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

fourlightyears.blogspot.com

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

#41

Post by qzervaas »

andrewstuart wrote: post #23
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…

The point in the blog post is that if you are currently building a national broadband network, why would you build anything except state of the art?

Especially when the current solution offers no upside (slower speed, no cheaper, a rollout that will take just as long).

I like to play "stupid or liar" when it comes to things like this, but I can't figure out which it is when it comes to the NBN decision making.

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

#42

Post by dkbrk »

andrewstuart wrote: post #23
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…

The point in the blog post is that if you are currently building a national broadband network, why would you build anything except state of the art?

Because there is a non-linear relationship between money invested and the end result, and the greatest efficiency in investment may be achieved through a heterogeneous approach.

For example, if there is existing coaxial cable infrastructure in an area, it may be far less expensive to deploy higher-speed DOCSIS than it is to roll out entirely new fibre for the same amount of bandwidth. DOCSIS is easily capable of gigabit speeds, the main issues are sharing QAMs with existing cable television and the ratio of customers per headend.

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

#43

Post by voltagex_ »

Advising anyone to move countries to go to Silicon Valley (or SFO) seems irresponsible with the out of control property market and all the social issues that come with it.

http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2015/10/09/the_median_rent_for...

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

#44

Post by [deleted] »

andrewstuart wrote: post #3
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#45

Post by voltagex_ »

ajdlinux wrote: post #37
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.

Moving to Sydney for a job could be almost as expensive as moving to the States.

I'm looking in Melbourne but the market down there seems like a mess right now.

Couple that with the falling Australian dollar and moving to the US and getting paid in USD doesn't sound so bad.

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

#46

Post by imron »

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…

> still skeptical as to the degree to which it will address fundamental problems with the tech economy here though.

Fast, reliable Internet is going to be the beating heart of any modern tech economy.

Fix all the other problems you mentioned (tax, education, risk aversion etc) and it will all be for naught if companies and freelancers are stuck on a 10mbps connection that drops out when it rains, because they won't be able to have meaningful and reliable collaboration with anyone outside their own physical location.

You can't have a flourishing tech scene with that limitation. It's not just 'improved quality of life' for techies, it's about being able to conduct business or not in reliable and productive manner.

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

#47

Post by phantom_oracle »

Just as a side-point to some of the authors (valid) points:

Atlassian would have failed in Silicon Valley as well.

It is kind of strange where the author mentions how Atlassian bootstrapped its way to an IPO after many years and then tells entrepreneurs to head to "boom or bust" Silicon Valley.

The truth is that an Atlassian-style business can be built from just about anywhere.

You will need to market appropriately, but if your product is great, it will eventually get to a point where it will market itself quite a bit too.

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

#48

Post by d_t_w »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #29
d_t_w wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI non-Australians, I give you (former) PM of Australia, Tony Abbott: July 17, 2015 - "For the foreseeable future coal is the foundation of prosperity" http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jul/17/for-tony-... That just about sums up the amount of vision in Australian politics.

To be fair, he's probably right. Australia has no new hydro planned (we can thank The Wilderness Society for that), and no plans, that I'm aware of, to shutdown any coal fired power stations. So, pending catastrophic climate change, I'm going to guess Tony will turn out to be right. And besides, politicians aren't selected for their 'vision', they're selected for some other set of characteristics, whoever knows what.…

"For the foreseeable future coal is the foundation of prosperity"

I take that to mean 'Coal will provide the prosperity that takes Australia forward', rather than 'Coal will continue to provide our electricity'.

i.e. We should invest in Coal, train our children to mine for it, research new ways of producing it, at the expense of other fields like high tech.

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

#49

Post by ajdlinux »

voltagex_ wrote: post #45
ajdlinux wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Moving to Sydney for a job could be almost as expensive as moving to the States. I'm looking in Melbourne but the market down there seems like a mess right now. Couple that with the falling Australian dollar and moving to the US and getting paid in USD doesn't sound so bad.

The primary motivation for those I know who have moved to the Bay Area isn't the pay (although that certainly is part of it), it's finding more interesting work and being in the SF/SV culture.

Personally, I don't like the start-up culture, and I happen to work at a place that does interesting things already, so I'm quite happy staying in Canberra.

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

#50

Post by voltagex_ »

ajdlinux wrote: post #49
voltagex_ wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving to Sydney for a job could be almost as expensive as moving to the States. I'm looking in Melbourne but the market down there seems like a mess right now. Couple that with the falling Australian dollar and moving to the US and getting paid in USD doesn't sound so bad.

The primary motivation for those I know who have moved to the Bay Area isn't the pay (although that certainly is part of it), it's finding more interesting work and being in the SF/SV culture. Personally, I don't like the start-up culture, and I happen to work at a place that does interesting things already, so I'm quite happy staying in Canberra.

I'm in Canberra too - contact me if you'd like a coffee.
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