IT work in Australia

gonementhol

Hi guys,
I'm planning on heading off to Australia for a year or so on the holiday woking visa. Doing the typical thing everyone seems to be doing these days. Seeing as you can only work 3 months in the one job with this visa and the fact I want to get around a bit to see different places this seems ideal i.e. different contracts in different places for a couple of months. Anyway I'm just wondering does anyone know

1) Is there much contract work over there for IT jobs? I'm a programmer, mainly VB and SQL, but know JAVA and C++ etc as well, just haven't been working much with it. I'll have 2 years experience in a large reputable company by the time I'm planning on going (soon).

2) How does the pay fare against work here, taking into account the cost of living over there etc?

3) Any other info you think might be useful to me??

Thanks in advance

ChRoMe

I'm just back from Australia. I was lucky enough to get IT work pretty easily. I work as a helpdesk co-ordinator. There is _lots_ of IT work in Australia (well in the big cities Melbourne,Sydney and to a lesser extent Brisbane).

From the skill set you listed I wouldnt imagine you having any difficulty finding short term contracts. However one thing I will warn you about is that you will be discriminated against on the basis of your visa (i.e scruffy backpacker).

The only job site you will need is www.seek.com.au its an excellent site. In order to land some of the contracts you will have to bring a suit or buy one there for interviews. Its very important that your overall presentation is up to scratch becuase you are a prime candiate to start a contract and then a week later say I'm going to Thailand so of course some aussies are sceptical. You could get lucky my interviewer had travelled around europe so gave me a equal chance.

In relation to the three month cap its not set in stone. I only worked in the one company for my whole time in Australia. My boss and me decided that we would just ignore the three month cap and that my employment would contuine. Nobody (including the tax office btw) gave me any grief over it.

deadfingers

Did you have many years experenice ChRoMe when you went out there?

k974

unless you work for the big companies or someone familiar wiht the 3 month thing you can work as long as you like with one company. if your going contracting get an abn that way you get all your wages and do your own tax return at the end of the year:D by which time you'll be on a south east asian beach!! you can also charge 10% on top of your wages for gst

klam

Fellas, I have similar skillset to gonementhol but a bit more junior. I will have one year industrial experience by August. I was hoping to go the Australia and work. I realized you that you guys started work there with a working holiday visa. Is a working holiday visa available to Americans?

ChRoMe

Deadfingers: I started in Ireland online when i was 17 (6 years ago) I left IT for about 18 months and then returned. So four and a half years experience.

I would advise against going the abn route. For a few reasons firstly in the past two years the goverment is trying to stop people using them in this way. You mightnt have anything happen to you while in the country but you would have to answer to them if you attempted to enter Australia again. Another thing with them is that as un-fun as it sounds paying tax and your pension payments works out great because its enforced savings. I back in Dublin two weeks and I just put in the applcation to get my pension refund and its about 700 euro Thats seperate to the other 1500 euro from tax.

In my first week back I decided to move to London in May. Go travel the world its the best thing you can ever do. I feel like I will never be content on this small wet rock in the atlantic