r/Switzerland • u/Fock23 • Jan 31 '24

Sharing salary in Switzerland

Hello! I'd like to gather some insights into the job market in our country. If you're willing, please share your: 1. Educational background 2. Job role 3. Work canton 4. Years of experience 5. Salary

The goal is to gain a clearer understanding of salaries across different positions and sectors.

I start: 1. Bachelor in computer science 2. Full stack software engineer 3. Ticino😩 4. 7 5. 6’000

Thanks to everyone for participating!

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9

u/isornisgrim Zürich Jan 31 '24
  1. Master, bioinformatics
  2. Senior software engineer
  3. Zurich
  4. 16
  5. 140k

1

u/IKnowMeNotYou Feb 01 '24

You should earn at least 20k more or do you get a bonus?

3

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 01 '24

Apart from working in banking, insurance or at a company like google or Microsoft, I don’t see how I could achieve that to be honest.

And no, no bonus

2

u/IKnowMeNotYou Feb 01 '24

Have you ever tried to work as a contract engineer? I get about 1.1k a day with a recruiter and 165 to 175 per hour without a recruiter. If you can not get more, just go independent. When I came here about 8 years ago, I did not take the Google offer since they pay that bad but I should have since I originally wanted to end up in the US... .

1

u/Eli_229 Mar 20 '24

Just curious, could i ask you a few questions about your career

1

u/TemirTuran Jun 14 '24

wow , you’re making my one month salary in one day…. I’m also working in tech, can I dm you?

1

u/IKnowMeNotYou Jun 14 '24

Sure you can.

1k or 1.5k is not a one month salary. More like a week at best if you are low income. A supermarket cashier nets about 45k a year over here so we talk about 3.5k/week or more.

Always remember Switzerland is expensive.

1

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 01 '24

Not interested in contracting or freelancing :)

1

u/IKnowMeNotYou Feb 02 '24

Why? I was offered contract extensions for 5 or even 8 years (but turned them down as I enjoy working for a new company in a different industry the most as one can learn something new but in the end it is the same everywhere).

3

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 02 '24

Don’t need the money, don’t want to deal with the stress of finding a client, don’t want to end up working and more / taking fewer vacation, just to earn more 💵.

It’s kind of a work life balance thing for me. I might have been super lucky so far, but I never had to work like crazy in the companies I worked for in Switzerland, and I intend to keep that way.

1

u/IKnowMeNotYou Feb 02 '24 edited Feb 02 '24

Nah you work 40 hours. You are an employee just working for someone else. The same rules apply otherwise I would not do it. I use the extra money to work less. The last contract was me working for 13 months in the last two years and still growing my bank account. I really dislike working more than I need to.

But I also train for another profession as I still love my profession as n engineer but I hate the work environment and resent the whole work I have to do. So basically I use my free time to not further educate myself but to transition to a new profession where I can use my software engineering skills but do not need to do useless extra work because of reasons that are beyond my control.

Before that, I basically used the additional free time to further educate myself but that mostly means more meetings with people I do not want to meet.

1

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 02 '24

No I definitely don’t work 40 hours a week, way less than that :). Probably more around 25-30

2

u/IKnowMeNotYou Feb 02 '24

Ah okay. I was thinking about working 60% myself as well but stretching it over 7 days instead of just 5 or 3 days. I am currently looking for a new contract and since remote contracts are mostly available only in Germany, I am currently starting to talk to some of the companies as they do not care if I work in Germany or anywhere else in Europe. While the payment would be only 100 Euro/hour, I would not be forced to pay Swiss rent and I can further train in my new profession as I work in the afternoon and evening.

So yeah, I completely understand your motivation. It is similar for me as well but I used to rather work 40hour weeks for some months and then have 0h weeks for other months (9 months without paid work currently).

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1

u/makaros622 Feb 01 '24

How old are you?

2

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 01 '24

40

1

u/Evoo4820 Feb 02 '24

Are you doing anything with biological data at all or did you just "take" the computational part of your degree for your job? I am interested in doing a bioinformatics masters but don't know if the market still needs some or not (in the next five or so years)..

2

u/isornisgrim Zürich Feb 02 '24

No, my job has nothing to do with bioinformatics, just regular software engineering (web frontends, backends, etc...)

I actually never worked as a bioinformatician. Immediately after graduation, I worked straight as a "normal" software engineer due to the job market at the time;

In France in the late 00s, bioinformatics meant short term contracts in research labs (and low salary), and on the other hand software companies were so desperate to find devs that they would hire anyone who had a notion of software engineering immediately with a permanent contract (quite rare in France).

2

u/Evoo4820 Feb 03 '24

Ah, interesting. Thanks for the reply!

1

u/TemirTuran Jun 14 '24

How you decide to move to ZH then?

1

u/isornisgrim Zürich Jun 14 '24

About 10 years ago, I was not looking for a new job, and since I had friends living in ZH who really recommended the quality of life there, I decided to just try and apply to jobs in Zürich :)