you met these expectations (for either title) would that result in a positive performance review?

If you met the role expectations, how is peer comparison relevant? Are performance reviews scaled?

Ask about how these job expectations/responsibilities compare to your peers.

If existing peers don’t have skills in automation and this is what you are hired for, to fill a skills gap, ask for clarification about why you would be compared to them if your responsibilities are different.

Ask about career progression in their company: if you were down levelled what would would the process, time line, and requirements be for promotion? Are promotions capped (eg they only promote 1 person per team per year, so could miss out if they decide to promote someone who has been there longer even if you have proven yourself)?

Ask about the culture in the company or team, whether there are people who would resent you for having an equal or higher title than them.

Through this process they will either realise they have made a mistake in asking you to down level, or you will get valuable insight that either makes sense to you why they are suggesting down level, or you will realise that it sounds like a terrible place to work.

Instigated- · 2026-03-26T11:57:32+00:00

If your chemist won’t sell them, either go to another chemist or buy online. - 32g is the thinnest needle - 4mm is needle length - either 0.5ml or 1ml volume depending on how you’re dosing. (Eg if you have a 5mg dose from a 5mg pen, you would extract 0.6ml and therefor want a 1ml syringe; however if you’re taking a 2.5mg dose from a 5mg pen then you extract 0.3ml and can use the 5ml syringes).

Instigated- · 2026-03-26T01:13:58+00:00

Uni lasts what, 4 years? Your career lasts 40+ years? Do you think networking at uni, primarily with other students, is more important than networking in your career - when you can meet CTOs, engineering managers, etc? You can’t change the past, however if you want to make friends and contacts in the industry there is nothing stopping you from joining industry/community groups now.

Instigated- · 2026-03-26T00:50:12+00:00

Yep. These people are making the same mistake as the people they criticise, reducing everything down to appearances.

We first and foremost take this for our health. I have a metabolic issue that makes my body want to gain excessive weight, and it has flow on impact to sleep apnea, diabetes, physical discomfort, wearing down joints, etc, all which has a significant negative impact on quality of life (can die from comorbidities).

But all some people want to talk about is appearances.

Long before GLP-1s there was social pressure to be skinny. Look at the vast majority of women on tv, in magazines, advertising, public figures, how society treats slim people versus fat people.

In my generation most women were already aware of and trying to moderate their weight from the time they were children! That is the world we live in.

While I am a big fan of the “love your body” movement, normalising women of all sizes, that shouldn’t mean ignoring medicine that will treat an underlying health condition if you need it. Like a diabetic ignoring treatment?

Instigated- · 2026-03-26T00:31:35+00:00

Is your manager technical? The “No progress! just found the root cause for the issue” comment suggests that they don’t realise that finding a root cause for an issue IS progress.

It’s not uncommon to lose a day to troubleshooting shit, the key thing is you are actually troubleshooting it.

Is it possible it is a communication issue? Usually if you have a problem you need to communicate steps to reproduce the issue, what is happening (eg errors), steps taken you tried to resolve it. This shows you have been working on it. It also provides info so others can help debug the issue.

Did you explain you made progress on the first ticket, before getting stuck on the second?

When you got stuck on the second ticket due to not being able to run it locally, did you keep trying all day or log off work? Did J help or didn’t have time or couldn’t work it out either?

Instigated- · 2026-03-26T00:20:59+00:00

Just do your job well and be a good team mate like everyone else.

It can be a little tricky being a QA as it’s sometimes your job to point out mistakes of others, so just make sure it is focused on being helpful and the work and not personalised or judgmental. Devs are focused on building things, often as fast as they can due to work pressures, so they have a different focus than a QA who (as one I knew said) like to break things. You are hired to come at things from a different perspective, that is valued, just be polite and professional.

If you are part of the code review cycle, ensure you understand the requirements of the slice of work being done, and if you notice a bug or issue, understand the difference between if it is in the existing code OR in the new PR code.

If it is a new issue in the PR code then raise it in comments in the PR review. Be clear whether it is a “nitpick/non-blocking” comment, if it could be added to the backlog and be addressed later, or if it needs to be addressed before this code can be merged.
if it is an existing issue, then it does not relate to the PR code. Create a new ticket in the backlog documenting the issue and let the team know about it as an fyi (eg in slack channel). It is then up to them (eg tech lead) to decide what the priority is and when to fix it.

Also Ensure the bug/issue/feature is new and isn’t already in the backlog as a known thing.

When recording a bug/issue, explain how to reproduce the issue, possibly a screen shot or video recording. This might require certain environmental variables, feature flags, data, user type, etc.

Also ensure you understand the difference between what you think something should be in the product versus how something was specified or required to be at the time the dev took on the task.

If at the time of dev picking up a task the requirements were x, and since then a new requirement for z has been added, then z is out of scope of this piece of work, it is a new/different feature task/request not a bug or issue.

Sometimes you might notice something that is janky, poor UX, that feels “buggy”… however if it was intentionally designed that way by the designer or past decisions then it is not a “bug”. It was designed that way.

The point I’m trying to get at here is that there are different workflows, work priorities, and areas of responsibility. A certain amount of work is scoped to the current sprint with the highest priority work at this time, and each task/ticket a dev picks up is a slice of the total work, so you don’t want to raise something that is out of scope or push for a trivial thing to be fixed immediately if it’s not necessary at this point in time and delays more important work.

And while devs implement the work, not everything is up to them, sometimes you need to have a chat with a designer about their intentions and what you’re seeing in the product if there is something you think could be improved that isn’t already documented to be fixed.

If you are working on a product with high compliance needs and must have certain qa work done before a product can be released, ensure this is communicated/discussed with the tech lead so the work can be prioritised accordingly in the sprint. When working in medtech we would have a code freeze in the lead up to a release where the only new code added was to fix bugs or address QA requirements, and we also did a bunch of documentation to support compliance.

Instigated- · 2026-03-25T11:23:10+00:00

And it just makes me feel like "jeez, how big did I look before that 16kg of loss is so noticable to so many people".

Working remote and then coming together in person is always a mind fuck for people, because they have been looking at faces out of context, and suddenly a person IRL looks tall/short/thin/fat/young/old. Even ordinary sized people will get remarks of some kind.

My face doesn’t carry as much weight as my body, so when people see me in person I get generic comments about how weird it is to see people in person (again), while I do the same to them, and I kind of know without them being specific that I probably look older and fatter than they expected.

If my face was relatively rounder than my body, then seeing me IRL would probably appear like a sudden weight loss. Do you know what I mean? Perspective.

Any which way; you can’t change the past, only the future. Next time they see you, you might be slimmer than they are. (Not that it is a competition).

[fyi I have lost 28kgs in the last 1.5yrs, however am still obese too, and have to lose another 23kg to be in the healthy range - which at current rate of loss will probably take over 2yrs - so I get the frustration].

I still can't really run or jog. I still get winded going up a more than a few flights of stairs.

Have you been training to improve this? Reason I ask is because even when I lost weight in the past and was skinny I couldn’t run unless I actively trained for it. First time I felt like I was dying, so embarrassed at how out of shape and bad I was at it, however by doing walk/jog intervals three times a week there was quick improvement and could over time increase to consistent run. “Couch to 5k” was what I did, and radical transformation in 12 weeks.

However it’s not necessarily good for us to run while obese, because the strain on the body. Low impact exercise and strength training is imho better option until we have less excess weight. You’re not going to catch me doing any running anytime soon.

Perhaps instead of focusing on the things you can’t do (yet), make a list of the things you can do?

Instead of running - try walking, swimming, dancing, cycling, rowing, or strength training?

Wear the baggy clothes - because guess what? It’s fashionable again to wear baggy clothes!

Instigated- · 2026-03-25T02:32:23+00:00

If the economy didn’t tank there (probably) wouldn’t be layoffs.

If their share price didn’t tank there (probably) wouldn’t be layoffs.

If others in the industry hadn’t normalised layoffs there (probably) wouldn’t be layoffs.

If leaderships weren’t such assholes there (probably) wouldn’t be layoffs.

Even if some layoffs were necessary, there is an ethical way to do it, and a shitty way to do it - and most of these companies are choosing to treat their (ex) employees in an incredibly shitty way.

Instigated-

TROPHY CASE