But Google is in Switzerland too.
It probably doesn't make sense to compare country level averages to the pay off a single company famous for huge comp.
The question was whether you can get FAANG like compensation in other countries. While Google has an office in Switzerland, it is minuscule in comparison to the US.
There are over 2000 workers there. That's "miniscule" compared to the HQ in California of course, but it's the biggest engineering office they have in Europe. The city it's in only has about 350,000 people, so it's a non-trivial local employer.
But we're not comparing country averages, we're comparing the highly paid spots only. The same multinational company e.g. Google will pay you much less in Switzerland than they would in California.
I don't know where you're getting your info from, but Google salaries in Switzerland are extremely competitive with California. The average for software engineers at Google Zürich is around $300K at L5 I'd say. And the housing situation, while still very expensive, is a lot less fucked up than San Francisco.
Source: I'm a Googler in Zürich. Current total comp is at $320K after 3 years at L5.
