Switzerland for Software Engineers
A deep dive
EDIT: if you want to see a comparison with Poland, check out this article.
As you guys know, I have been living in Zurich for some time now.
Almost 1 year in 2018/2019, and about 3 years from September 2021 until now.
So, that’s about 4 years in total.
I’ve also travelled a lot in Europe, and lived in several different countries and cities, including: my hometown (San Benedetto del Tronto), Berlin, Augsburg (Germany), London, Milan, Seville, Madrid, Barcelona, and Warsaw.
If we’re talking about vacation and short stays, I’ve basically been everywhere in Europe.
Zurich is interesting for Software Engineers for obvious reasons: highest salaries in Europe, reasonable taxes, good amount of quality companies, beautiful nature and great standard of living.
With today’s article, we’ll touch on several aspects that show in details how Switzerland “performs” as a location to be based in as a dev.
If you’re a dev in Europe, maybe you should not move to Switzerland, but you should at least know about it, to evaluate if it is for you or not.
Therefore, I think you’ll find today’s article valuable.
Money
Big Tech jobs in Switzerland are hard to obtain.
Costs
Of a cappuccino and croissant.
Lifestyle hack: leveraging Zurich’s airport to have a Euro-wide life.
My favourite place in Zurich? 🇨🇭
The airport! ✈️
I know… It sounds like a joke.
But the Zurich airport really is amazing.
As far as I know, it's the best airport in Europe and one of the best in the world.
It’s super efficient, perfectly sized, well connected, easy to navigate, perfectly located at the very center of Europe.
It’s also well connected to the city.
My apartment, for example, is in a very good and pleasant area of the city—close to the lake, the city centre and the forest—while being at a 18 minutes train ride from the airport.
Door to door, it takes me about 20-30 minutes to be at the airport from my apartment.
If I’m flying to a place in the Europe/Schengen area, being at the airport 45 minutes before the flight's departure time is usually enough.
This means that I only need about 1.5 hours to leave my house and be on a plane somewhere.
And in about 1-3 hours of flight I can be literally anywhere in Europe.
Want to go to Lisbon to checkout my apartment and eat some crabs at a cevejeria? Easy ✅
Want to take a Friday after work flight to Warsaw? I can leave at 5 PM and at 8 PM I can already be sitting at one of my favourite restaurants there.
Want to chill in Barcelona, meet up with some friends in Rome, eat a kebab in Berlin or checkout London? Same thing.
Want to visit the balkans? Same thing: you’re a couple hours from partying in Belgrade, relaxing in a thermal bath in Budapest or checking out the steady growth of Bucharest.
It’s spring or autumn and you want to be at the beach somewhere where it’s warm? In a few hours you can be in the Mediterranean.
It’s summer and you want to switch up the nice lakes and rivers in Zurich with some seaside location that is not too hot? Nice in Southern France is just one hour flight away.
Zurich is sooo well connected!
And that doesn’t even include the 3/4 hours train rides to Paris or Milan, for example.
Or to the alps.
All while travelling on very high quality airlines and trains.
Zurich is not necessarily my favourite city in the world or the most fun city I know, but it’s so well connected to so many of my favourite places in the world that makes it an excellent base for me.
It’s also a practical place to be based in, as the country is politically very stable, quite efficient in managing taxpayers money, reliable etc.
An excellent place to keep your “books”, closets or boxes, and to enjoy some calm, undistracted life—surrounded by amazing nature, with great air and water quality—and rest in-between trips.
Taxation
Taxes in Switzerland are among the most fair out there.
Especially in Europe.
Especially if you're an employee.
Here’s a link for a tool I use to calculate taxes (including mandatory social security contributions) in Switzerland. From my experience it's pretty accurate.
If you go there, you can see that for a 100k CHF salary in Zurich, your total tax rate is of 23.6%.
This includes:
Federal, Cantonal and Communal Tax (money you "lose", to pay for public services).
1st pillar: basically pension.
2nd pillar: more pension (to make sure you'll have more than enough when you retire).
Unemployment insurance (if you get fired or lose your job, you'll receive a stipend while you look for a new job).
The first component is about 13%, and that is basically lost money.
The first pillar is about 5%, but it's not lost: it's your pension; you won't be able to cash that out before you're old, but considering that your employer contributes to another 5% of it, all in all it's a decent way to allocate money.
The 2nd pillar is about 4%, and it can be cashed out if you start a company or move to a country outside of EU-EFTA. So it's not really lost money. The pension fund doesn't have very high returns (I think below 2%), but it's safe, like you won't lose the money.
The unemployment insurance is about 1% and in the end it's a service you pay for. I think it's fair.
Another thing which isn't mentioned here is the mandatory health insurance which is about 300-500 CHF per month depending on your situation and needs, which for 100k is about 3%-5% per year.
The way health insurance works in Switzerland is that up until a certain amount (usually around 1k-3k CHF per year), you pay for your healthcare expenses (which are very pricey: about twice as much as Italy/Spain/Germany) out of your pockets, and after the above-mentioned threshold, they're almost completely paid by the insurance.
I think paying 3% on 100k, or 1.5% on 200k, or 1% on a 300k salary, to make sure you have access to good facilities and doctors in case you have an emergency or special needs, while paying for your day-to-day healthcare needs out of your pocket, is a somewhat reasonable system.
So, if we take the above 23.6% tax rate, is it good or bad?
Considering that with 100k a year in Zurich you are plain middle class, is not THAT great, but considering that you at least know where the money actually goes, and that you can even cash-out some of it if you want to, I think all in all it's pretty good.
For 200k, it'd be about 31% (still ok).
For 300k, about 36% (starts to get bad, but you can move to Zug if you really care, and pay 26%).
For 400k, it's 39% in Zurich, and 27% in Zug.
All in all, these are some of the best tax rates for employees in Europe, and therefore, also considering the good employment market in Zurich, I think it is, tax-wise, one of the best places in Europe for employees.
Possible downsides of living in Zurich, from a lifestyle and mental health perspective
Is Zurich, Switzerland 🇨🇭 boring and sad? 😴😔🤔
Here's my opinion, after having lived there for 4 years.
Boring:
It can be boring.
Zurich is 400 thousands people, and it lacks a "big city vibe": it's not a very eventful or vibrant place.
In summer it's better. But summers aren't that long (maybe a couple of months).
Culturally, being in the German part of Switzerland, it's a bit "rigid": rules and efficiency are everything. Think of Germany, but more.
People are quite focused on work, and leisure is mostly restricted to productive activities such as sports or side projects.
At least half the people I know in Zurich spend a good chunk of their weekday evenings in the bouldering gym or at home working on some side project.
Maybe I'm biased because I know a lot of engineers. 😂
But the city is full of engineers and bankers anyway... These are the main industries here, and most of the expats work in these fields.
The locals, which are about 50% of the Zurich's population, tend to mind their own business. And as an expat, you'll likely be hanging out with other expats.
Sad:
It can be a bit sad.
Having lived in over 7 cities in Spain, Italy, Germany, Poland, and travelling frequently all over Europe, I think the status of mental health in Zurich is not 10/10.
There are many advertisements about it all around the city, inviting people to seek professional help if they're feeling stressed or depressed. Maybe this is just an anecdote, but I thought I'd mention it.
IMO, some of the root causes for this suboptimal mental health situation in the city are:
People are closed-off: it's hard for an expat to integrate, and even among locals, they tend to always hang out with the same few people. It can be hard to get a sense of "connection".
The hyper-focus on efficiency and career, which is common in Zurich, seems to strip away some of the natural joy to live from people.
Strong materialism: I think Swiss society values money a lot, it almost seems like everything revolves around it.
High cost of living and barriers to go out to socialise and have fun.
Loneliness is not uncommon. Most of the above mentioned points contribute to this.
Balanced view / the pros:
Is it bad city to live in?
No.
Everyone here has money, and that alone makes life easier.
Quality of life is good, if we look at metrics such as air and water pollution, safety, infrastructure, healthcare, unemployment rates, welfare, corruption and political stability etc.
In summer, you have clean rivers and lake right in the city, more people go out and there are more events and festivals.
The other seasons can also be enjoyable if you like the outdoors (hiking, skiing, etc) or if you're in a relationship and like spending cozy times indoor.
If you're single/young/don't like the mountains, winters can be a bit boring/depressing.
Final Considerations
All in all, I would say that being based in Switzerland as a SWE is still a solid choice.
The pros:
High local salaries: 80k to 170k even in local, smaller companies.
High big tech salaries: 160k to 1M.
Reasonable taxes for employees, basically the lowest among all high-paying countries.
Trustworthy and stable government and administration.
Reasonable inflation.
Strong currency, especially during this geopolitically complicated decade.
Low crime and pollution, beautiful nature, amazing infrastructure.
Excellent location at the center of Europe.
Taxes for self-employed people can be optimised further and you can reach a 10% tax.
Living in Switzerland for 10 years gives access to one of the strongest passports.
Great welfare.
Multicultural, well-educated society.
Free, top quality universities and schools.
Easy to get by with just knowing English.
Many expats.
Access to top corporate careers, especially in tech and finance.
Not a bad place to start a company: reasonable taxes, high quality talent, funding etc.
Good place to build up wealth, especially as a single person with high income.
Bikeable.
Many lakes and rivers, even inside cities.
Strong deep tech industry. Good amount of high quality jobs for highly specialised devs.
The cons:
High cost of living.
Suboptimal place to be based in as a remote/online worker.
Local language is hard (Swiss-German in particular).
Hard to integrate into the society.
Can be boring if you're young and/or single.
Very high costs for raising kids: kindergarten, nanny, etc.
Many rules: can't shower after 10 PM to not make noise, etc.
Risk of becoming a less attractive hub as tech jobs become remote and get offshored.
Local tech market is growing less than in other places. Companies are offshoring.
All in all: still a very solid choice.
If I had to look at the next 10 years though, I think being remote in LCLT might be better for most folks.
Some other useful links:
How it compares with other cities.
Story of my friend who turned down a big tech offer in Switzerland to take a remote job.
Companies are offshoring, moving SWE jobs from Switzerland to other cheaper locations.
Another story of someone who turned down Switzerland for a high-paying remote job in LCLT.
Some companies that have office in Zurich.
How a Remote Job from Low-Cost Low-Tax (LCLT) Protects You from Layoff Anxiety
If you’re a developer based in Europe, or interested in moving to Europe, make sure to checkout:
My Job Board with over 4500 top-paying jobs in Europe and fully-remote jobs that can be carried out from Europe (or anywhere else): eurotoptechjobs.com
My exclusive Coaching Program to help you with level up your career as a dev in Europe. New edition will probably start in October 2024. If you’re interested in joining, now might be a great time so send me an email.
Really interesting take on Zurich as a place to live.
Enjoyed the read! Thanks for sharing your experience, Nicola.