I'm also in NZ and everything you say is true, except wtf $1k in electric and gas?! I'm not a conservative energy user, and I'm paying around $280 (mid winter) for a family of 4. Hard to believe/understand the $1k remark.

I have a 1910 villa and a Vietnamese wife with a new born. She has been here for 14 years but still likes it warm.

I'm working on getting her to understand that we don't need to heat rooms we don't use.

But $280 is cheaper than I pay during summer. I'm averaging about 20KWHs in the summer. At the moment it's closer to 75KWHs per day. Our hot water is all gas. About 1 x $150 bottle per month in the summer. That moves up to 1 per week in the winter.

Double glassing is in the wish list. Then wall insulation. But we have a mortgage and an asbestos roof to deal with first.

> 75KWHs

That's a lot of energy per day, mate. I'm in the US and not particularly careful with usage and I'm averaging about 25KWH a day. You might want to get a usage meter that lets you check various appliances/lights/switches in real time to find the heavy usage

Yeah, that kind of thing makes me think 'why do they have six refrigerators?' or 'is the electric dryer running literally 24/7?'.

Three chest freezers, one fridge freezer, dryer goes five to six times a day, three heat pumps and two radiant electric heaters.

So you live an unbelievably excessive existence.

No, I don't think so. I just want to keep my family warm and in clean clothes.

We do need to get down to less freezers but we have some home kill that we need to get through first.

How big is your family and how big is your house? Your situation is so far from anything that I've experienced in my life that I cannot even imagine it. How can you use a dryer that many times per day? Do you even need to use a dryer? Can't you air dry things?

I normally don't stay in places with a dryer and just let things air dry. If you're running heating/ac, they normally lower humidity so things dry really fast anyway.

2 adults, 2 infants. 110 Sqr metres.

6 a day is on the high side. It's probably an overestimate.

When there are no new borns we might dry 3 loads a week.

But the house is a work in progress. The curtains blow on a windy day.

Yeah 75KW per day is massive. Throw whatever money you have left in solar.

I suspect insulation would make a bigger difference than solar.

You can get a hot water tank insulation blanket that should help a little bit.

We use a califont gas hot water heater. So it's on demand, no storage tank.

> Smart developers are leaving.

I'm in Ōtepoti/Dunedin (best city in NZ!), and within my social network most developers work remotely for overseas companies.

Kia ora from Tauranga

100%. There are 2 NZ employment markets. Those working for NZ companies in the $100k region, and those working for US firms for the $200+k region.

I've had an annoying time explaining this to past US employers when they present median values for NZ salary fudge factors.

Where do people find jobs in the US that can be done from outside the US?

The few job boards I've seen all have either low salaries, or are US-only...

People tend to post interesting jobs that they find in the #jobs channel on the DevelopNZ Slack if it's something you're interested in.

I got my first remote gig (firmware work) through a friend's referral, however that was years before COVID-19. These days I'd suggest looking for a remote-first company. Or, maybe apply for remote gigs that say US-only (assuming there's not an obvious or stated reason), then bring up your location when talking to a real human.

FWIW - technically I run a NZ company, so am a contractor and not an employee of the company that my day-to-day manager works for. This arrangement seems to be common among people who work for US companies, or are US citizens, which brings up some questions about the stats in the article...

You forgot all the Kiwis working remote for Atlassian and Canva in the $200+k region.

My team of ~12 is nearly ~30% kiwi at this point.

this city is so damn small, I didn't even need to know your real name to know who you were :D

All you other NZ devs should join the Slack server I founded for IT people in NZ. https://dev.elop.nz/ a lot of us work remotely. We have a dedicated jobs channel and all - we also have some very good recruiters. (700ish people)

Good to meet you. I'm in Palmy, (most average city in NZ).

That is something I need to look into. I'm guessing now is a bad time to be looking for international work. It seems like the job market is not great internationally.

Kia ora from Hawke's Bay.

"Smart developers are leaving" - or working for overseas employers. This seems to be quite common. Too bad NZ is a small market which I feel make many jobs not that interesting.