My espresso machine would like a word. It's pretty compact yet weighs 17 kgs / 37.5 lbs due to essentially being a dense block of stainless steel, copper and brass.
Finding an expensive apartment vs. not finding an apartment at all, really?
Say you are single, have some experience and get low-balled into a CHF 100k contract. Not counting 13th salary this translates to CHF 7.7k per month gross / CHF 6k net (before health insurance). I.e. at up to 1/3 of your monthly net you can spend up to 2k per month on an apartment. There are plenty of those to choose from inside Zurich city, even if some might be small for the price or have other drawbacks. You can find cheaper/bigger/nicer easily by expanding your search radius to the (extremely well-connected) suburbs.
I would describe my personal experience in Zurich (and having lived in Berlin before) a bit differently.
Everyone loves whining about finding a place to rent in both places, but in Berlin it's about finding anything at all whereas in Zurich it's usually about finding something cheap and ideally in a desirable Kreis 3 or Kreis 4 neighborhood. Yes it's competitive, but you will find something with realistic expectations + budget.
NB: I don't earn a big tech salary either. If you land a Google/Meta/IBM/Disney/adjacent job, the (rental) housing market should not give you any headaches.
As a rower myself I wanted to type the same correction initially, but then realized that the parent comment is probably referring to a rowboat rather than a racing shell. No sliding seat, no leg drive.