Tech salaries in South Africa compared to the UK and Australia

marhsava said:
So, the moral of the story is that the grass is always greener on the other side?
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The grass is always greener where you make it greener.
If you aren't happy in another country then no matter how much you earn you won't be happy.

When you move you have to make it clear to yourself that there is no going back. You have to make yourself make it work, no matter how hard it can be.
 
Barbarian Conan said:
People always go on about how expensive meat is so you expect it. It's the veg that's a shock when you see it.
I've paid AU $16/Kg for tomatoes once. (Out of season on an island, but it still hurt my soul)
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I kinda get you.

I walked into two well known grocery franchises in Toronto last month & the price of fruit with my ZAR hat on was pretty eye opening.

(No lecture needed of PPP, I am versed lol).
 
Ϲhristopher said:
How accurate are the salaries in that table?
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Pretty conservative actually.
I was earning a little over R400k in SA, and I earn just under £50k in the UK. I am a VoIP engineer (3CX & 8x8) with experience in networking/routing, win server admin and various other things (working at an MSP makes you a jack of all trades essentially). I am currently working on some Azure qualifications that should see me earn up to £80-90k in a couple of years.
 
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Let that sink in, I've said it before, you simply can't compare foreign salaries in ZAR

I wonder if even doom and gloom Dawie Roodt remembers the presentation he did several years ago titled the grass isn't always greener on the other side...
 
Diesal said:
View attachment 1751277

Let that sink in, I've said it before, you simply can't compare foreign salaries in ZAR

I wonder if even doom and gloom Dawie Roodt remembers the presentation he did several years ago titled the grass isn't always greener on the other side...
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So a Big Mac in the UK is £4.99, the same burger in SA is R51.90/£2.22 (R23.196=£1).
However the question is, how many Big Macs can you buy with a single hour of minimum wage work in each country.
In the UK the minimum wage is £11.40 per hour, in SA its R27.58.
So I can buy two Big Macs with an hour of labour in the UK, and in SA I can't even buy one.
But that higher minimum wage is the reason burgers (fast food/ eating out in general) is more expensive here. You also don't need to tip (but I still do at restaurants).
 
killerbyte said:
So a Big Mac in the UK is £4.99, the same burger in SA is R51.90/£2.22 (R23.196=£1).
However the question is, how many Big Macs can you buy with a single hour of minimum wage work in each country.
In the UK the minimum wage is £11.40 per hour, in SA its R27.58.
So I can buy two Big Macs with an hour of labour in the UK, and in SA I can't even buy one.
But that higher minimum wage is the reason burgers (fast food/ eating out in general) is more expensive here. You also don't need to tip (but I still do at restaurants).
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Letr's be realistic, the majority of us on Mybroadband aren't earning minimum wage, so accepting that, how do you factor the equivalent niceties that most of us enjoy, into the equation? (You wanna maintain the same lifestyle at least correct?)

I was chatting to my manager in the US and he said he pays $ 4000 a month for two kids in Kindergarten in New York

Edit: Becuase I have actual work to do I'm not going to do a dissertation on this but, some quick googling yields the following:

Average Salary in NY for a software engineer: $ 132,772 so that's what 11060.16 p/m (note sure about Uncle Sam's cut)
but that would be a whopping 36% of your salary...
 
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killerbyte said:
So a Big Mac in the UK is £4.99, the same burger in SA is R51.90/£2.22 (R23.196=£1).
However the question is, how many Big Macs can you buy with a single hour of minimum wage work in each country.
In the UK the minimum wage is £11.40 per hour, in SA its R27.58.
So I can buy two Big Macs with an hour of labour in the UK, and in SA I can't even buy one.
But that higher minimum wage is the reason burgers (fast food/ eating out in general) is more expensive here. You also don't need to tip (but I still do at restaurants).
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If you do the same comparison w.r.t groceries, I think it would be even more telling.

Take out is just really expensive in the UK when compared to groceries. I paid R340 for a single Burger King meal on Deliveroo (but I was hunger over AF, and it was worth every cent).

So if the UK minimum wage is £11.40 per hour and in SA it's R27.58...
A loaf of bread is like 85p at the cheapest (that I've seen). In SA it's around R15 on average (looking at Checkers)

So that's 13 loaves in the UK vs 1.83 loaves in SA (per hour worked)
 
Dylan_G said:
If you do the same comparison w.r.t groceries, I think it would be even more telling.

Take out is just really expensive in the UK when compared to groceries. I paid R340 for a single Burger King meal on Deliveroo (but I was hunger over AF, and it was worth every cent).

So if the UK minimum wage is £11.40 per hour and in SA it's R27.58...
A loaf of bread is like 85p at the cheapest (that I've seen). In SA it's around R15 on average (looking at Checkers)

So that's 13 loaves in the UK vs 1.83 loaves in SA (per hour worked)
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And this is why I prefer to do a lot more cooking than eating out (but a good pub lunch is always a good reason to go out).
 
Diesal said:
Letr's be realistic, the majority of us on Mybroadband aren't earning minimum wage, so accepting that, how do you factor the equivalent niceties that most of us enjoy, into the equation? (You wanna maintain the same lifestyle at least correct?)

I was chatting to my manager in the US and he said he pays $ 4000 a month for two kids in Kindergarten in New York
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Big Mac is not the most reliable indicator anyway, because most of the ingredients can be sourced locally. It doesn't provide much insight into other sectors that may have their own challenges and cost implications (property, imports and their associated duties etc.).

SA also has the double-tax problem due to a useless government, so you can already start by deducting 30-45% of your income because it disappears into a black hole. Your "actual" tax is what you have to pay in medical aid, school fees and security...
 
Diesal said:
Letr's be realistic, the majority of us on Mybroadband aren't earning minimum wage, so accepting that, how do you factor the equivalent niceties that most of us enjoy, into the equation? (You wanna maintain the same lifestyle at least correct?)

I was chatting to my manager in the US and he said he pays $ 4000 a month for two kids in Kindergarten in New York
Click to expand...
I was earning about R420k in SA, I now earn around R1.1m in the UK.
I am still paying off my SA debts, so that amount is fixed. But I am now paying more in child support, and I give my mom money each month.
I pay more in rent, less for food, less for my mobile account, and because I travel less I pay less in transport costs.
Each month I am able to save the local equivalent of what I was taking home in SA before I left. I save my old NETT salary every month after expenses, and after being able to give other people more money than I could when I was in SA.
Financially for me the move has been very beneficial.

And I do love a good Cream Tea...
 
killerbyte said:
I was earning about R420k in SA, I now earn around R1.1m in the UK.
I am still paying off my SA debts, so that amount is fixed. But I am now paying more in child support, and I give my mom money each month.
I pay more in rent, less for food, less for my mobile account, and because I travel less I pay less in transport costs.
Each month I am able to save the local equivalent of what I was taking home in SA before I left. I save my old NETT salary every month after expenses, and after being able to give other people more money than I could when I was in SA.
Financially for me the move has been very beneficial.

And I do love a good Cream Tea...
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How can I argue against this,

Opening workday to see if I can move to the UK
 
Mike Hoxbig said:
Big Mac is not the most reliable indicator anyway, because most of the ingredients can be sourced locally. It doesn't provide much insight into other sectors that may have their own challenges and cost implications (property, imports and their associated duties etc.).
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This is true, it's only meant to be a quick and dirty comparison of the purchasing power parity, of a big mac, which is supposed be the same world wide. Remeber we're not setting monetary policy here...
 
The prices of things in Australia is shocking, makes me wonder how those people who emigrated without qualifications are managing there.
 
killerbyte said:
I was earning about R420k in SA, I now earn around R1.1m in the UK.
I am still paying off my SA debts, so that amount is fixed. But I am now paying more in child support, and I give my mom money each month.
I pay more in rent, less for food, less for my mobile account, and because I travel less I pay less in transport costs.
Each month I am able to save the local equivalent of what I was taking home in SA before I left. I save my old NETT salary every month after expenses, and after being able to give other people more money than I could when I was in SA.
Financially for me the move has been very beneficial.

And I do love a good Cream Tea...
Click to expand...
But the weather in the UK is depressing; if you have seasonal depression, you might feel depressed permanently.
 
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