San Diego is the armpit of California! Thing is, I have no problem with hard work. It's nice to be in the sun with people that smile and to go chill on the beach on the weekend and go eat out with the family for $30. I'd go.

I work in the semiconductor industry, I design electronic circuits for implementation on chips (micro-electronics).

Nor I.

However, it's not somewhere that I'd choose to live (though I did consider it before moving to Ticino 21 years ago).

Tom

Yes, basically in Switzerland there are two kinds of people: murderers and white people.

Thanks, but I prefer the opening hours here.

Tom

I envy you. I'd live in Ticino if there was a way I could earn money there. But this isn't a comparison between the warm, stunningly beautiful, latin environment of Ticino, but rather the cold, rainy, post industrial mitteleuropaische Zurich. OK, lol I'm overstating, but still on balance I'd go to California.

I couldnt bear to live in California. Its just seems like a crap version of home (Australia). NY would be awesome to live and work though

Career and family wise, I like europe. Sure my family lives on the other side of the world but my wife and I have a nice, clean, laidback life here in Zurich (once we sorted permits....:S ). And I can't read the paper so I'm completely ignorant to political things. Just the way I like it

Where were you?

I once worked there for an internship for 3 months. NY is truely awesome, the centre of the world as far as I am concerned.

I'm sure you do.

And I agree with all of you.

We are in this time of the year where we are looking for new positions. We have some offers on the table and all are very extremely opposite of each others.

We took our decision according of family and career together! And yes, we could have take the job that offer the best pay check, the best boost in my husband's career but with a very shitty lifestyle for the family.

What we choose was the Boost with family lifestyle. Not the money. The money will probably stay the same at the end of the month but the quality of life will be much better for us.

It depends of what you are looking for. For me, I am going crazy of how excited I am to learn a new culture and a new language (that I actually enjoy) and I like it when life moves, when you get a lot of opportunities to do plenty of things at the moment you get out of your house. Switzerland is pretty but very very boring to me.

For us, the culture of the place is very important. If the population is warm, if they like kids, if it is easy going (mentally) if help is easy to find and to afford, if going out and enjoying the place with kids is possible, if people will be friendly to families, etc. This is for us much more important that the cash in the bank account.

that's strange, i always thought of australia as a crap version of california

Its strange for a person to have a differing opinion?

To us this isn't a Switzerland Vs San Francisco argument.
If my husband walked in the door right now and told me that he thought it would benefit us to move, I'd be packing.

But whats so frustrating about it all is that there is no concrete discernible benefit (career wise) other than 'networking opportunities'. In fact the move from here to the US and subsequent salary conversion from Chf to US$ puts him over his US salary range. So financially we wont benefit for a number of years either.

He'll have at least 2 hours of commuting every day and he's going to have to fight to get 4 weeks annual leave (currently they're only offering 2) and longer working hours so it will impact on our family life.

All this because one of the bosses wants him at his right hand?

Benefit in bold. You have to be in it to win it. You move, you become invaluable, you ask for more money or you leave and enter an environment with loads of opportunities.

In such a case, the answer is clearly NO

agreed, boss moves up, right hand man gets the boss' job

Or at least learns everything that the boss knows and right hand man becomes worth millions to competing company.

I think we can pack up and go home now, I'm not sure anything else of value can be added. Life = career + family. you cannot easily separate the two.

No place is perfect, the more places you stay the longer is the "wish" list..
I am sure you will miss lot of good things about switzerland, but I am glad you have already started looking at the brighter side of your new move. Good Luck