Quite impressive!
With your new position I don’t know if it would be worth to FIRE. You seems to enjoy your new work from what I could understand in your blog.
Congratulations 
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Thanks, yeah I certainly can see myself doing that job for 5-10 years and in that timeline I should comfortably pass the FU money threshold. I just hope lifestyle inflation won’t be too big of a problem.
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flying business class with the extended family is definitely lifestyle inflation, just an “in your face” wake-up call 
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True, also not the first time… And there are soo many pretty watches on my wishlist… And maybe replacing my 7 year old car… I’m doomed.
Looking forward to see how it will turn out. Will know for sure in about 2 months.
But still: some of these progressions are depressing 
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Time to share (read: humble brag) my own numbers.
- Background: Bachelor and Master in Computer Science from University of Zurich (no, not ETH. It’s the building next to ETH)
- All jobs in Zurich
- Numbers are for yearly salaries to keep comparability
| Year | Job | Salary at 100% | Actual salary assuming I worked for the full year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | IT Consulting | 54k | 38k, worked 70% | Finished Bachelor that year, first job. |
| 2019 | IT Consulting | 54k | 38k, worked 70% | same job. |
| 2020 | IT Consulting | 60k | 42k, worked 70% | same job, got a raise at start of the year |
| 2020 | Back-end dev | 82k | 41k, worked 50% | New job during the year, got bored at the previous one |
| 2021 | No job | 0 | 0 | Spent the whole year on Master Thesis + job search |
| 2022 | Software Engineer, L3 | 180k | 180k (100% base in CHF, no bonus) | Found absolute dream job. Crypto startup, research heavy |
| 2022 | Software Engineer, L4 | 193k | 193k (100% base in CHF, no bonus) | same job, got promoted after 8 months |
2023 will start with the same pay as 2022 ended. Salary freeze in place for the new year
To see a small bit of data from my job search in 2021 see this post from earlier in this thread.
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Crazy how much the salary can vary depending on your employer.
I can imagine making a 20-25% jump, but getting an offer that is twice as good?
Just wondering, I see a yearly increase in a lot if not most salary progressions shared here, at the same employer, and not necessarily following a promotion. Is it quite common in Switzerland to obtain a salary increase every year? Do you guys tend to renegotiate on a yearly basis?
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To my knowledge, in a private company, if you do not ask you will have nothing.
You have to swap company or accept international mobility to get salary increase.
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I got an increase every year in the same company without asking.
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which percentage is it in general ?
What I call nothing is 1-2%
I can’t believe I have to say this but the generally accepted number representing “nothing” is 0… 
In my company the small automatic raise depends on the yearly performance (both employee’s and company’s performance), usual range was 1-5% in the last few years
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Interesting!
In my experience, that’s how usually the bonus is determined; the small automatic “0.5-2% raises” are more inflation-linked.
Whatever larger raises happened for me, it was either a promo, role change or/and company change.
What I did see is that some companies also do a “one off” additional payment (some proportion of a monthly salary, e.g. 50%) in times like these past few years (inflation/recession).
Guess in the long term it is cheaper for them than giving everyone a 2-5% raise due to (“transitory”) inflation. 
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comparison is the thief of joy
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i once was told something along the lines of: life’s like traveling on a train heading straight to hell, however, it’s up to you if you want to travel on the roof of the cars or if you want to do it in style in first class… there’s a couple of gems in there that i only understood years later.
but c’mon, i’d never fly longer than 3hrs in economy with kids…watches and cars, cool collectible items, so why not go for it if you can ?
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Most places I worked in had a salary range tied to a position, which maps out salary percentiles for the position profile with the number of years experience the employee has. Think of something similar to the WHO weight growth charts:
Unlike my weight, the salary with these ranges tend to flatten off around 40 - 45 years old. So aged 25 - 35 I would have a seen a pay rise that a) covers inflation, negotiated for the whole staff with union / employee reps, and b) an additional personal component that reflects me moving up in the experience / age axis.
They tend to keep you on the same percentile curve however, unless you push to negotiate or change to a new employer. And their willingness to negotiate depends on whether you already are above their median curve or not. If you are, you pretty much need to move into a new job or take on additional responsibilities and convince them that you should be on a higher salary range.
Big jumps mostly come from new positions … why would they pay significantly more for the same work you have done before for less? Changes in the same position are mostly small, incremental and maybe coupled with a small on-off bonus.
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I’ve seen it at my last job where I seemingly was the only one getting more than 125k (besides some managers), they pulled people somewhat over the table up to the way where a guy had to beg for salary raises because he was depending on state support for child care while the company earned almost a million every day. HRs job is to find the best possible person for the lowest possible salary.
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i think it’s also important to be in the right niche. it’s much easier to source certain profiles vs other specialized ones. i could also definitely go be a programmer/software dev/software eng but that would put me in competition with many more people as the skills required to go into those types of jobs are getting more widespread. in turn, that drives salary down, especially since startups will go for anyone, anywhere on the planet that fills the profile.
The hurray or nay date for all bankers is coming closer…
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Hello,
Sharing my salary evolution with a business school background.
Gross income numbers:
2012: € 32k - France, province. Private industry.
2013: € 32k
2014: € 33k
2015: € 34k
2016: € 48k - France, Paris: 1st job change. Private industry.
2017: € 110k - CH: 2nd job change. Private industry.
2018: chf 111k
2019: chf 112k
2020: chf 112k
2021: chf 135k - CH: 3rd job change. Public sector.
2022: chf 205k - CH: 4th job change. Public sector.
I am working in organizational / financial auditing (no big 4). The evolution in terms of pay and worklife balance has been going in the right direction over the years with decreasing travel and always reasonable working time (40h). A goal would be to adjust my working time to 80% in a couple of years. Hope it helps some readers to consider the public sector, especially those coming from business schools.
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