Considering the low taxes and lower cost of living in Zurich (yes, lower than Seattle), and the much higher quality of life, Zurich is a no-brainer.

I'd say if you get a job in the same company, Zurich is competitive. The problem is that if you lose your job at Google in Seattle there are several hundreds of FAANG positions and probably thousands of other 200k$+ SWE jobs you can reapply to. In Zurich you will maybe see a dozen of openings in the small subsidiaries of Apple, Microsoft & Co., and maybe some individual job offers from small AI companies, and applying to any of these positions basically means competing against the whole rest of the continent.

Ex-Googlers in Zurich have no trouble finding other jobs. For people with the right CV, there are a lot more openings than that.

> and applying to any of these positions basically means competing against the whole rest of the continent

Which should not be an issue, if as I read a lot in this page, "all good European engineers move to the US". It means that you only have to compete against the "bad ones" that stayed back, right? /s

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou... says Zurich is 33% more expensive and I remember it that way.

Numbeo shows averages, and the basket of goods that it considers is not what a well-off person would buy. I Zurich I could live perfectly well without having a car, just with public transportation, and French and Italian cheeses and wine are a cheaper than in Seattle.

As a well off person your most significant purchase is going to be a house, and in Seattle they are 3x cheaper.

I just left Seattle Greater Area and my 350sqm admittedly old house + a small ADU with an outdoor pool went for $2M (at the moment it was a downturn, so maybe $2.5M tops now). What can you get for that money in Greater Zurich Area? A 100sqm flat?

In the Zurich Greater Area, you can get this for example: https://www.immoscout24.ch/buy/4002631314. Keep in mind that in most of Europe, real estate ads show the living space, i.e. surface net of walls, corridors, closets, cupboards, etc... whereas in US/Canada it's the gross surface. Those 350sqm are prolly 280 "livable". So if you're willing to live outside the Zurich city core, prices are comparable to Seattle but construction quality is way higher.

Also, most mortgages in Switzerland are very peculiar: you pay 20% down, but then you don't ever pay off the principal, only interest on the remaining 80% which is owned in perpetuity by the bank. The interest rates are kept very low and the currency quite stable, because most of the citizens rely on it. So your monthly interest could be 400-500 CHF, and you invest the rest however you prefer.

This is incomparable. Here's a friend's house from the neighborhood: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2845-140th-Ave-NE-Bellevu...

much larger, much closer to everything, almost an acre of land

How long was the commute from your place?

The rail network in and around Zurich is reliable and punctual, so you can live anywhere along that 30km long lake and still have your commute be 30-40m, without needing to search for a parking spot and whatnot.

I experienced this myself when I was briefly commutung from Pfäffikon(SZ).

Commute to where? 15 minutes walking from Microsoft main campus and 10 minutes driving from a new Facebook campus. 10 minutes driving to a good daycare.