As a side note, half of the team we replaced in Switzerland were from the ETH and Lausanne. Our interns here get more work done than those guys! It's completely surreal, which is why I felt so strongly about your comment.
I got a US Engineering degree from RIT, when I got back to to Switzerland I couldn't even get responses to waiter jobs, let alone programming. That said, I'm first generation Swiss with a non-Swiss name, they probably didn't even look at my CV.
I know people with similar stories in the industry, most of them in the Ukraine and Thailand actually.