An announcement that could lead straight to burnout. The Swiss start-up Forgis, specializing in industrial intelligence, has just published a recruitment ad on LinkedIn to hire new employees, but the conditions are controversial among our neighbors, the Blick site reported this Saturday, November 22.
In question, a position of development manager in Schlieren, near Zurich, which provides for 100 hours of weekly work for a salary of 70,000 Swiss francs annually, or around 75,000 euros, accompanied by 1% shares. The employee may also be accommodated in a shared accommodation adjacent to the company site. Forgis is a fast-growing company that has developed software capable of analyzing and optimizing production processes in real time in an industry using artificial intelligence.
“A few Sundays off”
If the sum is enough to attract more than one French employee, it remains below the Swiss median salary, remind our colleagues, rather located between 78,000 and 80,000 francs (around 85,000 euros). Very high sums which are proportionate to the cost of living in Switzerland, where the public and private health systems charge much higher prices than in France.
But it is obviously the pace of work which quickly raised several questions. Indeed, the offer requires “80 to 100 hours of work” per week with “a few Sundays off” generously allocated by the company. That is, days of more than 14 hours without any weekly rest. All for one of the lowest hourly rates, in a country where the working week averages 42 hours, with a legal duration of up to 50 hours depending on the sector. “We don’t believe in balancing personal and professional life,” the ad specifies.
“We don’t force anyone to apply”
And don’t think about applying for these human resources or marketing offers with just any diploma: the company is targeting holders of a “Master of Science” from a “leading university, for example ETH (Zurich Polytechnic)Munich, Oxford or Cambridge”. The company promotes “co-opetition” between its employees, i.e. cooperation that will push them to surpass themselves, where everyone will encourage others to push their limits, with the aim of “healthy competition”.
“We are currently looking for founding members, not collaborators. The founders work between 80 and 100 hours per week, depending on the intensity of the work. I think it’s legal to spend my time however I want. This is life in a start-up, Silicon Valley style. If someone doesn’t want that, we don’t force anyone to apply,” the company’s CEO Federico Martelli explained to Blick this Saturday.
In a post on LinkedIn, he claims that Forgis received no less than 1,200 applications for the four positions open this week, including 183 for that of development manager.
But according to Roger Rudolph, professor of labor law at the University of Zurich, it is “clear that a working time of almost 100 hours constitutes a flagrant violation” of Swiss law and that this could lead to criminal prosecution.