An immediate effect of the changes and uncertainty brought about by proposed changes to the 457 visa for skilled migrant temporary workers could be an increase in development costs for early stage start-ups.
Occupations dropped from the replacement programs include ICT support and test engineers, technicians and web developers – roles that are critical to tech start-ups. When we began our business we were bootstrapping, finding talent quickly and affordably was challenging and it was our ability to attract a foreign developer through the 457 visa program that ultimately allowed us to build our minimum viable product (MVP) and then successfully raise seed funding.
We have had employees on 457 visas, do have them and were hoping to continue to have future employees on 457s. The ones we have hired that have been on them held various positions in primarily technology and product development. A shortage of relevant skills and experience from the local market was the main reason to rely on 457s. While we haven’t hired anyone under an occupation that has been “removed” from the list so far, those removed positions will become relevant in the near future for us, so it is concerning to see them removed.
Testing, for example, is a big part of the product development cycle and is being removed from the list of approved occupations. A big question for us now is: how will we hire from the local market and find relevant testing experience in the future in this area specifically? There is a lack of local experience simply due to the nascent nature of Australia’s startup ecosystem. We met a couple of young guns during our search, but they were quickly snatched away by big overseas tech companies.
We’ve held off hiring test engineers until now because 1) We hadn’t grown to a size necessitating extensive testing until recently and 2) We were unable to find people locally that had the relevant experience. Because of our recent Series A funding, we are now looking to hire more experienced developers and in particular, test engineers, who will be essential for our business to expand overseas.
The government needs to do more to offset the impact of these changes on the local startup scene. If they are going to restrict our hiring ability, then they should consider providing robust training programs, or subsidise startups who spend time and money training local hires. This may involve startups engaging contractors and professional trainers to skill up the local workforce, which would increase operational costs. If the government’s long-term goal is to cultivate the local workforce, then they should do more by encouraging the hiring of inexperienced developers that are trained by their employers.
Lack of such support will drive Australian startups to either outsource more (given there are no other real alternatives) or completely relocate to other more ‘startup-friendly’ countries, which is exactly what the Turnbull government does not want.
While there is merit to saving jobs for Australian-born developers, the fact of the matter is that the community is small and technical specialists are few and far between. When it comes to tackling the hardest challenges to complete highly specialised work, there may simply not be developers in Australia with the relevant experience.
Under the 457 visa program, Australia as a country was able to attract developers of an extremely high quality who may now be unable to gain permanent residency through that channel. The end result is slowed growth in an Australian startup scene which is really still in its adolescence, thanks to a reduction in international talent flowing to Australia.
While a focus on training Australians to fill our own labour market needs is important, skilled migrants are often best positioned to be educating the next generation of Australian workers – such as when working together with junior developers within the same companies, for example. While we wait for more details on the new program to be released, we will remain hopeful that the changes made do not restrict the options available to startups.
David Ballerini, Co-Founder, Liven
