CH is cheaper cost-of-living-wise than Bay Area at-large. I formerly lived in the Bay Area and now live/work in Zürich. When you throw having a child into the equation, Zürich is hands-down cheaper and better than West Coast. No more worrying about what zip code you live in for a decent school district, etc. Your earnings go much further here.

This is an expensive place to visit as an outsider but cheap place to live and work. Let's not forget tax efficiency, either.

But, hey, the Helvetic Confederation isn't for everyone, and I'm OK with that.

It is not much a matter of cost of living but rather cost of the Swiss Franc versus other currencies.

Currently, the swiss Franc is very strong, therefore making any Swiss product expensive to the exterior.

It can become a huge problem for an economy based on trading with neighbors.

Actually, the Swiss franc is at one of its lowest points in the 10Y view [1]

A Swiss franc is traded at roughly 1.09 Euros, I would say significant, sure, but not a deal breaker in high-tech industries. If we were talking about commoditized products I would have to agree but in our industries this is just not the case.

[1]: http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=CHF&view=10Y

It's the other way around: EUR/CHF=1.09 means 1EUR=1.09CHF.

> [2011 to 2015] the Euro was exchanging [at] CHF1.20. [Then] the exchange rate stabilised to between CHF1.05 and CHF1.08 to the Euro, due in large part to further intervention from the SNB which discreetly set about buying up foreign currency to ensure the franc did [rise to] new heights

https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/money--money--money_sw...

There's a slight error there. SNB was buying foreign currency to lower the CHF exchange rate in an effort to protect the Swiss export industry.

Yes, sorry, I meant to write [not rise to].

Yeah sorry... Still my point holds...

> Yeah sorry... Still my point holds...

not really, no. the opposite, actually. while not an all time high, it is pretty high in the 10 year context and it did affect export industries.

What industries where effected the most?

Mechanical and electrical engineering industries were seriously affected, according to Swissmem: https://www.swissmem.ch/en/news-medien/news/mem-industrie-di...

According to Credit Suisse, "nearly all sectors of industry are affected", especially the Mechanical Engineering industry, but also Metals and Food Industries, Hotels, Catering and Retailing: https://www.credit-suisse.com/ch/en/articles/articles/news-a...

Yes. The strength is the inverse of that.

My point was that in high margin industries such rate is not a big issues.

Sorry but this is not true. It has been such a big deal that the central bank pegged the currency artificially.

> It can become a huge problem for an economy based on trading with neighbors.

Exactly. Switzerland has just 8.5M people living there, while the US has 322M and Germany 82M. If Germany were expensive, for example, it'd still have a sizable inner-country market while Switzerland does not.

It changes what you try to do, but Switzerland and Germany isn't all that different from Silicon Valley and the US.

You use premium resources in Switzerland and try to sell German (or EU) resources back upon lower markets at a high enough volume and mark up to make the high market costs incidental.

The EU has 510 Million.

Start-ups mostly do not generate profits. Yeah, losses might increase but who in start-ups care about say 5% less revenue due to currency.

I can confirm. Just moved from Zurich to San Francisco. Pretty much everything except rent is cheaper in San Francisco (food can be up to half price of what I paid in Zurich) but rent being such a major expense, it ends up being similar. Salaries are a bit higher in Switzerland though so one would save more on average there.

And taxes are a lot lower!

Relative to the average income, Switzerland has rather unexpensive rents. Of course, in absolute terms, cost of living might still might make your runway on the same budget shorter compared to Berlin.

Average ongoing rents are relatively ok, but bringing in new people often means paying top market prices, they can be double to quadruple an average ongoing rent.