Software development, how is the job market nowadays?

Well, to be honest if I’m an international company, especially in IT, what value would I derive from a home office employee in Switzerland that I can’t derive from a similar profile in, say, Bangalore?

It may be a little more difficult in the near future. roughly 250 employees have been let go from Google Switzerland recently, and it’s probable that a significant portion of them will enter the job market soon.
It’s not a lot and of course the market can absorb them, but, you may find yourself competing with them for employment opportunities.

Are you sure about that? Most of Google’s employees are expats and I am not sure if they really want to work for Swiss companies. On the one hand, they are used to >200k CHF salaries at Google (which almost no Swiss employer will match) and on the other hand, being a software engineer in Switzerland is pretty bad compared to other countries in my opinion. Salaries are comparatively bad and many companies are pretty conservative. For instance, if you compare https://germantechjobs.de/ with https://swissdevjobs.ch/, many of those german jobs pay better when adjusted for purchasing power. And in the US salaries are obviously much higher. So not sure how many will actually stay in Switzerland.

Many of those people have been in Switzerland for 5-10y and built their life here (kids, etc). It doesn’t seem so unlikely they’d try their chance on the local market (most tech jobs will pay more than what they get from RAV anyway).

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I’d have a look at tutti.ch for quick sale of stuff and/or at immomapper (or other immo sites) for the market crash for expat housing then.

Ok so far, I applied for 3 java jobs in mid February.

One of the companies sent an automatic email saying my file had not been selected without any specific reason. I politely asked for more details, whether there’s anything in particular they disliked in my file but haven’t received any answer.

I have no news of the second one. Their recruitment platform shows my application is still in progress but I am not getting my hopes up.

The last one went a little further, I had an interview yesterday. I was almost ill with nervosity but it went well, we had a nice exchange and they seemed interested. I felt so relieved but it didn’t last long, they phoned 2 hours ago to thank me and announce that they chosed someone else. They said some other candidates had more experience with their software stack and were a better fit for that job.

I feel so depressed… :face_with_diagonal_mouth:. I know I am not the first nor the last to lose at the recruitment game but I am really starting to feel like my profile isn’t attractive anymore. Wondering if I have spent too many years maintaining old projects running on outdated software stack, getting obsolete without realizing it.

many of those german jobs pay better when adjusted for purchasing power.

Once you take taxes in consideration German compensation is much worst

The job market seems to be strong.

@stef any update?

…unless you have a couple of children on a „normal“ salary.

If we’re talking a 200k+ salary though, you can basically employ a nanny for childcare.

@wapiti

I just got hired as a software engineer for a 6 months renewable contract. 105k/y with home office 2 days a week. Nothing great on paper but it’s close to my place, the technical stack is modern and pretty marketable, thus I am quite happy about it.

Of course, going from +130k to 105k hurts. But on the other hand, it’s a good opportunity to refresh my skills and I am not required to spend hours in my car everyday.

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Because of your avatar, I’ll ask: do you know of a place to find Ruby jobs in Switzerland? I’d love to work with Ruby again but it’s very very rare to have companies use it in CH from my experience.

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Hi @boschika, indeed last time I used Ruby/Rails was in 2018, it seems everyone moved to node or Python since.

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My previous company used a couple of products developed and maintained by Renuo AG… From what I could tell, their solutions were largely Ruby-based.