Compensation wise it's still a better idea to move to the USA to work at google & co then. A typical goofacesoft sr engineer gets +$250k/yr total compensation + paid for health insurance with a %30-%40 total income tax rate as a sr engineer.
Also to start a corporation, you have no capitalization requirements and it's easy-ish to hire canadians, australians and people work who work in a foreign office for +1 yr on a L visa. The waiting times for citizenship in the USA are surprisingly less than switzerland if you're not chinese or indian, which is pretty bad when the USA beats you in citizenship waiting time.
And most important of all, there is a shit ton of VC cash to get investment dollars from.
I think you confuse many things here. For canadians US is the better choice but for people from the EU who are not top 5% of the engineers, Switzerland is the best choice.
Being in the top 30% of engineers or even mediocre means you will make a decent or very decent living in Switzerland. I am not sure, if this is true for the US.
As one those engineers who has worked in SV for 5 years, you definitely do not have to be in the top %5.
You probably spent 4+ years of your life going to some sort of university to get a degree to help get something like 60k euro per year software job. So is spending a couple of months really getting good at cracking the coding interview and doing some practice interviews is definitely worth the $70k+ equivalent after tax salary bump. Even getting a job at a FaceGooSoft european office and later transferring to HQ in SF would be a good idea. Do realize though it's hard to change jobs with an L1 visa vs. H1B once you have one, so that should be your goal.
Now the USA has it's non-salary downsides for sure, but if you're just thinking in salary terms then the USA beats CH as far as I can see.
You're assuming that everyone with a bachelor or master in CS can just walk into FaceGooSoft after reading "cracking the coding interview".
That is not true.
The false-negative rate at FaceGooSoft is very high, they have a revolving door of candidates, that is why they can afford it.
I am interviewing people for IT-jobs for over a year now and I met many engineers that are Google-material but did not make it into a tier-1 firm for some reason (they where scared-off by annoying recruiters, where asked unlucky questions at interviews, did not even try or even want to make it in there).
Hence, they have to work at mediocre companies and life at mediocre companies is better in Switzerland than in the US, I believe.
That is why you apply for 10 companies, get 3+ offers and maybe try a few times. They know that people get rejected for BS reasons and it's totally cool to apply again after +6 months. They even will start contacting you again to apply! With enough prep and determination, you can do it, and the amount of time & money required is far less than getting any 2 year masters degree.
You can even apply to not FaceGooSoft, get in the USA with smaller company X and then try from a more comfortable position of having a work visa and being in the USA.
Also to start a corporation, you have no capitalization requirements and it's easy-ish to hire canadians, australians and people work who work in a foreign office for +1 yr on a L visa. The waiting times for citizenship in the USA are surprisingly less than switzerland if you're not chinese or indian, which is pretty bad when the USA beats you in citizenship waiting time.
And most important of all, there is a shit ton of VC cash to get investment dollars from.