Work and graduate school in Switzerland
Hello, dear habravchane. It so happened that about six months ago I managed to get a job in Switzerland, at the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (EPFL) in Lausanne. By the current moment a lot of different impressions have accumulated, which I want to tell about.
I’ll say right away that I have never had a chance to work abroad for a long time before that, and I also didn’t go on holiday on Belarus either.
So, I found a job offer quite by accident, looking through our university forum. The announcement, as it turned out, was placed by a graduate of our university, in whose position I subsequently found myself. From the very beginning I was upset by the fact that I did not reach the stated requirements for a candidate a little, but I still decided to write, having embellished my skills a little.
After the standard description of his achievements and life goals, it was necessary to demonstrate his ability to program. For this, it was necessary to solve (and implement) a puzzle for cleverly sorting input data (numbers, strings, dates) and write an average complexity web application on django. After performing these tasks, I was among the suitable candidates, and the final test was to write additional functionality for the existing code. It turned out to be much harder than abstract tasks, since I was not at all familiar with the code, and time was limited. But in the end everything ended well and after a telephone conversation with employers I was officially hired, and I began to actively get involved in the development process, get acquainted with the same code, and in parallel began the process of obtaining a visa. Getting a work visa to Switzerland is a rather lengthy process, usually takes about 2 months.
You can read about the project itself on our website www.sciencewise.info , in this article I will not dwell on it in detail, but I will go straight to the moment of arrival of banks and hours in the country.
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When I got there, I was very impressed. Despite my knowledge of the stories and photos about life in Europe, I just could not fully imagine how it differs from Russia. Now all the local benefits already seem familiar and natural, but at first I was fascinated by almost everything - from the modern railway station, air-conditioned electric train cars and the internal amenities of public transport in general to the overall friendliness and friendliness of others. Immediately, striking savings and optimization of everything in the world are striking: the light is turned on by the motion sensor in each corridor of residential and working premises, almost all pedestrian crossings are equipped with a traffic light button, in unloaded hours the metro trains consist of fewer cars than in peak hours .
Separately, we would like to note the culture of cycling in Switzerland, almost every inhabitant has a bicycle here, from student to senior citizen, it is very convenient to navigate around the neighborhood and play sports, most of the roads are marked by bike lanes, and there are separate bike trails for traveling picturesque places.
Geographically, the place of my work is one of the buildings of the university, and the campus of the EPFL itself is very unusual compared to Russian university campuses. When walking, it is most likely that its huge area is amazing - it takes at least 25-30 minutes to get from one end of the campus to the other on foot. On campus there are plenty of open spaces equipped with tables for playing table tennis and table football. Part of the territory is often protected with a portable fence, creating a pasture for local sheep or cows. Believe me, I was very impressed when behind the opened doors of the train at the subway station I saw a cow grazing on the lawn in front of me.
You can get to the EPFL for work or as an intern for 6 months, or immediately apply for a PhD for 4 years, however many local laboratories (especially those specializing in Computer Science) take PhD students to themselves only after you have successfully established yourself as an intern. If it is interesting, I can describe in more detail the procedure for applying for a PhD.
At the moment I am here for about 4.5 months and, despite all the beauty and colorful local culture, I have already managed to miss my girlfriend, friends and relatives in Russia and in Russia itself. Perhaps this is the only thing because of which I still can not give a definite answer to my employers about my future plans for work here.
Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend that you try your hand and work abroad, you will get a huge amount of experience and you will definitely have something to compare your work with in Russia. I do not think that in the near future, Russia will be able to achieve a state of everyday life comparable to the countries of Western Europe. Here all the conditions have been created in order to allow a person to work and rest effectively, to feel safe from bureaucratic red tape, traffic jams, crowds in the subway and other nonsense.
A couple of photos:
local student residence
view of the alps from the city
I’ll say right away that I have never had a chance to work abroad for a long time before that, and I also didn’t go on holiday on Belarus either.
Prologue
So, I found a job offer quite by accident, looking through our university forum. The announcement, as it turned out, was placed by a graduate of our university, in whose position I subsequently found myself. From the very beginning I was upset by the fact that I did not reach the stated requirements for a candidate a little, but I still decided to write, having embellished my skills a little.
After the standard description of his achievements and life goals, it was necessary to demonstrate his ability to program. For this, it was necessary to solve (and implement) a puzzle for cleverly sorting input data (numbers, strings, dates) and write an average complexity web application on django. After performing these tasks, I was among the suitable candidates, and the final test was to write additional functionality for the existing code. It turned out to be much harder than abstract tasks, since I was not at all familiar with the code, and time was limited. But in the end everything ended well and after a telephone conversation with employers I was officially hired, and I began to actively get involved in the development process, get acquainted with the same code, and in parallel began the process of obtaining a visa. Getting a work visa to Switzerland is a rather lengthy process, usually takes about 2 months.
You can read about the project itself on our website www.sciencewise.info , in this article I will not dwell on it in detail, but I will go straight to the moment of arrival of banks and hours in the country.
')
Switzerland
When I got there, I was very impressed. Despite my knowledge of the stories and photos about life in Europe, I just could not fully imagine how it differs from Russia. Now all the local benefits already seem familiar and natural, but at first I was fascinated by almost everything - from the modern railway station, air-conditioned electric train cars and the internal amenities of public transport in general to the overall friendliness and friendliness of others. Immediately, striking savings and optimization of everything in the world are striking: the light is turned on by the motion sensor in each corridor of residential and working premises, almost all pedestrian crossings are equipped with a traffic light button, in unloaded hours the metro trains consist of fewer cars than in peak hours .
Separately, we would like to note the culture of cycling in Switzerland, almost every inhabitant has a bicycle here, from student to senior citizen, it is very convenient to navigate around the neighborhood and play sports, most of the roads are marked by bike lanes, and there are separate bike trails for traveling picturesque places.
Job
Geographically, the place of my work is one of the buildings of the university, and the campus of the EPFL itself is very unusual compared to Russian university campuses. When walking, it is most likely that its huge area is amazing - it takes at least 25-30 minutes to get from one end of the campus to the other on foot. On campus there are plenty of open spaces equipped with tables for playing table tennis and table football. Part of the territory is often protected with a portable fence, creating a pasture for local sheep or cows. Believe me, I was very impressed when behind the opened doors of the train at the subway station I saw a cow grazing on the lawn in front of me.
You can get to the EPFL for work or as an intern for 6 months, or immediately apply for a PhD for 4 years, however many local laboratories (especially those specializing in Computer Science) take PhD students to themselves only after you have successfully established yourself as an intern. If it is interesting, I can describe in more detail the procedure for applying for a PhD.
Total
At the moment I am here for about 4.5 months and, despite all the beauty and colorful local culture, I have already managed to miss my girlfriend, friends and relatives in Russia and in Russia itself. Perhaps this is the only thing because of which I still can not give a definite answer to my employers about my future plans for work here.
Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend that you try your hand and work abroad, you will get a huge amount of experience and you will definitely have something to compare your work with in Russia. I do not think that in the near future, Russia will be able to achieve a state of everyday life comparable to the countries of Western Europe. Here all the conditions have been created in order to allow a person to work and rest effectively, to feel safe from bureaucratic red tape, traffic jams, crowds in the subway and other nonsense.
A couple of photos:
local student residence
view of the alps from the city
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/99395/
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