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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

#191

Post by lukego »

mike_hearn wrote: post #184
lordnacho wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

> 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.

Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come home for lunch. The motivation for the system may well be to suit traditional family setups, and make it hard for both parents to work in an office, but it also seems tailor made for self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family. (ask me again in a few years.)

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#193

Post by Scarblac »

lukego wrote: post #191
mike_hearn wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

> 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. Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come hom…

> self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family.

That's about as traditional as family setups get, isn't it? Except you're not working on your farm.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#194

Post by mike_hearn »

icantdrive55 wrote: post #109

I have a few questions for Swiss expats. Could you tell me about the Swiss culture--at bit? I know it's a huge topic. Just some of the differences you see between the Swiss, and say Americans. I mainly interested in the Millenials. What do they think of Americans? Do they basically have the same hobbies? Are their any stark differences in what they value? Do they view Americans as spoiled? Do they fear us? This next…

This is a weird list of questions. I am a migrant to Switzerland (trying not to use the word expat anymore).

Swiss people are not very different to Americans in what they value, what hobbies they have, etc. They are much less outgoing, however. In America you can walk into a bar anywhere, at any time, sit down and have a spontaneous conversation with the barman or strangers sitting at the bar. This never happens in Switzerland. Do not expect it even if you speak good German. People in Switzerland keep to themselves. Because this makes it very hard to make friends there are a lot of "expat" events for immigrants to meet each other, and at these events you can go to a bar and start chatting to people of a similar age and background to yourself and make friends. This is how I made most of my friends: I have a few good Swiss friends, but overall most of my friends throughout my time in Switzerland were other foreigners.

Swiss people do not "fear" Americans, why would you have that idea? They do not spend a whole lot of time thinking about Americans in particular. The vast majority of people who live in the cities (and you want to be in the cities), and especially teenagers, do not own cars at all. Not only is there no need (public transport and taxis can get you everywhere) but there isn't usually enough parking and it's very expensive. People generally only buy a car once they settle down and move out of the cities.

People on the street in Switzerland tend to be well dressed and fashionable, and the women especially so. The high streets are dominated by fashion brands and shops. I can't compare this to the USA because I've only been to a few places there, but it's definitely a brand and fashion conscious place.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#195

Post by uola »

mweibel wrote: post #159
eternalban wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what's so inflexible about .ch in particular? Well, I remember when arriving for work in Geneva a few years ago, a French colleague informed me (quite seriously :) that one can not urinate in the street. The American colleague mentioned "oh, and quiet hours after 10 pm". And you are not supposed to hunt the swans swimming in the lake. (& My youngish Swiss friends all complain about how "boring" it is.) I think Swit…

> that one can not urinate in the street never heard of such a law. If anything there's maybe one in certain cities. I know this is just an example, but I wonder why you'd bring this example up as an example about inflexibility? > oh, and quiet hours after 10 pm yep, that's fact. > And you are not supposed to hunt the swans swimming in the lake. Again, why would you bring that up as an example? I'm not sure whether y…

Yeah, those are weird examples. I was more thinking of that it's small (even for it's size), bureaucratic (while fairly efficient) and expensive. It's not the place where one shows up and figure out what to do. It's where you work for a large business, live slightly outside of town and sign long contracts.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#196

Post by lukego »

Scarblac wrote: post #193
lukego wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Just an anecdote: We are (expat) remote workers raising kids on the Swiss countryside. Our fellows haven't started school yet but we are really looking forward to having them come hom…

> self-employed people who work from home with a flexible schedule and want to spend time together as a family. That's about as traditional as family setups get, isn't it? Except you're not working on your farm.

On the one hand, yes, this is quite similar to our neighbours who are dairy farmers. On the other hand I am quite an anomaly here as a high-tech worker operating under the modern and nontraditional principles of "Remote: No Office Required" :-)

I also suspect that having both of us parents at home during the day will make it much easier to manage the disruption of kids coming home in the afternoon, etc, which could be hard for one person to juggle with a career.

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#197

Post by im4w1l »

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…

> 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.

Could someone explain this to me? Like I assume lordnacho had expected that guy to apply for a wider category of jobs, but which jobs? And what is the advantage of that broadness?

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#198

Post by denzil_correa »

mike_hearn wrote: post #184
lordnacho wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ho…

> 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.

Or "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure" aka Goodhart's law.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: Switzerland is the world’s most competitive economy

#200

Post by lordnacho »

im4w1l wrote: post #197
lordnacho wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Could someone explain this to me? Like I assume lordnacho had expected that guy to apply for a wider category of jobs, but which jobs? And what is the advantage of that broadness?

Say you have a degree in maths. What jobs could you apply for? Just "Mathematician"?

I think you could do a whole range of things. Anything from quantitative trading to traffic management. Or something that doesn't even require math, like project management.

The advantage of broadness is you have a wider choice about what you do. If one kind of work turns out not to appeal to you, you aren't stuck. That has some economic value as well. If you have the watch industry collapse, you don't have a bunch of watchmakers sitting around on benefits who could be doing something different.

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