This really makes me consider moving my family to Zurich.
Looking back at growing up in Germany/Europe made me really feel disadvantaged compared to people growing up in more tech friendly environments. I would want my child to grow up somewhere where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light.
So much good stuff is coming out of ETH that it really seems to be a place where people talk more enthusiastically about tech in general.
I have actually applied to Google Zurich (but after 10 interviews they didn't hire me) and studied a bit how the life is there. There are many advantages or living there, but the cost of life and the fact that most people in Zurich are immigrants makes it a pretty cold city where it is hard to make friends or stay for a very long period of time. I think that now your point about "tech friendly environments" is not relevant anymore, because many countries support tech companies and offer a lot of grants for programmers and tech-related activities.
Can only confirm this too. I lived and worked in Zurich and it it indeed very hard to make friends. They are polite and well meaning but very distant. A (german) coworker told me this (sad but oh so true) joke about Zurich inhabitants : "How to make them laugh ? Point a gun at them and order them to do so". No way I'm going back there.
Don't a large number of immigrants make it easier to make friends? My experience in a different large city - immigrants new to the city are eager to make friends, as they won't know many other people in the city. People who grew up in the city often still have their friend group from childhood, and thus are less interested in meeting new people.
My parents were immigrants in Zurich and I lived there the first decade of my life. I can confirm what OP said, it's a very expensive city and people are really cold and lonely.
The immigrant part would make it appealing for me. The amount of outsiders is one thing that makes New York City and Silicon Valley more culturally interesting than Cincinnati or Iowa City.
As for being cold - I have several Swiss friends in Zurich. They are warm and decent people, but they are more reserved than most Americans.
I'm moving back to Google Zurich. The male/female ratio is a huge issue there, so it's good to bring a girlfriend, but cost of living was never a problem. Taxes are minimal, salary at Google Zurich is huge.
It is really a stretch to claim that Germany isn't tech friendly. It isn't pseudo-tech friendly, i.e. Germans have the obnoxious habit of separating hype from tech.
The only area where I'd agree is nuclear power, which regrettably doesn't have wide acceptance.
But that's only because nuclear power uses non-renewable raw materials, creates waste products that are dangerous for tens of thousands of years and occasionally leads to catastrophic accidents.
Not at all. Germany is one of the most tech/dev friendly country, especially if you are outside web dev. I see a lot of C++ engineering opportunities there. If only it was an English speaking country, and they had a sun... (It's a shame that we don't have a good English speaking country in whole Europe...) ;)
Lisbon fulfills both your criteria: lots of sun and even kids learn English on the first year at school. I can surely bet that we speak better english than British people will ever speak Portuguese! :)
English is one of the two official languages of Malta. I was thinking about this evergreen island myself, but it seems that they have mainly jobs with web dev and C#.
I am now in Germany on C++ job and I don't now German that much.
Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Munchen, Madrid, Barcelona London (for now), hell even Malaga are tech friendly and much easier (in my experience, but that is totally a matter of taste: I find Swiss too stiff) to settle. Really wondering where you are from.
Malaga? I visit every year, and last time I checked there was only Ericsson, Siemens and a group at the university doing human centred robotics... A quick online search leads me to the MalagaMakers meetup (which unfortunately has been quiet since January) and a few small tech companies. Do you know of any hubs or interesting companies there?
I certainly noticed the city becoming a bit more modern in recent years, with the whole SoHo thing and the Pompidou, but it generally always seems to be aimed towards boosting tourism. I'm really happy to hear that there's something else going on [:
Interesting. I never had the feeling of not growing up in a tech friendly environment in Germany. It's traditionally geared a bit more towards machines than software but overall I think fairly tech friendly/open. Maybe it depends on the specific region.
Entrepreneurship is another issue, I feel like "failing" had and still has an overly negative connotation here.
My (single)mother was looked down upon for buying us a computer when my sister was 16 and I was ten.
It went as far as the local priest calling social services because he assumed neglect.
It's not like I grew up around Amish, but its just generally a very acceptable stance here to be skeptical of all new technology. It's very apparent especially when you look at the discussions centering our school system.
We still debate about the harm of too much technology in school, theres still no real IT classes and people just now start looking toward programmers as a favorable job, simply because we have stable jobs while so many other industries have problems...
A good sign of commitment by Google to their Zurich office - recently the Swiss papers had stories of Google looking towards building their London office, due to limitations in acquiring work permits for staff in Switzerand. This news somewhat contradicts it; Zurich really is an attractive location for talent to flock toward.
Zurich attractive? - I though it might be Google hedging its bets in the event of Brexit.
Though Cranfield CIT and half way between Oxford and Cambridge woudl have been another good choice. - they could even have taken RAF Twinwoods over as a site for a DC as it has a direct link to the Grid.
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"
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.
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.
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.
Would be great if the next Google/Facebook/Microsoft was European and HQ'd in Europe, but it's hard to see that.
ML anecdotes - Schmidhuber makes a point of how LSTM was developed on European taxpayer's dime. Backpropagation was invented by Esko Linnainmaa (a Finnish researcher) in the 70s.
Universities or startups can't compete with finance/Google/FB level compensation, so that's where a lot of the bright minds go.
I also used to think that, and in the long-term I agree, and I have (i) done a startup in Europe (failed for lacking of funding) (ii) worked for a European startup (Prezi). But right now I work for Facebook (in London), and this is a good thing. You can go to these places and learn a lot, a lot more than what you can figure out on your own with your friends sitting in a garage or at one of the moderately successful European startups (moderately successful=0.1% of Facebook, that's already like $300-500M), which any sane entrepreneur here would be super happy over, fully so.
By "a lot" I mean cultural things, vision, strategy, how to set your own expectations, how decisions are made, what tools are available, etc.
I love how they throw in a link to picasa instead of google photos. Anyway, this is really good news with the EPFL and ETH next to it, it's perfectly placed next to the core research centers of Europe.
Anyone know why so many tech/pharma companies have research/development departments in Switzerland? It sounds expensive and not very centrally located.
A young company where I live have HQ in Switzerland, but that's just a post box and some servers for tax reasons. The are so few people working there it's negligible.
This is great, I'm glad that they are tapping into the many very smart Europeans who aren't willing to leave Europe to work in the states.
That being said, I'm pretty sure this is almost an entirely tax based move. By doing this, they now have a way to spend a bunch of the money they have "stranded" in Europe.
I definitely see the reasons behind this move. The computer vision department at ETH is particularly strong and that spills over to industry as well. There is Fashwell, a startup that is doing pretty well and they do ML / computer vision quite extensively.
Salaries are huge (7000 CHF - 12.000 CHF after taxes) and the living standard is very high. I am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and need support, send me a message (e-mail is in my HN-handle). Disclosure: I am a tech-recruiter.
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Looking back at growing up in Germany/Europe made me really feel disadvantaged compared to people growing up in more tech friendly environments. I would want my child to grow up somewhere where technology is not overwhelmingly debated about in a negative light.
So much good stuff is coming out of ETH that it really seems to be a place where people talk more enthusiastically about tech in general.
As for being cold - I have several Swiss friends in Zurich. They are warm and decent people, but they are more reserved than most Americans.
The only area where I'd agree is nuclear power, which regrettably doesn't have wide acceptance.
I am now in Germany on C++ job and I don't now German that much.
Edit: fixed Barcelona
I certainly noticed the city becoming a bit more modern in recent years, with the whole SoHo thing and the Pompidou, but it generally always seems to be aimed towards boosting tourism. I'm really happy to hear that there's something else going on [:
Entrepreneurship is another issue, I feel like "failing" had and still has an overly negative connotation here.
Was this really true for the place you grew up ? It sounds so luddite.
It's not like I grew up around Amish, but its just generally a very acceptable stance here to be skeptical of all new technology. It's very apparent especially when you look at the discussions centering our school system.
We still debate about the harm of too much technology in school, theres still no real IT classes and people just now start looking toward programmers as a favorable job, simply because we have stable jobs while so many other industries have problems...
Dead Comment
This article says this is enough space for 5000 more employees.
Though Cranfield CIT and half way between Oxford and Cambridge woudl have been another good choice. - they could even have taken RAF Twinwoods over as a site for a DC as it has a direct link to the Grid.
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.
ML anecdotes - Schmidhuber makes a point of how LSTM was developed on European taxpayer's dime. Backpropagation was invented by Esko Linnainmaa (a Finnish researcher) in the 70s.
Universities or startups can't compete with finance/Google/FB level compensation, so that's where a lot of the bright minds go.
By "a lot" I mean cultural things, vision, strategy, how to set your own expectations, how decisions are made, what tools are available, etc.
And then there is France (polytechnique) and the rest of Europe...
A young company where I live have HQ in Switzerland, but that's just a post box and some servers for tax reasons. The are so few people working there it's negligible.
That being said, I'm pretty sure this is almost an entirely tax based move. By doing this, they now have a way to spend a bunch of the money they have "stranded" in Europe.
Also, the ML meetup in Zurich has 2000 members, which is a lot for a small town like Zurich (http://www.meetup.com/Zurich-Machine-Learning/).
Salaries are huge (7000 CHF - 12.000 CHF after taxes) and the living standard is very high. I am well-connected in the tech-scene in Zurich and if you're thinking of moving here and need support, send me a message (e-mail is in my HN-handle). Disclosure: I am a tech-recruiter.