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Comment by razorbladeknife | Hacker News Reader

I get paid 250K EUR in Geneva for writing deadbeat Scala code for Banks. I doubt anyone can match that in Europe

I am straight out of ETH Zurich so my experience is negligible.

Switzerland is an outlier in many aspects for Western Europe :)

And not only in terms of earning - look for example at benefits you get for having kids (amount of parental leave, cost of kindergarten, etc).

It’s like a weird capitalist Enklave in the middle of Europe. I’ll bet a lot of people thought of having kids in Germany or Austria and moving to Switzerland after a few years of taking advantage of generous benefits for having young kids in the former.

What is also common is to live at the border in one of those or France/Italy and cross the border every day. That way you take advantage of the higher wages and lower living expenses respectively.

You're lucky. I talked to Lombard Odier some time ago and they pay their Scala devs 120-130k CHF tops.

250k for a software engineer is quite a lot in Geneva, and even Switzerland. Only Google regularly pays that much after a few years of experience.

Saying I am lucky downplays my hardwork which I put through the university. I hope are you aware of my investment or commitment to studies which got me here

For someone who works in finance, you should understand that the market for software engineers in Switzerland simply doesn't pay this kind of money. The average salary of an ETHZ new grad is 80-85k CHF. You can be the top of your class from MIT or whatnot, companies aren't going to triple their entry-level range to hire someone with zero experience, just because they put a lot of effort through university.

I know top 1% students from ETHZ and EPFL who then did PhDs and postdocs under world class professors. They'll probably never get close to 250k if they stay in Switzerland. Even after 20 years on the job.

How did you come across the job posting ? And also whether you are Swiss should also make a difference as to whether you get the job ? Whats your take ?

I highly contemplated both Zurich and Luxembourg because of my finance tech experience (SocGen, BoA, Wells Fargo, Goldman Stackzzz). I love Switzerland.

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