161–170 of 194 posts
I'm sick of seeing titles like this one. Why can't Switzerland simply be Switerland instead of a clone of the Silicon Valley? We all have our own cultures and different types of innovation can spring from each one of them.
FWIW: I am a 2nd-time entrepreneur. I bootstrapped a company in Germany from 2004-2011, and sold it to Google then. As part of that I moved to Switzerland. I started another company in early 2018 in Zurich, believing the hype about it being a good place to do business. I won't go into details publicly, but: If your market and your potential acquirers are primarily in the US, and you think your startup will have a lon…
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I fully agree, love your country, have spent two years of my life there and come every time an opportunity pops up. I speak fluently French, Italian, German and can manage plenty of Swiss German common expressions as well. Yet, the rules, oh boy, not sure how you will take this, but from my point of view Swiss world of rules makes the northern Germany feel as flexible as a South American country. When something must…
On the other hand, when speaking to a government employee, you're mostly speaking to someone who can make an actual decision on that matter, and can help you to solve your problem. Yes, there are many rules, but living there I've never had the feeling that this made the country inflexible.
There are plus and minus to both approaches, the rules approach favours more the society overall as everyone gets the same, while the flexible approach kind of favours the individual.
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Just came accross the 2019 Global Innovation Index report: https://www.wipo.int/edocs/pubdocs/en/wipo_pub_gii_2019.pdf The ranking on page xxxiv says: 1. Switzerland 2. Sweden 3. United States of America 4. Netherlands 5. United Kingdom 6. Finland 7. Denmark 8. Singapore 9. Germany ... so not too bad after all. This " is an annual ranking of countries by their capacity for, and success in, innovation. It is published…
This is not necessarily because Switzerland is high-tech friendly. There is an absolutely massive pharma industry in the country. Lots of innovation comes from there.
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>> Not much for developers who are looking for interesting challenges .. From a Swiss person This is simply not true. I'm Swiss and working as a developer and consultant in Switzerland since the nineties. I - as many others - was able to do several studies at a world-class university right on my doorstep without getting into debt. People are fair, hardworking, innovative and responsible. Switzerland has ideal conditi…
(The reason Google has an office here is because Urs Hölzle studied at ETH at knew people here.)
Not at all. Yes Switzerland is probably the best country if you want to follow the rules, have a good quality of life and good education for your children. Not much for developers who are looking for interesting challenges. This is due to the mentality of the population and the risk aversion of the investors. From a Swiss person.
I fully agree, love your country, have spent two years of my life there and come every time an opportunity pops up. I speak fluently French, Italian, German and can manage plenty of Swiss German common expressions as well. Yet, the rules, oh boy, not sure how you will take this, but from my point of view Swiss world of rules makes the northern Germany feel as flexible as a South American country. When something must…
That is quite unworldly. I worked on large projects both in Switzerland and in Germany. These are totally different cultures. The number of laws and the degree of bureaucracy in Germany is many times greater than in Switzerland (only surpassed by Italy). In Germany everything is forbidden that is not explicitly allowed, in Switzerland it is the other way round. In Switzerland everything can be negotiated; try negotiating with a German official. Good luck with that.
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On the other hand, when speaking to a government employee, you're mostly speaking to someone who can make an actual decision on that matter, and can help you to solve your problem. Yes, there are many rules, but living there I've never had the feeling that this made the country inflexible.
As south European, I think it is a personal matter, it basically boils down to how much one can adapt to living by rules, without the flexibility to bend the rules one is used to in other countries. There are plus and minus to both approaches, the rules approach favours more the society overall as everyone gets the same, while the flexible approach kind of favours the individual.
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yeah, I know. And the ETH graduates are probably top-quality. But the parent poster said that he didn't experience cutting edge technology in switzerland and I wondered whether it's the same in Zurich. In germany, I've experience that you can excel at one technical property (usually your core product, manufacturing something, designing some material) while also being very conservative in virtually every other dimensi…
> he didn't experience cutting edge technology in switzerland What ever that is supposed to mean; maybe after looking a couple of days with a very narrow focus. > The swiss are not really known for a silicon-valley kind of attitude Well, there is no "hire and fire", and there are no garages and cellars that are worth a billion dollars overnight. But there were and still are a lot of innovations in various fields. Als…
I'm sick of seeing titles like this one. Why can't Switzerland simply be Switerland instead of a clone of the Silicon Valley? We all have our own cultures and different types of innovation can spring from each one of them.
While I like Silicon Valley, it has its downsides as well. And not everything good for Americans is good for Europeans.
I want to see our own "tech cities" across Europe, every one of them with their own culture, their own lifestyle, their own philosophy, etc. To be successful you don't have to imitate SV on everything.