That makes sense. I’ve once again learnt something thanks to you/this community.
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Background: Bachelor in IT
(value from salary certificate, does not include 2A contributions but bonus)
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grad student → M$FT → BlackBerry post-IPO stock option exercise → salary wandering-in-the-wilderness period (doing my own startup) → Finance UK → Finance CH
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Also some countries such as Andorra had 0% income tax up until very recently.
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I love that name but it’s too generic for me to be confident in finding what it’s about on the internet. What is your startup about?
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Sorry, that wasn’t the name of my (long since defunct) startup from over a decade ago, that was just my own name for what happened to my salary during that period.
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Thanks for your answer, I still love the imagery, though I can imagine it’s been a wild ride. Hope you’ve found your equilibrium in your current career.
Total net comp:
2010: EUR 46’000 (at age 35)
2011: EUR 71’000
2012: Fr. 80’000
2013: Fr. 93’000
2014: Fr. 117’000
2015: Fr. 95’000
2016: Fr. 105’000
2017: Fr. 131’000
2018: Fr. 110’000
2019: Fr. 107’500
2020: Fr. 141’000
2021: Fr. 146’000
2012 first salary as a developer in traditional company in Switzerland (coming from abroad with lots of experience already)
2014 first remote job (Silicon Valley startup)
2018 second remote job (Swiss startup company)
2020 third remote job (late-stage Silicon Valley startup)
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My progression
2019: CHF 92,000 (first year working, 8 months)
2020: CHF 155’000
2021: Target CHF 211’000
I’m now thinking of leaving my current job for a big comp cut (down to 130, but something much more exciting and fulfilling).
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If the raises continue like that I’d rather do it 5 more years and save as much as possible.
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Which profession is that, paying those amounts straight outta uni? 
(Unless the US comp in ZH, then reasonable)
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If the raises continue like that I’d rather do it 5 more years and save as much as possible.
Good point, but being 25 and feeling burned out of my work, with anxiety on top of it, is not great. I feel 130 is already an excellent salary in Switzerland and although it’s almost half of my target for this year, I prefer to get an experience with more learning and growth opportunities as well as something I will enjoy more.
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What is your job, man? your salary was great for 1st year, amazing for 2nd year and incredible for 3rd year…
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Maybe you shouldn’t resign, but just starting a parallel project on your own. But first: build the network!
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2005-2008: 30k CHF pa - telecom support and later as implementation engineer (Eastern-EU
2008-2012: 50k CHF pa - telecom consultancy (Eastern EU)
2012 - 130k CHF (moved to CH) - Operations engineer, telecom
2013: 135k CHF - senior ops engineer, banking
2014: 125k CHF - deployment engineer (small CH company, was a total flop)
2015 - 2019: 150k - sports events mgmt (IT)
2020: 155k - big4 internal IT with 125% load
2021: 145k - project mgmt in a more relaxed IT company
I wonder what one needs to break the 150k limit, let alone 200k. That seems to be the ceiling for many industries until team leader (director for 200k) status. Is the only way forward to get a department lead position (without contracting)?
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It’s not a progression but I really don’t know what to do. I’m currently earning around 130K in a software project company. Now I’ve been offered 160K at a large insurance company. Obviously the work is much more enterprise and not much fun anymore. They pay a lot because otherwise no one would go there and especially because they want to acquire knowledge and not just staff in the themes of cloud adoption, transformation, issues that all the big non-tech corp must or are facing.
Less fun but 30K more? 30K is a massive amount in FIRE terms.
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In my field of work (banking), most experienced workers (Associate Director position) are in the 90-120k range in terms of base salary and 10-30k range in terms of bonus, so 100-150k. I’ll probably stay in that range too if I don’t have any major career milestones.
@SwissTeslaBull
I made the experience last year. Accepted an offer that was much better than the current one and decided to leave them after working 1 week there lol. It sucked so much! Now I know that salary isn’t everything despite my FIRE goals. Wouldn’t even go back to that place for 200% of my current salary.
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I’m just not sure I’m ready to make the jump from doing things to talking about them.
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2015: 46’000 CHF
2016: 55’400 CHF
2017: 60’600 CHF
2018: 21’700 CHF + 30’000 GBP = 59’200 CHF
2019: 30’000 GBP + 70’000 CHF = 107’500 CHF
2020: 134’000 CHF
Background:
2015 - mid 2018: PhD salary
mid 2018 - mid 2019: work at a (big) UK startup
since mid 2019: research job in industry
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That’s the dilemma, a lot of high pay jobs in IT (except maybe Google) are in boring or shitty companies (old tech or bad company culture). To be able to attract talents, they need to raise the salaries, but they still continue to have a high turnover
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