Moving to Germany or Switzerland to progress further in my IT career

malachi · 16 Mar 2018 at 09:23

Hi All,
Small update to my original thread created here.

I am still here in the UK, working hard. The passed 18 months haven't been easy. Actually been quite stressful at times. I have been continuing with my self studying and have decided I am going to move to Germany or Switzerland to further my IT career.

So since I created the thread back in August 2016, this is what I have done so far.

Visited Switzerland, I really enjoyed it and the culture.
Earned my MCSA in Windows 10.
Earned my ITIL Foundation in IT Service Management (this was through work, not self studying)
Passed my Installation, Storage and Compute with Windows Server 2016 exam.
Completed term 1 of my German Language evening course which I started last September. I am on term 2 now this will finish in May with an exam at the end to get a qualification.
Spoke to my mortgage company, remortgage my house so I can easily change over to Buy-To-Let mortgage if I decided to rent my house when I move.
Saved 10K for moving to keep me going while I get use to the change.

I am now studying for 70-741 and 70-742 to get my MCSA in Server 2016. Then will go for 70-744 so I can finish off the cert by getting MCSE in Cloud and Infrastructure (fingers crossed!). I want to get these passed within the next 8 months as I want to leave the UK by the end of this year, definitely before March 2019 because of Brexit etc.

Any advice from anyone who has done similar, which are the best places to work in IT, either in German or Switzerland? I have checked on many forums but I want to hear from fellow Overclockers

or should I move to another country instead of German or Switzerland?

mid_gen · 16 Mar 2018 at 11:09

Well, I've been in Germany for 4 years now. I'm in gamedev here (gameplay programmer).

Germany is very different depending on where you are. Here in Düsseldorf it's relatively cosmopolitan, you've got an international airport on the doorstep, and are 45 mins drive from Holland, Belgium, France. You can get by in English fine. Away from the major cities though it'll be tough without fluent German, they aren't the most welcoming of foreigners on the whole and certainly don't make it easy when it comes to bureaucracy.

BUT. If you make the effort to learn the language, it's a terrific place to live. Accommodation is cheap and plentiful with strong tenants rights, food and drink is cheap as chips, social security is excellent, public transport and public spaces in general are well-maintained, clean and cheap (it's grim how run down austerity Britain is in comparison). You've got Europe on your doorstep.

Downsides:

Bureaucracy can be a pain...but it's not something you deal with every day, so meh.
Taxes are relatively high (including health insurance in this) - BUT you get your money's worth
You realise what a bunch of miserable complainers brits are

There's lots of useful stuff I can let you know about moving here if you do decide to go for it.

malachi · 16 Mar 2018 at 11:40

mid_gen said:
Well, I've been in Germany for 4 years now. I'm in gamedev here (gameplay programmer).

Germany is very different depending on where you are. Here in Düsseldorf it's relatively cosmopolitan, you've got an international airport on the doorstep, and are 45 mins drive from Holland, Belgium, France. You can get by in English fine. Away from the major cities though it'll be tough without fluent German, they aren't the most welcoming of foreigners on the whole and certainly don't make it easy when it comes to bureaucracy.

BUT. If you make the effort to learn the language, it's a terrific place to live. Accommodation is cheap and plentiful with strong tenants rights, food and drink is cheap as chips, social security is excellent, public transport and public spaces in general are well-maintained, clean and cheap (it's grim how run down austerity Britain is in comparison). You've got Europe on your doorstep.

Downsides:

Bureaucracy can be a pain...but it's not something you deal with every day, so meh.
Taxes are relatively high (including health insurance in this) - BUT you get your money's worth
You realise what a bunch of miserable complainers brits are

There's lots of useful stuff I can let you know about moving here if you do decide to go for it.

Excellent post, thanks for the feedback

I will do abit of job hunting in that area.

mid_gen · 16 Mar 2018 at 12:31

malachi said:
Excellent post, thanks for the feedback I will do abit of job hunting in that area.

Some Germans give Düsseldorf stick for being a bit conservative and straight-laced....but all of Germany is conservative compared to the UK

I think it's great personally, it's small, I just cycled the 5 minutes back to the office from lunch at home, but it has a very well connected airport, museums, galleries, great nightlife, food etc, everything a bigger city has. On sunny evenings I can take the tram 10 minutes into the altstadt, grab some 1EUR beers from a kiosk and sit by the river with mates as the sun sets over the Rhein.

There's been a bit of a hipster revolution happening in the last few years, there's more and more interesting little restaurants and fancy coffee shops....German food tastes are about a decade or two behind the UK

English speaking employers I know of here are

Ubisoft Blue Byte (where I am, I had a quick check, but no infrastructure openings atm, but keep an eye out on the jobs page)
Vodafone - big office just over the river in Neuss
3M - I know a few brits here working for them
Trivago - Their HQ is here and they hire a lot, very open to non-German speakers.

malachi · 16 Mar 2018 at 13:22

Thanks for the heads up

Fusion · 16 Mar 2018 at 19:47

Nothing really to contribute other than to say fair play for taking up the mantle and developing/being proactive. Too many people moan and get stuck in a rut, but never take any action.

Hope it all works out for you.

malachi · 16 Mar 2018 at 22:14

Fusion said:
Nothing really to contribute other than to say fair play for taking up the mantle and developing/being proactive. Too many people moan and get stuck in a rut, but never take any action.

Hope it all works out for you.

Thanks, one thing I've learnt over the past few years is the most successful people in life are the ones who leave their comfort zone to go out and make a change. I have to be one of them.

randomshenans · 19 Mar 2018 at 09:02

I live in France, but have worked in Basel for the last 6.5yrs. Just apply for some stuff, that's what I'd do. You can get a lot of English speaking positions but doing all the certs won't give you too much benefits tbh. Tax is cheaper in Swiss than Germany by quite a bit. Germany can be like 50% and swiss is about 25% (roughly, but completely depends on salary etc.).
Rent is pretty expensive in Swiss; if you're Zurich or Basel you'd be looking at about 1500CHF for your rent, but your wages in IT, even fairly low level would be more than enough to cover this.

Language is Swiss German in both Basel/ Zurich, which is different from standard "High German" as they call it. You can't really be taught Swiss German, it's a dialect, and no courses cover it but most will understand German, and a lot of people understand English. Geneva speaks "Swiss French".

Zurich has more going on than Basel, it's a bit more metropolitan and larger. They have many big companies there, you should get away with business language as English too. A lot of Finance companies there, which is good if you can get in with, even from the IT side it's really useful for all future positions.

Questions, just ask...

Kreeeee · 19 Mar 2018 at 09:10

I hope you don't call Switzerland 'Swiss' with the locals as they hate that, it's like calling England 'English'

They use CH as shorthand when writing in English. Picky I know, but so are the Swiss!

I work in IT in Switzerland so feel free to ask any specific questions or send me a PM if you want a chat.

Edit: I thought this seemed familiar, I posted a similar response in your other thread.

Edit 2: There is no Swiss French, they speak regular French throughout the romandy but with a few local words. It's a bit like how in Wales they speak English but say cwtch for a hug or butty for a sandwich.

randomshenans · 19 Mar 2018 at 09:37

I'm not speaking to Swiss people...

I just couldn't be arsed to type it. I am aware this is what it means.

malachi · 19 Mar 2018 at 10:35

randomshenans said:
I live in France, but have worked in Basel for the last 6.5yrs. Just apply for some stuff, that's what I'd do. You can get a lot of English speaking positions but doing all the certs won't give you too much benefits tbh. Tax is cheaper in Swiss than Germany by quite a bit. Germany can be like 50% and swiss is about 25% (roughly, but completely depends on salary etc.).
Rent is pretty expensive in Swiss; if you're Zurich or Basel you'd be looking at about 1500CHF for your rent, but your wages in IT, even fairly low level would be more than enough to cover this.

Language is Swiss German in both Basel/ Zurich, which is different from standard "High German" as they call it. You can't really be taught Swiss German, it's a dialect, and no courses cover it but most will understand German, and a lot of people understand English. Geneva speaks "Swiss French".

Zurich has more going on than Basel, it's a bit more metropolitan and larger. They have many big companies there, you should get away with business language as English too. A lot of Finance companies there, which is good if you can get in with, even from the IT side it's really useful for all future positions.

Questions, just ask...

Thanks for the advice. One of the main reason for doing the certs is to expand my skill set and learn in areas I am not familiar with. Networking is one of them as my current role is Desktop and Mobile Support Engineer. I very rarely touch anything to do with networking. All these years I have been working in IT and the only qualifications I have to my name is GCSE IT and GNVQ IT I got back in the early 2000's. I doubt any of those would be recognized internationally when applying for jobs in other countries so it was good to a few certs such as MCSA/MCSE.

I have noticed when looking at many jobs specs they say "Computer related degree or similar qualification" I dont have a degree so the alternative was doing abit of self studying.

Kreeeee said:
Edit: I thought this seemed familiar, I posted a similar response in your other thread.

Yeah, thanks. I decided to give a small update instead of digging out an old thread. You and many people also suggested Switzerland. Back when I made the original post I wasn't really sure where I would be moving to, if in Europe at all. Now I have my mind set in these countries. If I have anymore questions (and I know I will) I drop you a PM

randomshenans · 19 Mar 2018 at 12:14

Kreeeee said:
Edit 2: There is no Swiss French, they speak regular French throughout the romandy but with a few local words. It's a bit like how in Wales they speak English but say cwtch for a hug or butty for a sandwich.

The French people I know on those borders would beg to differ

but that's probably because they hate each other.

malachi · 20 Mar 2018 at 05:54

Which websites did you all use to apply for your jobs, was it an smooth process?

randomshenans · 20 Mar 2018 at 09:14

indeed.ch jobs.ch jobserve.co.uk - or my agency coopersgroup.ch

malachi · 20 Mar 2018 at 16:39

Thanks

mid_gen · 26 Mar 2018 at 10:24

malachi said:
Which websites did you all use to apply for your jobs, was it an smooth process?

It's worth making a profile on Xing. It's kinda like LinkedIn, but more popular over here.

malachi · 26 Mar 2018 at 10:49

mid_gen said:
It's worth making a profile on Xing. It's kinda like LinkedIn, but more popular over here.

Thanks, i give that site a look.

D.P. · 5 Apr 2018 at 13:20

I lived in Switzerland form 2006-2011 and have moved back at the end of the year. My wife is German and i spend a lot fo time there, and we nearly moved there last year.

One thing to bear in mind Switzerland and Germany are very different countries, with different cultures, languages, lifestyles, economic, social support, work environments. you are probably putting the 2 together because you are learning German, but you need to realize that unless you are fluent in German it wont really make a difference, and in Switzerland it is just as likely a hindrance. Swiss Germans don't speak German, they don;t like it, they don't like Germans, they feel bad when speaking high German and would much rather speak to you in French or English. You are also limiting options if you were to restrict to the Swiss German side of the country. Lots of IT jobs in Geneva, English only requirement.

Next up is you want to check what kind of certificates and qualifications are sort after in each country. Switzerland for example has very high staffing costs so where ever possible IT staff are off-shored to Romania or India etc. You need to have sufficient skill-base to make your high cost not an issue.

You better hurry up while your passport still allows freedom of movement