Graemsay

It might be worth having a chat to a few agents or locals. An IT contractor in Sydney was telling me that things are good down there, whereas the UK jobs market has been poor all year.

Looks like not all is rosy Down Under in the IT sector. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/business-it/relocation-the-only-option-for-it-contractors-20120703-21ene.html It sounds like the east coast is slowing, whilst things are booming in the resource states. Anyone noticed this on the ground?

Jules, I'd argue that it would be difficult for Oz recruitment agents to be worse than their UK counterparts. :biggrin:

The contract market in London is pretty dead right now. It seems to be very sensitive to recession, and whenever there's a downturn recruitment shuts down. That said, I had a call from an agent about a banking job which could be the best opportunity in the last few years if it comes off... I don't know what's going to happen with the economy. My suspicion is that the UK is going to be down for the next few years, which would seem to be supported by predictions of interest rates remaining at 0.5% until 2017. There still needs to be a correction in house prices here, and that will bring about more pain. Since you're an IT guy, you've probably seen this piece on the RBS at the Register. There's a telling comment that the only reason we're not seeing a financial crisis from the major failure of their systems is that we've already had it a few years back. With Australia I get the impression that it's in the same place that the UK was in 2007. House prices have started falling, but no real problems have kicked in. One possibility is that they'll have a bit of a slow down, then things will pick up again. The feeling on property investing boards is pretty good at present, which might be an indicator. But then again, if something goes wrong, such as a withdrawal of foreign funding to the banks, then there could be a nasty housing market crash, and we've seen what they can do to places like Ireland and Spain. I'm considering heading to Oz in the autumn, unless I find something decent here first, and maybe spend a stint down there on a contract. If things look good then I can always make a more permanent move down. If not, my possessions can cope with six months in a self-store facility.

I'm currently in London, and mainly do Java / Android. The UK jobs scene is pretty bad at present. I'm a contractor, and have seen rates fall over the last three or four years, with long periods out of work. I'd certainly not recommend it as an option if someone's looking at coming back. Having canvassed a few people, I believe that Oz is better. Most of the work is in Sydney, followed closely by Melbourne. There are a few things up in Brisbane, and whilst the salaries tend to be slightly down on Sydney, that's more than made up by lower living costs.

There's an article on the Age's website today about encouraging people into IT. http://www.theage.com.au/it-pro/innovation/blogs/smoke--mirrors/software-engineering-starts-at-home-20120621-20qbe.html Some of the comments are interesting. I'm at the point where I'm starting to get the urge to move out of programming.

From what I've seen (and I'm in the UK), salaries and contract rates are broadly similar to London outside of the banking sector in Sydney and Melbourne at the current exchange rate. Something I heard was that start-ups tend to pay better than established companies in Australia because they want to attract talent. This is the opposite of my experience in the UK, where they tend to offer lower salaries. Funnily enough, there seem to be more new companies coming out of Sydney than London.

You need to look at the contents of your degree course to determine whether or not it counts as suitable for the ACS. An Electronics and Telecommunications course is likely to have a significant amount of programming and working with computer hardware (albeit at a low level). If you're lucky there might be enough to put you into Group A, but it's more likely you'll fall into Group B. The ACS assessment isn't that difficult in itself, the problem is that their documentation isn't that clear. I found it the hardest part of my (DIY) visa application.