San Francisco is famously non-sunny (all that cloud).
Salaries are certainly not capped at 140k CHF, I've seen a number of job ads for 180K CHF and that doesn't count stock options which is usually the bulk of compensation at the high end.
Not sure about the MBA vs IC thing though.
I grew up in a place in France that gets slightly more sun than Zurich. I now live in the Bay Area Peninsula with 3,000+ hours of sunshine a year and the difference is incredible, especially in winter.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_sunshine_dur...
San Francisco is on a peninsula, so it gets lots of fog. Its weather pattern does not represent the area in general.
San Jose is further inland and very sunny most of the year.
Today SF high will be 66F and San Jose 75F; big difference but in either case its mid-October and still t-shirt weather.
Used to be true, but less and less given climate change