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Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

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Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#181

Post by lordnacho »

sambe wrote: post #170

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…

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.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#182

Post by thatfrenchguy »

xal wrote: post #116
bpodgursky wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a traffic jam increases GDP What? No, it doesn't, in any possible measure. Those are lost hours of productivity.

The driving hours usually come out of the participants free time instead of out of the work force. The traffic jam will increase gasoline consumption. You are right though, it isn't a good example. Here is a better one: Someone getting cancer increases GDP significantly due to health care costs.

Not in France though :-)

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#183

Post by vidarh »

tigershark wrote: post #172
vidarh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly it is the first time in my life that I hear the association computer science - Switzerland.. Some names you might recognize: * Niklaus Wirth (Pascal, Modula-II, Oberon etc.; retired professor at ETHZ) * Jurg Gutknecht (Oberon; EHTZ) * Erich Gamma (one of the "Gang of Four" behind the Design Patterns book; co-wrote JUnit; studied at University of Zurich) * Urs Hölzle (Google SVP of Technical Infrastructure…

I was clearly speaking about companies. In uk there is (was until one month ago) Arm holdings, in Silicon Valley I guess you should know, Samsung should be quite famous in the world, Sony and all the other Japanese companies the same. Which big software/hardware company famous in all the world I'm missing in Switzerland?

I was responding to the association with computer science.

In terms of companies, here's a few of the best known I'm aware of:

An old infamous one:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_AG

And a couple of major international ones:

* Logitech (founded in Apples, Vaud)

* STMicroelectronics (headquartered in Geneva; though it was a merger of a French and an Italian company)

And a new but still quite well known security hardware one:

* Silent Circle (security hardened smartphones)

But as other have pointed out, in software/hardware Switzerland is doing best in R&D, not least because of the high salaries, and a lot of CS grads will also end up going into jobs in companies that are not necessarily hardware/software companies but that need a lot of CS talent (e.g. banks, high tech manufacturing).

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#184

Post by mike_hearn »

lordnacho wrote: post #181
sambe wrote: post #170

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…

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…

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.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#185

Post by jamespo »

hobo_mark wrote: post #97
uola wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I can't find a source at the moment, the story I heard is that some early Google hire had ties to ETH. It's also that Google is in many ways not structure like an engineering company. Being closely connected to a school fits their management methodology quite well. > I think in the grand scheme of things, Zurich/Switzerland has a lot to offer. Actually no and this is the problem. If you can either stand being a…

You probably mean Urs Hölzle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_H%C3%B6lzle ps: expats usually remain expats almost everywhere (as they tend to stick together), what's so inflexible about .ch in particular?

From an acquaintance who lived there, it's a bit of a nanny state, neighbours will complain about anything.

She was walking home one day and saw a couple watching television in the house wearing headphones, presumably so as not to disturb / annoy the neighbours!

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#186

Post by mike_hearn »

harryf wrote: post #166
Hermel wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also note that Google acquired Swiss company Endoxon for their maps technology, providing them with many Swiss employees early on. Endoxon was much more advanced technology-wise than Google's own service at that time. That acquisition is also the reason why the Google maps team is located in Zurich.

Urs Hölzler is Swiss ( https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urs_Hölzle ) and as employee #8 that probably has a bigger influence if at all. That said I beleive the Endoxon guys have had impact e.g. the current lead PM on Google Maps is one of the former Endoxon team (this guy - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tYw4zNfqBNs ). The interesting thing - from what I hear from people working at Google Zürich - is less than 10% of t…

I joined the Swiss office when it was still pretty new, only about 70 people in total (today: over 2000). That was prior to the Endoxon acquisition. I don't think their technology was actually better than Google Maps even at the time, but they had basically matched it with far fewer resources and the team there had easily proven their competence at mapping, so joining forces made sense. I worked with a Swiss guy who came from Endoxon: quiet, intense and very competent, like so many Swiss people I know.

With respect to the office being located there in the first place, the story I heard was that it was basically a combination of Urs and ETH. The office was never intended to be huge, but it was successful in attracting candidates at a much higher rate than other European offices and thus quickly became the largest, making it the de-facto European engineering HQ. And yes this was very expensive for the company indeed, but luckily Google prints money so it wasn't a big issue. Other less fortunate companies would have had to impose hiring caps or quotas I think, to avoid Swiss salaries becoming dominant.

I don't think unlimited or limited EU immigration has made a huge difference. It's always been true that most employees in the Swiss office are not Swiss. When I joined Switzerland required visas for EU citizens as well, I had to prove I had a job and a degree to get in, and the Swiss office is full of Americans, Russians, etc. Local kantonal control is very strong in Switzerland and Kanton Zürich very much likes having a local employer with bottomless hiring needs and a bottomless bank to pay them with. I guess Google Zürich is closing in on employing 1% of the cities population, so they can usually get the visas they need.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#187

Post by wobbleblob »

noobermin wrote: post #5

I always feel like it is unfair how we place different European nations in same category as the US in these rankings or whatever, and for the US, we average over all the states in the US. As homogenous the US is, different states have different economies, different laws, in some cases, some slight but important cultural differences. Is it really fair to say have the US compete on terms of "competitiveness" or in othe…

If you want to take that approach, then why not compare Skåne to Staten Island, Zuid-Holland to Manhattan etc. These European countries aren't homogeneous blobs either.

You shouldn't feel competitive (pun intended) about this kind of lists anyway, it's just a score on criteria some organization called "WEF" values for reasons that are their own. You don't have to 'win' every ranking, if you "win" one, you're going to lose another that uses different criteria.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#188

Post by mike_hearn »

Annatar wrote: post #164
jahnu wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the cost of living proportional to competitiveness? Anyway, it seems like a mystery to me why tech firms like Google set up shop in small expensive Zurich instead of say cheaper, bigger Barcelona or Vienna, for example. I'd love to know what the incentives are for them.

I'd love to know what the incentives are for them. ETH Zürich is among the top ten computer science schools in the world, that's what. Zürich was and is a glamorous place to live, au pair with New York, Tokyo or Milano, and after the "Brexit", Zürich is the new London now. Financial industry is withdrawing from the island and going home. Those things create incentives and an upward spiral for Zürich. And also bear in…

Heh. Political bias much?

I'm a Brit who lives in Zürich. I would not describe Zürich as being anywhere near as glamorous as New York nor as being the "new London". It's a lovely city to live in, but it's tiny - the entire population of Switzerland is smaller than the population of London and that reflects in the variety of things to do, things to see, services available and so on. My brother lives in London Zone 1 and I am often envious of the fantastic things that city has to offer.

The Brexit vote was three months ago. So far nothing has changed, and the financial industry is certainly not moving to Switzerland - which is also not in the EU! Moreover, the Swiss voted against freedom of movement as well in 2014 and the implementation deadline is in February. The Swiss Parliament are busy demonstrating exactly how compatible the EU and democracy are (not at all) by attempting to push through local hiring preference laws when the referendum, which is constitutionally binding, stated explicitly that it was a vote on imposing quotas. The SVP is not happy and a fight is looming. Quite possibly the Swiss will chicken out given how evenly divided society is on the topic of immigration, but if attitudes have hardened since 2014 or if the SVP is able to turn this into a fight on the topic of democracy itself, Switzerland may find itself on the same side as the UK very quickly indeed.

I don't actually want the Swiss to impose immigration quotas on people like me, that can only make life more complicated, but Swiss direct democracy is an admirable thing and I am 100% convinced it's a part of the reason Switzerland is so successful. Watching the EU systematically tell voters in the most successful European countries to bend the knee is not impressing me one bit.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#189

Post by mike_hearn »

woah wrote: post #93
jomamaxx wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Transfer pricing is not 'tax evasion' - it's 'tax avoidance'. To be clear, 'tax evasion' is illegal. Most companies do what they can to avoid paying taxes, which is rational in some ways, but they usually don't do anything illegal. It's important that we don't mix the two :)

What's the difference? Does 'tax evasion' involve falsehoods?

Yes, tax evasion involves lying to the tax authorities.

Tax avoidance does not. It involves complete honesty with the tax authorities, who then charge you less tax, as the rules state they should. The definition of "avoidance" is therefore intensely political - avoidance tends to be defined as lawful behaviour by other people the speaker would prefer paying for government instead of them!

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#190

Post by mike_hearn »

tigershark wrote: post #172
vidarh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Honestly it is the first time in my life that I hear the association computer science - Switzerland.. Some names you might recognize: * Niklaus Wirth (Pascal, Modula-II, Oberon etc.; retired professor at ETHZ) * Jurg Gutknecht (Oberon; EHTZ) * Erich Gamma (one of the "Gang of Four" behind the Design Patterns book; co-wrote JUnit; studied at University of Zurich) * Urs Hölzle (Google SVP of Technical Infrastructure…

I was clearly speaking about companies. In uk there is (was until one month ago) Arm holdings, in Silicon Valley I guess you should know, Samsung should be quite famous in the world, Sony and all the other Japanese companies the same. Which big software/hardware company famous in all the world I'm missing in Switzerland?

The swiss are very strong in biotech. Consider that Genentech, Silicon Valley darling of biotech, is now owned by a Swiss company.
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