6 ms·

Could easily be true in some areas of the economy, because professionalism seems really strong there and core technology infrastructure is often ahead of surrou

by sambe 10y ago

Could easily be true in some areas of the economy, because professionalism seems really strong there and core technology infrastructure is often ahead of surrounding areas. However, my experience of living and working there suggests that it is very much not true in the areas I encountered: businesses cling to tradition and people prefer everything to be managed (contracts should be given to the "right" people, rules should be organised around what traditional groups want). By traditional I mean book sellers, grocers etc. You often get the feeling there is not much logic/forward thinking - only maintain what people are used to. Of course, that is a decision you are free to make, but not one that seems to tally with this article. Designated innovation area seemed pretty dead. As a consumer the low quality of many companies' websites and ability to automate was quite surprising. On the other hand, salaries are high almost all office jobs (debatable whether this makes sense for lower skill-sets, but nice if you live there) and it seems fairly easy to get a new job as long as you "fit" in the culture. I can imagine that some of the big industrial tech and pharma companies are run a bit more aggressively. Finance didn't seem to be.

lordnacho 10y ago
My experience of Switzerland is similar. Things are very much done according to a formula. If you're an enterprise looking for a Java developer, only a guy whose CV says "Java" will do. C# is some other planet. I think it's a Germanic thing, they expect very specific qualifications. I remember meeting a guy who had a degree as a food chemist. I asked him what jobs he was after, and he said ... food chemist. There is a startup scene in Zurich though. The tax rate is low, and people seem to have enough savings to give it a go, at least some of the young ones. It's not a huge number of people, but the Swiss are going about it in their own way, with a number "technoparks" and such. It's somewhat cosmopolitan in its outlook; people compare themselves to other startups around the world. Reasonable pay for such small firms, too. Came across more than one 6 figure job. Salaries are high, but stuff is expensive, too. Daycare for a kid, at a public nursery, is CHF30K a year (USD is in the ballpark of CHF). I've met a number of Swiss people who'd like to have more kids, but it's just a lot of money to pay. A quite ordinary family meal at a restaurant can be 100. Buying the food from a supermarket ain't cheap, either. I sometimes wonder whether GDP measurement is problematic. Quality of life doesn't feel like it's all that different between various industrialized countries, but the figures suggest they are. If stuff is expensive, that makes GDP higher. So a guy eating a $1 potato is enjoying a lower quality of life than a guy who paid $2 for his. This has implications for wastage, particularly when it has to do with large organisations such as government. Burn more money, get higher GDP. Tax rate also has implications. There's probably more black market business going on in certain countries, which also contributes to general welfare. But of course that doesn't go into official accounts, or at least it's quite hard to guess how much it is. Low tax places like Switzerland are more likely to have more stuff going through official accounts.
- mike_hearn 10y ago
  Salaries are high and daycare is expensive deliberately, or so I've heard. It's a cultural decision - they want women to stay at home with the children and raise them, so the salaries are calibrated to be high enough for a nuclear family. That's why you get things like schools sending children home at lunchtime or on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately set up to be incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce traditional family setups. Food is expensive in Switzerland partly because it imports a lot and the surrounding countries know that the Swiss are rich and thus not very price sensitive. I read somewhere that exactly the same kilo of parma ham that costs 10 EUR in Italy can cost 50 EUR in Switzerland simply due to being charged different amounts by the supplier. This is not helped by the fact that the domestic supermarkets have what amounts to a duopoly between Co-op and Migros, with other brands like Denner being owned by one of the big two. There's little price competition. GDP is a disastrous statistic almost everywhere, not just in Switzerland. Politicians single minded focus on it is a classic case of "what you can't measure you can't manage" being harmful. The biggest problem is that GDP is trivially pumped by government borrowing and spending, hence the endless circular arguments in Europe about austerity and whether governments should try to spend their way to growth. It doesn't work - governments ideas for productive investments rarely go beyond roads and railways - but it can appear to work in the short run as spending splurges feed directly into the GDP.
  - lukego 10y ago
    > That's why you get things like schools sending children home at lunchtime or on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately set up to be incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce traditional family setups. Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come home for lunch. The motivation for the system may well be to suit traditional family setups, and make it hard for both parents to work in an office, but it also seems tailor made for self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family. (ask me again in a few years.)
    - 10y ago

by sambe 10y ago

lordnacho 10y ago

My experience of Switzerland is similar. Things are very much done according to a formula. If you're an enterprise looking for a Java developer, only a guy whose CV says "Java" will do. C# is some other planet. I think it's a Germanic thing, they expect very specific qualifications. I remember meeting a guy who had a degree as a food chemist. I asked him what jobs he was after, and he said ... food chemist. There is a startup scene in Zurich though. The tax rate is low, and people seem to have enough savings to give it a go, at least some of the young ones. It's not a huge number of people, but the Swiss are going about it in their own way, with a number "technoparks" and such. It's somewhat cosmopolitan in its outlook; people compare themselves to other startups around the world. Reasonable pay for such small firms, too. Came across more than one 6 figure job. Salaries are high, but stuff is expensive, too. Daycare for a kid, at a public nursery, is CHF30K a year (USD is in the ballpark of CHF). I've met a number of Swiss people who'd like to have more kids, but it's just a lot of money to pay. A quite ordinary family meal at a restaurant can be 100. Buying the food from a supermarket ain't cheap, either. I sometimes wonder whether GDP measurement is problematic. Quality of life doesn't feel like it's all that different between various industrialized countries, but the figures suggest they are. If stuff is expensive, that makes GDP higher. So a guy eating a $1 potato is enjoying a lower quality of life than a guy who paid $2 for his. This has implications for wastage, particularly when it has to do with large organisations such as government. Burn more money, get higher GDP. Tax rate also has implications. There's probably more black market business going on in certain countries, which also contributes to general welfare. But of course that doesn't go into official accounts, or at least it's quite hard to guess how much it is. Low tax places like Switzerland are more likely to have more stuff going through official accounts.

mike_hearn 10y ago
Salaries are high and daycare is expensive deliberately, or so I've heard. It's a cultural decision - they want women to stay at home with the children and raise them, so the salaries are calibrated to be high enough for a nuclear family. That's why you get things like schools sending children home at lunchtime or on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately set up to be incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce traditional family setups. Food is expensive in Switzerland partly because it imports a lot and the surrounding countries know that the Swiss are rich and thus not very price sensitive. I read somewhere that exactly the same kilo of parma ham that costs 10 EUR in Italy can cost 50 EUR in Switzerland simply due to being charged different amounts by the supplier. This is not helped by the fact that the domestic supermarkets have what amounts to a duopoly between Co-op and Migros, with other brands like Denner being owned by one of the big two. There's little price competition. GDP is a disastrous statistic almost everywhere, not just in Switzerland. Politicians single minded focus on it is a classic case of "what you can't measure you can't manage" being harmful. The biggest problem is that GDP is trivially pumped by government borrowing and spending, hence the endless circular arguments in Europe about austerity and whether governments should try to spend their way to growth. It doesn't work - governments ideas for productive investments rarely go beyond roads and railways - but it can appear to work in the short run as spending splurges feed directly into the GDP.
- lukego 10y ago
  > That's why you get things like schools sending children home at lunchtime or on Wednesday afternoons: the school schedules are deliberately set up to be incompatible with working hours, in order to reinforce traditional family setups. Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come home for lunch. The motivation for the system may well be to suit traditional family setups, and make it hard for both parents to work in an office, but it also seems tailor made for self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family. (ask me again in a few years.)
  - 10y ago