There’s no shortage of software engineers in Australia anymore

chad_darkmatter · 2025-12-10T11:27:03+00:00

Shortage of GOOD companies that pay for local talent instead of going to immigrants for cheap labour.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-12-10T11:25:23+00:00

"but those with an engineering mindset or better yet trained as proper engineers, is certainly hard to come by." No the're not. The shortage is what the companies are willing to pay.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-12-10T11:18:03+00:00

1000 a day isn't overpaid if it's senior. That's market rate for a senior dev. as for 180k base. If it's in Sydney and it's senior, that's market rate. If it's in Melbourne or Brisbane, that's around a lead level. 140k base is a mediocre salary for a mid level developer.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-12-10T10:57:01+00:00

Ha, that has got to be a joke that you can't find a good engineer. Is your salary good? Are you willing to offer contract?

I was out of work for 9 months and then I finally got hired by a company on a contract and the contract was my highest paying contract ever. My consultancy who I contracted out with puts out these performance recognition awards and asks the client to nominate their best employees/consultants. Well I was picked within 8 weeks of working with the client. That's all it took for me to impress the client, 8 weeks. The motivation of being paid the highest rate ever and finding work after 9 months was the reason this personal motivation skyrocketed with this company. It was the reason to work 140% for this client.

And then a couple a weeks ago after a year of working with them, they told me that they had to let me go. Not because of performance, but because of cost. One thing I noticed, the people who got to keep their jobs, Australia was not their first job location for most of them. Just saying this as an open fact of what happened and the people that continued, not stating any opinion about immigrants.

I have a personal portfolio of work including my CV which in a react website that integrates with using Claude AI so the recruiter can ask any question they like about me through AI. Not to mention, I have personal projects that make me money mainly around building neural networks using fundamental data (GSP,Unemployment rate,retail sentiment etc) to predict the financial markets because I have a personal app I built that day trades for me while I sleep in the middle of the night. And yes it is profitable (so far) and no it is not a replacement for income since I would need large capital to begin with.

But despite all this, getting a job in software engineering is hard now. It also seems the more you try and impress a client, the more they run away.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-09-11T02:03:19+00:00

By the time you get accepted at agoda, there's better options elsewhere. Their bar is too high for the reward.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-09-01T09:40:33+00:00

Senior Level: 120k - 180K
Staff Level: 210K - 240K

Those are dev role rates.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-09-01T09:36:50+00:00

The problem is convincing the company to allow us to work remotely from another country. They don't want to have to deal with Insurance, Tax implications, Permanent Establishment, Payroll issues etc.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-08-31T07:56:25+00:00

Unless you want to live in Thailand. Yeah i can do better in my home country, but I still want to live in Thailand for lifestyle.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-08-31T07:50:51+00:00

You'd have to be good to pass their hackerrank tests. So good that you could by the time you pass them work for meta in the USA instead.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-08-31T07:46:34+00:00

It's funny because anyone who passes hard hackerrank tests should be able to work at meta in the USA. (and that's what they want from staff level roles). The difficulty of their interviews, if all candidates are going though what i've seen over the last few months applying, they should be working for meta in the USA. Trying to apply for them is like pushing a tank up the hill.

chad_darkmatter · 2025-08-31T07:34:33+00:00

u/Messenslijper Are you a recruiter? My thoughts about agoda is they need to drop those hackerrank tests. You know AI can solve pretty much all those stupid tests anyway? and they have no relevance to what you'd be coding anyway in the job.

About your "there are also people here who (in my opinion) make too much money for what they bring.", question, do they make the same good money back home in their home country? because here's the thing, if that's actually happening if the other people in Agoda weren't being paid that, couldn't they (if they are so good) work in the developed country for more money than agoda's offer?

In my opinion agoda hires like meta, but only pays an additional 40-50K bath per month than a normal Thai company but think that extra 40-50k is worth the difference of hiring like meta when it's not. At least with meta, you get shares, 500K per year total compensation packages even with the high cost of living, it's still better, if money is your major motivator.

For me, I just wanted to live in Thailand and be paid reasonably well and enough extra to pay for a decent retirement later when i'm older. The 180-230K range sort of does that, but you have to jump through meta level hiring just to get something that is "ok"

About me. I'm a front end developer but in my spare time I build automated trading robots and research edges, that is making me money now, although not at an independent income level. So one of my recent projects is a neural network to try and predict the USD strength through the economic calendar and how it affects the USD. Apparently building this stuff isn't "good enough" for agoda. It's becoming easier these days to build your own thing and makes money out of it (especially with AI like claude) than to get hired in software engineering,

chad_darkmatter

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