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Comment by s3nnyy | Hacker News Reader

I can only agree; if you optimize for money, Berlin does not pay. As a junior developer with a master in CS from a top European school, the offers I got from Berlin were around laughable 40k Euro for a web-dev gig.

40.000 Euro gross amounts to 2000 Euro per month in net-salary. My living costs in Berlin would be around 800 Euro.

I chose to go to Zurich instead. Here, I am making 92.000 CHF also as a junior web-dev. Due to the low taxes, my net-salary is 6.500 CHF and I live on 1300 CHF all-in.

Zurich is the only place in Europe where salaries are comparable to NYC or the Bay-Area. If you are interested in moving here to work in IT, shoot me a mail. Contact details can be found in my HN profile. Alternatively, check out my medium-story: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland" (http://goo.gl/EIX4UX).

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I second this anecdotal evidence. It's a very tight real estate market but somehow, cheap compared to salaries, with high quality options and a high quality of life. Thanks to EasyJet, Swiss (the airline), and the always great Swiss public transport, you're also next to a budget hub (ZRH) allowing you easy access to the rest of Europe.

I moved cos my next job took me to Geneva (which is nowhere near as nice) but remember the city fondly. Switzerland is generally a wonderful country to live in and work, if you can cope with not being in a culture hub (which is the only real drawback, relatively easily mitigated by weekends elsewhere).

The events that are important to me are about technology, UX, design, business and entrepreneurship. There are plenty events happening covering these topics. Usually, I am attending two to four meetups per week.

Also, people tend to forget that Zurich has 320.000 inhabitants and one should account for this when comparing it to mega-cities like Berlin, which is literally ten times bigger.

Wow - I work in Berlin, and your figures sound unbelievable (Also your post seems to be before Euro lost some value, so in current Euro-CHF exchange rate - you are way higher.)

I heard few companies like Zalando can pay in that range for good developers. Most of the IT companies in Berlin seem to be startups with no/limited funding, thus low salary.

Around 50-55k Euro gross is enough to live comfortably. Even for someone who came here from Asia, I find grocery stuffs, beers etc very cheap. Rents are going up, but still cheap. I live in 42 meter square studio flat for around 500 at the centre of the city (current rate should be between 600-800).

How do you manage to live for 1.3k in Zurich? I can't get close to that in Basel and I'm not even living alone.

I pay 600ish for a room (never stop looking, this is how you find the real-estate deals here), 220,- for the obligatory insurance, I mostly ride my bike to work, and the rest is budgeted for food and travel.

I guess, by Swiss standards I live frugally. However, I don`t feel that I am missing a thing.

I still rather live in Berlin than anywhere else - money isn't everything.

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