I'm moving from Google NYC to Google Zurich later this year. I'm an L3 Software Engineer. My current base pay in NYC is ~146k USD. I'm being offered ~139k CHF in Zurich. Stock/bonus are unchanged. As per the current exchange rate, my base pay is getting lowered and I've heard Zurich is more expensive than NYC. What should be the ideal base pay change? Does someone have any estimates of average rent, monthly expenses and effective tax rates in ZRH compared to the US? #google #googlel3 #googlenyc #googlezurich #salarycomparison
Can I ask why are you moving from NYC to Zurich?
Maybe no 😂
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Big ticket expenses - taxes and housing are much cheaper in Zurich. Only labor-intensive services are more expensive. And meat. Rent 25-35 Fr/m^2/month. Lower for apartments away from center and old buildings. 35-40+ Fr/m^2 gets you nice brand new builds in the center. Almost entire real estate market is on homegate.ch, shop around there. Room in a flatshare would go for around 700-1200 Fr, one big site in this niche is wgzimmer.ch Tax at 250k gross income maybe around 23-25%, with 35-40% marginal rate. Depends on municipality, you can sacrifice commute for some big tax savings (unless you're american, then you won't run away from IRS). Use comparis.ch to run the numbers. No capital gains tax. Social security (state pension and insurances) 5.27+1.10%. Standard health insurance with state-prescribed coverage ~3k/year premiums with 2.5k deductible; Google gives you 4.5k lump sum with your salary towards it. Life insurance of 3x your TC included in pension plan. No dental, no vision, no fertility benefits Generous employer-side pension fund contribution of 8.5% of your base, that you cash out when leaving Switzerland paying minimal tax, like 5%. Overall for the same gross TC in Zurich and NYC, and if saving money is your goal, you'll likely save quite a bit more in Zurich in the end. The big problem for you here will be the golden handcuffs - there's nowhere else to go up after Google here, it'll be the peak of your career. Also, your future refreshers will be roughly half of usual US amounts.
Thanks a lot for the details. I did some calculations and it does seem like I'd save more in Zurich in the end. It just hurts to see my base go down. :/
It is more than sufficiently compensated by your US stock grants. People who start in Zurich get only half as much. So you'll still earn more than your ZRH L3 peers. Also, exchange rate is volatile. At market low recently, USD/CHF was at 0.93 making your CHF base the better deal. With crazy stimulus money printing in the US, we might revisit it soon enough