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've been a coder in Switzerland and now I run a tech recruitment agency: https://coderfit.com - I focus solely on Zurich and surrounding regions.
1. Engineers are similarly in demand as everywhere in Europe
2. I'd say the "cost of living" to "after tax salaries" ratio is unbeatably good
3. 100% remote work: not that popular; why would I pay you 130k CHF remote when I can get someone in Ukraine for $50k?
I had cases where firms wanted a Swiss (German speaking) person and they paid 140k CHF for fully remote but this was an exception.
Ping me for any further questions: iwan@coderfit.com or better just cold call me: +41 77 986 9000 (I am on any messenger app like Signal, Whatsapp etc.)
Yes, but Switzerland is a special case in general. Even post-docs (research assistants) at academic institutions have near six-figure salaries (CHF 85K, in quite theoretic field). A lot of non-hype tech companies provide six-figure salaries for engineers. I can't imagine any non-junior engineer to relocate to Zurich for anything below that.
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?
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'm swiss and work at a (not internationally known) software company in zurich.
1. Yes, you will find a lot of job offers
2. Compared to my peers not in the software industry the pay is excellent. To get a glimpse you can check https://swissdevjobs.ch/ for salary ranges. Note that this is a lesser known job board and will not have the big name companies on there.
3. Currently there is mandated remote work due to a spike in covid cases. My company has floated that they will require 50% office presence afterwards. But guessing from the sentiment in the industry, there will be plenty of companies allowing full remote.
Could you please elaborate on where to find 10-14K senior developer role opportunities in zurich? The ones I stumble upon are sensibly on a lower ballpark.
My partner and I are thinking of moving to Switzerland to settle down and raise a family. Are there any engineers currently based in Switzerland than can shed some light on the current state of the job market there?
1. Are engineers in demand to begin with?
2. We're aware of how expensive Switzerland can be. Do the jobs pay well enough?
3. Even more interestingly - what's the current attitude in Switzerland towards 100% remote work? Is it primary office-based over there? What's the work culture like?
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).
>Yes you get a lot of competition on entry level roles. The opportunities for engineers working as experienced consultants is massive in Germany and Switzerland
Also, entry level is paid well. If you want to know more about Switzerland, here a blogpost I wrote 4 years ago and which is still valid today: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland to work in tech" https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... (disclaimer: I am a founder of a tech recruitment agency and we look for tech talent all over Europe who want to join Swiss companies. If you look for a tech job e-mail me at iwan@coderfit.com.)
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.
I've lived in a major urban region of Switzerland for the last 12 years and I could not disagree more. I've seen companies looking for capable software engineers for years, including paid relocation and arranging temporary housing for them to move into.
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.
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:
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).
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?
Interesting switzerland is mentioned, there does seem to be a shortage of programmers here, our company recruits a sizeable chunk from abroad. Also, if you search in a local language, especially german, there are a lot of open positions, where fluent command of the local language is required.
I moved to Switzerland (from Denmark) almost a decade ago, and I’ve not regretted it.
1. If we’re talking software engineering, the demand is ultra-high. I’ve had to hire freelancers, because skilled software people are neigh-impossible to find.
2. Yeah, for engineers and other skilled workers, pay is very good, even the relatively high cost of living considered.
3. Before CV19, 100% remote was pretty rare. 1-2 days of home office was pretty common. Nowadays, things are a lot less defined, and given how desparate companies are to hire skilled ppl., you can probably negotiate something.
I’m not sure how to describe the work culture, but if you get into some tech start up in Zürich or Geneva, you probably won’t find it too foreign, and everyone speaks English well enough.
If you have a EU passport, you can generally get a work visa just by asking. If you’re from elsewhere, it’s a little more involved, but still manageable.
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