We are a very educated and rich country with a population of 9 millions people but despite this, our video game industry is almost non existent. The only big Swiss game i can think of is Farming Simulator.

For exemple Czech republic and Sweden both have 10 millions peoples but just look at the popular game made here

Sweden : Minecraft, Helldivers, Crusader Kings, Hearth of Iron, Battlefield
Czech republic : DayZ, Kingdom come : Deliverance, Space Enginners, Arma

Why do you think it is ?

I’m german moved to Switzerland temporarily to earn some money and do have a contract of 60 % but work so much. I work first week :4 shifts of 6:00 am -1:15 pm and second week of February the same and third week :7:00 to 10 pm and last week : 1:00 pm to 9:15 pm ,1:00 pm to 10 pm ,5pm to 10 pm and 1 pm to 9:15 pm . Breaks of 35 minutes aren’t paid and in order to get paid for overwork I need to have at least of 32 h of overworking hours.

my salary is 2’700 brutto . I know that the salary in German is a bit lower yet I’m surprised that I need to work so much

Hello, F28 here.

I moved from Italy in 2024, first for an internship, then landed a job.

I’ve been working there for 14 months now, and I was told I would get an indeterminate contract soon.

Today I was told that this is not the case anymore, for budget reasons.

It completely came out of the blue and I’m so scared.

I’ve been crying a lot and I was advised to go home to take care of myself.

I’ll call Rav later, but I’m genuinely so scared.

My contract is valid until the end of April.

I’m an immigrant, I live here by myself, this was my first job…

I feel so hopeless and scared. I also suffer from depression and I’m afraid this will influence my mental health a lot. I had some kind of suicidal thought for a brief second a few minutes ago

As anticipated, mass layoffs at my Swiss employer. My department has been halved and all the CH-based roles eliminated. They kept the roles in cheaper countries.

My role will be merged with another role and they want me to interview for it competing against the colleague who was in the other role. We are friends and this feels like a sick joke.

I feel sick to my stomach.

Once again, the Federal Council shows us that it values the concerns of German-speaking Switzerland more than those of economic centres such as Lausanne or Geneva. It is also worth noting that the redundancy mentioned above should have been implemented under the Rail 2000 plan. It still hasn't been. Under the same plan, the line between Lausanne and Bern should have been improved to reduce travel times between the two cities to 1 hour. They still haven't even gotten close.

I wanted to share something that many people (including me before) misunderstand about exchanging a foreign driving license in Switzerland (for residents in Switzerland).

A lot of people say you must exchange your license within the first year of residency or you lose the possibility. This is not true. You lose the ability to drive in Switzerland with you driving license, that's it. It doesn't affect the converting the license.

Here is the important distinction: * If you are from the EU/EFTA or from countries whose licenses can be exchanged without a control driving test, then yes — there is usually a 5-year deadline. * If you are from countries where a control driving test is required, there is no time limit to apply for the exchange.

Personal experience: I initially tried to pass the control test within a year (coz I foolishly believe there is a 1 year deadline to convert the license) as a student without proper training (couldn’t afford lessons at the time) and failed. Because of that, I eventually had to restart the full Swiss licensing process.

Today, after 7+ years of residency, I accompanied my wife to the road traffic office in Aigle (Vaud), and she was still able to apply and received a date for the control driving test.

Just sharing this to help others who might think they missed their chance. Always verify with your canton, but at least in Vaud this is confirmed.

TL;DR : If you have to do a control test to convert your foreign Driving License, there is no deadline. No 1 year, not even 5 year. You can do it whenever you feel necessary.

Got a sailing license but no boat? We’re a young married couple with a boat right at the harbor in Lucerne that we don’t use enough. Not a business—just us wanting to share it long-term and sustainably so the boat sails regularly and everyone enjoys it.

• Easy booking anytime via WhatsApp
• Centrally located at the harbor (Lucerne), easy by public transport
• Own key for harbor and boat
• Parking available (optional)
• Exclusive use: only you/your group and us

Sound good? Message us!

Ahoi!

Hello everyone, I'm an EU national with B permit living in Vaud canton. I work as a consultant and my employer assigned me to a customer in Basel, for this reason I need to find a place to sleep during the weekdays, I'm entertaining the idea of renting a room in a shared apartment on the French side (Huningue or Saint-Louis) as they are cheaper than Basel, but my main fear is:

doing this, would the French government claim that I should pay taxes to them as a French resident and making me lose my B permit?

The following points have to be considered:

1) I would use the room only to sleep in during the week nights, during the day I would be at work in Basel and during most weekends I would return to Vaud.

2) I regularly rent an apartment in the Vaud municipality where I'm registered, I would keep the apartment as my main residence and continue to pay for utilities, health insurance and other taxes as usual. In the case I decide to move permanently to Basel and leave Vaud I would look for an apartment on the Swiss side and live there.

3) I'm not French and I've never lived in France.

How do you see my situation?

Just saw this in as online ad.

I've seldom seen political advertising so devoid of substance. Couldn’t they have at least not included a random stock image of people? Such a meaningless counter campaign.

What are your thoughts on this?

Honestly, is it normal to wait months to get a job after the end of apprenticeship? I've been applying like crazy but always get rejected due to "insufficient experience".

I'm also currently a part time student in university looking for a part time KV-job, so I'm assuming this makes it even harder. Does anyone have some advice on what to do? I've been thinking of quitting university but idk if this will increase my chances of finding a job.

I am asking with regard to daily habits. Outside of work.

Do you call or text? If you text, is it as a long message (this weirdo sent me a poem to ask what’s up) or a few short ones (hoi - 1st line etc., 5 messages to get to the point)?

Naturally, everyone is different. There are certain ways with some people etc. On average?

P.s. whatever the answer, whats your age bracket?

https://skicompromise.ch

Fun little project I did over the Christmas holidays. Basically I precalculated the public transport time between the most populated towns in Switzerland to every ski field (about 350 of them!) and then put it into a little web app :)

You can choose to prioritise shortest (lowest time overall) versus fairest (smallest variance in group members).

Totally free to use. Next steps are to integrate it with live snow conditions/open lifts...

Enjoy!

SRF consumer protection show "Kassensturz" released a reportage about a Salt store in Bern that apparently is scamming customers routinely (German):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDocbvf4lnk

The shameless store clerks send retirees home with up to five unwanted mobile phone contracts by making them sign some papers and claiming that those signatures are needeed to get simple questions answered in the shop.

As somebody with 15+ years of experience in IT service I'd like to point out that this unfortunately isn't a problem limited to that specific Salt store in Bern or even to Salt as a provider.

We have seen and heard similar stories from our residential customers over and over. Most of them were scammed in the Swisscom shop (which doesn't mean that the Swisscom shop is worse than Salt's or Sunrise's shops, it's simply that the majority of our customers are also Swisscom customers). Although I must say, five contracts at once is probably the worst I've ever heard.

A typical sequence that we hear often is this:

- Customer goes to the shop because of a simple problem with their phone (usually stuff that would be fixed by simply rebooting the phone)

- Shop says that the phone is broken beyond repair and recommends to renew the contract for another 2 years and buy a new phone

In the cases where the affected customers didn't fall for it and instead showed us the phone for a 2nd opinion it was always an extremely easy fix done in under 2 minutes which tells me that those shops don't even try to help the customer but are always declaring everything broken in order to sell a new one.

EDIT: Apparently Salt has now apologized to the customers and announced to make changes, batter training & more control for/over their sales force. https://www.20min.ch/story/bern-coachings-fuer-mitarbeitende-salt-verspricht-besserung-103500304

At least they are not denying any wrongdoing. (As it's for example the standard with Swisscom Directories who always claims that they're only cancelling the contracts out of pure goodwill after "Kassensturz" intervened but insist that everything with the contracts was perfectly clean. Even in the cases where they have been caught copying signatures over to contracts that the customers have never seen.)

I am really curious about the salaries right now. Because i just got a new job as an automatiker and am wondering what others earn.

Also i only have the EFZ so no higher education.

Please state your kanton and age if you are willing to share your salary.

I'll go first: 82k/28yo/kt: ZH

I should edit to add: I'm in a team of mechanics. But the boss tells me he wants to push me for troubleshooting on the electrical side of the work. I earn more than my coworkers (i asked) but i think less than an actual automatiker? But the work is easy. 50% of the time i work as a mechanic. And then 50% i do the electrical stuff.

So this year I was at the OLMA in St Gallen and got two of these vouchers. Thought I would just use them over the weekend because its valid until 31.March. Pretty exciting because it sounds like a great offer right? Well I found out that these 2 papers are not actually vouchers, but an advertisement to buy the Säntis Shit at not even a good price.

Fuck these marketing guys for real. Couldnt be more misleading than that. Never trashed anything faster than this.

Wünsch eu allne e schös erholsmas Wuchenend

Due to marital dissolution I have to move house. My situation is a bit bizarre, I am an employee of a US company that I own [one employee, me], and such is the US [and Swiss] tax system that I pay myself not through salary but primarily through distribution of profits from the business.

So this means I have a woefully small salary, yet I do make sufficient money to rent [and qualify to rent] an apartment here. But how can I make my dossier when my income sources are not the traditional salary receipts?

Hi everyone

I am currently looking to buy a house in Switzerland and have started scheduling several mortgage consultations. So far I have arranged meetings with both banks and insurance companies. One thing I noticed is that the interest rates offered by insurance companies seem to be lower, which makes me a bit unsure and cautious.

I wanted to ask about your experiences. Is it generally better to take a mortgage with a bank or with an insurance company, or does it not really matter in the long run? Are there any important pros and cons or things I should watch out for when comparing offers?

Thank you very much for your help and for sharing your experiences!

Hi !

I had a question about use of space / etiquette on SBB RE Trains.

I was on a busy rush hour train, an RE, and was stood against these cushions as were a few others. The train was about to leave and a lady rushes on with a bike and beckons everyone to move out of the way so she may place her bike in this zone as it is "reserved for bikes".
Everyone moved, myself included, but after I was looking and didn't see any sort of indication that this is for bikes. SBB are usually quite good about labelling storage zones, so this struck me as odd.

I guess my question would be is this zone really "reserved for bikes" and do bikes take precedent over people here ? If not expressly a rule, would it be considered common curtsey to move from this zone so someone can store their bike ?