I was raised in New Zealand, and spent the first half of my life (so far) there. I'm now happily raising a family in Melbourne, Australia. Some observations:
- many of the people I knew in IT in New Zealand have left, especially for Australia; when I was there, this was known as the 'brain drain'
- growing up in New Zealand, there was a strong anti-intellectual current to the culture, especially amongst Maori students (I came top in my year for Maori language despite there being fluent speakers in my school, because I did assignments and they didn't)
- successful people in New Zealand are often criticised because of their success; this is known as 'tall poppy syndrome'
- New Zealand is, politically speaking, entirely socialist; even their 'right wing' party is in favour of a welfare state, taxpayer-funded education and healthcare, and a wide range of 'sin taxes' and legislation designed to protect people from themselves (a.k.a. the 'Nanny State' to its critics)
- Universities there simply aren't as demanding as overseas; my wife cross-credited a psych. degree from Australia, and she was more than half way through a NZ undergrad degree after one year of a degree in Australia
Note that I haven't listed NZ's many positive characteristics. Just saying that all of the above contribute to an environment that in my experience is less productive and less entrepreneurial than Australia.
- many of the people I knew in IT in New Zealand have left, especially for Australia; when I was there, this was known as the 'brain drain'
- growing up in New Zealand, there was a strong anti-intellectual current to the culture, especially amongst Maori students (I came top in my year for Maori language despite there being fluent speakers in my school, because I did assignments and they didn't)
- successful people in New Zealand are often criticised because of their success; this is known as 'tall poppy syndrome'
- New Zealand is, politically speaking, entirely socialist; even their 'right wing' party is in favour of a welfare state, taxpayer-funded education and healthcare, and a wide range of 'sin taxes' and legislation designed to protect people from themselves (a.k.a. the 'Nanny State' to its critics)
- Universities there simply aren't as demanding as overseas; my wife cross-credited a psych. degree from Australia, and she was more than half way through a NZ undergrad degree after one year of a degree in Australia
Note that I haven't listed NZ's many positive characteristics. Just saying that all of the above contribute to an environment that in my experience is less productive and less entrepreneurial than Australia.