Planning to move to switzerland in May, and and searching for guidance

Welcome and Introductions
1

Hi everyone, hope everyone is doing well!

I found this forum online when searching more about switzerland, so I want to give a quick introduction on myself, and wanted to see if anyone could have any sort of tips or ideas to improve my moving/stay.

I’m 22 years old, I’m from Portugal, here I worked as a web developer but the market is too saturated and I’m unemployed and I can’t get a better life here.

I have 2 more friends and they earn the minimum wage and they want to move out as well, so I had the brilliant idea of moving to swizerland (after careful considerarion, searching for the country/rules/culture, the only barrier would be the language, which is something we started studying already).

We were planning to maybe go to Vaud Canton, work in Lausanne, but to stay on the villas around, do you have any suggestion or opinion on this?

The thing is we don’t have any special education (only I have in IT, and Its being hard), so we though about working in civil construction, we dont have experience but we definetly have the interest to learn and to do our best to deliver the best service as we can.

So let me know some of my questions.

  1. Would it be impossible for us to get job at the same company?
  2. Do you have any jobs/niche recommendation that we could search for?
  3. I have a doubt about the health insurance, I saw it has a deductible value, do we need to pay this value as soon as we sign the health insurance?
  4. If everything goes well, and we do get a job we were planning to stay in a airbnb maybe till we find a place to stay, we were aiming to find a house with 3 rooms and then split all expenses so we can manage better finances and invest the money (on the country), so the house values I’ve been watching goes around 3k-4k, I’ve found its common for the landlords to ask for 3 months in advance, this usually happens for houses at this price as well?
  5. What is your opinion on the swica telmed model? (I saw people saying to avoid the cheap health insurance duo to the quality service, so I was aiming for a “middle” one)
  6. Do you think its worth it to pay for complementary insurances? per example: dental care, gym?
  7. I saw videos from emmigrants saying its hard to make friends in the country when you are an “outsider”, what would be your opinion on that?
  8. btw what’s the common opinion on natural swiss people on emmigrants?
  9. Is there any thing you would recommend us to avoid, or to have more attention to?

I dont think I have any more questions at the moment, if you have any questions please feel free to do so.

We are just young people looking for a better life that want to work and make a life in switzerland and to also invest on the country to the best of our capacities.

If you read till the end, thank you so much, hopefully I can get some guidance, wish everyone on the forum the best.

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Clearly your biggest challenge will be to find work. There are many Portuguese in Switzerland, and many work construction jobs. I don’t think there are here on this site, so you may want to find another way to reach that community. Construction may very well be purely a seasonal job where people get laid off regularly in autumn, so have that in mind.

Good luck.

3

The Portuguese in Switzerland are concentrated in Zürich, Vaud, and Geneva cantons (provinces), in the western French speaking areas (called Romandie) in general because of the proximity of Portuguese and French. Zürich is the exception here, probably because it’s the economic center and has the largest population.

The residence permit depends on having a job. You wouldn’t have that problem if you decided to live across the border in France and commute. That might also be cheaper but of course there’s the commute.

You’re probably best served by contacting an association like Federação das Associações Portuguesas na Suíça or Federação Portuguesa de Folclore e Etnografia na Suiça and take it from there.

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4

No, you’ll rarely (if ever) will use your complementary insurances. Try to get the basic and cheap one (you’ll see nothing is really cheap here and expenses pile up)…at your age it’s more than enough.
And btw, although I can understand that you want to move to the French side due to language similarities, the better jobs/opportunities are on the German side. If you can put up with German/Swiss-German, that is…:slight_smile:
I wish you good luck! You’re so young you can learn and adapt (maybe get another degree/training/certificates in parallel), and it’s very likely you can make it.

5

This is entirely up to you, and entirely up to the individual Swiss. Swiss share an annoying characteristic of “being human” which means that you might meet a bunch of Swiss people that will respond well to your abundance of friendliness and welcome you into their group/club or you might find that they are a bunch of gumpy sods and not give you the time of day. Most likely they’ll be a mix of the two across a whole spectrum.

Most of the Swiss I know don’t care that I’m a johnny-foreigner with sometimes weird German but know me as someone to chat on the doorstep with or help out with a dog-walk or come over for a coffee or have a delicious bitchy moan about the teacher we have for our kids.

6

The market is pretty saturated in IT here as well and web developer jobs aren’t easy to find.

I’d concentrate on the Romandie region where there are already enormous numbers of Portuguese people and where the language will be easier for you.
Neuchâtel has a huge Portuguese community and you’ll find lots of Portuguese people working here, lots in construction and in the service industry. There are many Portuguese working in the shops here.

The Neuchâtel Portuguese centre website links to the general site for Portuguese in Switzerland which may be helpful for you.

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:rofl:
how peculiar. Thanks for the giggle.

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hello and welcome to the forum.

Some quick answers:

  1. Anything is possible, but carrying all the eggs on the same basket is not the smartest. Better is anyone works at different places, so the risk of all fired at the same time is not there.

  2. If you have Lausanne in mind, look for agence the travail, or agence de placement (employment agency). This will help to land the 1st job and save your energy to deal with other problems in Switzerland. Of course, the agence will take a cut of your income, so start networking to get rid of the agency as soon as you can.

  3. Yes, 2 or 3 months of rent PAID INTO A DEPOSIT ACCOUNT at the time of the first rent is normal.

  4. Check the age of the immigrants. I’ve had problems, but arriving to Switzerland at 30+ YO certainly did not help. I’ve seen younger people have no problem at all.

  5. In politics, there are several politicians telling dumb stuff about immigrants. This will come up on web sites, TV or radio. On the street…I’ve had 2 bad experiences on 11 years with people telling me “go home” or something like that. One with a local and one with another immigrant :rofl:

  6. Your point #4. A house with three bedrooms with a rent of 3-4k CHF a month. Contract would be at least once a year, so you should think about 36-48k in rent because once you sign the contract you’re liable for that amount. Also, to rent that house, the landlord or real estate company will ask you to show some proof of a job with unlimited contract with a reasonable income (rent < 30% salary).

Good luck!

PS, fixed answer to #4. My mind was not working on Monday. Thanks @bluntside

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These prices are valid for canton ZH (for instance) but are you sure it’s the same for Vaud?

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For that size of house within easy commuter distance from Lausanne you’re definitely looking at those sort of prices.
You can get 3 bedroomed appartements for less but houses of that size in sought after areas like that are at a premium.

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That made me smile. My advice is that if you care too much about it, you better don’t move here. I have no idea what they (all of them? some? the stupid ones?) think of immigrants, the ones I know are OK. As in they won’t bite you. :rofl: I am joking, as you might already know there’s a mix of friendly people with unfriendly ones like in most places.
This should be the last of your worries if you ask me. You main obstacle is to find a decently paid job. (and a permanent contract, don’t listen to people who advise you to focus on “seasonal” jobs) Your housing situation will depend on a permanent agreement as already mentioned btw.

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It’s not 2 or 3 months in advance. It’s a deposit. If you haven’t trashed the apartment when you move out you’ll get it back. You can either pay the money into a secure account that either the landlord or you can’t access until the contract is terminated, or you can take out insurance. Swisscaution is one, but you can check others. Try moneyland.ch or comparis.ch

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Thanks, you’re right. I did not write that sentence clearly. Fixed it.

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Yes. Provided house means single-unit building with a garden, rent for a house with 3 bedrooms is around the same price as any other canton. Don’t drink the kool-aid of Swiss Germans calling Vaud poor, socialist or stuff like that :rofl:

15

Thank you for your answer!
I didn’t know construction would be a seasonal job, I’ve joined some facebook groups, and I’m looking into reaching out to mutiple companies to see if they would need someone.

I have a friend who’s father has a construction business but its in bern, what would be your opinion on that?

The living differences between Bern and Lausanne

16

Thank you for the answer!

Exactly, thats why I’ve been looking for job more on those areas, specially in Vaud. Thank you for the suggestion! I will try it

17

Thank you for your answer!

I see, and do you have any insurance agency you would/wouldnt recommend?
I was looking into some of the complementary because I think they offer some discount on gym, and because usually I go to the dentist 2 a year, but maybe for the price of the complementary insurance it wouldnt pay of.

May I ask if there’s any difference between the living lifestyle, or in how people are like between the both sides? the french and the german side?

I was more inclined to the french side, because from videos I saw people were saying that on the German side, people usually are more “cold”, as in not warm on relationships, and that per example it would be harder to meet new people in the future, also the language barrier, but I mean, if I could get a job there and not in Lausanne there’s no other option I think ahah

Btw, someone before mentioned construction is a seasonal job, do you share the same though?

Thank you for the support, hopefully I will make it, in regards to the education, I do like IT but I’m not sure if its something I really like doing 8h or more hours a day, its well payed but we will see, I also though when moving there to do university, maybe on law, psichology, economy

18

Thank you for your answer.

Yea, so I’m not the most high energy person that requires a lot of people in my life, but I’m young im 22 and I would like to have people of my age and older as well on “my life”, or people that I get to know or chat a little time to time.

Btw, from what I understood you are on the German side, right? May I ask why you went to the German side and not to the French one? I’m trying to get more people opinions and weight it, if thats ok

19

My Swiss lad is from the German side. Learning German was a bit of a slog, especially because nobody speaks it :roll_eyes: but I got there in the end.

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Thank you for the answer!

Exactly, the market it to bad, it should recover in the future but I can’t wait here in Portugal for it, the best I can do would move to Switzerland, and maybe there in the future get a IT job, but thats a “problem” for the future.

I was mostly looking into Lausanne, but I will also look into Neuchâtel.
I saw that page, I think its no longer being updated, but they have a good resource for jobs search and temporary agencies, which is good, thank you!

I have one question, another person on the forum mentioned construction could be a seasonal job, would you agree?