An announcement that can immediately cause fatigue. The Swiss startup Forgis, which specializes in industrial intelligence, has just published a recruitment advertisement on LinkedIn to recruit new employees, but the conditions are controversial among our neighbors, the site Blick reports this Saturday, November 22.
In question is a development manager position at Schlieren, near Zurich, which provides 100 hours of weekly work at a salary of 70,000 Swiss francs per year or around 75,000 euros, accompanied by a 1% stake. Employees can also be accommodated in shared accommodation adjacent to the company premises. Forgis is a fast-growing company that has developed software capable of analyzing and optimizing production processes in real time in industry using artificial intelligence.
“Some Sundays off”
If the amount is enough to attract more than one French employee, then the salary remains below the average Swiss salary, remind our colleagues, which is between 78,000 and 80,000 francs (around 85,000 euros). The very high amount is comparable to the cost of living in Switzerland, where the government and private health systems charge much higher prices than in France.
But it is clearly the speed of the work that quickly raises some questions. Granted, the offer calls for “80 to 100 hours of work” per week with “several Sundays off” generously allocated by the company. This means days of more than 14 hours without any weekly rest. All this adds up to one of the lowest hourly rates, in a country where the average working week is 42 hours, with an official duration of up to 50 hours depending on the sector. “We don’t believe in balancing personal and professional life,” the ad explains.
“We do not force anyone to apply”
And don’t even think about applying for these human resources or marketing offers with just any diploma: the company targets “Master of Science” holders from “leading universities, for example ETH (Zurich Polytechnic)Munich, Oxford or Cambridge”. The company prioritizes “co-opetition” among its employees, namely cooperation that will encourage them to surpass themselves, where each person will encourage others to exceed their limits, with the aim of “healthy competition”.
“At the moment we are looking for founding members, not collaborators. Founders work between 80 and 100 hours per week, depending on the intensity of the work. I think it is legal to spend time as I like. This is life in a start-up company, Silicon Valley style. If someone doesn’t want that, we don’t force anyone to apply,” explained the company’s CEO Federico Martelli to Blick this Saturday.
In a post on LinkedIn, he claims that Forgis received no fewer than 1,200 applications for four positions open this week, including 183 for the position of development manager.
But according to Roger Rudolph, professor of labor law at the University of Zurich, “it is clear that working hours of almost 100 hours is a flagrant violation” of Swiss law and that this could result in criminal prosecution.
