Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Engineering Job Market in Switzerland?

32 pointscatchmilk43 comments

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?

Any insights are much appreciated.

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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.

Super interesting. Can you share what is the consulting/freelance rate going for skilled software people?

Prices in excess of 1'000 CHF/day are not unusual if you get someone through an agency. Freelancer rates I’m less sure of, but they’re probably not far behind.

Thanks!

Are there any 'tech-specific' areas in Switzerland, or is it mostly just the big cities like Geneva & Zurich that have most of the tech jobs?

Zug prides themselves in being the <strikethrough>scam</strikethrough> crypto capital of Switzerland.

The two MIT-like schools in Switzerland, EPFL Lausanne and ETH Zürich are big tech hubs.

Also Google has a huge hub in Zürich, and most of the other big tech companies have offices there or in Zug. And as someone mentioned, there’s a lot of crypto-stuff going on in Zug.

Oh and before I forget, Bern has a bunch of OpenData/government IT stuff going on, and Basel is a hub for medical companies (Novartis and friends), and thus has a lot of med-tech companies.

Is there any site where you can find jobs and/or freelance opportunities in Switzerland?

I’ve never really needed to look for work, but https://www.jobs.ch/en/ is one of the big ones. Lots of smaller portals too.

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.

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.)

> why would I pay you 130k CHF remote when I can get someone in Ukraine for $50k?

The Ukrainian dev would probably bill 130k CHF if he had the same skills...

You would likely be surprised. There is a ton of strong software talent in the Ukraine and not quite as much demand as they’d probably like, with predictable outcomes in terms of the balance of market forces.

Contractor working from Ukraine could bill less because of low taxes for contract work (5%) and much lower CoL compared to Switzerland. But yeah, you are not going to hire anyone remotely competent for $50k in 2022.

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.

> 42h workweeks are standard

Why is it 42 hours? That is not a typical 8x5 work week.

I don't know how or why it has become 42, it just is. Mainly for medical professions it's even higher. We swiss have a bit of a strange relationship with work hours and holidays, when we had to vote on 6 weeks of holiday instead of 5 it was of course voted down... A lot of companies are still very old school so I don't have high hopes of getting any of the new experimental 6h workdays to try out here.

If you're not white, don't move there. The Swiss culture is very unwelcoming to newcomers.

Would you say this is the case if one speaks German (or French) already?

German or French would certainly help a lot but don't forget that the german speaking part of Switzerland does not speak high german (like germany) but their own accent (swiss german) which you would have to learn to understand first. Noone is expected to actually learn to speak it (if you're not born here) but if you want to integrate better it's a must to at least understand it.

prashp, why are you spreading such rumors on the internet?

About 25% [1] of the population are foreigners, so it can't be that bad?

If you're not white, still move here (I've been living here since 2016, love it). If you work in IT you most likely end up in a bigger city anyway, and as in most big cities in western europe nobody cares about the color of your skin. Or what languages besides english you speak.

[1] https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/m...

> About 25% [1] of the population are foreigners, so it can't be that bad?

It's not a convincing argument. As counterexample, until not to recently, black people were a sizable portion of the US population, and it was literally that bad for them...

They did come to Switzerland voluntarily and could have left any time they wanted, that must mean something. However an overwhelming majority of that 25% are white and European so I agree that it's not the most convincing argument.

I've actually heard this the case for most immigrants, regardless of race. Would you say it's the case in the entire country, or more so the rural areas?

There are somewhat separate issues here: racism/xenophobia and standoffishness.

Regarding the first: Yes, I'm sure it exists, including, to some extent, in government representatives. It can express itself in more stark ways in rural areas (If you want to get naturalized and live in a rural village, the village gets to vote on your application; it larger places, the process purely bureaucratic). OTOH Switzerland is not a particularly violent country, so generally the racism does not express itself in physical violence.

The standoffishness is a big cultural thing. When we moved back to Switzerland after 8+ years in California, this was something we had to get used to again. OTOH, as others said, 25% of the population is foreign born, so you can always socialize with those… and, who knows, maybe over time you'll develop a taste yourself for keeping your distance and playing your cards close to your vest ;-)

Definitely rural. The cities, especially Basel and Zurich, are very left and open minded.

Ridiculous. More than a quarter of Switzerland's residents are foreigners. There are also a lot of cultural differences between the cantons themselves - 4 different languages are spoken for example.

Africans will find a vibrant local culture often welcoming, Arabs and Indians may get some looks from xenophobes. Think of it as Connecticut: lots of greatness, some backwardness in places. The Swiss are aware of their dependency on foreign skilled labour.

I'm sorry if this has been your experience. But I think at least in larger cities the situation is not nearly as bad as you make it out to be (Among other reasons because in a city like Zurich, the definition of what qualifies as "Swiss culture" is extremely fuzzy; there are people with all graduations of skin color, cultural background, and immigration status to be found).

This is mostly true if you come from certain nationalities and/or places. Arabs and people from the Balkans have a bad reputation because they are seen as sources of crime and or violence in the traditionally quaint Swiss society.

I don't think it's this easy. Especially not as simple as skin color. But I do admit that it is not a non-issue. Even caucasian germans can have a hard time here. I know enough germans that get xenophobic remarks here and there.

Historically, getting an employer to sponsor you for a work visa has been the biggest challenge getting into Switzerland. It's generally been easier to get into Germany. Of course your nationality may be a factor here too in terms of which countries have various visa restrictions.

If one has an EU passport, do you even need a work visa?

No. But you can stay only 3 months without a job, and up to 5 years with a job. After having worked for 5 consecutive years you can apply for permanent residency.

This isn't quite accurate:

- You can only stay 3 months to look for a job. You can stay indefinitely without a job if you can prove you have the means to support yourself.

- You can stay in Switzerland indefinitely with a job, you just need to renew your permit every 5 years, which is essentially a rubber stamp because of freedom of movement agreements.

- You're only able to get a permanent residence permit after 5 years if you're a national of a subset of EU countries (list at [0]) or you're able to demonstrate that you're well integrated (the most burdensome criterion for that is speaking one of the canton's languages at B1 or better). Nationals of other countries who don't go for the exceptional integration pathway have to wait 10 years like most other countries.

[0]: https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/aufenthalt/eu_ef...

> You can only stay 3 months to look for a job.

This isn't quite accurate either. You can stay as a tourist, but otherwise it's a good old Catch 22: - no one will allow you to rent an apartment (and therefore get a permanent address / residency) without a job contract and without a residence permit - you won't get a residence permit without a job contract. - but if you don't have a permanent address and a residence permit, you could just as well apply for jobs from your own country, because what's the difference?

I guess it is easier to go to job interviews if you are staying at an AirBnb, but otherwise no point in staying in Switzerland, unless you are a millionaire, in which case you can support yourself anyways, so the above does not apply to you.

This is actually one noteable difference to EU countries, where you can just move to as you want, you most probably need to register but don't need to apply for a work permit separately.

PS. There is another way. Many people live in Germany, close to the Swiss border, and commute to Switzerland. But if you are a German you already knew that, and if you are not, it's probably not much easier for you to get a job this way :)

> This isn't quite accurate either. You can stay as a tourist

Unfortunately you're not accurate either.

What you're referring to (staying as a tourist) is the same 3 month limit I was talking about. An EU national can come to Switzerland for up to 3 months without doing anything special at all. After 3 months, you can apply for a short-term visa to search for work for a further 3 months [0] or you can apply for residence without gainful employment [1].

[0]: https://www.ch.ch/en/foreign-nationals-in-switzerland/workin...

[1]: https://www.ch.ch/en/foreign-nationals-in-switzerland/entry-...

What kind of engineering? Civil, electronics, aerospace, software, mechanical(watch)?

Apologies, should have mentioned - software.

The 42 hours work week may come as a surprise to some. In many ways working in Zürich is more like working in Boston than in Paris, Madrid, Rome. (From experience end friends' recollections)

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