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I'm German, but have spent my whole adult life studying and working in Switzerland. Cost-of-living is high, but salaries are higher. I regularly check the Numb

I'm German, but have spent my whole adult life studying and working in Switzerland. Cost-of-living is high, but salaries are higher. I regularly check the Numbeo comparison to a city like Munich [0] and the results are still the same: Given a Munich salary of X, you earn more than 2 * X in Zurich, and spend less than 2 * X. At the end of the month, you're left with alpha * (2 * X) where alpha is a percentage value based on your thriftiness. So even if you are just as thrifty as in Germany, you are still left with double the savings at the end of the month. From what I've heard of the job market relationship between Canada and the US, Germany and Switzerland seem to be in similar shoes. Brain drain towards Switzerland/US because the salaries in Germany/Canada aren't terrible, just terrible compared what you could earn in a neighboring country. Apart from that, I would be curious to hear if Germany is suffering the same cognitive dissonance in media that we get here in Switzerland: Somehow, there are never enough candidates to fill all positions in the Software sector, but neither salaries nor perks are increasing. In my experience, companies insist on moving away from WFH in favor of having everyone come to the office again with a complete lack of empathy that that could even be considered unattractive. One notable company I talked to said that for all their teams of ~5 employees, the 1-2 per team based in Switzerland would have to commute into Zurich, while the other 3-4 would work remotely from Bangalore and Romania. When I pointed out that at that point, surely the Swiss employees should be able to work remotely as well, I was told that was not an option. [0] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Switzerland&country2=Germany&city1=Zurich&city2=Munich https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
>Apart from that, I would be curious to hear if Germany is suffering the same cognitive dissonance in media that we get here in Switzerland Not Germany but this is definitely happening in The Netherlands. Salaries are marginally, mostly begrudgingly, increasing. Even managed to squeeze a few words out of hiring managers looking to expand to Southern Europe specifically to capitalize on Spanish and Portuguese developers willing to work for current Dutch salaries. They would rather outsource before making the local market any better.
- Aeolun 4y ago
  I recently applied to two positions in the Netherland. Stating I’d need at least €100k to make it worth moving halfway across the world (and I’d still be losing out). All is roses and sunshine, companies agree (or at least, recruiter tells me they agree), and both interviews go well. Get offered 85k and 87k… Yeah, no.
  - BlargMcLarg 4y ago
    Dutch companies are incredible penny pinchers, trying to oversell small things while avoiding big things. I recently got offered 45-55k for a relatively high pressure, high tech, domestic fintech as a mid-level developer. That package was already 'average' pre-COVID, except it didn't have the 'hybrid work' slapped on it. Oh, and a laptop from the company is a benefit (what, am I supposed to just conjure code in the air?) Unfortunately, I know enough people will say "What? But 3.5k+ gross is a lot!", not understanding their attitude will continue this behavior and will keep wages low across the board.
  - beepbeepcabbage 4y ago
    Outside of the biggest multi-national companies or banks/Fintech/oil, 90k is really hard to get past in NL.
lakomen 4y ago
Yes it does, suffer. The media is always doing their "There aren't enough specialists" chorus, meaning "we want to pay less than we are right now by hiring cheap labor from India" and similar low wage areas. Meanwhile hype driven recruitment is the norm. I've come to the conclusion that those companies aren't really looking for people to hire but use job abs as a means of free advertising their oh do modern companies. So sick and tired of reading countless DevOps Kubernetes Microservice AWS GCP Azure AI ML Blockchain finance job ads. And you have to be proficient in their proprietary cloud service they use to create apps and services. Sorry but there's just so much ignorance out there and I'm tired wasting my time reading those. My time is better spent on working on my own stuff than reading those arghh infuriating job ads that make me feel like the least 18 professional years are worthless and doubt myself as a human being because clueless idiots are ever chasing after the next hype and requiring their applicants to do the same. Sick and tired and angry.
- rusticpenn 4y ago
  "Cheap developer from India". I am a (former) Indian living in Germany, I know a lot of Indians here, everyone is earning more than the salaries mentioned in the graph there.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago

>Apart from that, I would be curious to hear if Germany is suffering the same cognitive dissonance in media that we get here in Switzerland Not Germany but this is definitely happening in The Netherlands. Salaries are marginally, mostly begrudgingly, increasing. Even managed to squeeze a few words out of hiring managers looking to expand to Southern Europe specifically to capitalize on Spanish and Portuguese developers willing to work for current Dutch salaries. They would rather outsource before making the local market any better.

Aeolun 4y ago
I recently applied to two positions in the Netherland. Stating I’d need at least €100k to make it worth moving halfway across the world (and I’d still be losing out). All is roses and sunshine, companies agree (or at least, recruiter tells me they agree), and both interviews go well. Get offered 85k and 87k… Yeah, no.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Dutch companies are incredible penny pinchers, trying to oversell small things while avoiding big things. I recently got offered 45-55k for a relatively high pressure, high tech, domestic fintech as a mid-level developer. That package was already 'average' pre-COVID, except it didn't have the 'hybrid work' slapped on it. Oh, and a laptop from the company is a benefit (what, am I supposed to just conjure code in the air?) Unfortunately, I know enough people will say "What? But 3.5k+ gross is a lot!", not understanding their attitude will continue this behavior and will keep wages low across the board.
- beepbeepcabbage 4y ago
  Outside of the biggest multi-national companies or banks/Fintech/oil, 90k is really hard to get past in NL.

lakomen 4y ago

Yes it does, suffer. The media is always doing their "There aren't enough specialists" chorus, meaning "we want to pay less than we are right now by hiring cheap labor from India" and similar low wage areas. Meanwhile hype driven recruitment is the norm. I've come to the conclusion that those companies aren't really looking for people to hire but use job abs as a means of free advertising their oh do modern companies. So sick and tired of reading countless DevOps Kubernetes Microservice AWS GCP Azure AI ML Blockchain finance job ads. And you have to be proficient in their proprietary cloud service they use to create apps and services. Sorry but there's just so much ignorance out there and I'm tired wasting my time reading those. My time is better spent on working on my own stuff than reading those arghh infuriating job ads that make me feel like the least 18 professional years are worthless and doubt myself as a human being because clueless idiots are ever chasing after the next hype and requiring their applicants to do the same. Sick and tired and angry.

rusticpenn 4y ago
"Cheap developer from India". I am a (former) Indian living in Germany, I know a lot of Indians here, everyone is earning more than the salaries mentioned in the graph there.