I love New Zealand and I think it's an amazing country. I really miss it, and if I ever had kids, I'd want to raise them in NZ.
But the money and the jobs just aren't there.
I doubled my wages by moving to Melbourne from Wellington and cost of living is roughly the same. It took me 2 weeks from when I started looking for a job to getting an offer. My salary went from NZ$42k + 3% super and no bonus to AU$75k (NZ$80k) + 9.5% super + bonus. I'm sure I could've landed a better paying job here too, but I was living off my credit card so I took the first job that gave me an offer.
In New Zealand there just weren't many options for someone with 2 years of experience. There's a chronic shortage of senior positions, but for mid level positions, especially if you don't want to work with .NET or Java, there just aren't jobs available. There were about 5 open positions nationwide for a Ruby on Rails dev with 2 or 3 years experience when I was looking to move on from my job, before deciding to jump ship to Australia. In Melbourne, there were so many positions I was qualified for that I didn't even bother applying for most of them. I had recruiters ringing me every morning with new positions that I was perfectly suited for.
If you're trying to start a company, don't expect a lot of investment. Most startups in NZ bootstrap or get investment from family and friends. There just isn't a culture of venture capital in NZ. It seems like a very normal trajectory for an NZ tech startup is to get enough funding and growth that they can migrate to California. Xero is quite unique in that it stayed in NZ, although it's now listed on the Australian Stock Exchange. The lack of investment in startups is a cultural thing I think, and ties right in with tall poppy syndrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tall_poppy_syndrome. Our humility is both a source of national pride and also something that holds us back as a country. Of course, not everyone wants to start a unicorn, and that's fine, but someone needs to.
It does lead to a very different startup culture. There isn't that rapid growth in companies that you see in the USA, because there's less investment. The startup I worked for had been around for 3 or 4 years and only had 8 employees, the lack of manpower (especially developers) really held the company back. The business idea was solid, we made decent sales, but we were severely undercapitalised. Most startups, due to the investment situation are one or two person shops.
The tech startup scene is weird too, at least in Wellington, as it's so small. It's like this little incestuous community, full of gossip about different people and companies. I actually found it got quite catty at times.
It's a crying shame that I felt I had to leave (although money was only part of the reason), but like fuck I'm going to work for $20 an hour when I can jump on a plane and 4 hours later be earning double. NZ is a beautiful country let down by a low wage economy.