Luca (recent Polimi graduate): 'I earn three times as much in Berne as in Italia as an engineer'

At 26 years old Luca Ferro says that 'the point is not how much you earn' but 'the growth that work experience allows you' and 'what you can do with your salary. After three years of work, I live in a flat in the centre of Berne, I can go on holiday twice a year and I am saving for the future'.

Luca is an engineer from the Milan Polytechnic, a robotics enthusiast who, after many interviews first for an internship and then for a real job, chose to go and live in nearby Switzerland. Why we ask. "It was consistent with what I was looking for both from a professional point of view and in terms of the conditions of entry into the labour market.

His first professional experience was a paid internship with CHF 1,300 net per month in a multinational company with 50,000 employees and 'with a very structured and international mentality where I was welcomed into a young talent programme, without having to worry about the more bureaucratic and practical aspects. A dedicated team helped me to find a flat with subsidised rent and to open a current account, which was also subsidised, allowing me to focus on the work right away. Although I was on an internship, they also offered me the opportunity to work from home and manage my time and activities independently".

After graduating, in 2023 an offer of employment arrived for a year 'with a contract for 65 thousand francs per year at a very low tax rate that translated into 4 thousand francs net per month,' he recounts. 'The salary I had was much higher than all the offers I had received in Italia. In Milan the offers never came above 24-25 thousand euro gross.

With a salary like that, between rent and expenses, I could never have had either real autonomy or the possibility of saving anything. In Switzerland, even though the cost of living is high, with 4,000 euro net per month to start with, I had this possibility'.