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Comment by moondowner | Hacker News Reader

I guess ETH Zurich and EPFL are the reason why Google chose Switzerland "Europe is home to some of the world’s premier technical universities, making it an ideal place to build a top-notch research team"

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Many of the workers in Google Zurich are not Swiss or Swiss university graduates. I mean, there are surely a lot, but they are europe-wide offices. All of Google Russia went there, I think.

I'd guess the main reason is low tax on salaries, and less competition from finance than e.g. London.

Well, finance takes also a large chunk of Switzerland's GDP and thus is scooping up many engineers as well. Maybe it's not as pronounced as in London, but it certainly isn't very easy to hire good engineers here because of all the banks and hedge funds.

I think google came to Zurich because of EPFL/ETH, the very high living standard and most of all the rather liberal labor law. It's very easy to fire someone in Switzerland, compared to the surrounding countries.

Finance is 12% of Swiss GDP last time I checked. This country has this image of banking powerhouse, but in reality small/medium companies and tourism contribute much more.

healthier economical setup I must say. also, if they decide to trash banks with some end-of-data-privacy law (and it will eventually come, as for US persons), it won't be such a disaster for their economy.

I think that Google went to Zurich because an early engineer was from there.

Urs Hölzle (also an ETH alumni), who was googler n°8, but I'm not sure that was the reason; ;)

There is no low tax on salaries, that is a myth … and there is a lot of additional mandatory fees in addition to direct salary tax. Switzerland is only a tax haven for a very small target group – and someone has pay for these tax privileges, i.e., salary earners in the private sector.

Swiss income tax IS low, relatively. But if you want to actually buy something....

depending on canton/commune of residence, and income, it can be relatively small. I would call it medium taxation though, at least for common folks. definitely not a tax haven though.

VAT is small (8% or 2.5% on essentials), but prices/fees are very high to begin with.

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