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Comment by iagooar | Hacker News Reader

Yeah Switzerland is great as long as you don't have children. Once you get a child, well, you're out of luck. Childcare in Switzerland is the craziest expense I've seen in my life, where having your kid looked after for 5 days a week will cost you 2-2,5k CHF / USD per month! And if you have a second child, they might give you 10% discount. So around 4,5k USD per month for 2 kids. It's madness!

Besides that, you will need to leave your shared apartment and go looking for one with at least 4 rooms. That'll easily cost you 2.5k-3.5k per month.

So while I agree that Switzerland is a nice place to be while 20-30, after that age it hugely depends on your situation. Got 2 kids and know some German? You might actually be better off in Germany.

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OP here. I disagree with everything you said.

> having your kid looked after for 5 days2-2,5k CHF / USD per month!

Yes but only when your kid is 2-3 years old. After that kindergarten is free. Superb elementary school, high-school is free; and on top Uni-Zurich and ETH, the MIT of Europe, is also almost free (costs like 500$ a semester).

> Besides that, you will need to leave your shared apartment and go looking for one with at least 4 rooms. That'll easily cost you 2.5k-3.5k per month.

Why? You're probably referring to some regulations. Well, if you have a wife and one kid, you can legally even live in a 1-bedroom apartment (formula for legal limit of grown-up people per apartment is "# of people = # of rooms + 1" - source p. 29: https://www.ekm.admin.ch/dam/data/ekm/dokumentation/material...)

Of course you disagree. You literally make money off people who want to buy into the "Swiss dream". While certainly it is a great country to live in, it has its shortcomings. What I'm pointing out might not be a big deal for many people who are not planning to have children. But for others it sure might be a deal breaker.

> Yes but only when your kid is 2-3 years old. After that kindergarten is free.

Yeah, you just forgot to mention that kindergarten starts at the age of 4, and is not 5 days a week, the whole day. It's 4 days a week, 3,5 hours a day. The rest still needs to be paid at the same rate I mentioned before. So you are talking here without really knowing your facts.

> Why? You're probably referring to some regulations. Well, if you have a wife and one kid, you can legally even live in a 1-bedroom apartment (formula for legal limit of grown-up people per apartment is "# of people = # of rooms + 1" - source p. 29: https://www.ekm.admin.ch/dam/data/ekm/dokumentation/material...)

So you are basically saying that someone who earns a shit-ton of money should live in a 1 bedroom apartment with their partner and child? I just can't answer to that...

>So you are basically saying that someone who earns a shit-ton of money should live in a 1 bedroom apartment

No, I am not telling anybody to do anything. I am pointing to the existing legal possibilities because Zurich's landlords are arrogant and sometimes write clauses in their rent-contracts that "break" Swiss law ("only 1 person can live here"). I am trying to highlight that Zurich's jurisdiction is renter-friendly and laws are applied rigorously.

You can calmly rent-sign a contract with weird clauses, because they are invalid, so you can break them and the landlord can't kick you out for it. Worst case is you get infront of the "Schlichtungsbehörde" which is a pre-step before the court, where a volunteer-landlord, volunteer-renter-representative and a neutral party will decide over a dispute quickly (and cheaply). So please make sure you are member of mieterverband.ch, if you live in Zurich.

> and on top Uni-Zurich and ETH, the MIT of Europe

Universities are way more on a level field in Europe than in the US. “Elite” universities will just be marginally better than good universities that come in the dozens and you probably haven’t heard of.

Though it is true that Universities are on a level field in Europe, I feel that ETH Zurich is a bit of an exception to this rule, it really is talked about in a different way than other universities in Europe.

I have to argue that there are both tax rates and job opportunities available in Switzerland that you'd be hard pressed to find elsewhere in Europe.

If someone it taking home ~300K CHF / year in some sort of support role in a bank in Zurich the above overheads don't seem to be such a deal breaker.

If by support you mean IT support, then it will probably a third of that.

Though IT support would count, I was thinking more along the lines of supporting traders, such as quants and the people that specialise in their toolkits that support them.

Salaries for software engineers engineers in Zurich are 90k CHF - 120k CHF. That is 6500 CHF - 8500 CHF after taxes per month.

For more information, shoot me an e-mail. You find my contact details in my HN profile. (Disclaimer: I am a former programm and I recruit software engineers into Zurich, New York and Munich for a living now.)

300k / year? You must be dreaming. In IT you are lucky if you get 120k.

This is the biggest negative of switzerland. It's like a 'tax' for living in an amazing, amazing place. I am very happy for my 2 kids to grow up here though and that cost is relative to me. Relative in that it is 'just' acceptable. Taken me a while to say that though.....

Yeah, I'm not sure daycare anywhere is cheap.

3 kids, US Midwest, 36k/yr for daycare.

I'm honestly looking at it as a huge bonus (paid to myself) after 4-5 years. It keeps me from crying.

It is cheap in Germany. Until this year it's been less than 300€ / month. Starting in 2018, in Berlin, daycare is going to cost you a whopping 0€! So it is possible, if the country and the people really want it.

As long as we're not passing up quality, I'm all for this.

On the flip side, taxation for a married couple is negligible.

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