Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by FirmwareBurner | Hacker News Reader

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I remember reading around here about how many companies in Switzerland like Roche, offshore a lot of mid-tier tech jobs (like web dev) out to places like Poland due to much better performance/cost. IIRC, Acronis also has most of their devs in Bulgaria now. I also remember reading a few years ago an interview with a Swisscom exec about offshoring their devops jobs to the Netherlands on the claim they can't find local devops talent.

Now I'm not in Switzerland and even I'm not buying that reason at face value, but it's clear that offshoring is an issue in most high-CoL countries in the post WFH era as a lot of tech jobs became more of a commodity in the post ZIRP era. So I can imagine the jobs not moving out of Switzerland are those "management" type of jobs where the job itself is having coffee and networking with the other managers on how to further reduce costs and increase profits while relocating engineering jobs to cheaper countries.

Due to this, it seems that Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now.

>the local "unemployment office" (RAV) told me they have to deal with clueless ex-googlers asking for 200k+ unemployment benefits, almost weekly

This explains some of the absurd arguments I often hear from delulu googlers on this board and how out of touch they are with the real world. The sad thing is they have little introspection to realize it and would rather die on their hill.

To your main point: it feels like CH is losing a lot of "in-house" knowledge and mostly the managerial / leader positions are growing here. This is somewhat masked by the fact that the universities show top notch research (mainly with foreign students tho), and there are many startups that eventually make some noise. But classical business will suffer a lot from off-shoring literally any real knowledge and know how that is normally needed to create a product. As one of my ex-managers said: "it's crazy that we cannot even produce aspirin anymore in Switzerland".

And then some more anecdata:

I happened to be part of Acronis during the time when they tried helping escape all the Engineers in Moscow to Bulgaria. (I have stories, yes, I was in the HQ in Moscow too). The engineers, who made Acronis (the product) were always in Bulgaria for the past 5+ years, so that one is not like the other examples.

I also ended up working for a small banking startup, 20 of us tried to do business on the regional banking sphere. I left during the time when the company was inflated with 40+ offshore (Balkans) engineers.

To be precise, the ex googlers are not clueless about engineering (or at least I hope so), but about how the unemployment system in CH works, and they are also out of touch salary-wise.

>This is somewhat masked by the fact that the universities show top notch research (mainly with foreign students tho)

Yeah, but those positions require highly specialized knowledge and are therefore very niche. Say you're an unemployed tech worker, how would one get such a job without a PhD in the field? You can't. What do you do when most new positions in your area of expertise have been shipped abroad?

>As one of my ex-managers said: "it's crazy that we cannot even produce aspirin anymore in Switzerland".

I doubt they don't know anymore, but they just don't bother since it's a generic drug in the race to the bottom that Switzerland can't and doesn't want to take part in.

>To be precise, the ex googlers are not clueless about engineering (or at least I hope so), but about how the unemployment system in CH works, and they are also out of touch salary-wise.

I think you misunderstood me. I never said googles are clueless about tech, but about life in general, especially the life of those not earning 200k+.

Because living in a coddled bubble of 200k+ wages in Zurich would make one highly out of touch with the reality of most average people in Switzerland and moreso in the rest of the world, and you see this in their comments and arguments on HN. They just can't empathize or understand that your reality on the ground is different than theirs.

Even without knowing the unemployment system in Switzerland or in any other country, how the hell can you expect to receive 200K+ in unemployment benefits? That's just so entitled and out of touch, it's insane. Unemployment benefits are never a payment of 100% of your salary to continue the Googler lifestyle, but a smaller basic safety net to cover your vital expenses till you find another job. That's just common sense everywhere.

You didn't say they are clueless but I did :-)

Also, I'm not saying that it's great to have these high performant researcher-founded startups, my point is simply that because of these, the "numbers" don't look too bad.

BTW, In Switzerland "you get 80% of your last salary", as most of the people heard from this or that. Obviously this is not the entire story (it is capped, it's not necessary 80%, etc etc) - some people think, oh I made 250k, therefore I'm entitled to 200k now. With that said, in a very optimal case, here you can get around 150k as unemployment benefit, which is still enormously high compared to other countries.

In California, you get $450 USD per week max. In other parts of the US it's less.

>> Eastern Europe is one of the hottest places to be in tech right now.

Market there is much better than in western countries, but I see projects are pushed from Poland further to the Asia. UBS is laying off thousands there, moving projects to the Indian office.

While that's true, UBS also canceled some Filipino contracts. I guess UBS just sucks in general and has to cut costs a lot, these days.

They had $1.7bn net profit for Q1 2025. It's good for bottom line in short term to outsource to the cheapest location. Also they have tons of internal project which does not need any quality at all. Could get a bunch of students in the cheapest location for such things.

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