As one those engineers who has worked in SV for 5 years, you definitely do not have to be in the top %5.<p>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&#x27;s hard to change jobs with an L1 visa vs. H1B once you have one, so that should be your goal.<p>Now the USA has it&#x27;s non-salary downsides for sure, but if you&#x27;re just thinking in salary terms then the USA beats CH as far as I can see.