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As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

nytimes.com

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Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#381

Post by scalatohaskell »

BonoboBoner wrote: post #378
scalatohaskell wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have, from EU. I've been living in Auckland for 2 years. Scala dev. I left recently though. I think I may have good perspective, shoot me questions if you want.

What made you leave? Did you miss european culture ( or sports on TV or anything like that)? How did you deal with the time difference between Europe and NZ? When I was in NZ on vacation I missed being able to watch the stuff that I am used to on TV in the evening, due to the twelve hour time difference to Europe. I dont think I could ever switch from soccer to cricket.

> What made you leave? Missing friends and family, very hard to reach with 12hours difference even by phone. Requires lots of coordination.

Very isolated - very little "new" jobs, conferences(Scala) etc... all in respect to EU (where there are hundreds of scala positions etc.).

I was on very good salary (100kNZD++ dollars / year), life was very very comfortable. Besides huge purchases buying house or like that which I couldn't do I found it very hard to spend over half my salary (never cooking, eating twice a day out). I was living alone in AKL renting all the time.

Weather is very nice, but sun is very very strong, so you require sunscreen 100% of time.

> Did you miss european culture ( or sports on TV or anything like that)?

Yes. I'm not sure how to put it, as I'm not native English speaker, but I hope noone will get offended by following. Also this may wildly differ outside of AKL. There are lots of ethnicities, which is fine, but I am single and I am most attracted to single type, so the pool for me to find girlfriend from is much much smaller (I'd say about 20-30%). While people are very very friendly there, the nightlife in Auckland is pretty bad (was much better in Wellington when I flew there once).

> How did you deal with the time difference between Europe and NZ? When I was in NZ on vacation I missed being able to watch the stuff that I am used to on TV in the evening, due to the twelve hour time difference to Europe. I dont think I could ever switch from soccer to cricket.

I don't watch TV so I didn't miss it, and they occasionally had NHL live games on, which is great, since I couldn't watch it in EU since lots of them were at crazy times. They are huge for cricket and rugby, which I given some try but I did not enjoy it as much.

All in all, I do not regret going there and it's awesome country, but my take on it is, if you have a family, it's the ideal place to move into. Schools are great, it's very safe country, people are mostly happy, and salary of programmer's is very very decent. If you're single, and move there on your own, you're gonna have it a bit tougher, but lots of that depends on you.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#383

Post by will_brown »

yellowbeard wrote: post #370
will_brown wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Quality of life" is inferior on any axis? Fort Lauderdale is the Yatch Capital of the World, the intercostal are a billionaire playground. Name any activity on the water from recreation, fishing, diving, to bio research...SV isn't on the map. On the other extreme - absolutely free - I would take Fort Lauderdale Beach and the weather over anything SV has to offer. After all there was a move to totally relocate Hollyw…

>Name any activity on the water Surfing. Significantly better in the bay area.

haha fair enough, we don't have the types of reefs as CA so our breaks are shady over 5-6 feet, and even our best surf in all of FL (3 hours north of Fort Lauderdale) isn't CA. Still it is the small surf of FL that produced Kelly Slater so at least we should fall on the same axis.

Seriously though Fort Lauderdale beach and Hollywood beach have great surf communities that have been around decades.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#384

Post by timClicks »

RantyDave wrote: post #224
Apocryphon wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I think of NZ, I imagine South Pacific beaches, lush forests of emu and kiwi and other exotic animals, and the landscape of the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. What natural beauty does Tulsa have?

There are no emu here, you're thinking of Australia. And Kiwi are both endangered and nocturnal. We have, really, nothing exotic at all apart from Tui's (that are awesome), Kereru (a huge wood pigeon) and Kea's (that are bastards).

Kaka are also an amazing parrot that are less bastardly and much more accessible (just go to Wellington)

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#385

Post by fennecfoxen »

wcummings wrote: post #205
mahyarm wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want a family they don't live right beside work in the middle of a busy and dirty city. They move out to the suburban south bay (which has more tech jobs) or east bay, have 30m-1hr commutes and are dual income families. TBH the harder part of the bay area and kids is actually finding an affordable place to live that have good schools.

>TBH the harder part of the bay area and kids is actually finding an affordable place to live that have good schools. Translation: it's expensive to live where rich people live. "Good schools" is a flimsy proxy for wealthy, exclusive suburbs. Where I'm from, "good schools" is a nice way of saying "it's a white neighborhood". I would not feel good about letting "good schools" influence where I live, or buy a home.

> Where I'm from, "good schools" is a nice way of saying "it's a white neighborhood"

Eh. The Bay Area isn't where you're from. Actually, relatively few people in the Bay Area use the term "good schools" at all because they tend to have few children and the idea of school quality isn't on their radar.

> wealthy, exclusive suburbs

Honestly if you wanted to say Bay Area residents were coding racism into how they talk about where they live, you could point to the San Francisco fetish where people AVOID suburbs like Oakland and the East Bay, though honestly that's _actually_ because of all the public-transit-accessible hipster coffee spots in the one and the violent crime and strip-mall Starbucks and sprawling freeways with hours-long commutes to work from the other.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#386

Post by sbardle »

jostmey wrote: post #232

There's something special when a certain density of talented people live together. Moving toward an isolated environment is never a good idea. I'm sure the title is a little misleading. Disclaimer: I have nothing against New Zealand and I am no fan of San Francisco

Moving towards an isolated environment is pretty much what pioneers do. If they succeed, people will follow and new networks develop.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#387

Post by sbardle »

I think NZ could become a major tech hub over the next 15 years. The geographical isolation will be alleviated by the internet and the development of faster air travel.

For anyone interested in tech, wanting to start up or grow in NZ, check out the Edmund Hilary fellowship.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#388

Post by sigi45 »

zacmps wrote: post #182
TheAlchemist wrote: post #13

That's interesting ! I'm intending to make a move with my family in near future, and we actually went to visit the northern island for 15 days last month. The country is really beautiful, and there are not a lot of people around, so you can't help but feel blessed by the surrounding nature. The people are great, probably the nicest I've ever seen (as a whole). I've noted some cons though (not blocking for us thankful…

New Zealand is currently running gigabit fibre to 85%(?) if the country, for no instillation cost. In a couple of years NZ will have one of the highest (if not the highest) average internet speeds in the world.

Local internet speed. My home network hsa gigabit for 10 years now ;P

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#389

Post by jpatokal »

EdwardDiego wrote: post #239
vacri wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Here's the thing. Would New Zealand stay that way if it pursued a policy of large scale immigration, they way the US has? Both NZ and Australia take in a far higher rate of immigrants than the US. You should change your question to "Imagine if the US took in as many immigrants as NZ". NZ has a serious problem in that because it's easier for an NZ citizen to become Australian, a lot of immigrants use NZ as a 'steppi…

> NZ has a serious problem in that because it's easier for an NZ citizen to become Australian Australia specifically changed laws to make it very hard for an NZ citizen to become an Australian citizen back in the 90s.

But Kiwis have effectively unlimited rights to residency and work in Australia, so the "hop the ditch" phenomenon remains very real.

Re: As New Zealand Courts Tech Talent, Isolation Becomes a Draw

#390

Post by pjc50 »

interfixus wrote: post #377
pjc50 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ramifications are still unclear, but if we end up in the situation where the Home Office decides that 3m Europeans here on Free Movement don't get to stay there will be a huge mess, potentially with blood on the streets. Not to mention that last week senior Conservatives were talking up war with Spain over Gibraltar. Is this meaningless jingo garbage for the press or a likely outcome? Who knows?

Sounds to me like you're saying the UK could end up being held hostage against its scheduled, voluntary, legal exit from a cooperation it joined in 1973 with full assurances that it would always have the option of leaving.

"hostage" is a ridiculous way of putting it. Both the things I mentioned are purely self-inflicted: the UK government doesn't have to contemplate deporting EU nationals, and does not have to mouth off over Gibraltar.

Leaving the EU means leaving the benefits of the EU, and Brexiters have generally refused to acknowledge what those benefits were while simultanously complaining when they might be withdrawn.

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