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Comment by Gud | Hacker News Reader

I disagree.

I am ambitious and from Europe. I live in Switzerland and I love it here.

There is no way I would wish to move to a dysfunctional country like the US(no offense).

Switzerland is great and I live there too, but the USA is hardly dysfunctional and we shouldn't overpraise Switzerland. This is a country that now has basically only one big bank, for a country that was once famous for banking! And look at how many well paid tech jobs in .ch are with US firms. Try and create a tech startup in Switzerland and you will quickly figure out why.

Switzerland is no good because they don’t have enough banks or tech startups? I’m not sure everyone would agree that those are the most important metrics.

Switzerland actually has plenty of banks still. Not sure why parent was making such a big deal out of Credit Suisse going bankrupt.

That's not what I've been hearing from European co-workers. Switzerland and London being somewhat of an exception, the vibe I get there are few if any good jobs and few good and ambitious developers left in Europe. Everyone who is any good and ambitious moves to London, or the US unless they have special circumstances.

People from France, Spain etc. tend to be more polite about it, but specifically 3 people from German speaking regions in Bay Area - 2 natives and one who moved to the US via Germany from Eastern Europe - basically said the above directly :)

I myself looked into moving to Austria / North Italy for the nature and good cities, but the salaries and cost of living are just too much of a joke, even for non-developer. In Austria back then I'd be making less than my wife makes as a teacher in the USA. Switzerland is somewhat better, but still pretty bad, even for a developer

As an Italian, that's the reason I left. The salaries have been the same for like 20 years

Don't forget you are talking to the people who left and their reason for leaving, not the group that stayed and are happy.

I loved London for nearly 2 decades, but moving out to the countryside was the best thing I've done - huge house, cheap mortgage and nearly (but not quite) as many well paying job opportunities. I could go back to London and maybe even double my wages. But to have the life I love now in terms of just housing and location I'd have to quadruple or more my outgoings.

But I'm sure I'd give you a great story for why I was in London if I ever moved back there.

Yup, most countries in Europe are better to live in than USA. Americans just don't want to be told they're not special.

We have 45M+ immigrants in the US. This does not count children of immigrants, only people who were born in another country and now live in the US.

That is 5x the total population of Switzerland.

And no offense taken, I've heard Switzerland is an amazing place!

I’m not for sure what you are trying to say with that statistic, but Switzerland has a much higher percentage of immigrants.

40% have a migration background, you can see the stats here: https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/statistics/population/m...

I wasn't really trying to compare immigration between the two, more just trying to illustrate the scale of US immigration vs the OP's anecdote

What's your point?

Your personal immigration preference is not worth mentioning since we have actual statistics on the subject

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