How Is The Software Engineering Industry In Switzerland?

Visas, Permits, Passports and Naturalization
41
[QUOTE=MariiaR;3069477]Hi!

As far as I know, Switzerland has no many giant IT companies, but there you can receive a really great salary. Average developer salary is higher than in the USA and this is a very good remuneration for the european country (even as expensive as Switzerland).

The figures are not reliable. I doubt very much that there is much input into it beyond the English speaking world.

42
20k$(!)

Don't forget that Poland has its own currency - zloty.

And these numbers are OK when we convert $ into zloty

43
[QUOTE=Jim2007;3070058] Why do you think so?

I found especially for you the source of this image: https://www.payscale.com/research/PL...veloper/Salary

44
Of course 20K$. It just seems low to me. Poland has stepped up in recent years.

https://www.payscale.com/research/US...379/Google-Inc .

USA, Google, Software Engineer: median salary 87K$ - sorry, but I refuse to believe such numbers. Or am I missing something?

45
These numbers are true for the USA, not for Poland

46
Do you really think that median salary of a software engineer at Google in USA is 87K$? Not true by a long shot.

I used that link as an example how the median salaries provided by that webpage doesn't reflect reality.

47
Hmm, just got back to the thread curious to ask for a PM where and for which tech stack a software engineer can get a total compensation package over 200k chf in Switzerland.

Not that I consider it unrealistic, quite the contrary, but somehow my annual income is below the figure in the last 3 years In fact I start considering to take any of the EU offers filling my email box as ~140k € is on pair with 140k chf taking into account the taxes but also cost of living, yet I'm just a bit fed up with being stuck in Switzerland with no outlook to progress again towards a high standard.

48

Of course, a good senior software engineer at Google can get a total compensation of 87K$ (per month) - if he is really good

49
[QUOTE=MariiaR;3070194] I would say that for Switzerland they are quite accurate, even when you look at what companies are currently offering in the job postings on:

https://swissdevjobs.ch/jobs/All/Zurich it goes between 70'000-120'000 CHF on average.

50
I dont know how many times we had that discussion on here:

Google and co might or might not pay a lot... I heard very different things from different people working there, so i assume that there is a huge spread within the companies. However: Lets just all repeat "Google is not the average IT company". Whatever they pay has absolutely zero impact on the rest of the market. If you have a high flying tech career: great for you! but tossing these numbers around on this forum just raises expectations with the other folks coming here to inform themselves about life in Switzerland... and there is the reality pretty simple: In Zurich can a junior pretty quickly get up to six figures. A lot of perm positions are in the 120k range even for experienced employees with potentially some tiny bonus on top. Contracting, team lead or some serious specialist: 200k is in range, but increasingly hard to get. All in all did salaries come down the last 20 years as more and more multinationals rather move the entire department to Poland than to hire some immigrants for a multiple in CHF in Zurich.

51
Not only Poland, it can be any other low cost location in Eastern Europe, maybe Southern Europe (see what Nestlé has done in Vevey, moving activities to Spain), or India.

52
I dont see much going to India or the far east anymore... looks like literally everyone burned their fingers with poorly planned and executed outsourcing before. Eastern Europe has very competitive prices (the day rates in the Ukraine are about the same as india), the more expensive ones are EU countries which has a legal aspect for many businesses, the time difference is an hour or so vs 6, the cultural differences are much smaller.

The hottest seems to be Romania at the moment, but I believe the major banks in Zurich have their nearsourcing centers in Poland. Not that it would make a difference for a job seeker in CH...

53
Don't forget though that the chf went from around 1.70 chf per eur (2004 ?) to around 1.15chf per eur now...

54
I know, but the last time I checked were the main cost drivers of living in Zurich, say: rent, health insurance, transportation and so on... the exact same or more than before in CHF. I know I wrote it in another thread but I actively advised friends against taking contracts in Zurich when the day rates in Brussels or NL (with the expat tax agreement...) are on a similar level.

The Forex means anyone living in CH today can have an awesome time on vacation in the US or Thailand... but the effect on every day life in CH was very limited.

55
Serbia is very popular as well, and in general looks like "outsourcing" is one of the buzzwords in today's entrepreneur circles. Unfortunately it can happen that outsourcing is imposed by management on engineers purely on cost grounds and that never ends well.

IMHO in the next years outsourcing will reduce Swiss-based IT and contribute to lower the salaries, but most of IT will continue stay in CH otherwise companies will begin to experience sensible drops in productivity.

56
This question cannot be answered in general, it depends in which "sector" you work:

As an internal in:

- one of the big US tech companies (Google, Facebook, IBM, Disney Research, ....)

- one of the big international companies (UBS, CS, Roche, Nestle, SwissRe, ..)

- a small and medium-sized swiss company

- one of the (few) Swiss Software Companies (Abacus, Ergon, ...)

- one of the (many) body leasing shops or pseudo consulting companies

- a startup-up company

- the public sector

As a contractor:

- through an agency (with hourly or daily rate)

- idependent contractor without agency (direct client contract)

With you own business:

- Selling your software or IT services to clients (private, companies)