Everything you’ve said up to the end sounds great and makes me want to move there but the final sentence is where most of my worries are and you are exactly right you don’t know me and have no way of knowing if i will fit in…
In Germany i have been thrown into workplaces that i’m not qualified for and not educated for, my first company was a decent start for minimum wage and after barely 2 years there i was already the unofficial shift manager and at that time i had barely the basic German speaking knowledge and that was primarily because 10 people weren’t there (quit, vacation or sick) so i was just told “you can do it” and was left to somehow pull a miracle out of my ass and it didn’t stop there, after a few months i was the unofficial shift manager whether the guy that was there 20 years was there or not, after 5 years i quit and went to Deutsche Post that was the worst 2 months of my life, 1.5 year at a groceries delivery company and now 2 years at a textile company as a crane operator (kinda), never been fired and my point is just because i’m good here doesn’t mean i’ll be good enough for the Swiss.
Skunk@jlai.lu 2 days ago
Honestly I wouldn’t think too much about fitting at work.
Work is just work, work culture is probably similar to Germany so everything is squared out, mostly. As everywhere, you can find a job where the boss is lame and the management is a shit show. I’ve seen bosses that use company money for drugs and forgot to pay employees but I’ve also seen the opposite. Generally speaking in bigger companies everything is written and respected.
Salaries? Here is a table with salary classes. Yearly compensation? Here are the HR rules to give them. (etc. etc.)
“fitting” and “job culture” is different between Zurich, Geneva or Lugano and I’d say it is more about fitting in life rather than at work.
I’d say you might have a harder time fitting in Swiss-German because you (probably) speak hochdeutsch. If your German is too good you will have to learn the local switzerdütsch. At first people will adapt to you and speak hochdeutsch, but after a while they will switch to switzerdütsch and assume it is your job to learn it (and yeah, it is). Whereas is you live in Romandie or Ticino, as you don’t speak French or Italian everything will be in English until you are able to speak the local native language (but in the end, yeah you have to do the job of learning the local language same as with switzerdütsch)
Fitting in Switzerland is quite easy according to me, just do the same as the others. If they are quiet in the train, do the same. If they are laughing around a beer, do the same. But the general rules are quite easy; Don’t put your feet on the seat in front of you in public transports, don’t litter, don’t be a dick. After all it’s only about being respectful to people and stuff.
Now for the clichés. Sometimes you can hear about the Röstigraben which don’t really exist but still exist in some ways. If you look at videos from Emily-National or Camille Federale you might often see us, Romands (french-speaking) describe the german-speaking with the word “square” and the hand movements that describe that (and honestly, it’s not always a bad thing to be “squared”, specially in a professional environment). The opposite is they say that we drink too much and like to party.
For example, there is a joke that a former federal counselor (aka, president) said about the French part while in fact he never said that, not publicly tho.
(to read with a strong German accent):
“Les Romands toujours rigoler, jamais travailler.” Meaning: “The Romands always laughing, never working”
All of that are clichés and jokes, in reality we are different but friends. And same goes with foreigners, approx 40% of the total population is not Swiss, that is a huge number for any European country. If they were treated like shit and not accepted by others would they still live here? (and again, you will find some dumb racist fucks, like everywhere with human being. But this is not the norm).
PS: I cannot vouch for the Camille and Emily videos on Watson as I’ve only seen a few in French but the links I gave you are in German and I don’t understand.
Eternal192@anarchist.nexus 2 days ago
I realised i’ll probably have issues at first especially when i watched a video comparing Hochdeutsch and Switzerdütsch and it’ll take some time to absorb the differences.