What is Perth like for Single Young Professionals in General?

[Michael_Van_der_merw]

Im a 25 year old Web Developer from South Africa; single and looking for something fresh, many of my friends have spoken about Australia and Perth specifically. But i would like some more context from someone who is actually there.

• Would Perth be a good choice for someone like myself, compared to the other main cities ?
• What do i need to consider when moving ?
• What is the job market like their ?
• And would it be easy enough to meet people and make new friends(I will be 100% alone on this Journey) ?

Thanks

[Michael_Cooke]

I moved to Perth as a single man when I was a 27 - that was back in 2011.
It was very easy to move to Perth (from East Coast of Australia) due to very reasonable access to public transport and a fantastic series of cycle paths that connect the city. The cycle paths extend all the way from the city to the beach and I believe in theory you can cycle from the city to the wine region as well although I have not tried that. Unless you have found a job outside the main part of the city, you can probably get away with not buying a car until you're ready.
Cost of renting in Perth is ok by Australian standards. Not great, not terrible.
I met my wife in Perth, so I can say from my own experience that there is good opportunities on that side of things as well.

As a web dev, you'll be happy to know there are several active groups in Perth catering to web development. You can find them through meetup.com.
One of the more active groups are the Fenders, front end web developers. There is not an active bender (back end) group but each aspect of back end is likely to be represented in some other group.
There is an organisation called Spacecubed that run very frequent activities relating to technology and web development that are located on the main street of Perth.
If anything, your social life will become crowded with activities and you'll have to make some hard decisions on what to keep up with and what to cut out.

Perth has a great range of places to eat and drink during the day - I don't stay out too late these days so can not comment on the night life after 10pm.

...Now for the bad news:
Perth, WA, in 2018 is unofficially in recession.
Jobs are scarce, especially full time positions.
The situation has been bad for a while now. I'd say gradually deteriorating since 2012.
A lot of smaller businesses are closing.
There are a lot of "for lease" signs on commercial buildings.
General signs of things not doing so well economically.
My wife and I left Perth last year so I could pursue a better career opportunity - this was after several years of both of us struggling to make any career progress in Perth. Whilst career stagnation is better than unemployment, it did eventually take its toll on our morale. I'd suggest you to keep that in mind as a potential hazard in the long-term.

Having said that, I really like Perth as a place to live.
It's easy to meet people in Perth. They're relaxed and friendly. There are plenty of places to go based on your interests. If you enjoy the outdoors, there are plenty of options from the coast / beach activities to hiking to my favourite, wine tasting.

[Michael_Van_der_merw]

Thanks so much for your insight Michael!

The part about Career Stagnation and Recession, is a bit of a worry though.
Do you have any suggestions on places/ cities other than perth that i could look at ?

But other than that, perth sounds like my kind of place, and a great place to live!
The amount of activities make it sound like i would be spoiled for choice which is great!

[Michael_Cooke]

The part about Career Stagnation and Recession, is a bit of a worry though.

Yes, it is. Can be very difficult to predict when things will turn around on that front.

Do you have any suggestions on places/ cities other than perth that i could look at ?

Seeing you're from South Africa, you'll probably have the mental and physical fortitude to take on the Top End.
The Top End includes Northern Western Australia, The Northern Territory and the Gulf and Cape region of Queensland.
Or you can go in the direction I have, to the Outback. The Outback is a very broad and vague geographic region. For the purposes of this topic, it includes the vast interior of Australia. I'm currently located 500km west of Uluru (Ayers Rock). In my community, there are about 4 people here who can use a Content Management System (Joomla) and zero with any actual web dev skills, and I'd bet that would be the same across the vast region.
The first question would be, can you find anywhere that has a need for an onsite web dev far away from major cities.
The other question would be, do you want to have to deal with wild people, wild animals and wild variations in temperature? If you can put up with it, the Top End or the Outback might be for you.

Web developers are few and far between in these regions, meaning any business would be very keen to hire someone with your skills if only to maintain their website - but I think they'd probably expect you to do a wide range of tasks that sometimes include web development due to workplaces being smaller up there.

There is a common misconception that web devs are automatically good at troubleshooting any IT problem from Outlook to printers to the cash register not working. If you want to become the mister fix it, you can play that to your advantage too.

I'm not going to recommend any other cities, because it's been too long since I've lived in any other capital other than Perth.
I left Sydney in early 2010 and it has changed a lot since I left, become the most expensive city on the continent and in my view it doesn't represent value for money to spend 3/4 of your income on renting a small living space.
I have visited Brisbane dozens of times but haven't lived there, so cannot comment other than saying its comparable in size and possibly comparable in opportunities to Perth.