Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business • Hacker News Board

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#31

Post by froo » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:01 AM UTC

qzervaas wrote: post #19

theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

> In an age where the state of the art broadband to the home in the U.S.A. is 10 gigabits, Australia is currently building (it claims) a National Broadband Network at great expense that promises a blistering 12 to 100 megabits per second at the top end I know it mentioned "state of the art", but the vast majority of Americans would be lucky to get 100 megabits without breaking the bank every month. Many (most?) don't…

Many (most) of Australians don't even have the option of 10 mbit. When the new NBN is rolled out, most will have the option for 25 Mbps. This plan is due to be completed by 2020.

I've got a 100mbit Fibre connection. I live in an inner city suburb.

It is continually dropping out (I get an average about 1 hour a week of downtime), my upload speed tops out at 35mbit (using iiNet's own tools) and for a lot of things like YouTube, videos can be sketchy, even on the more popular ones.

Australian's really aren't missing out on much if this was supposed to be the standard.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#32

Post by qzervaas » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:02 AM UTC

xxpor wrote: post #27

qzervaas wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many (most) of Australians don't even have the option of 10 mbit. When the new NBN is rolled out, most will have the option for 25 Mbps. This plan is due to be completed by 2020.

Part of the issue is that getting transit out of Australia is EXTREMELY expensive. Telstra still has a stranglehold on the country, and the amount of cables out of the country hasn't kept up with demand.

Not to say your point isn't true, but that has nothing to do with successive governments shitting on each other's plans when it comes to installing infrastructure to houses (or choosing the right infrastructure to install).

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#33

Post by beefsack » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

regecks wrote: post #4

andrewstuart wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key point of the blog post is that any tech company that succeeds in Australia does so purely on its own two feet and that governments are at best mildly supportive of technology and at worst actively hostile. Turnbull destroyed the fibre to the home NBN and I can't see high speed ubiquitous Internet access coming any time soon. Imagine if 95% of Australian home - including ones in the country areas - had super h…

I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP…

> what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really?

I'd imagine you'd be less nonchalant about it if you were transferring gigabytes of data from a backup in an emergency.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#34

Post by voltagex_ » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:03 AM UTC

pedalpete wrote: post #2

Disclosure, I work for data61, a major recipient of the gov't new innovation strategy. I'm also Canadian and have worked in technology in SF, LA, NYC, Vancouver and Santiago Chile. I have a very different perspective on this. Australia has had more than just one Atlassian. They've also got Campaign Monitor, BigCommerce, Canva, Where 2 (became Google Maps), Envato. Australia is also growing Freelancer (I don't believe…

I'm Australian and want to escape to Vancouver (for various reasons, email me if you're really interested). Can you provide any pointers?

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#35

Post by qzervaas » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:04 AM UTC

This is a propaganda piece from NBNco (the company installing Australia's new broadband network). It basically says Internet that is too fast is bad:

http://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/singapores-gigabit-dream-arrive...

Or to put it another way: our bad solution is superior because it's slower.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#36

Post by xxpor » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

qzervaas wrote: post #32

xxpor wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the issue is that getting transit out of Australia is EXTREMELY expensive. Telstra still has a stranglehold on the country, and the amount of cables out of the country hasn't kept up with demand.

Not to say your point isn't true, but that has nothing to do with successive governments shitting on each other's plans when it comes to installing infrastructure to houses (or choosing the right infrastructure to install).

Sure. I think they are two separate, but related problems. Even if the NBN were perfect and brought gigabit internet access to the entire country, without more intl transit it wouldn't help as much as people would hope.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#37

Post by ajdlinux » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

wahsd wrote: post #28

The weird thing about these kinds of posts is that it only contributes to places like Australia, in this case, lagging behind other places like the USA. All this is is another one of those whiny posts that sets a mindset that you have to leave Australia and head to the Valley if you want to make it when what the post really should have been about is " We (Australia) really have some work to do. Here is what we need t…

As an Australian, it saddens me every time I hear of a friend leaving for the States. I can count at least six or seven people off the top of my head who went through my uni's computer science program - a relatively small department, I should add - at the same time as myself, and have since moved to the Bay Area.

I can't really blame them, but it'd be nice if some of the brighter ones stayed around.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#38

Post by imron » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

catmanjan wrote: post #11

regecks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP…

The benefit of NBN wouldn't be for employees, it would be for potential customers. I've heard so many times from so many people "I'd love to use X but my internet is dodgy/stops working when it rains/is slow between 5 and bed time" Where X is any number of internet reliant service

internet is dodgy/stops working when it rains

Hah! This so much. Sorry , we can't have our scheduled video call meeting now because it's raining and my Internet isn't working.

This has actually happened to me. If it wasn't so embarrassingly awful, it'd probably be funny.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#39

Post by regecks » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

beefsack wrote: post #33

regecks wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't understand the NBN meme. I've worked for small tech companies in Australia my entire (not so long) career, and access to high internet speeds has never ever really been a problem. When you're a programmer, what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? Yes, regional areas should be upgraded from dialup/slow sattelite to at least 10mbps. What kind of impact will that have wrt the OP…

> what is the difference to your work between 10 and 100mbps, really? I'd imagine you'd be less nonchalant about it if you were transferring gigabytes of data from a backup in an emergency.

My backup strategy does not involve a residential internet connection so I cannot relate.

Re: Atlassian's success reminds what a crappy place Australia is for tech business

#40

Post by voltagex_ » Mon, Dec 14, 2015, 2:08 AM UTC

qzervaas wrote: post #35

This is a propaganda piece from NBNco (the company installing Australia's new broadband network). It basically says Internet that is too fast is bad: http://www.nbnco.com.au/blog/singapores-gigabit-dream-arrive... Or to put it another way: our bad solution is superior because it's slower.

As an Australian the only reaction I can have to stuff like this is an overwhelming desire to leave the country. We're screwed in the near-to-medium term, and in the long term if we don't improve both our technical capability and the level of political discourse.