The commute of most of those workers is usually less than half of what most rockstars of Sillicon Valley need to endure, not to mention that the public transport extends to border towns in France and is significantly better than the one in SV. Geneva lies directly on the border so those towns are way closer to most workplaces than Oakland is to San Francisco.

The issue with Geneva is that there's no more physical space to build - but living in France with Swiss Geneva canton minimum wage will boost your quality of live way beyond most San Francisco dwellers.

The problem might be there are thousands of French, Italians, and other Europeans sharing the same Swiss dream while standing in the traffic jams. I doubt the rents by the Swiss border in France are at the "French level".

As someone who lived in both places I can easily tell you that Geneva traffic jams / crowds don't come close to what most employees of SF tech startups endure on their way to work.

To make Geneva as awesome as Silicon Valley, you'd have to prolong the jams and time spend on the road by about 2-3x and remove all the busses and trams.

The rent in those region from what I've heard from colleagues (I work as a SWE in Paris) is trough the roof. you also have to pay taxes in both countries, but compensation wise you'll still end up with a significantly better deal even taking into account things like cost of living. The commute is not better for me or my colleagues in the Paris region.

> it seems that most low wage earners survive by living in nearby French towns and commuting in to work

My interviews with Swiss companies when discussing the employment form usually turn to "you can live in France and commute daily to Switzerland". Yeah, thanks no thanks.

I've done that and it was lovely! 20 minutes bike ride each way, crossing the border every morning and evening on my bike. Nicer than most commutes.

In bad weather taking the bus, which was always on time and never delayed in traffic.

Are we talking about Europe where you are free to live where you want? If people are living in France it’s just that it’s cheaper nobody is prevented to live in Switzerland. The main problem arise when the janitor working in SwitzerlanD is getting 3x the salary of the high school tacher in nearby France. Btw Zurich where the cost of living is higher is far away from any border....

I've lived in Geneva and Zurich, and there is a big difference between the two. Geneva is basically France, with some Italian and Portugese thrown in for added rule breaking, but Swiss so the "special" rules apply to other people. It's full of self-entitled snow flakes, backwards and not like the rest of Switzerland at all.