squarepusher

Regarding contracting rates, they don't seem to be much higher than the equivalent perm salary, whereas when I worked in London there was a significant mark up when contracting.

I'm looking to start contracting in Sydney and the rates aren't that impressive. I'm wondering if that is just due to a tight job market & oversupply of candidates or whether this is always the case here.

You're correct the rates are low, its mainly due to oversupply. The contract rates here in Sydney are not much better than permanent rates, once you factor in Super, Holiday and Sick , then there is no real incentive to contract. Occasionally good rates are paid for extremely scarce skills, but this is rare and much lower than the UK rate. If you're coming here expecting UK rates, i'm afraid you'll be very disappointed.

July is a fab time, it's the start of the financial year so money is available to kick off projects.

 

January would be the worst possible time as it is holiday season, it'd be like looking for work in July/August in the UK. Temporary accommodation would be hard to find and/or expensive too and the weather would be awfully hot, much better to arrive in July and acclimatize slowly.

Hi,

I'm afraid i'll have to disagree with the above comments . The start of new financial year in Australa is not a good time to hunt for jobs.

Contry to what you'd expect, Australian businesses tend to refer their project spend to the start of the new year.

I'm a full stack developer, hands on team lead and Agile coach trained by thoughtworks. I have 10 years of successful London financial contracts, 22 year of experience in total and have run, owned and sold my own startups. like the poster above, I assumed that project spend would synchronise with the new financial year as in the UK.

My wife and I arrived in June 2014, having left a very lucrative insurance contract in London. Generally speaking my interview success rate is 95%+ , but I found the market in Sydney virtually dead. I got interviews, received offers but these were way below my expectations and experience level.

I networked with various recruitments companies (Most of the good agents are British) and soon discovered that the busiest time of the year starts pre-christams leading into January and accellerates post Australia day. The market then cools heading towards March.

I'd verify this yourself. Get in touch with companies such as the Hydrogen group or TRA global, speak to the agents, they'll confirm what i'm saying. If you'd like some introductions PM me and i'll hook you up with some contacts.

Good Luck with your plans

Paul

you'd be super lucky to get BA work outside a major city - especially as a contractor. BA rates in Brisbane $500-$700 per day.

The contract salary rates are the same in Sydney. You'd be on a good contract rate at $700-750 in finance.

I use to earn £650 a day in central London as a .Net team lead in the financial sector. Once I arrived here, with the tight tax laws and low (comparative) contract rates, I chose to go permanent...

But wherever he chooses ain't going to be Sydney with everything it's got going for it. He must have wanted to move away from London for some reason.

We wanted to move away from London due to the overcrowding, violence, filth and general unpleasant side that you only see if you live there. Other careers seem to at least pay the equivalent rate in Australia, for example a senior nurse in the UK on £45K can expect to make $95-100k in oz. On that principle and having spoken to a number of contractors who'd worked in OZ , my daily rate translation of $1100.00 per day seemed achievable.

The point I was making is that if you're in IT in London, don't for one minute believe that the rates in OZ are comparable. Essentially the rate i've taken , with "Australia largest bank" is half what i'd normally earn , its the same rate I was earning in 2006.

With the price of houses in sydney starting at $1.2 million for a two bedroom flat in a "Nice Area", a sub 200K salary isn't going to cut it.

As for skills sets, I'm a senior full stack microsoft and open source web developer with multi-million pound mobile and ecommerce projects in my portfolio , extensive banking and finance skills and a bleeding edge skillset(webapi, Angular.js, WPF, oracle, TDD and agile) as well DevOPs, team lead, managerial and business operational change experience over the last 16 years.

The other issue is that my wife, a senior blood transfusion scientist with two degrees, a masters degree in haematology and 10 years experience at one of London's busiest hospitals, is unable to find work in NSW due to a recruitment freeze. in order to apply for NSW health jobs you need to already work for NSW health ....

On the plus side it is nice and sunny here

I got my 189 Visa in March, and we activated the visa on a visit in June. We've now postponed our planned move as the IT jobs market seems quite scary. Recruiters I've encountered are contemptuous and unhelpful, emails and calls aren't returned. Many job adverts seem to prefer local experience or Australians....which in IT makes zero sense. And I don't believe half the advertised jobs actually exist.

I arrived in Sydney in June 2014 on a PR visa , my background is in the London insurance and Banking sector as a contractor. We left london with a fair amount of savings, around £60K for me and the wife. In London I was on rates of £550-650 per day, so we were doing very well. I didn't look for work before arriving as being a contractor the jobs tend to need you there and then. After getting here we spent about six weeks settling in , so I've only started looking seriously for work this week.

Before arriving I spoke to many other contractors , English and Australian, who'd worked out here. I was told to expect rates of $850+ a day or more as a minimum for my skills. Unfortunately the reality is not as expected. The are very few jobs currently and although i'm getting offered interviews for everything I apply for, the rates are very low. Even with a cutting edge development skillset i'm only getting offered $700 a day, and thats an absolute maximum.

I'm slightly worried as I would have expected a similar IT market to the UK , but in reality its extreme slow and the rates are very low. If im lucky I might achieve half my UK salary here. Whats even more upsetting as I keep recieving calls from UK agents offering me very lucrative roles back in the UK.

Hi,

Well I have finally received my PR 100 visa in February , so now i need to find a job. I'm a hands-on contract .Net Team Lead with 20 years experience.

My recent gig highlights include Hiscox Insurance, EMI, ASOS, Dollar financial, LLoyds of London, SwiftCover and Money Supermarket. I've also done a lot of work with consultancies such as ThoughtWorks and RadTag.

I specialise in agile transformation, team mentoring, TDD, BDD and continuous build & delivery (Teamcity, cruise control, Msbuild). My technology of choice is C# with ASP.NET MVC but i'm extremely flexible and have worked with most major technologies.

Any recommendations for agencies in the Sydney area would be greatly appreciated , especially those working in Insurance , Finance or with BIG retail clients.

Cheers

Square

Year 2009

Lotus - Evora - 3.5 V6 2+2 Sport Pack + Tech Pack

Petro

275 BHP

6sp manual

15000 miles

Aircon

uk value £32,000

Red book Value $79,000

Destination Sydney NSW

Is this worth shipping with the luxury vehicle tax ?

congrats square what date did they give you ?I allied on the 1st of august and sorted on the 2nd march ...

22nd February is my actual grant date . They emailed me to confirm I wasn't in Australia at the time of grant. I only exchanged one email with KP , which was to confirm my visa type .

Congratulations! Can I ask when you applied and who your CO is??

Thank you . I have to say that the wait had been killing me .

I applied to the London office with a front loaded application on 24th July 2012. KP is my CO

Finally , after 213 days , I've been informed my visa will be granted next week. It appears that the processing of July 2012 applicants has finally commenced .

I look forward to exploring other parts of the forum instead of staring endlessly at this thread

Could someone take a look at the spreadsheet (hopefully the owner) . It looks like its been trashed.Could you roll back the version history, as many records have been deleted.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aopvk3Y5mD7HdGp5V2hESFluN3V0QWNBTDg2TWJoLVE#gid=0

Looking at the spreadsheets, it seems highly unlikely that any grants are happening . There are 13 July applicants listed , only two of these have been granted. One was an offshore via agent and the other was a "special circumstance" . I'd hoped that the grants would have proceeded during January , but it looks as if something else is happening.

Maybe there has been a cut in staff levels, perhaps there is a departmental reorganisation or maybe DIAC are running staff training ?

Does anyone know what has prompted the change in the processing speed ?

Hey guys and girls,

Quick update on my end - fiance got an email from ACPO saying they needed to 're-issue' his police certificate (because we questioned some errors/indiscrepencies). Obviously they made a mistake but didnt exactly admit to the mistake. So now we need to give our CO the amended ACPO poilce certificate ASAP. Pretty upsetting that they can make a mistake on something so serious as a character clearance certificate. But it is also such a relief to confirm that it was a mistake on their behalf, as we read that clearing an incorrect police record can take years.

So he is now here on a TV, which expires in April, hopefully that will take us to the grant date.

 

Any news from late July/August applicants??????

I contacted my CO just before Christmas to confirm my visa type. My visa was lodged on 24th July , and i was politely informed (once again) not to expect it granted until March 2013 at the earliest.... Not sure what the entire DIAC office in London is doing for January / February ?

Hi Everyone,

Congratulations to those who've received been their visa grants.

I emailed KP , my CO, to obtain verification on my visa type. The good news is i'll be getting a class 100 visa :biggrin:.

The bad news is that he doesn't expect to grant it until March, as originally advised.

I applied in late july, so this looks like the end of the six month grant times and a definite move to the eight month time-frames.

My originally CO , JC also left in October , so i'm wondering if they are cutting staff and merging their case loads ?

I'm thinking of ways to mitigate the 80 / 20 . So far I'm considering buying rental property though the business.

You can also try expanding your services ( web sites, hosting) to increase revenue stream.

Hi , I had the same email today. JC will be leaving and my case officer is now KP. Slightly worried about the affect a hand over will have.

Is KP completely new , or is he taking over JC's workload + his existing cases?

If you're good you'll always find work . I've contracted in London right through the recession and never been without work .

My skills are current, cutting edge and sought after . I spend between 2-3 hrs a day studying on top of my working day. Next year I move to Sydney , I have no concerns over work . Talent and confidence are easily spotted by employers.