Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

nextrends.swissnexsanfrancisco.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 197 posts

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#151

Post by tormeh »

ZenoArrow wrote: post #104
tormeh wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because you're making a service company. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The org chart you need for product and the one you need for services are different. The necessary mindset of the employees are different. Not only that, but the buyers of product and services are often different as well. Sure, building up a huge services company lets you squirrel off some funds for product development, but how often do…

To counter your hypothetical "can't be done", here's a real example of a product company that's grown a single person selling electronics kits from their college dorm room to a product company making $33 million in revenue less than 10 years later: https://www.adafruit.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries#History A similar example being this product company, which started out in 2012 with two people…

So they started out as hardware product companies.. and remained hardware product companies. I don't see any examples of software services companies transitioning to product.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#152

Post by m_mueller »

aetherson wrote: post #150
m_mueller wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a Swiss I think you got a healthy attitude. Many Americans seem to think that they have no power over what's forced up them in the workplace. You're selling a valuable, sought after and potentially unique good - your expertise. Don't let BigCorp trample all over you, they need you. Employee retention rate is a very important metric for any good company - if they don't care about that it's a big red flag for any po…

I have a lot of sympathy for the idea that this isn't always true. Amazon's warehouse workers may just not have enough bargaining power to avoid long hours. Walmart's employees likewise. But software engineers in the bay area are uniquely sought-after and well-compensated individuals in a red-hot market. If you don't want to work long hours, you don't have to, folks. You just have to put that onto the list of things…

Yes, the bulk of increasingly automatable jobs that require weeks of training at best are a very different issue. A capitalist system without UBI will look like a very bleak dystopia soon.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#153

Post by hocuspocus »

wil421 wrote: post #94
barrkel wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zurich, along with London, has the highest salaries for development in Europe. You may need to work in a finance-related position, but you can make fairly big bucks.

The population of Zurich seems quite small to support a large amount of developers. Everyone here is comparing London, SF, and other places that have over 4 million more people. Zurich also has a high cost of living and well above any US cities.

> Zurich also has a high cost of living and well above any US cities.

SF and NYC are a lot more expensive.

You're right about the size of the job market though, it's tiny, even relative to the population size.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#154

Post by ThePadawan »

skrebbel wrote: post #149
derriz wrote: post #28

The point that public transport can be more efficient than private does not necessarily reflect public investment although the Swiss do invest in subsidizing transport infrastructure. But what's suprising is that much of the public transport system is owned and operated by private (profit-motivated) companies. I think there are about 10 different companies operating what looks like a unified public transport system i…

> But yes I love that "adjustable work schedules" are the norm here and I think Switzerland is fairly exceptional from what I know in that regard. Yeah it's cool. It's becoming increasingly common in the Netherlands. It has been common for moms for a long time (somehow it's nearly always the women who work less when they get kids, we're bafflingly traditional that way), but it's slowly beginning to be acceptable else…

Having just interviewed at various companies in Zurich, it surprisingly varies.

I've also heard "Most of our employees work 80%, but if you prefer, you can do 100% as well - just be advised that we find 80% better for work-life-balance."

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#155

Post by ZenoArrow »

jiggunjer wrote: post #119
ZenoArrow wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But not operating expenses." I'm not referring to operating expenses. I'm referring to investment in growth. The idea is to prove you have a business that can turn a profit by bootstrapping it yourself, then get a small business loan from a bank to take it to the next level. There are also other sources of business loans. Here's one example: https://www.fundingcircle.com/uk/businesses/ Here's another: https://www.…

I think this is how many franchises grow. But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart.

> "But most highly educated people aren't interested in starting a restaurant or mini-mart."

What a bizarre statement. So highly educated people can't be passionate about food?

Also, what I suggested is not limited to expansion through a franchise model. Let's go back to product manufacturing to explore why. Imagine you have just received an initial order of 100,000 units of Product X. You can meet this order with your current supply chain, but in order to cut costs in future orders you'd like to manufacture a greater proportion of the finished product in-house. Let's say for the sake of argument that you've identified potential savings if you can create injection molded cases for Product X. If you go to the bank with a low-risk plan to grow the business, including an analysis of the current health of the company and forecasts of future profits, you can reasonably expect that you can find a bank (or other business loan lender) willing to lend you the money to invest in your company to help it grow.

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#156

Post by kgwgk »

chrisper wrote: post #139
kgwgk wrote: post #17

> My nationality hampered my ability to obtain medical treatment Why?

Because of this: https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wissen/medizin-und-psychologie/... (Sorry it is in German, but here is a translation https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u... ) TL;DR: They do not do it because they are afraid of getting sued by Americans.

Thanks. But it’s not as bad as I feared: it’s a particular hospital in Zurich and it applies only to non-residents and elective procedures. Don’t worry, US tourists, if you get sick even the University Hospital of Zurich will take care of you!

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#157

Post by kgwgk »

maehwasu wrote: post #75
hobo_mark wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, you will need that much to live there! Take this 250k googler, he's more frugal than anyone I know and yet they spend 90k/yr living in Zuerich. http://retireinprogress.com/2017-q4/

If you read the post, he spent $27K on two wedding ceremonies, and $10K on a huge trip (presumably his honeymoon). Actual "normal" cost was closer to $50K.

And that’s the most frugal guy he knows!

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#158

Post by ZenoArrow »

tormeh wrote: post #151
ZenoArrow wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To counter your hypothetical "can't be done", here's a real example of a product company that's grown a single person selling electronics kits from their college dorm room to a product company making $33 million in revenue less than 10 years later: https://www.adafruit.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adafruit_Industries#History A similar example being this product company, which started out in 2012 with two people…

So they started out as hardware product companies.. and remained hardware product companies. I don't see any examples of software services companies transitioning to product.

Who said anything about software service companies? I said design agency, which is not the same thing as a software service company. Sure, they use software to do their job, but that's not the most important part of what they do.

As for examples of design consultancies morphing into manufacturing companies, Cambridge Audio is one such example:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Audio

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#159

Post by kgwgk »

hocuspocus wrote: post #153
wil421 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of Zurich seems quite small to support a large amount of developers. Everyone here is comparing London, SF, and other places that have over 4 million more people. Zurich also has a high cost of living and well above any US cities.

> Zurich also has a high cost of living and well above any US cities. SF and NYC are a lot more expensive. You're right about the size of the job market though, it's tiny, even relative to the population size.

It depends on how you calculate the cost.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_citie...

https://www.atlasandboots.com/remote-jobs/most-expensive-cit...

https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/index

Re: Forging a Swiss Lens: How Zurich's tech scene changed my view of SV

#160

Post by md_ »

timewarrior wrote: post #12
sailingparrot wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do not have world conquering ambitions - which kinda works against them. Works against them towards what? Not wanting to conquer the world is legitimate, I don't see why everyone should absolutely want to become the next Bezos.

Imagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch. In today's globalized world - if you are not one of the bigger players and do not have moat (govt contract, some other kind of exclusivity) - other bigger players will come after you.

> Imagine you build an AirBnb like solution limited to Switzerland market. AirBnb will eventually come and eat your lunch.

I don't think this is born out by the evidence. There are many social reasons that smaller markets prefer a local solution--both because of network effects and just because of branding.

In the Swiss case, Swiss people (often) don't use Google; they use Search.ch. They don't use Amazon (which is mostly unavailable in Switzerland); they use Galaxus. They don't use OkCupid; they use Parship. They don't use Zappos; they use Zalando (which is European, not Swiss, admittedly). They don't use eBay; they use Ricardo.

Many larger examples do involve the kinds of moats you describe--the Chinese Internet is a key example of that (where censorship and government backing contribute to the superiority of local alternatives)--but I think the phenomenon of Swiss startups having what an American might consider to be reduced ambitions has to be viewed in the context of Swiss _consumers_ also often preferring local options.

I would also add a subtler point here: to an American observer, the often-American-centric perspective of American startups--which are often slow to expand to foreign markets, but for whom "America" and "the world" are often near-synonyms--is less glaring than the Swiss-centric perspective of a Swiss startup. Americans--both entrepreneurs and their observers--are just less likely to realize the extent to which American companies equate national and international markets; it's far more obvious when observing a foreign company, especially one with as small a national market to dominate as Switzerland's.

Post reply on HN