While you won't earn over 200k USD easily (unless at Google Zurich or very lucky) in Switzerland you can actually save a lot from your Software Engineer salary, if you go the frugal way (in SV half of your salary is easily eaten by taxes/rent/etc).
Important to notice - In Switzerland you can actually save a lot from your Software Engineer salary, if you go the frugal way (in SV half of your salary is easily eaten by taxes/rent/etc).
You can pretty much just come to Switzerland and work if you are an EU citizen, so might as well be.
Zurich has probably the best ratio of earning potential to COL in the world (for the average person, not necessarily for software engineers). If you are cheap/thrifty you can even go do your shopping in a neighboring country, since Switzerland is so small.
For a more meaningful view of the Swiss market (there's almost only Google on this site for Switzerland), I would have a look at https://swissdevjobs.ch/. There's not a lot above 150k.
I don't know where you're getting your info from, but Google salaries in Switzerland are extremely competitive with California. The average for software engineers at Google Zürich is around $300K at L5 I'd say. And the housing situation, while still very expensive, is a lot less fucked up than San Francisco.
Source: I'm a Googler in Zürich. Current total comp is at $320K after 3 years at L5.
From my experience, Switzerland is definitely better compared to countries like, let's say, Germany, in almost every area of life - standard of living, salaries, closeness to the nature, taxes, healthcare - you name it.
Average salaries for devs :
- Germany: 50k EUR / year;
- Switzerland: 95k CHF / year.
Of course, it depends on the specific canton/city/town when you want to settle down, but you need to take to account taxes as well. In Germany, they will tax you pretty heavily, around 50%, and Swiss taxation is ~30%, more or less.
Of course those are rough estimations, but you get the point.
In terms of costs of living, it is expensive, especially if you want to live in Zurich, but for a dev earning ~100k it won't be that much of an issue. Of course, you can choose a smaller town and cut down all expenses in half :slight_smile:
Besides San Francisco and New York I also think that the average software developer gets paid a lot more in Switzerland, especially tons more than in surrounding countries. The only caveat is that you are usually expected to speak German and/or french (there are jobs without that requirement, but one of those two languages will really make your life a lot easier).
Day-to-day expenses are a tiny part of a typical budget. In most scenarios, housing, income taxes and transportation alone will easily cost you twice as much in SF compared to Zürich.
As a software engineer, the salary difference should make up for it, or even reach levels that are unlikely in Switzerland. That's great, but for most people, I can guarantee you, Zürich is a lot cheaper.
In Geneva, Switzerland, earning more than CHF 100,000 / year (ca. USD 110,000) as a programmer is not an exception, by far. Wages are rather high here, compared to the rest of mainland Europe. The cost of living is high, but overall Geneva is a good place to live. It is full of wealthy institutions, which makes it a advantageous place to work as well.
This has a two drawbacks however. First, it's not such a good thing for us programmers to have too many cash cows in one place. Indeed, too many employers of software engineers here are service companies that tend to neglect the good "explorer" mind set, resting on a more lucrative "milker" working style, and sometimes even relying on "cowboy" techniques to catch new clients. This is very disenchanting for engineers that cross their paths.
Another issue here is that you have within the same narrow space institutions with huge cultural distances. It is well known that Geneva has a bunch of international organizations, as well as banks and financial institutions. It is less known that some of the biggest tobacco industries have chosen this area to monitor their business, and that some health organizations have to deal with this neighborhood. If you are a sensible worker with values, all this will put you in trouble sooner or later, and maybe in very unexpected ways. Pragmatic programmers, beware of the cynics in pragmatism clothing!
This leads to my suggestion: think twice before you leave your friends and beloved ones in the hope of a better salary. There are plenty of reasons to move to other places or to explore the world, but this should not be the first one. Instead, concentrate on the good you can do with your skills, and the fun they can bring you.
I would disagree. Zurich does indeed pay very well, but it's very hard to get a job there, and salaries are only competitive with the Bay Area at lower levels. That means it's possible to find a job that pays 100k, but 300k compensation packages are far, far more rare than in the Bay Area. I don't know any company apart from Google that pays that much for senior engineers.
I tried to get a job there about 8 months ago, and I could only convince 3 startups to interview me (after I failed to get a job at Google), and I didn't get an offer at any of them. I failed one for "cultural fit", one because I didn't do well enough in the technical phone screen, and with the third one I decided to stop the process because I had another offer and was tired of interviewing. It's fine to not accept people for cultural reasons, but if there are 4 startups that are hiring in Zurich, that kinda sucks for candidates.
Also, recently Google started paying new engineers in Zurich lower than in the US (same salary, far fewer RSUs). I guess the lack of competition in the European market is a good enough reason.
Do you know any companies in Zurich hiring developers that pay Bay Area salaries (100k junior, 200k senior) and hire >100 engineers a year?
Swiss salaries on the German-speaking side for senior engineers are in the 120k-160k bracket (Zürich area, depending on skills and domain). Speaking German natively will also score you above a lot of the local developers (expats from many non-German speaking countries).
Taxes are much lower and quality of life is great, but also more expensive.
PM me if interested and I can hook you up with local recruiters. Remote work might be possible.
I'm Swiss and worked at a couple of software companies, mostly smaller in size.
1. Engineers are highly sought after. The companies I worked for always had a hard time getting local people (and capable ones at that) and are pretty much continously searching. I'm hearing the same from friends at other companies.
2. Pay is very good, if you go for some of the larger companies or into the financial industry even better. (For swiss people, maybe can't compete with ridiculous silicon valley salaries.) Raising a family is pretty expensive though for everyday things, at least the schools and universities are cheap (and good) ;)
3. From my experience flexible working arragnements and remote work was hard to come by and often only allowed for maybe 20% of your work. Since COVID this has of course changed and we are currently forced to work from home. I think this also changed the attituded of many workplaces (at least I hope so) but it's not been a given for a long time. I can't compare work culture as I have never experienced it anywhere else but as others have mentioned, 42h workweeks are standard with 5 weeks of holidays (depending on the canton you move to you might also have more or less public holidays in addition to that).
The big cities are of course always the most expensive ones to live in but Switzerland has very well built out public transport that is also mostly on time so getting into the cities to work while living outside of the city is mostly a non issue if you are willing to spend the time traveling.
If you care about the FAANG titans, we have Microsoft and MS R&D in Switzerland, Google has their largest Software Engineer campus outside the US in Zurich and AWS is just moving in.
Or you could work for Google in Zurich, they apparently pay slightly more than in the bay area. Although that's nominally, after accounting for cost of living it may be less.
Indeed in Switzerland the taxes and living costs are lower than in SF/Nyc; hence, you are more likely to become a millionaire with a tech job here than almost anywhere else.
If Switzerland is an option, ping me. I am a well-connected tech recruiter with a solid network in Zurich, and I worked as a programmer before, so I know the tech scene here inside out.
This is my experience as well. Even with > 10 years experience, it's hard to find engineering jobs paying > 120k.
> In Zurich, you can rent a whole flat (50+ square meters) for something between 2500-4000 CHF and if you are single and open to living with other people you can find a room in something called Wohngemeinde for as little as 800-1000 CHF.
Good luck if you have a family, it's ~4k for 4.5 rooms (100sqm).
Check the listings on the website, most of them cap out at 10k/month. That is gross, pre-tax. So net is about 8k max.
> Maybe it is because of the crunch work culture that squeezes out everything out of employees and only gives a payout to founders and VCs?
Switzerland, Zurich has lots of tech jobs and great salaries.
It's not officially Europe but easy enough to work here if you have an EU passport / have 3yrs of industry experience. I'm on 200k here
Here is a cost and savings breakdown for Zurich: https://swissdevjobs.ch/blog/how-to-find-job-as-software-dev...
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