Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price for you as in other European countries, more or less ! The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes.
In exchange, employees get as standard :
* a top notch, virtually free healthcare system with no concept of exclusions or "pre-conditions"
* Usually no student loans to repay because their higher education was free, unless they went for a private business/engineering school but that's still an order of magnitude cheaper than a US university.
* a comfortable (unsustainable ?) state pension later on.
* unemployment insurance that covers around 70% pay for months.
* 5 weeks holiday + public holidays
* Non San Francisco / London / NYC renting costs (although Paris is quite bad by French standards, and much worse than Berlin)
If you're US-based, think about your monthly budget and what goes towards healthcare/co-pay, student loans, kids college fund, 401k, and building an emergency fund in case you get laid off / severely ill. None of that is strictly required in France (although some of it is available as extra private coverage, and a good idea)
This is why cross-border salary comparisons are pointless, it's really apples & oranges.
I'm French and living in London, and I'd personally rather have the freedom to have a higher take-home pay and contribute towards the above items myself as I see fit. But I'm not fooling myself thinking that because my take-home pay is twice as high each month, the math is as simple as that. I know that I'm so much more on my own here than at home...
I love how people trot out universal healthcare or pensions as a reason to ignore that European salaries are so much lower.
With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings. That $100k is more than enough to build up a massive nest egg which will provide for me better than any pension or unemployment insurance would.
If you play your cards right, you can be financially independent after about a decade of working in the US tech industry. Your entire working career could be only 10 years. That would be insane to imagine in Europe, yet you think France has better quality of live?
You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe.
European developers are underpaid. Full stop. You could dramatically improve your financial circumstances by getting a job at a US tech company (though the visa situation makes that challenging).
Well, that means you're part of the "1%". In that case, you obviously don't have (m)any real problems. So, if you're thinking for the "1%", then your logic holds up.
If on the other hand you believe to be part of the "1%" soon, then this quote may be of interest to you:
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
More importantly, I'm not making some grand proclamation on morality of French governance vs American governances. I'm just affirming that as a developer, you are much better off in the US (particularly NYC/SV) where such salaries are fairly achievable and common.
Not quite right. What you are thinking of is household income where $400k is about the 99th percentile - usually achieved by two high earning individuals.
For individual incomes, $288k makes you a 1%er, and $200k is in the top 2.5%. [1]
> I'm not making some grand proclamation on morality
Me neither. The point I was making is:
Due to content in our media/movies (and general culture), most of us tend to think that we will be millionaires in the future, which will lead us to sacrifice some important things and aspects. However, most of us do not end up being millionaires. More precisely: The $200k/yr only holds true for a certain lucky elite.
Not really unless you are living in Switzerland which is no part of EU.
I got a friend and atm he works in a top bank at the highest position a dev can acquire. He makes £120k a year without his bonuses etc. Thing is he is living in London and houses are so expensive in London and generally the cost of life and the taxes are drilling him. Am not gonna say he is not comfortable, he definitely is alright, although he has been trying to get transferred to Singapore or USA because after his research he found out he would be 2 times better off working there.
So yes I think devs working outside of the EU are doing better for themselves.
I lived in London where I was on 115k GBP per year. To be honest I lived in an ex council flat in not a great area and never really felt like I had "made" it (despite being in the perceived 1%). Everything went to saving for a house deposit for a pretty miserable house in london!!! The only time we actually felt middle class was when we travelled to cheaper destinations overseas.
I was transferred to SF about 2 years ago. I got a nice pay increase to $250k, live in a lovely neighbourhood, bought 2 cars (1 new, 1 nearly new), 2 motorcycles (1 new, 1 nearly new), have already saved 100k USD and now planning on getting my sweet wife a great boob job.
> “Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” - Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
This quote is by John Steinbeck not by Ronald Wright. Ronald Wright merely quoted Steinbeck.
The way Steinbeck actually said it (and the way you're implying it) is different than how Americans perceive this. To Americans, being a 'millionaire' is a goal to aspire to, it's like to every school kid who dreams of being Harry Potter who fights evil, is a goal to aspire to. But to Steinbeck (a self-described socialist) and to you, these goals are delusions.
America IS proudly the nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires. To Americans them becoming a millionaire is what might happen, whereas to you, that's not what did happen.
The reason why European countries are not the nation of temporarily embarrassed millionaires because anyone aspiring that goal would rather move to America (that's also the reason why Europe does not have a real right wing). So what you're left with is people with a different kind of aspiration.
> With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance
Even if you can pay for it, doesn't mean you can get it. Pre-ACA, I knew people who had the levels of income you're talking about (and higher) who couldn't buy health insurance on their own at any price.
Some of them could get insurance through employer groups, assuming they didn't want to retire, assuming a given employer wanted to hire them, and assuming a given employer wanted them in a given risk pool. What they couldn't do was buy insurance on the individual market.
I'm also not anxious to take giant salary cuts, but there are times as I get older that the logic of establishing a floor even if it means lowering the ceiling seems to make more sense.
Sure, it was a lot worse pre-ACA. Thankfully, it's quite easy to purchase individual insurance these days (I pay $160/m for mine). We'll see what happens with the Republicans.
More importantly, health insurances do not at all sufficiently explain the differences in salaries. Google will hire you here and give you great health insurance, even though they're also paying very well.
Also, the notion that it requires really high taxes to implement single payer is simply not true. Singapore, for example, has a robust public health system while also having some of the lowest taxes in the world. After all, companies are already paying for insurance here. If we socialized it, I wouldn't expect tech salaries to drop.
- A functioning public transportation system (I was living in a city of 100k people and could get around by bus decently. The worst bus lines still came once every 20 minutes).
- almost free access to culture
- Being able to get your passport done in a week, not six. Maybe not the nicest people, but things happen a bit faster
But I think the core reason you don't see super-high salaries is because the system makes offering absurdly high salaries very costly, instead preferring for more people to make reasonable salaries. You have things like the fortune tax so that even if you don't have a salary, if you have too much money you'll get an extra tax.
It's a feature of the system, not a bug. The glib explanation is France hates rich people. Not everyone likes it but at least everyone gets 6 weeks vacation. And if you don't have a job you can still have a place to live and not live under constant fear of eviction.
If the local charity fete has music playing they need to pay €1k to get the right license (it's enforced), and musicians can't work for free or they could be fined.
France hates lots of things but it sure loves red tape.
Where do you get your passport done in a week? Last time (in 2014) I did mine, it was closer to one month.
And for culture, apart from some museums when you're under 26, public libraries and cultural festival, you have to pay for the rest (theatre, concert, expositions...), even if they are subsidized.
The cheapest catastrophic insurance plans in 2017 in NJ start at over $250+. I'm about the absolute cheapest plan you can find on healthcare.gov. What state are you in?
There is really no reason to argue that, more money does not mean more quality of life. Especially its very different if you look below to the IT bubble.
I went to the US last summer and found most people in awe when I told them I was there for the whole month, and it was not even my first vacation that year.
The misunderstanding here, is that some believe 100k$ equals better life no matter what. In France the fact that most people have a decent life makes mine better as well.
Also, I'd like to point out that universal, guaranteed, un-gameable health insurance is VERY different from any insurance you could ever buy from a company.
I never even thought about the fact that something could go wrong to me and I would not have access to the best possible care for any reason whatsoever until I found out about Americans and I remember thinking that was really savage. Then I realized my luck.
To me, the problem is not in the concept, it's about tax evasion.
> I never even thought about the fact that something could go wrong to me and I would not have access to the best possible care for any reason whatsoever until I found out about Americans and I remember thinking that was really savage. Then I realized my luck.
I am based in Switzerland so my health care money also goes to private companies. But these are heavily regulated.
However i can only agree with that statement. I always went to a private clinic because it was near my home and had less people there. It was not special or anything, it was just convenient.
Whatever happens i knew i get help and if i get a bill it some bullshit small costs i can easily pay anyway. The highest bill i ever got was $500 but only because i wanted a lot of random blood tests that no reasonable health care would cover.
No one in America seems to understand how close they are to financial ruin from surprisingly common stuff. My wife has lingering complications from the birth of our last child. My statement of benefits from the insurance company for 2016 shows that they paid $97,000 for her this year, and this was at least the third year in a row at that level. Fortunately, I already had pretty good insurance when this whole mess started for us, and we aren't really at risk of losing it. But I can tell you that it is a significant factor any time I consider changing jobs.
Eh, it's just a matter of having and maintaining insurance. Obviously that's important to get right, but it's not like most engineers are walking around without insurance.
That being said, if Republicans actually follow through on repealing the ACA it could get a whole lot more precarious.
Until a few years ago the ACA was not an option, and the incoming government has been pretty clear that they intend to eliminate the ACA as soon as possible.
> With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings.
Are you sure you're counting it as 200k and not a higher number? With taxes in the bay area, at least 70k of that is gone and surviving on 30k/year is kind of tough if you want to save a full 100k.
If its a tax advantaged account, its only a 401k at that income level; a traditional IRA is off limits, and while you might be able to do a backdoor Roth conversion, rumor is that loophole is going away.
So what tax advantaged account are you using to stash away the other $77500/year?
That's fair, but you should point out that you're using those advantages that aren't available to a typical employee (solo 401k where you can customize the plan, deducting your business expenses, etc).
Is your life plan for everyone to start small tech firms outside Silicon Valley and pay themselves $200k/year? Most developers don't make that much - I don't even think they do in SV.
That sounds like a plan for other people's lives, not a plan for my own. I don't care what you want to do, even if that's working as an underpaid developer in France.
My life plan is to continue building my startup mostly remotely while enjoying the high rate I can charge as an American consultant.
> Most developers don't make that much - I don't even think they do in SV.
$200k is quite standard for a mid-level engineer in SV. If you're not reaching that in total comp, you're probably being underpaid (or being paid in funny money ie. equity).
You don't understand; this is not about what YOU (or should I say WE, highly sought-after engineers) can have. The point is that it is an ENTIRE COUNTRY (for the most part) that has access to those benefits and standards of living.
The point is that, from an individual financial perspective, you're much worse off in the EU. I'm not making a normative judgement, just a financial one.
Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement. In any case, I certainly don't expect a tech visa in France to hope to attract people whose life goal is to retire in 10 years, so on that we probably agree.
> Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement.
You don't seem to understand what a normative judgement is. I'm not saying whether socialism is good or bad, just that it objectively does not balance out with the less compensation. The OP literally framed it as you getting "these benefits" in compensation for the lower salary and they are simply wrong.
> I certainly don't expect a tech visa in France to hope to attract people whose life goal is to retire in 10 years, so on that we probably agree.
If France isn't hoping to attract people who are hoping to make enough money to retire in 10 years, I question how they'll get any good founders. Successful founders are almost always in a position to retire within 10 years.
It sounds like you're arguing that a socialist state will have trouble attracting capitalists. On that I agree. I don't really see how you imagine startups being built without capitalists though.
Well, you can't make an individual perspective and use the plural "you are much worse off in the EU" at the same time.
Some individuals will fare better in the US, but on average, you'll fare better in France.
Now I agree with you, financially as a tech engineer, you'll come out with more money working in the US.
I disagree that the extra money will lead to a better quality of life, but QOL is very personal. Some people find pleasure in life from very different things.
This entire discussion is scoped to engineering salaries, I'm not trying to make arguments about everyone regardless of career.
For any given engineer, they are definitely financially worse off in the EU.
I'm sympathetic to QOL arguments. Personally, I really don't like SV. NYC is fairly nice though. Plus, the real secret is that after working here for a few years you can switch to remote work in an even higher QOL city.
Ah, sorry if I generalised your argument, ya in the case of tech engineers I'd have to agree with your statement. If you're a decent engineer, you wont find the kind of financial prospect you do in the big tech cities in the US anywhere else, not even close.
> You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe.
Doubt that. Contracting in London is very profitable. That's possibly the easiest money on the continent.
Sure, contracting in London is "very" profitable but it's still not as profitable as contracting in SV/NYC. It only looks good in comparison because full-time rates are shit.
Also, if you're talking about contracting then all the supposed benefits of a better work-life balance or vacation time are out the window.
$200K would be a high salary, meaning a fixed cash payment someone receives on a periodic basis (with $200K being the yearly sum). However, as the value of total compensation, meaning cash salary plus stock plans, retirement plans, the value of healthcare insurance, expected bonuses, etc., then yes I agree it's pretty normal. Indeed, the starting total compensation of college graduates at top tech companies like AmaGooBookSoft is apparently around $175K (see web search results for "What is the salary for graduates starting at <company X>?").
One Quora article claims that the average compensation of tech employees at these companies is above $200K. This is partly why areas that employ many tech workers are facing housing price crises: after covering their costs of living, the surplus compensation often goes into housing. Since housing is seen as "safe" and as a form of investment, it can soak up considerable amounts of surplus income, and since there's only so much of it in a given area, the competition for housing is intense.
I'd say $200k is very typical (if not on the low end) of salary + stock for big companies. Not including other things like insurance or retirement plans which are hard to attach a quantifiable dollar amount to.
In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.
Do you have a source for this? Or can people chime in? I could see this for Google or FB which are known to pay pretty well, but is this really "typical"? And even for Google or FB, I imagine $200k would require that you include annual bonuses too.
> In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.
But.. is contracting really ever easy? I mean it's hard work getting clients and how many people are qualified enough?
I can vouch for the 200k number, I was earning slightly lower than that 4 years into the industry (before I left to work at a place where the RSUs are worthless before IPO). It wasn't anywhere near Google/FB level.
But I disagree that there are many options to save on tax, etc though. I wasn't too bad, but there was no way I could've saved 50% of that (esp if not locked away like 401k). Just my rent for 1 bed in a average apartment was >50k a year.
> Your entire working career could be only 10 years. [...] European developers are underpaid. Full stop.
If your chosen standard is that software developers must be financially independent demi-gods after ten years, then yes, by that standard, European developers are underpaid. It's not clear that that's really the correct standard, though.
My bigger cost right now in London is my son. Nursery alone is way more than my rent and the price of renting in London is stupid even compared to Paris.
$130k in the US with paid health insurance, 2-4 weeks of vacation and dramatically lower taxes, vs. $50k in France with more 'benefits' and higher taxes.. Are those extra benefits worth $80k per year?
Social charges really crush the ability for French companies to compete. Then with CDIs making it almost impossible to fire anyone, it results in a far less liquid job market. Now there's even talk of actually forcing men to take paternity leave in the name of reducing inequality between men and women in the workplace. I live in France and love it for the most part, but other than my tiny hotel business on the side, I would never consider starting a company here. Even filing the paperwork to form an SAS is arduous. I can incorporate in the US in less than a day and have a bank account opened the next day. In France, even something as simple as getting business-class internet requires a SIRET number for no logical reason. I could offer to pay €1000 per month and without some piece of paper saying you're a business, you can't even get a business phone line.
However one really important area that ought not be missed is the amazing pre-k (free or nearly free) childcare. If I were in the US, that would amount to $20k+ per year (I have 3 kids.) That is definitely a plus.
In France, you have less disposable income than you would in the US (even after benefits are counted,) however, France does have a great lifestyle if you can afford it. Though I can't say much for Paris -- expensive, somewhat dirty, a dreadful public transport system (try taking kids with strollers on the metro,) along with a very high cost of living and you have a pretty bad place to raise a family. Toulouse, Grenoble, Lyon, Avignon on the other hand -- really great places!
As a French living in Paris and having created a company before I'm sorry but some of your points are simply not true and/or not relevant.
> $130k in the US [...] vs. $50k
Just no, a $130k salary in the US would be at least 70k€ in Paris. In others city it would probably be less but the cost of living would be much less too.
> there's even talk of actually forcing men to take paternity leave
Just because one organization (OFCE) ask for it 3 days ago doesn't make it a reality.
> even something as simple as getting business-class internet requires a SIRET number
I pay 30€/month for 1Gbits/250Mbs. If you need more than that, you're already a business and have a SIRET. Same for the phone line. I don't know about incorporation paperwork in the US but I did it alone in France and it was really not that hard. It took me a week max to get everything.
> Paris -- expensive, somewhat dirty, a dreadful public transport system
It's 73€/month, and half is paid by your employer for unlimited access to all transport in Île-de-France. Do you really find this expensive? Paris also provide the "best access to public transport in the world" according to some recent article. http://www.thelocal.fr/20161011/parisians-have-best-access-t...
Yes some place are dirty but isn't that the case all over the world?
That said Paris is far from my favorite city in France. And as you said the job market is probably far less liquid than in the US because of the CDI. Even if I personally think that this is a good thing. In software development/operations there is still more jobs than applicant at least in Paris.
> Just no, a $130k salary in the US would be at least 70k€ in Paris. In others city it would probably be less but the cost of living would be much less too.
In regard to this, I think what needs to be mentioned is the number of $130,000/year jobs in the US for developers/engineers, even outside of NYC/Boston/SF.
I live in the Great Lakes Region in the US. The starting salary for most engineers that I see is $50,000-$60,000k and then those companies also have health insurance benefits and the like. The salaries for experienced engineers that I've seen are closer to $100,000 (~5-7 years experience), and you can probably nearly double that for NYC/Boston/SF. I'm not sure of the cost of living differences between Paris and those cities, but I think US engineers are unequivocally paid better, even if you account for all of the great social benefits that France has (and many areas in the US desperately need).
tokyo has way better access to public transport than Paris. And better quality transport too. Again chauvinism coming out whenever anything is mentioned about France. Paris n est pas le nombril du monde.
For a country about to have so many elderly people, I think the elevators are hard to reach and the floors shouldn't have been made of hard shiny/slippery marble. And it's actually quite expensive to get around if you start counting.
There's nothing in the world to complain about aside from that.
> And it's actually quite expensive to get around if you start counting.
Because you are closer to paying the real price of the ticket than in Paris where transportation is heavily subsidized by the state. In Japan most train companies have now become fully private.
The great thing about private train companies is how many other businesses they've built in the stations. There's a near infinite number of fake-French cafes in every subway.
Meanwhile here my nearest Caltrain station has some car repair places and a mystery fondue restaurant that never seems to open. I think it's a money laundering scheme.
Well look at Paris' metro and its lack of elevators and escalators. Most stations have none! Good luck if you are in your seventies and your legs don't carry you anymore...
tokyo has way better access to public transport than Paris.
And at half the density. The median neighborhood of the Toyko metro area is 150 while central Paris is 300 and outlying neighborhoods—not as well served by transit as Tokyo's—are over 200.
And better quality transport too.
That's largely a matter of serving Japanese passengers. In my experience, no one else matches the consistent care and respect that even young and rowdy Japanese people actively apply to public space.
Density is a little bit bullshit, because density only takes in account the people living in a particular place, not the folks who actually commute every single day to work to go into offices where nobody lives.
Actually the rail network in Tokyo transports far more people than the RER/Metro in Paris, every single day.
Tokyo is busiest rail network in the world. Paris is far, far behind.
> That's largely a matter of serving Japanese passengers
No, even the stations, the network, the trains themselves are of better quality that the ones in Paris, and have much higher passenger capacity too. Well, Paris' network is pretty old so you can't blame them for everything, but they have stopped investing heavily in transportation for a long time. The metro trains are still ancient in Paris.
Actually the rail network in Tokyo transports far more people than the RER/Metro in Paris
Tokyo's metro population is 35 million. Paris's is 11 million. Each of them is served by multiple commuter and underground subway train networks. Comparing raw passenger numbers is ridiculous.
Density is a little bit [obscenity],
Density over the built up parts of a metro area, including offices, homes, parks, industrial and commercial areas, and roadways, tells us quite a lot about the basis of transit dynamics. Paris consistently packs a lot more people in the same land area than Tokyo.
No, even the stations, the network, the trains themselves are of better quality that the ones in Paris
Paris spends enormous amount compensating for its more difficult passenger base with space, maintenance, security, cleaning personnel, and more. That doesn't even begin to address the different demands for municipal investment and corruption in governance. Many collective projects that succeed in Japan could never do so in nations where citizens are less committed to cooperation.
I don't claim it's the best of the world but calling it expensive and dreadful if just not the reality. Compared to what I have experienced mostly in Europe I found it good and inexpensive.
You should mention the numerous strikes of the RER to give a full picture of the reality then. Because that's a real issue for people who want to rely ONLY on public transports in Paris.
And when it's not a strike, it's the breakdowns. This morning, my commute was one hour longer since there was no train on my line and I had to walk to another one.
Paris metro system definitely has an amazing coverage. I really enjoyed using it, but I'm athletic, love walking and don't have any injuries. On the other hand, I recently had to use it with someone who's knees aren't so good - I never realized how steep those stairs are and how few escalators are there. If you have any kind of disability or kids with strollers, it's definitely not the most comfortable way to travel.
> Then with CDIs making it almost impossible to fire anyone
This myth has to stop. It's almost impossible to fire anyone on the spot. You can't tell them "go home, and I don't want to hear from you again". You have to give them up to 3 months notice (depending on the contract, for engineers, it's going to be 3 months).
But you can still have them go home and never come back, as long as those 3 months are paid.
Edit: BTW, it works both ways. You can't quit on a whim either. You need to give the same amount of notice.
For a UK contract (and probably USA), there is a clause that says 'if any party decides to end the contract, so be it, and there will be X weeks/months of notice".
For a French contract (CDI = permanent), it's not possible to terminate the employee unilaterally.
For a UK contract (and probably USA), there is a clause that says 'if any party decides to end the contract, so be it, and there will be X weeks/months of notice".
I don't know what anyone's contract says, but the law in the USA is clear. Notice (and cause) are strictly optional. People offer two weeks notice when leaving by convention, but it is not required nor rewarded.
You can be asked to leave at any time with no warning nor compensation nor explanation.
You make some good points, albeit most of them quite exaggerated.
For example "almost impossible to fire anyone" : the up to 1 year trial period is pretty much hire-and-fire at will. After that, it's never too hard to fire a single employee. It's true that mass firings are quite heavily regulated though.
In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)
Yep... Some of my ex-classmates from engineering schools who stayed in France now have 45+ holidays per year. One even has 52 holidays per year. FIFTY TWO! And that's excluding bank holidays!
French employees aren't paid on their standard holidays? It also seems strange that if you're working over the 35/hr week baseline and being compensated for it by extra leave, that you would not be paid during that leave. After all, you're working extra for that time off, so you've essentially just already worked those weeks in advance.
How is it? My salary gives a per annum rate. I have a flextime system where if I work >38 hours in a week I get a 1:1 credit of those hours to take off later, and I don't lose any pay whatsoever for it.
In the same vein, this deal means that because the person works [35+x] hours per week, they get 2 weeks extra later on (where I assume x*48 = 70 or so) to take off without losing any pay. I don't see how you claim that they lose pay considering the work the same number of total hours for the same amount of pay, they just take 2 weeks' of work time, chop it up, and sprinkle it over the other 46.
But the point is, that in the true sense you don't really get any paid holidays.
If your employer considers you worth $120K, then with 2 months of holidays, he will simply pay you $100K spread over 12 months.
In other words, paid or unpaid doesn't mean anything (other than a lack of option to those who don't want these vacations) as long as the employer and employee are free to negotiate the salary.
Salaries are the same at companies that offer RTTs and companies that do not. I’ve more RTTs and I’m more paid that all my friends with the same profile in similar companies.
I don't think you understood my point. Lemme put it this way, if govt in France made it a law that you must pay 10% tip to the waiters at the restaurant, do you really think that the waiters would really be 10% richer?
If this were the law, would you not simply consider the cost of dining at a Restaurant to have gone up by 10%? And if that were the case then your eating out behavior would change the same way if restaurants DID raise their prices by 10%.
Since waiters are getting 10% more from the customers, this means restaurant owners will reduce the wages of the waiters by 10% and reduce the prices of the food by 10% (so at the end the waiters end up getting the same amount of salary, it costs the same amount to you to eat at a restaurant and the profit margin of the restaurant owner remains the same).
The fact is, that a company does not (and cannot, even if they wanted to) differentiate between "vacation" part and "salary" part of the employee compensation package. At the end of the day, the vacation costs them money and paying employee salary also costs them money. So when a company decides what compensation package to offer to a candidate.
For instance, if an employee would bring a marginal productivity of $100K in a year, then either they can offer 10% time off (26.1 days off, assuming 261 working days) + 90% in cash, or they can offer 0% in time off and 100% of the salary it would be the same to them.
Technically as the number of vacation time goes up, the cost to the company goes up too (if you took 6 months off, then this means the company might have to get new employees to fill for the remaining six years, which could be expensive).
In your example, you're just valued that much more by your company than your friends are by their companies.
35 hours + 4 weeks of holidays = 37h per week + 4 weeks of holidays + 2.5 weeks of RTT.
The salary is averaged over the year and you're paid the same every month in both cases.
Someone who does 37h per week + 4 weeks of holidays + NO RTT, would be paid more over the year.
The hours are driven down and the yearly pay is driven down as well, because of the 35h and the RTT. It's subtle but it's happening.
Note that in theory, you can have the choice to not take the RTT and work instead. In practise, all employers force you to take the holidays so you don't get a choice.
The GP mentioned 5 weeks vacation + public holidays. To make my example easier, let's say that I worked in France and decided to take the month of July off (using the 5 weeks vacation). Would I get paid for that vacation? Or is the 5 weeks vacation unpaid??
In Canada, my vacation is paid, so if I take an entire month off, I collect my pay cheques as usual.
I'm calling BS on that. No, you get paid during your holidays in France, wathever the type, RTT or annual leave. In addition to that, you can take unpaid leave.
Perhaps you were a contractor? In that case you would not be paid when you're not working.
No he's simply pointing out that your employer can only pay you what the market is allowing him to pay you. Or in other words, your salary is what your marginal productivity to the company is.
If you are not working for 2 months a year, then you're getting paid for only 10 months of what you could have gotten over 12 months.
In other words, there ain't no such thing as 'paid vacation' when the employer can simply account for that 'paid vacation' when making you an offer.
I can confirm this. I happen to be French and had a consulting firm in France for a couple years in the early 2000s.
I was able to charge 90kEUR/year at the time for a mid-level Java programmer. They loved the idea that they could fire the devs at any given time and having Canadian engineers helped them get funding from local VCs.
2nd update: Huge update, completly forgot about one tax on the salary..
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I'm French, I can give you some more details.
I'm a full stack Ruby Developer, and I work at https://www.talent.io, the first recruitment platform for developers in Europe. (If you're looking to relocate in Paris, London or Berlin, you know where to look. )
I usually don't comment a lot on HN, but if it can gives people the desire to move in France / Europe to work, this is great for my country / continent.
I'm gonna speak with raw cold numbers, for me it speaks more than some random "headlines".
Here in Paris, developers are paid between 40K and 90K (there are developers that are far better paid - and unfortunately far less paid-), but this is a large "common" fork I'm giving to you. Those numbers are raw, meaning that you have to remove the tax.
Here my own numbers, hoping it can help you imaginate with your current own situation.
Note : I'm living with my GF, so I'm gonna divide all "common" expenses. We have equivalent salaries.
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Salary + flat
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My raw income last year was appx 45K euros. When you remove the first tax each month, I have 34600 left.
I paid appx 2600 to the state in taxes, only for the salary. It's a quite good salary for a junior / mid developer here. (22 years old, 2 years of professionnal experiences in Fullstack Ruby / Rails developer).
In Paris, for a 35m2 (365 ft2) with furnitures (meaning full equiped, from the Kitchen to the Bed to the sofa and desks), I paid 1K2 / month, so 14 400 for a year. (Living with my GF, so dividing it by 2 : 650 euros / month / person, so 7800 euros / year / person)
You have to add the taxes, which was approximately a half month of rent : 650 (dividing by 2: 325 euros).
So in total, I paid to the state for my flate + income taxes 5500 euros.
Total net income : 32000 euros / year
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Common expenses - Insurances - Transportations - Food
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* Healthcare insurance ~ 40 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (240 / year)
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This is not the best insurance ever, I could have go for a better one at greater prices. It covers for the basics. I'm young and in good health, I take care of my glasses and my dentition, so
To give you an idea, I have to change my glasses every 1.5 year / 2years, the total price of my last bill was 322 euros, my glasses were full covered (with full treatment on lenses),
I had to pay from my pocket 50 euros for the spectacle frame. I also had to replace a tooth because it broke at sport, on a 600 euros cost, I only paid 47 euros (going to a private clinic - not public hospital.).
From a basic surgery, cost was appx 1000 euros, I didn't paid anything (public hospital) - bad note is that I waited 3 months for the surgery - it was not urgent at all -. Public healthcare in France is overbooked, but it's good.
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* House insurance ~ 20 euros / month. Nothing to say. (120 euros / year /person)
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* Transportation (Only counting public transportation, not Uber etc...)
here we have the subway, bus, bike, tramway (and soon a boat :o), it costs 75 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (450 euros / year)
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* Electricity
nothing much to say, we pay appx 70 euros / month, so 35 euros / person / month, so 420 euros / person / year
I won't talk much about food, because it REALLY depends your habits, if you live alone / with a family. Here for 2, we approximately pay 600 euros / month - We love food. We could have reduced it a little, but we try to eat locally / bio, it costs much more.
Per year per person, it's appx 3600 euros / person.
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* Mobile phone + internet
It's quite cheap here.
Mobile phone, unlimited phone calls in France (Even in europe I believe) + unlimited text + "unlimited" Internet (4GO / month of data 4G then caped) at "Sosh", I pay 25 euros / month (300 euros / months)
Home internet, provider is called "Orange" + television, fiber 500 MBits fully unlimited, I pay 50 euros / month (600 euros / year, 300 euros / year / person) (And it works damn well).
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total (tl;dr) :
In total, last year, I earned 39500 euros, taxes deducted. I paid 3600 (food) + 450 (transportation) + 240 (health insurance) + 120 (house insurance) + 300 (mobile phone) + 300 (Home internet) + 420 (electricity) = 26570 euros net of income after all "life mandatory" stuff.
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Please please please, do note that I did NOT included all restaurants, clubs, travels, clothings and all "fun" stuff. It really depends on your lifestyle, and I don't even know how much I paid for it.
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Education
It's true, public education is almost free. It costs less than 1K euros / child / year to go to high school (I even think it's way less than that, but IDK since I went to a private school).
You can even lower those costs because we do have a lot of helps from the state. When my brother went to a historian school, he paid nothing, and even more, the French state paid him 10K a year to go study (Because he was a damn good student)
For my private computer science school (the "42" school of Xavier Niel is a perfect copycat of mine, but free - unfortunately it did not exists at that time), I paid (my parents did) 50K, and this is only for the school (5 years, so appx 10K a year)
About the other bullet points @renaudg talked about, I don't have much to say, It's pretty self explanatory.
I hope it does help people better evaluate the "cost" of life in France, if I forgot something / you want more informations, please do not hesitate to ask :).
>> * Healthcare insurance ~ 40 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (240 / year)
For the benefit of non-French readers, let's clarify that the kind of 40€/month health insurance you're talking about is called "mutuelle", which is optional extra private insurance that covers the remaining third or so of each medical bill, after mandatory state insurance ("sécurité sociale") took care of the first two thirds (slightly oversimplified explanation : the coverage ratio varies and you might sometimes still be out of pocket slightly)
In other words, France has a hybrid paying system which gets a lot of criticism, but I think is actually the best of both worlds : it means patients get almost complete freedom in choosing their private doctor/hospital, but most of the bill is still footed by state insurance. You don't have to attend a specific surgery as in most public systems (UK NHS), and there are no mandatory "provider networks" like with most US/UK private health insurance.
The drawback for the very poor, is that it's not entirely free (but there's special help available to get on a "mutuelle")
In the UK where I live, on the other hand, the National Health Service is almost completely free for patients and often has great staff, but is chronically subject to government cuts, unavailability of "non-essential" treatments, and unacceptable waiting times.
So, most people in the UK who can afford it buy private insurance (if they don't get denied because of "preexisting conditions", a notion that doesn't exist in France) and go to completely different doctors / hospitals than the NHS. It's a two-speed system which doesn't feel right when you're used to the French one.
Yes, you might have to pay out of pocket for some things (special prescription eyeglasses, certain kinds of dental treatment, etc.), but the general idea is that you won't be hit with a surprise bill of several thousands because something went wrong.
Last year, my son (30 months old) spent a week in the hospital, underwent surgery, and had to keep a cast on for six weeks. The remaining costs, after the sécurité sociale paid its share, were 17€. Covered by the mutuelle.
> My raw income last year was appx 45K euros. I paid appx 5K to the state in taxes, only for the salary.
Employee Taxes on the "Raw" salary are approx ~23% usually, that does not match your 5k. Are you talking about the yearly "income taxes"? But then your 45K were not "raw" in the French sense?
Just wanted to add another data point for comparison.
South East USA. All numbers in USD.
Gross earnings = 104000 / year
Bonus + Stocks = ~12000 / year
Income tax = 31986 (27.5%)
(Fed + State + Social security + Medicare)
Earnings after taxes = 84014
Expenses :
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Rent : 1 BR in the city = 800/month or 9600/year
(Living by myself)
Utilities = 150 / mont or 1800 / year
(Phone + Internet + Electricity)
401K contributions = 628/month or 7545 /year
(My only retirement savings. I don't think there'd be anything in Social security in my time of need)
Car payments - 500/ month or 6000/year
Gas/fuel = 110 / month or 1320/year
Car Insurance = 150 / month or 1800 /year
Restaurants/bars = 600 / month or 7200 / year
Misc expenses = 3600 / year
Balance = 45149
I have a personal family commitment expense of 7200/year.
Employer provides health insurance and also 800 per year as seed money into my HSA(which I can use to meet deductible for the insurance).
Even after all this, I'm a dumbass who didn't save that much.
I think I'm at the best situation in terms of making money.
Plot twist : I'd most likely move to Denmark or Netherlands later this year because my GF is needing to be there. I'm taking the leap saying, new experiences and crafting a family life is better than saving money.
> I'd most likely move to Denmark or Netherlands later this year
Just a tip... check out the application process for a work visa now. Work visas anywhere always take way longer than the applicant wants.
Getting married before you leave will change the type of visa you need... and might shorten the time required (but probably by not as much as you'd hope).
Thanks!
Yes, I do plan to get married before I make the move.
I saved up some money to spend two months traveling cheap with my GF before we make the full move and get into jobs.
Denmark is amazing in the sense that my GF's future employer(an University) says they will employ her partner(me) for an year according to my skills at market rate and also help us settle in with local culture and even help find jobs after the one year ends...
Thanks for the information and good luck with your move. New experiences and family are worth significantly more than money - best of luck and have fun!
If you ever need more encouragement, my email is in my profile. I am nearly 40 and looking back, I see many opportunities where I should have done exactly what you are doing. A part of me is very envious but another part of me is going to cheer you on as you embark upon this amazing adventure.
That’s interesting, thanks for the data points. Maybe I could chime in w/ comparison – living in Sofia, Bulgaria; doing consulting/contracting for Austrian company.
Brutto salary is €40k w/o bonuses; There’s flat 10% income tax and after maxing out fully the pension and health insurance payments the take-home pay roughly €35k.
I’m living w/ my girlfriend as well, so below numbers are to be divided. The expenses are as follow.
Rent
€250,00/mo for 70m2 / 1 bedroom apartment, fully equiped w/ new furniture in a nice and quiet neighbourhood.
Utilities
€30,00/mo electricity, €10,00/mo phone, €10,00/mo internet
Transportation
I’ve recently bought VW Golf 1.6TDI 2013’ in cash, so no car payments. Taxes and insurance are roughly €170,00/year. I’ve budgeted about €100,00/mo for fuel. Public transportation is fine, but we don’t use it.
Other
We don’t go to bars/restaurants and normally cook daily at home. About €250,00 are going for food, as this is mostly organic and local produced food w/ paleo-ish eating habits.
Total expenses are about ~€600/mo, which is 20% of my take-home pay; the rest is going to a generic savings account at the moment.
Paris is one of the few places I would go out of my way to live in (at least without the current unrest), but the rent really kills it for me. That would be an instant downgrade in life quality that I wouldn't want long term.
It kills me a lot also. I'm planning to buy something this year / next year, I still don't know yet if it's gonna be in Paris or not. For the same price, in Paris I would get a 50m2, while in province (the rest of France), I would have a new 300m2 house with garden. It really kills me also. But you don't have to stop at this detail,
Maybe a third cheaper. Cheaper still if you're not actually close to the train. There are only 2 million people living in Paris proper, but 12 million within such commuting distance. So there's still a lot of competition for living space.
For a flat, in Paris, for a 50m2, the price greatly vary between 300K (with a bunch of work to do) to 700K and more (I don't know very well the market, I can't give you much details). Right now, the loan interest are very interesting and I could buy immediately something (With a 25K contribution and pay for it for the next 20 / 30 years depending on the rate).
Since I don't own a car, I think you have for all prices. You can get a second hand for 10-25K, and a first hand for 18K - 30K (And more obviously)
Again, the 30K free at the end of the year are without all the "fun" part, with the strict bare minimum. I didn't included bars, friends, travels etc...), unfortunately I don't have 30K after all of that :P
You've misunderstood. I get 26570 euros at the end of the year, after paying taxes, food, electricity, flat, insurances, common life stuff. This is the "bonus".
I also moved to another company and greatly increased my revenue :).
I don't know man, I'm with user5994461, after all my bills monthly ($2,000 monthly rent, $350 new car, $200 insurance, $30 phone, $200~ utilities, ~$500 food) I have +/- $60,000 USD at the end of the year after taxes in surplus with only one year of experience and no diploma..
You can't, because if you're American and you work in the UK, you'll have to pay taxes in your home country on top of your British taxes. That will ruin whatever compensation you have.
Please. Let's leave Europe to European and USA to the USA. No cross continent comparison.
Correction: You live with your girlfriend and you managed to save that after you shared all your expenses TOGETHER, especially dividing your rent by 2.
I can live in London, ALONE, and still get more savings than that at the end of the year, just sayin'.
Side note, I ran away from Free, it was not working at all, phone calls cutting all the time, Internet not reliable at all, I went to Sosh for mobile phone and "Orange" for home Internet, I NEVER (not a single one) had 1 small cut. I heavily use both, it's awesome.
24000€ of gross (the company pay ~0.30 * 24000 = 31200€).
18360€ (1530€/month) is my income but on that i pay ~1000€ of taxes (salary tax) and ~400€ of city tax(this vary from city to city).
My rent is 360€/month for 60 square meters, sure i live in the middle of nowhere regarding jobs.
After all the mandatories costs of life i can save ~550€/month ~6600/year.
> The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard
So, France could be great to be an employee, but it's horrible for entrepreneurs.
Do you have the option to pay into the French state pension as a non-resident French citizen? For example, in Canada I'm not aware of any mechanism to voluntarily pay into the Canada Pension Plan for a strict Canadian non-resident.
This would only be of note if you plan to retire in your original country of origin, in your case France.
If you are french working in a different country, you can contribute to the french pension plan through the "Caisse des Français de l´etranger" if you want to. However you would still have to pay the Canadian pension plan.
There is an agreement between France and several countries including Canada. Once you will retire, if you have worked 10 years in Canada and 30 years in France, then you will get 3/4 of your money from the French Pension plan, and 1/4 from the Canadian one.
This agreement works whether you are French or Canadian.
>>Canadian here, as far as I know you can't pay into the CPP if you're not working in Canada (I have a friend who is in the exactly that situation)
I came to the same conclusion unfortunately. Would gladly pay to contribute to CPP on the assumption that I'll (probably) be retiring back home. Unsure how it is in France, but in Canada (for now), I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today (i.e. supposedly we are paying our future retired selves). This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers.
>>But, that said you can put a lot of money into TFSAs and RRSPs.
I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but my understanding is that unless you have contribution room left for your TFSA or RRSP prior to your departure from Canada, there's little point to contribute since the "contributions" will not be recognized as such and hence the tax "benefits" in both cases will also go unrecognized. I think the only exception is for Canadian income (e.g. rental property).
Transferring funds into Canadian TFSA/RRSP accounts may be possible, but the CRA will eventually ask for a reckoning unless your friends are willing to roll the dice. Based on personal experience, penalties and interest per year add up quickly.
> I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today. This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers.
I think you're conflating the basis for calculating the payouts you will receive, and the sources of payouts. I. e. most government pension schemes are use today's payments for today's pensioners, but will still give you a higher pension if you paid more/longer into the system.
These engineers may find once migrated (especially after a few years, ie slightly older) that the option of having children not to be burden in such a system, might find the safety net of not worrying about health and insurance increase their ability to focus on being productive instance of simple grinders, especially if well educated and motivated.
So, they will pay huge taxes to finance the public education system they didn't benefit, while at the same time repaying their student debt because they had to pay for university in their own country? I don't quite follow the logic...
If you live in a society, you benefit from its education system even if you didn't attend it, as all the folks who were educated in that society's educational system are the rest of the folks who contribute to the economic system and its health and robustness.
I didn't judge in my comment if it is good or bad to organize a society based on these values. That seems to me to be a bit unrelated to the situation at hand, where you have to move across countries and switch different systems. That fact that you may end-up paying "double" is what I was raising.
Anyway, you will benefit as your friends, colleagues, neighbors and especially your own children will not be burdened with the debt, and more likely to be well educated.
French salaries are much lower and taxes are extremely high for high income earners. There's more than one tax on your income! There's the regular "impôt" but also the "contribution solidarité" which is legally considered "not a tax" but cost you a percentage of your income. And a "taxe d'habitation" too (which is proportional to your rent rather than income). There's quite a bit of misrepresentation and wordplay all over, so be careful if you are used to different social norms.
Having said that, the longer vacations are indeed true but that's the case for other European countries too.
I don't see how making one administrative task a bit easier (while all others can be extremely difficult) is going attract talent, except through the usual misrepresentation.
I've lived in France and the US. At the lowend salaries are almost the same. In continental Europe its extremely hard to break the 6-figure salary barrier. Now that I'm working back in the US after 12 years abroad I find we're at about the same level if we'd stayed in Paris. Salary is up but so are healthcare costs, childcare costs, transportation. While my effectively salary is double my take home is only 20% higher. And I get 10 days paid vacation. Which is completely fucking laughable. Dining out is also very expensive. Just had a mediocre meal at an asian fusion restaurant and the final bill was 60 with taxes and tips included.
I'm typing this on a French MBP keyboard which is really impractical but it's what I'm used to.
I agree that lowend salaries are comparable but presumably people working on a startup are earning anything but lowend.
The social benefits are only worthwhile when you are older (you should have done it the other way around :) ) and you are reminded of the administrative difficulties half the time you use them.
Mid-range food may be less expensive here but service is just terrible (well, not 100% of the time but it happens often enough to be really annoying).
I thought the AZERTY and QWERTY layouts were about the same if you touchtype. There should be a software option to switch it.
As illustrated by PGs post from a few days ago on YC startups and the ACA, benefits are useful at any age, whether you are an octogenarian or a 20yo founder with Crohns.
Most startups I know are Ramen noodle phase. Having a bit of govt help would be useful and could definitely help founders hold on to their equity rather than exchange it to pay next months rent.
In the US it's the same. You pay for it, then they guilt you into not using it. And if you need the more extreme help it literally becomes a full time job to wait in line and file paperwork week after week.
I miss the Paris service. You waive them down when you want something. They stay out of your way. Here, they are hovering around constantly asking me if I need anything. I don't think that kind of attention warrants $20 tips. If it came down to it I can pour my own damn drink.
So French Apple keyboards have some fundamental differences with accents. And if you need numbers it's 2 keys as you need to invoke the shift key to the number and calculator functions. And if you have a complex environment, ex. remoting from mac to Linux server good look finding the pipe | key.
Things got better in recent years, but in France startups have a hard time raising much money so they often offer a salary that's below average.
They get away with arguments like "the job is interesting" (probably true compared to IT service industry) and "you'll get rich on stock options if the company get big" (usually a lie).
It's good that the government is trying to encourage foreigners to start their startup in France, but I don't think we're lacking entrepreneurs. We're mostly lacking investors willing to bet on a small, newly created company.
I have a German kezboard (sic) but I run it in US mode. I have no idea how any programmer can use the standard German layout (and many I know use US keyboards).
This. All good manufacturers (Apple, Dell, Lenovo) allow you to spec US keyboards when you order.
macOS is good because of it's composing. You can compose umlauts by pressing option+u and then the "base" vowel, sz/ß is option+s. Same with accents, that's option+e/option+i and more. The Spanish ñ one is option+n, n.
> Bonus point: all your taxes are prefilled by governement you just need to confirm on the website.
A very odd thing to say, since in most of (Northern, at least) Europe salaries are paid tax-deducted. When I was in the UK my salary was my net income, nothing to declare or confirm. And it's been like that since the 60s.
Raw salary comparisons miss the point : you can't really compare pre-tax salaries between countries with such a completely different taxation and benefits structure.
The take home pay certainly is much, much lower in France than in the US, but it comes with access to top-notch free healthcare, free university, pension contributions, 5-7 weeks paid leave and generous unemployment insurance amongst other things. It all adds up.
I'm French, working in London and I've been happy with the trade off of more pay for a thinner social safety net, but I know it would be foolish to compare wages directly. I suspect the difference is much less spectacular with everything taken into account.
>but it comes with access to top-notch free healthcare
Does it cover stuff like cosmetic dermatology, full dental plan (implants) ? I don't live in France, I lived in different EU countries and every time I needed something the "free health care" meant I had to pay participation fee and wait 6 months walking around appointments and ended up going private clinic. I basically got 0 value out it, considering I'm young and healthy I would not have to pay much for insurance, you're mostly footing the bill for the pensioners.
>free university
Which again means nothing to anyone immigrating as a skilled worker
>pension contributions,
I sincerely doubt that by the time I hit retirement age the pension system will look anything like it does now because of multiple factors (current pension funds being structured around social transfers and constant employment growth, meanwhile automation replacing a large % of workforce permanently). Again just transfer payments to old people.
>5-7 weeks paid leave and generous unemployment insurance amongst other things
So you're going to emigrate as an expert in a sector earning top ~10-1% income for unemployment benefits ?
If you're a young professional either none of the things you listed matter to you or there are better countries than in Europe by those criteria (Nordics/Switzerland).
I don't live in France but I do feel qualified to comment on the general comparison, being a US software guy in Europe.
First, things like health care and free university are a huge deal if you plan to stay past your 30's. Consider being able to take a couple years to try a business without freaking out about health insurance. Consider being able to go get a PhD in some interesting subject without having to get a full scholarship. Consider, obviously, having kids and sending them to world-class universities without incurring any debt.
Then there's the job security aspect. It can be really nice to be employed in a country where people aren't just laid off whenever a company misses its quarterly numbers.
And finally, if you really are an actual Expert in a field where that's worth a lot of money, it's probably worth about as much in France as it is elsewhere. Sure all the "senior" programmers with 3 years' experience get paid a lot less than in the US, but I don't think the VP level does badly at all.
(Maybe I'm being naive here... my point of reference being Germany.)
I hear it can be very hard to get a proper, "permanent" job in France, but I also hear the quality of life is pretty amazing if you do.
> Sure all the "senior" programmers with 3 years' experience get paid a lot less than in the US, but I don't think the VP level does badly at all.
I think this is true from looking at my family. That's exactly what I don't like about European culture: the really senior people still make a lot of money. Americans are just better at sharing down the food chain.
I'm not trying to compare US and EU because I haven't lived in US, I'm just talking about France in the context of EU (although after Brexit things are a bit different). And I'm mostly asking this stuff as a counter point - I'm not making a definitive statement - again I've only looked in to France superficially before when I was looking for a country to move to - maybe I was wrong - but the arguments he presented don't appeal to me at all.
I feel like there are countries with better social security (and seemingly more politically stable than France, again this is just the stuff I pick up from the media) and better pay range (at least that was the case last time I was looking where to move ~2 years ago).
And most importantly - the language barrier - programmers have to speak English so English speaking countries don't have this problem.
> Consider being able to take a couple years to try a business without freaking out about health insurance.
Trying a business in a much more challenging business environment? There's not exactly a plethora of French tech startups, after all, despite the state health care.
> Consider being able to go get a PhD in some interesting subject without having to get a full scholarship.
Will universities accept some random fellow in his 30s who wants to earn a Ph.D.?
You don't measure insurance like that, just like you don't measure whether a wager is a good idea based on how well you happen to do in a single bet, but rather, on the expected value of the average of all possible outcomes weighted by their respective probabilities.
I'm in my early 30s, and up until last year never needed any sort of real medical treatment my entire life. Then I got I to a bike accident, fractured my tibia, almost needed surgery, and was damn glad that I did have health insurance. I could've just as easily not broken my ankle, or it could've been way, way worse. But I don't judge the value of insurance based on whether I happened to need it any given year; that's just dominated by chance.
One should mention their country of residence. In my case (Greece, 2005, during the golden days), if I had no money saved, my only option would be amputation instead of a titanium rod implant where my femur used to be.
> I basically got 0 value out it, considering I'm young and healthy I would not have to pay much for insurance, you're mostly footing the bill for the pensioners.
Wait, what? What if you are diagnosed with a major illness? Are in a major car accident? etc, etc.
The problem in the US is that people who are otherwise comfortable and healthy have their entire fortunes turn around, for the rest of their lives, due to unforeseen illness/incidents.
>Wait, what? What if you are diagnosed with a major illness?
Clean family history, healthy lifestyle (don't drink often, don't smoke, workout and watch my diet)
>Are in a major car accident? etc, etc.
Don't drive or do many high risk activities.
I'm probably at the bottom end of health risks - in a fair system my insurance would be minimal. Besides all other EU countries cover stuff like that (life changing scenarios).
There are some (significant?) drawbacks to this. Although English fees are outrageous now, 8 years ago here's the differences I observed between English and German university. Because it's free, the first year has to be brutal to weed out <x>% the huge number of applicants. Lecture halls are overcrowded, especially for popular courses. If you want a seat, you need to get there 10 minutes early. The amount of 1:1 with staff or lab time is often small or non-existent. And courses aren't necessarily set up so you can take them in the correct order. In England, 3 years for a bachelor is normal. In Germany, I have known many people to take 6 years or more.
So just because it's free doesn't make it better. Having said that, if you know the flaws it's fine. Many people go to University to have a degree for a job later, for that not having crippling debt is much more important than the absolute quality of the academic education. And post-grad courses and research don't suffer from this AFAIK.
I thought German's also cram in 4 terms every year rather than 2 and a bit in the UK? It seem like Germans who were doing 4 years had covered more ground than a bachelors + 2 years of MSc in the UK.
Perhaps that's not the case across all courses/universities, but seemed to be the case from my experience with Mathematics Erasmus students (in both directions) and German PhD students.
Seems to me like the German system is very high quality, and that the UK let too many weak candidates in to University and so the first year (and every year) is getting easier to compensate...
I remember that this was the case with Scottish students (as Advanced Highers did not cover as much as A-levels) so they had to work much harder in their first year. Scottish friends seemed to be under the impression that the first year in Scottish Universities was much easier than UK equivalents...
> Seems to me like the German system is very high quality, and that the UK let too many weak candidates in to University and so the first year (and every year) is getting easier to compensate...
This kind of generalisation is obviously useless, think Cambridge. Not that I'm defending all English universities, most of them aren't great. But that's true everywhere.
A big problem in Germany is that the transition to Bachelor/Master degrees has resulted in courses that are in need of refining. Badly in some cases. I'm mainly critical to the way German institutions handle undergrad degrees. Their research is top notch, and many of my friends from England went on to do research there. I think that's also an indication that English degrees are rigorous enough.
UK admissions is in principle more rigorous, by far. It acknowledges that school marks aren't everything and consideration for individuals with unusual situations or evident passion outside of school is given. Since offers are extended on a case-by-case basis, it's more fine-grained and the overcrowding, Darwinian filtering doesn't happen.
It's very easy to confuse working hard for working smart. Both will can get you to the same place, but in terms of personal development, one has to be nurtured and the other burns you out.
I keep joking with my kids that they need to prepare for university in Europe somewhere... I think I would have loved the experience of it in my past, but I hesitate to force that upon them now.
> I had to pay participation fee and wait 6 months walking around appointments and ended up going private clinic.
I lived in Austria and Switzerland. I never had to wait more than a few days and private clinics are usually allowed to go to without additional costs. Please dont project your experience to whole europe/eu
I live in the US with H1B. I still pay Social Security, and Medicare/aid every paycheck. Don't you?
Isn't it the same as what you said? Paying into a social system that probably won't be in a shape to pay you later?
I don't know why people assume I live in the US :/ I have no idea how the US system works in practice, I'm just saying to the OP that as a person who did emigrate for work within EU the arguments he listed mean very little to me.
> I basically got 0 value out it, considering I'm young and healthy I would not have to pay much for insurance, you're mostly footing the bill for the pensioners.
And when you are a pensioner, who will foot your bill?
Hard to say TBH. The least likely option is current income based transfers, much more likely some UBI scheme. Just going on the trend of increasing long term unemployment rates and automation. Honestly I have no idea what society is gonna look like in 40 years but I'm willing to bet your pension contributions will be irrelevant.
I have only three years of experience as a software engineer. I made over $200,000 in 2016. This is more than the Prime Minister and President make in France. I also have health insurance provided by my employer.
Granted, I only get four weeks of paid leave, which is less than would be typical for a French person, but not by a dramatic amount.
I would understand your point if the raw salaries were closer with France's only slightly lower. But the difference (for people working at top tech jobs) is so extreme that no amount of free university and pensions can make up for it.
Even if I have to save for my retirement, save for my hypothetical children's future education, and so on, I'm still making a lot more in the US than I would in France.
If s/he works for a public company, this is totally in line with total compensation at that experience level after you factor in stock. There are many places where you can get this level of comp. Of course, your stock package has to be worth something -- this person is almost certainly not getting over $200K in base salary alone, and if they are I would echo your question -- "what do you do?" -- and add another -- "who do you do it for?"
Yes, this includes stock, which is effectively the same as cash to me since I always sell it immediately when it vests. (Not because I don't believe in my company, but just because I don't want to put all my eggs in one basket)
Yes indeed; for senior engineers base salary approaches $200k, excluding bonuses and RSUs/options. RSUs are in the $50-$200k/year range depending on many factors. The general expectation is a top-up at least 50% of signing RSUs per year each year, so as the vesting periods stack up you can end up earning more in stock in years 4+ than in salary.
YMMV on all this. A new college grad isn't going to get that kind of deal in most cases. It also helps to interview and get multiple offers. Once hired you're typically expected to work hard and demonstrate the value you add to the business.
> This is more than the Prime Minister and President make in France.
Plenty of people make more than they do though. These are not especially high-paying positions, they're not even the highest paying government positions.
.. which is usually capped. So you are covered for minor incidents, but anything above 200k (or whatever the cap is) will completely fuck you up. Because anything that will have that much cost will also be something serious enough to incapacitate you for a long time and leave you without income. EU healthcare usually doesn't have cap, nor a deductible of thousands of dollars.
That's not true. Obamacare eliminated lifetime caps. Small and medium size companies often had $1 million lifetime caps but large companies have negotiating power and typically had no pre-existing condition exclusion periods and no lifetime caps (or something insane like $10 million). Under Obamacare all US health insurance plans have no lifetime caps and no pre-existing condition exclusions.
Any big tech company in SV offer amazing health insurance. I've never heard anyone say they had rouble with coverage/pre-existing condition/deductible/copay.
You seem to have no idea how health insurance works.
Any good healthcare plan, especially post-ACA, will not have a cap like that.
People way overvalue free healthcare. Yes, it would be nice but it's nowhere near worth the salary differential.
I pay $160/m for my health care. It's a high deductible plan, but even if I were to reach the deductible every year then my total expenses would be $9,070=(160*12)+7,150.
The compensation differential between the US and Europe is way more than $10k.
Absolutely. A lot of people seem to have almost a religious deference for free healthcare. I'm young, disease free so I've only minimal healthcare costs. Losing out >$100K/year on salary in exchange of free healthcare seems like a stupendously bad deal to me.
In addition to the other comments, I wanted to point out that many employers also provide Short Term and Long Term Disability Insurance, which would cover the "incapacitate you for a long time and leave you without income" scenario.
>I made over $200,000 in 2016. This is more than the Prime Minister and President make in France.
This kind of braggadocio statement is why the hate for tech workers is growing. It shows a serious lack of perspective and an incredible amount of arrogance and condescension.
It's also very untypical, even for a skilled tech worker in America.
We are literally in a forum discussing tech worker salaries.
Yes, I make an amount of money that puts me in an extremely high percentile relative to the world population. But pointing that out in a context where it's completely relevant is just conversation, not bragging.
Do you think I go around showing my W2 to random financially struggling strangers, or something? I don't.
By the way it's not as atypical as you might think, for top tech/finance jobs in the Bay Area or NYC. I know lots of people making these salaries, at companies other than mine.
As an aside: I didn't make any claims at all about whether I thought my pay was high or low, fair or unfair, whether I deserved more, how it compared to anyone else's in any other industry, etc. etc., so why exactly are you claiming I "lack perspective"? I don't think I displayed either perspective or lack thereof with my totally neutral statements.
This kind of statement helps people understand the challenges France is going to have in luring the top software-engineers away from America. I know it hurts people's ego when they hear someone with less experience making more than them, but put that aside and recognize that it adds to the discussion.
I've never found the healthcare argument to be relevant. Software Engineers in the USA usually have generous health care plans provided by their employers.
Continuity of insurance is an issue. My wife currently requires a fairly expensive drug (thousand+ per dose), and gets 1-3 months supply at a time. With insurance, it's quite affordable. (separate rant)
Every time I switch employers, or my employers switch insurance, it begins a long process of getting the right info (the insurance always contracts out specialty drugs), then getting that info to the doctors office (Drs offices, btw, never make it easy to talk to someone), then the doctor has to send the info to the right insurance company (rare is the doctors office that follows through the first time), then the insurance company will sit on it for a while (I've heard crazy things like "it takes 48 hours before we can confirm that we got the fax, and only then can we begin to 'process' the fax, which can take 1 day to 1 week"), and probably reject it. Then I have to find out this happened (this is absurdly difficult), then the drs office can appeal. Last time the appeal actually involved my wife's doc talking to an insurance company doc on the phone! Thankfully, her doctor is unusually reachable and was willing to do this.
So, generally speaking, it takes 1-2 months before she can get the medication that prevents her from being effectively crippled. since the previous insurance gave 1-3 months at a time, she often ends up falling behind on doses when this occurs.
I've had 2 jobs in the last 5 years, but 5 insurance companies (my companies kept spinning off or getting absorbed), and each time the process was stressful, even though each health care plan was quite good, relative to most of the US. So I can see a healthcare argument as being highly relevant.
Add in those that work 1099 or other such arrangements, and it matters more.
The question is whether issues like these are likely for the individual applicant and whether they're worth dropping salary from $120K to $50K or whathaveyou.
Absolutely - there are a whole host of issues to consider. I was just putting out an anecdote to counter the assertion that techies won't particularly care about state-provided health care. The original point is likely true for a good swath of people - just not all.
To continue with the healthcare argument, "top-notch healthcare" is debatable. Autism support in France is not good at all. People always like to think of healthcare as a single entity, a single package. Either it's good or it's bad as a whole. The truth is, it's not.
Autism in France is addressed ; autists kids have special classes in public schools (with non autist kids, so they share free time, lunch etc...., this kinds of system is aka as IME). Also those kids are mixed with non-autist kids during classes (a few hours a week). All in all, the system try it's hardest to make them feel normal (IMO).
What would you expect from a society dealings with disabled (nothing bad) ?
Nothing has changed since I last looked when I was living in Quebec.
> What would you expect from a society dealings with disabled (nothing bad) ?
What do I expect, or what do I hope? I expect that people assume that because they hospital visit for a broken leg is "free" and "good", that it carries over to autistic support, and that any suggestion otherwise is absurd and alarmist. This is usually the case.
I'd hope that they take the concerns from parents seriously and not be dismissive, even if it means they have to admit there are flaws in the system.
FWIW, that's lower than the US, and not that much higher than the UK (and we don't really know what is a good debt/gdp ratio).
Also, those numbers are not directly comparable (e.g. in Germany a lot of what used to be counted as gvt is now private: the work done is the same, as are the obligations, but it appears in a different "bucket").
It is indeed worth something -- most western countries are in deep trouble. And yet many pundits predict a strong dollar under Trump... For the vast majority of these countries, virtually the only way to meet debt obligations over the next decade will require rapid debasement of the indebted currency. Get your gold mining stocks/Bitcoin while you can.
Is "paid leave" really the best characterisation? Unless French system is radically different from e.g. UK and Slovenian (which I have experience with), that would be "paid vacation" - "leave", e.g. sick days, aren't counted as part of the vacation, and are also paid. It's my undertanding that "paid leave/time off" in the US means sick days + vacation.
At least in my experience, there was a shift around the late 90's at US corporations away from having a set number of no-questions-asked paid sick days (which often went unused) plus a fixed amount of vacation (which you were strongly encouraged to use); to having a fixed number of "Personal Time Off" days (PTO) accruing every month, and anything you did other than work used them up.
This, predictably enough, had the effect of people coming to work sick, because if you took the day off you'd lose a vacation day.
Now it seems the new trend is to have no specific number of free days, but leave it up to the employee to take however many days off he/she feels are necessary. Then it's up to their manager to deal with it if they take "too many."
This lets you tell people they can take vacations, while not carrying any liability to pay them for the unused vacation if they quit or are laid off / fired.
The downside is that there is no longer any incentive to take any specific amount of vacation (after all, it's not accrued and can't expire). So if you're really busy, maybe you'll never take more than a couple days at a time.
The upside would seem to be that if you're a top performer and manage your time very well and have a cool manager, you can potentially take a LOT of time off without violating any company policy. I have however not heard any stories of this being done.
IMO its hard for people coming from a country without proper social security standards to understand why we are happy to pay for those.
Personally i dont mind earning less, i am close to 30 and have no financial pillow or anything. So far i just enjoyed life and spent money as i wanted to. If i get unemployed or sick i have nothing to worry, which is something i happily pay for.
I also enjoy the fact that i know people who live in my country have mostly a good life. Have enough to eat & get taken care of. I see how a different world view makes this irrelevant, but personally i feel this is worth a lot. Makes the environment generally more nice.
Apropos of this, I was in Paris recently at a startup event, and was pleasantly shocked at the sheer number of startups and people I saw doing things.
This is a good move by the French, and will help attract entrepreneurs away from other countries (particularly like those just across the channel currently inflicting generational economic damage on themselves.)
As someone from the UK, my main reason for not moving anywhere else in Europe is the language barrier. I'm not even sure I'm capable of learning another language; 5 years in school trying to learn French + German, and can still only put together about two sentences. From what I remember, no one else seemed to really pick up the languages either.
>As someone from the UK, my main reason for not moving anywhere else in Europe is the language barrier. I'm not even sure I'm capable of learning another language
I moved to Poland from the UK yonks ago, and have equally disastrous - if not worse - language skills as you.
Not long after arriving, I accidentally got a job at a startup, and I'd been led to believe everything was done in English internally: communications; client emails; heck, even variable names in the code, all was in English and I had nothing to fear.
This turned out to be a slight exaggeration; anything in English was the rare exception, rather than the rule.
You know what, though? Even without lessons and fully resenting Polish's grammar, you learn really quick. You also won't be facing this alone; as long as you're actually capable of getting the job done, plenty of local language speakers in your office will bend over backwards to encourage and help you.
Don't let language be the only thing holding you back. If I had my time again, I'd let things like bureaucracy and road safety guide my decision rather than what noises come out of peoples' mouths.
> even variable names in the code, all was in English
As a English-is-my-second-language person I can't imagine naming variables using any other language but English.
English is most of the times more concise than my mother language (Polish), and it is much easier to share code on the net, find help on stackoverflow, etc.
Say you're implementing a field-specific solution, do you use the US English term or the term that's written on the users know? (specs, documentation, etc)
If another developer comes on board, will their English be fluent enough to know those terms? There's also a huge risk in having a translation error. We're programmers, not translators.
For general variable names, I agree. On the other hand, in my experience, when the programmers aren't fluent enough in English, if English is imposed, they tend to choose really bad variable names and not comment their code properly. So I tend to impose clear names/doc over imposing a specific language.
In Poland it is generally assumed that a programmer knows English, most of the companies here are just branches of companies from other countries (not only US/UK based) and to communicate we use English as a common ground.
Another factor to consider is that if we write in language that has some constructs (e.g. C - if/then/else/while/return/int/double/class/void etc.) then writing:
if (znalezione) {
...
}
looks awkward.
Also one has to consider popular libraries and functions/methods/classes in them are English based, so this would add even more awkwardness to the code:
As I said, I'm not talking about the basics, but more especially for field-specific terminology, comments, etc.
I agree with you, but the example you gave is more common than you think. We tend to over-estimate people's language skills. (keep in mind, English is not my native tongue, I'm including myself in there and it's not meant as an attack, just something we need to deal with, and I would not outright exclude bilingual code)
One problem for a startup (as opposed to a consulting firm), is that you would eventually want to have geographically distributed offices and teams, though. So if you start with a code-base in something other than english and then end up opening an office in Ireland, Germany, Singapore or India you will likely end up rewriting into english anyways (never mind the Bay Area, Seattle or NYC, which you will likely need before your company reaches 10,000 developers...).
Some advocates of code "expressiveness" would like (or perhaps dread) a word with your lead... ;)
Joke aside, for anyone curious: we use such i, j variables for abstract logic like a counter (e.g. i=0 at the beginning of a loop, and gets incremented by 1 each time the loop runs), or booleans maybe (e.g. P=0 or 1, true or false). But generally it is considered good practice to give names to variables that are self-explanatory (e.g. studentName or vehicle_age) for readability and ease of understanding. Even counters and booleans should be significant when possible (e.g. "hasResponded" or "day_num").
On topic, I think english or not doesn't matter theoretically. Its cultural and indeed 80% of computing/code happens in english on earth (no source, waddayathink!). What matters imho is that semantics are correct (both human and machine language...) and reasonably meaningful to a collaborator.
To anybody wanting to know better: read open-source code. Best school there is, actual practice.
I can't imagine naming variables using any other language but English.
I spent some time as a consultant auditing other companies' software. Even with platforms where the coding-standards dictated the use of English, most of the projects I audited in Europe used the local language, rather than English - especially in variable names.
Admittedly there was a selection bias - I wasn't ever hired to audit perfectly good software - but it was remarkably common.
>>English is most of the times more concise than my mother language (Polish) [...]
If one were to pick Polish variable names, would the default be the neutral forms[1]? I'm sure this applies to other languages that also have forms of complex declension compared to English. Which would make more sense in Polish?
So, I still live in the U.S., but generally try to meet people abroad as often as possible while remaining in contact via Facebook, Snapchat, and WhatsApp.
While, personally, the U.K. and Sweden remain the most viable destinations if I were to move abroad, Poland isn't far behind in terms of the personalities of the people I've met, the scenery they've showed me, and the cultural/historical depth there. Obviously, take that with a truck load of salt since I've yet to visit.
Learning a language in school is different from learning it by yourself. School is force-feeding you everything, at a pace possibly not suited for yourself. You might even start disliking something you liked before because grading and tests sucks the joy out of things. If you, on the other hand, start to learn a language now you can get quite far in a reasonable amount of time (months). Its the difference between external and internal motivation.
Also necessity is quite a motivator and immersion helps tremendously. I'm terrible at teaching myself languages or learning them in school but can pick them up quickly when I'm living abroad where I am immersed in the foreign language and compelled to use it for daily interactions.
This is so true - I hated with passion all that was force-fed to us, for some reason particularly stuff in high school. The only exception for whatever reason for me were foreign languages, physics and history (probably because they were easier for me to learn compared to rest).
It took years to find surprising interest (even passion) in things like biology, geography, or literature for that matter (chemistry is still a big mystery to me, although basic principles seem trivial). Grammar in any language is is still a big no-no.
It might seem ridiculous but if you pick an expensive language course, that adds some proper motivation (with added value of good teachers/materials).
I did it in Japan. Picked up the language with decent enough fluency to handle my job and everyday conversation within 6 months of getting a girlfriend who didn't speak English. The trick to fast language acquisition is to put yourself in a situation where you need it to survive day-to-day.
Duo Lingo found that "sounding like a fool" is a big inhibitor to learning a language. With his wife, I bet your colleague didn't feel that embarrassment and could thus plow through and pick it it up.
To echo the sentiment of other replies here - I learned Mandarin (an incredibly difficult and tonal language) because I literally would have starved without it, and I became fluent in German in 6 months because of a woman. And I too spent years in high school learning Spanish and still lack the ability to construct basic sentences. It's all about the situation you're learning the language in.
Also from the UK and I have the upmost respect for anyone that can speak a second language. I find it incredibly difficult to get beyond a base vocabulary to actually being able to use the language without sounding like a cave man. I assume there'll be a "click" moment somewhere but its hard work getting there.
Incidentally, if you're sticking with Indo-European languages, once you're past the base vocabulary it gets easier, as the "complicated" words are more or less all the same:
telecommunication, Telekommunikation, Télécommunications/communication électronique, telecommunicatie, telecomunicación, etc.
Funny, I'm from the US and find it difficult to understand some of the accents from both North-Eastern Americans (ayy Boston) and some of the UK folks I've met (when they write exactly how they speak).
I'm non-native English speaker and find that I can understand the severely broken pronunciation of people from China or India, but many of the English accents from England are quite impossible. I can ask them to repeat over and over again, and can't understand a thing, and feel rather silly.
I'm a native English speaker with the world's most broadcast accent (the main Hollywood movie accent) and I'm a fan of Sherlock and Doctor Who. Those programs are produced with the most well known UK accents.
And yet I still have to rewind a few times in every episode for dialogue that I just can't decypher. Sometimes I never quite get the words.
Regarding language: you'll surprise yourself. You will have passable French within 6 months or less, and excellent French within 2 years or less, but during the initial 6 months your life will be hell. Your pronunciation will never be as good as that of the natives, though, but if your grammar is all right, no one but complete assholes will mind.
Your pronunciation can most certainly become native. The easiest path there is to immediately abandon all attempts to speak the language as if it is your own, and focus on the rhythm and intonation of the language. Also, pay attention to the shape of your mouth when speaking. I almost feel as if I have an entirely different voice when I speak French than I do in English. Focus on the sound and rhythm of the language as much as you focus on the vocabulary and grammar.
When I was first learning French 22 years ago, my teacher, an older woman who'd grown up and studied in France, shared a funny little joke about French women: their wrinkles start from the lips and spread outward across their face. This was said because they keep their lips far tighter, nearly pursed, than one does when speaking English. I've noticed and paid attention to how the French use their mouths when speaking ever since. It's been immensely helpful.
You are absolutely correct -- French speakers DO use their mouths differently than English speakers. Once I learned this in my Linguistics courses, my accent improved immeasurably.
The mouth is much more pursed, there are more sibilants, sounds either come from the very back of the throat or the very tip of the tongue.
It might help if you were immersed in it, as opposed to a small amount of time in school. But would you be able to function those first few months, that's the question.
I thought the same of myself until I actually tried. At 30 I started learning chinese full time for two years and eventually became fluent. It's possible, but you've got to take time off and dedicate yourself and immerse without using your mother tongue.
From my experience (as a french guys more interested in tech than literature) I really 'learned' spoken english by dating an UK girl (also joined a polyglot club: http://polyglotclub.com/, but living it was a real step forward, nothing compared to years of learning at school). That's the ultimate card up your sleeve to learn a foreign language.
Yeah, to learn a language you have to use it. School is a good start, but that's not usually how anyone progresses to the higher levels. Basically, you have to move to the country first and learn the language afterwards.
But yeah, English being the modern lingua franca is a major benefit to SV, London, etc.
I moved to France in 2007 and didn't speak the language, to do a math degree. It was fine. The first two years were rough, but after that I had no problems, and by the time I left in 2013 people regularly thought I was a native speaker.
The math/tech background helped a lot in the beginning. The texts there are more structured than normal, so you can get functional quickly without being conversational.
Moving there is the best thing that happened to me. Don't let the language discourage you from going anywhere. You'll struggle, and overcome.
European countries have signs in local language plus English. And then there is France, where even in Paris or even international places like Disneyland Paris you find hardly signs in anything but French. General joe also doesn't or doesn't want to speak English with you, you better speak a little bit French if you visit Paris.
Language lessons in school could be the least effective way to learn a a language. If you are own the ground using it, it is amazing how fast you can learn.
Language lessons are good at giving you the grammatical foundation you need to become literate. I agree that they're pretty bad for fluency in spoken language. To be fair, though, language classes are usually 3-5 hours per week, and you won't become fluent if you move to France or somewhere and only spend 3-5 hours per week trying to speak the language.
I took three years of German in high school and a semester in college. I could never get the der/die/das stuff to stick. Later on I started reading German fiction for fun and then I got frustrated because I know the verb but not who did what to whom and then I got a lot better in the grammatical agreement area quickly.
I have gone through many years of on and off anime fandom without formal schooling. When I do pick up a book about the Japanese language, I often think "that is obvious" or alternately realized I'd heard the phrase many times without understanding it.
I feel the general consensus is that France is good at startup creation, but lacks the infrastructure, particularly capital, to support their growth. Many of the promising ones end up getting bought by an established player, often a semi-public company stemming from an administration, like Orange (former national telecom). In other words, good entrepreneurship, but no chance of disrupting anything.
People mention the lack of VC, infrastructure, tax or other issues, but to me the biggest problem is the lack of talent. I would say that in terms of business skills, there's a surplus of "salesmen" type of founders, but technical founders are missing. France engineers are very smart and engineering school are among the best, but unfortunately I find their curriculum still oriented towards hard engineering (civil, aerospace, nuclear, etc.). On the other hand you can go to a classic university instead of the engineering school and get a computer science degree, but then you don't get as much of the engineer mindset training. Instead you get something leaning towards the pure science training, and due to the lower prestige of the universities, the computer science teaching is lagging behind a US computer science school.
Either the universities could invest more in a better computer science degree, but finding good fundings is probably difficult for public universities whose budget is decided by the government. Or the engineering schools could join the 21st century.
French billionaire Xavier niel recognizes the problem and tries to address it with his "42" school[1], I wonder how much impactful this has been
The French engineering talent is top notch... but you'll never see it.
Go to a graduation ceremony at a top school (note: it's delayed 1-2 years after graduation) and you'll learn that the top 10% have ALL left the country, no exception.
(I'm talking about the top in terms of technical abilities, entrepreneurship and/or skills that are valuable to execute , not necessarily school grades).
Given the size of most engineering programs in France and the way students are admitted into these programs, talking about some 10% top doesn't make sense, especially with the criteria that you mention and that cannot be assessed just 2 years after graduation.
Many of these students do start their careers elsewhere, partly due to the way the curriculum is planned (which leads many of them to finish their studies abroad). If you do look for them for your company/startup you'll be able to see them, although you could have to dig a bit deeper due to the small size of these programs (advertising in one specific French university does not have the same impact as in the UK/US and most other countries in the world).
I find it believable and surprising at the same time. Believable because despite what everyone claim, lot of people put money on top of everything else and they will head to where they are welcome to make more money.
Surprising because if a first world nation with high quality life in so many ways faces this problem what about the rest of the world.
I can not find a quote because the numbers are hidden.
But i am in an engineering school, i am in the top 10%, and it is true.
There was even a note from the ministry this year asking engineering school to stop the mandatory semester in a foreign university for all engineering student, to try to reduce the drain.
The truth is it is a lot more complicated than you make it sound.
There are some schools which are relatively young and focus on coding. Historically they were expensive (for French schools), even though one of them is now free thanks to the generosity of a French billionaire. They recruit students with different profiles than the traditional "Grandes Écoles" and they get much less recognition from French employers, especially large companies. Because of that, their top students may indeed be inclined to move abroad, where degrees matter less.
In the more generalist, traditional engineering Grandes Écoles, however, the phenomenon is a lot less prevalent. Some students do move abroad, but my experience is that it is not correlated to their competence. Those with propensity to found companies are more likely to go to the US, but that is mostly because the ecosystem there is like no other. On the other hand, you may have noticed that some large US companies (Google, Facebook...) have been opening research labs in Paris, while top French companies such as Criteo send their marketing department to the US but keep development in France. This is not only because talent is cheaper (others have already explained how low salaries for not mean low costs) but also because top technical talent doesn't necessarily want to emigrate. This is cliché, but Fabrice Bellard is still living in France, and Yann Le Cun moved back. :)
Which number is hidden ? Certainly not proportion of people working outside France (e.g. it took me 2 mins to find the one from my own former school, ~25 %).
I am dubious because as mentioned by hiq above, you would need to wait much more than 2 years to figure out who are the "best". Another reason I am dubious is that working in France or at least in a French company is still the best way to climb the hierarchy fast when you're coming from X/Central Paris/ Mines de Paris/Telecom/etc... except for a few specific fields (finance comes to mind).
> working in France or at least in a French company is still the best way to climb the hierarchy fast when you're coming from X/Central Paris/ Mines de Paris/Telecom/etc...
For those in those French "Ivy league" it makes sense to stay in a non-meritocracy / credentials based company then, but for all other engineering schools, it's a better deal to get a 6 figures salary job in the US, where it's much closer to a meritocracy than in traditional French companies.
In US tech you certainly see some Harvard, Stanford, mit graduates, but also a lot of non ivy league colleges with jobs such as software engineer, program manager, management, etc. One extreme example is Satya Nadella who got his MS from University of Wisconsin. Even if is undergrad degree was prestigious is India, it doesn't have the ivy League "power" similar to a X/Centrale/Mines in France or Harvard in the US in traditional jobs.
Agree, it makes sense for the ones who are from these schools AND have family/friend leverage to get right into a position of power they shouldn't get, out of school or soon. They guys definitely stay in France.
However, if you're from these schools but have nothing except your hard work to sell, you're better off in UK/USA (and your alumni network definitely extends there)... but you're likely a Parisian with friends/family/housing in Paris, so there are strong incentives to stay in the place you already are. Your school name alone will afford you a career decent enough for little effort.
For someone from any other school who ain't Parisian, there is no incentive to emigrate to Paris. The opportunities are much better in the UK/USA to the point of insanity, and it may even be easier logistically (it was for me).
For an European. Why the hell would he go to Paris? It's not even worth if for French people who ain't already in Paris.
At CES's startup area Eureka Park, I was stunned by the French turnout -- with, of course, the usual wide variation in seeming quality or likelihood of finding a market you might expect, still it wasn't another row of VR headsets for my phone.
There's been a lot of nice french initiatives to promote tech, in the last few years. It's still hard to overcome the anglosphere bias and to promote internationally, but from the inside it's still a nice atmosphere.
The issue is why can't France even attract engineers and investors from WITHIN the Eurozone, these people don't need Visa. The issue is elsewhere, not in the pool of engineers. France can't even retain its own engineers.
There's actually quite a lot of competition within EU, and France is not too shameful in that competition. It's hard to compete with London which is undoubtedly the #1 tech hub in Europe, but aside from that, Paris is top notch.
I would still pick Berlin or Amsterdam over France. Maybe even Sweden or Finland because of the average English language level spoken in those countries even though the startup scene there is smaller than Paris.
France, or Paris? The joke my former (Parisian) co-worker used to tell was that he missed everything about Paris except the Parisians. I've heard nice things about Lyon: Largish city, easily accessible, and not full of Parisians.
I could say the same about San Francisco and I lived there for a couple of decades. It is insanely crowded now with Uber drivers cutting through neighborhoods obeying their GPS overlord.
As for Paris, I love Paris but then I'd have a hard time getting work done there. Being near would be enough. I worked in Milan and Geneva and would take the train into Paris for the weekend but not for work.
We've actually had this welfare for 70 years, and the harm was supposed to come any minute now for all this time. Ultimately, its demise is likely going to come from the propaganda against it rather from it actually being a problem.
Who says you haven't seen harm? You're erecting a straw-man.
Also, you have to factor in that when the coffers are empty, France may be more willing to sell weapons abroad... So maybe it's not France that sees that harm.
Ok, is there some French Defamation League, downvote-brigade choosing to censor realities it dislikes, rather than respond?
I note I have down-voted responses to replies that do not have further responses. Hence, from my point of view, it seems when the argument got difficult, down-voting was resorted to..
note: this comment was also down-voted within 5 minutes, again without comment. Those who never comment, never run the risk of malicious down-votes.
Even if what you said was true, what would be the point of a strong economy if people cannot have healthcare? I'd rather have a less strong economy and better health for everyone.
Not surprisingly, it helps the economy: people dont lose their savings, jobs and houses when they get sick in Europe.
because London is sat next door with considerably higher salaries, and everyone there speaks English
not to mention setting up a company costs £14, 20% corporation tax (dropping to 17%), tax back for individuals investing in SEIS companies (which is easy for a firm apply for), and R&D tax credits
Why would France chase an engineer in Germany? That has to be considerably more expensive then acquiring talent from abroad.
Just eyeballing this would indicate going after a German or Fin would likely cost more, because 1. They have similar programs, 2. They don't care about Visas and therefore are less likely to be invested in being or staying in France long-term. If France gives me a visa you can be sure I'm there for more than just my business. 3. Language. 270+ million people speak French, so why not pull from countries and cultures that have some shared history and association.
Seems to me this makes way more sense for France than chasing down Germans, Dutch, Fins or anyone else local.
Interesting. I live there and frequently joke about the 'frenchtech' with colleagues.
Sadly, in our experience, french companies are very slow to adopt new technologies.
There are of course some exceptions, but right now I plan to try to move to the USA.
When people have asked specific questions like "am I going to be able to continue to live here?" or "am I going to continue to receive scientific funding that is distributed by the EU?" or "how is this going to affect my business?", they haven't recieved answers.
In the words of Douglas Adams, "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
> When people have asked specific questions like "am I going to be able to continue to live here?" ... they haven't recieved answers.
the UK Government is has stated it will guarantee the right for EU citizens to remain, if the same right is given to Britons in rEU, however the European Union refuses to engage on the issue ("no negotiation without notification")
Then maybe they should not exit the union? The brits have to come with all the answer, and can expect no help being given since they are the ones breaking up the relationship.
I cannot quite understand the thinking behind this comment (even if I'm in a country staying in the union).
It appears that some people in the union want to retaliate to the British for wanting to leave the union and thus insulting the honour of Juncker et al. They are even ready to shoot their own foot in retaliation, instead of just accepting that Britain leaves and life goes on, and new agreements are made, and trade goes on based on new agreements, for mutual benefit.
Most assuredly the relationship of Britain and EU will have to be formed based on proposals and answers from both sides. It would be really, really strange if EU could make general schemes of preferential trade with Cuba and South Sudan but not Britain, out of sheer malice.
They're referring to the UK/Brexit. There's a lot of opinions and some decently complex economics involved, but for a short summary, Brexit created economic uncertainty which acts as a general damper on business investment/growth, and if/when it's actually completed it will complicate foreign investment from elsewhere in Europe.
Yes, as others have pointed out, I was referring to Brexit, which has created a lot of uncertainty for those wanting to start or grow a business (and others, too).
As someone who lives in Montreal, that's very strange to see. We import French talent by the hundreds because they are lacking interesting tech jobs over there.
Actually things have been changing in the recent years. We're seeing bigger investment, so startups can afford bigger salaries. Also multinational companies (like Google, Facebook) are opening engineering and R&D offices in France, driving up the salaries.
Anyway, most of the tech jobs in France are in the IT service industry, but if you want an attractive salary you need to go to join a software company with a product.
So now you can get a pretty good salary in France as a software engineer, and while it's still lower as a number than in North America if you factor in the social system and the work/life balance it's not a bad deal at all. Just don't go to the service industry.
The first thing that happens to French engineers who interview for Google: "So, this position exists only in our Dublin, London or Zurich offices. Which one would you be interested in?"
Google's office in Paris (rue de Londres) in pretty big. And it was only a few examples, but there are other wealthy multinational software companies hiring engineers in France.
I have friends who had an offer at Google, but joined French companies that aligned their offer with Google. So the impact on the job market goes beyond people strictly working for them.
anecdotal? Not sure you used the right word there...
FWIW, I work for google and have access to the numbers. Although I can't give specifics, I will say that although Dublin, London, and Zurich are all larger sites within Europe, the Paris office has a non-trivial number of engineers, and some cool projects going on.
It has roughly 100+ engineers. That is indeed VERY anecdotal, how could you claim something else? Even compared to Google worldwide (~25,000), but compared to big companies that employ thousands of engineers in France, Capgemini for instance: 22,000, Dassault Systèmes: 3,000…
It is mostly because of the social welfare that is funded massively over salaries extortion. Take a random 60k€ salary for a senior software engineer in Paris, the employer is paying at least the same amount of taxes on top of that, making the cost for the company up to 120k€. It is not that far away from some foreign salaries for the same position, except in other countries highly skilled workers are not that massively extorted from their wage.
Of course on the other hand you don't care too much about health insurance (you still have to get a supplement private insurance), education for your children (true that it's nearly free), vacations (5 weeks is the least, you usually get 9/10 weeks). But I think it just doesn't add up for highly skilled workers. That's why they flee to London, Germany, North America… :-)
Exactly. France isn't an exception in Europe regarding high taxes and social contributions (even though the distribution employee/employer is making the salaries look a bit low compared to say, Germany).
And I'm sure some companies can drive salaries up, they just don't need to. Software engineering is looked down upon, most new grads want to become project manager, somehow working at a big bank / big consulting firm is seen as nobler. Even the recent trend in data science doesn't seem to leverage the education system that is particularly maths/physics heavy.
The big London banks may pay double or triple compared to Paris. It's just stupid to stay in Paris if you're good and you want to work in banking/finance.
London has the top investment banks, the top edge funds, the top HFT firms, the top whatever finance thing there is in the world. There's nothing of that in Paris.
The average British bank data science is powered by ENS & ENSIMAG & co (among other top worldwide schools).
That'd make a lot of sense. French are very strong at maths.
Basically, the "ivy league" French curriculum is: The first 2 years of college ain't college. It's an intensive non stop maths training program, at the end of which there is a national test (incredibly selective on maths). The students get to choose what college they go to, in order of ranking, highest score served first. Then they'll do some more maths in college, because, well, that's the only thing they can do xD
Add to that the administrative environment. One to two months to incorporate, really complex stuff to implement when pass the 20 then 50 employees bar, etc etc.
Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citadel, and one thousand small tech and finance firms in London.
The only decent company in Paris is Criteo. And you better have worked abroad at Google, Facebook then Goldman Sachs if you want a chance to be interviewed there.
The number of times I've heard, "We can't find developers" from people in my city is uncountable. Sometimes it's for companies where the word has gotten out about bad dev culture, others it's for boring me-too projects. Sometimes the two are hand-in-glove (bad culture -> 'safe' projects).
Someone once told me that if a company has to hire from out of town, there may be a reason, and you should investigate. They may have a bad local reputation, or they may just be too big for the town (and what happens when you get tired of working there or get laid off?). I didn't listen and ended up at a place the locals wouldn't touch when I moved here.
We are lucky enough to have a quite a few of interesting tech. companies here in Montreal so you can easily find new work when you get tired or laid off! Retail business are starting to understand that having an e-commerce presence is important so everyone is hiring.
Sure, I was talking more about the situation in France.
Seems like, if what you saw is common, that they are trying to solve a brain drain with another brain drain, which suggests they don't have a complete grasp of the situation.
The article is misleading. This legislation [1] only apply to terrorism acts. And basically every modern country that was targeted has similar laws [2].
That's a use case that was emphasized, but it doesn't appear that the government's actually aware of that limitation:
> M. Pierre Lellouche ... told the National Assembly. “They deliberately use the argument of public freedoms to make money knowing full well that the encryption used to[sic] drug traffickers, to serious [criminals] and especially to terrorists. It is unacceptable that the state loses any control over encryption..."
And whether or not it is supposed to "only apply to terrorism acts", there's no cryptographic algorithm that has a case for "secure unless the government is investigating an act of terrorism".
The point is that French law requires applications to be designed in such a way that key disclosure will allow customer data to be extracted. Signal, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Apple iMessage, and other end-to-end apps would be illegal.
It's not crazy when you put it in context of the history of France with war and espionage I think. What are regulations on cryptography and decryption like in other European countries like Italy, Belgium, etc?
You can expect something from 50k to 70k€ (gross salary) dependending on the company and your experience.
Remove 25% of that to have an idea of your net salary. (Those 25% are mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. All of those are mandatory)
Expect to pay between 1 and 2 months net salary in yearly incomes taxes.
California is consistently at the top of polls ranking by taxes paid. Sooo... it's not entirely fair to extrapolate to the USA from California, despite its size.
> Just to use round numbers, here is a breakdown for a single person making $120k/yr in California at a typical tech company.
Is that total cost to employer for that employee? Or are there additional expenses that are not considered part of employee gross income but instead fall under "employer pays for them" category?
People making the kind of money being discussed here, such that you trigger higher bracket income taxes, have great health insurance in the US as well. Further, decent jobs in the US almost always include health insurance compensation above the salary. I have a brother that works in a pretty normal job earning $42,000 per year (not an outsized salary in the US), he pays $27 per month for his health insurance through his employer, and it's a nice plan. That isn't unusual in the US, health insurance compensation is almost universally ignored in salary comparisons (while the inverse isn't true, the tax based health coverage in other nations is always noted as a perk that should be considered with salaries).
The education system you're referring to is not free at all. The very substantial income taxes in France pay for it.
The context seems to have been lost in the shuffle. Here's what I was responding to:
>I have a brother that works in a pretty normal job earning $42,000 per year (not an outsized salary in the US), he pays $27 per month for his health insurance through his employer, and it's a nice plan. That isn't unusual in the US
My point is that most people in 'pretty normal jobs' pay considerably more for healthcare.
Show me the US median instead of the average. The average will usually be substantially tilted higher by extreme examples at the top end. I'd be willing to bet the median is closer to $60-$70. That's not expensive.
I believe education is "free" till the end of high-school in the US the same way it is in France, the difference starts with College/University.
(France has a really nice pre-K system though!)
Here's the same exact same free education logic applied to the US system:
US universities are free. The money you don't pay in taxes covers the cost.
What evidence would you hold up to suggest the French fraternal economy system is the one to mimic? As opposed to Sweden, Germany, or the UK, which have all produced superior results the last few decades with different approaches from that of France.
> As opposed to Sweden, Germany, or the UK, which have all produced superior results the last few decades with different approaches from that of France.
Sweden, Germany and the UK have approached economic growth far differently than what France has, and have produced superior results to that of France. The question was, why would the "French fraternal" system be worthy of being copied given its weak results?
See for example: Sweden's economic deregulation and lowering of taxes, which prompted their significant economic boom.
I'm sorry but I believe most of that is FUD, which some prominents economists have been calling out, e.g. this short Krugman piece: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/06/about-that-frenc...
The sad thing is that this FUD itself has a impact, and is therefore self-fulfilling to some extent.
"Superior results" are, to be fair, quite debatable:
- UK got an edge via fiscal dumping, hurting its neighbours. This is also what Ireland is doing now, which really gives "good results", but is hurting all other EU countries (Luxembourg some the same, some other countries as well).
- Germany has a lower unemployment rate, but with way more precarious working conditions for many workers.
- I really don't know about Sweden so I won't speak about it, but I'm going to read the piece you linked, it looks interesting.
I could also say that France has superior results, if you look at other metrics:
- productivity per hour: the USA is #1 with a very very small edge over Germany and France, both #2. The UK, Japan are far behind
- Gini coefficient! This one is very dear to me. We're doing pretty well, and our evolution over 10 years has been better than most of our neighbours[1]
I believe that the biggest problem we're facing nowadays (and have been facing for a couple decades) is that increased globalisation allows companies to go "shopping" for their fiscal system, and put countries in competition. This creates a drive to get lower tax rates than your neighbours, which is a bad spiral and in the end deeply hurts countries (however, if you happen to disagree with that, then I'm afraid we have fundamentally different world view, and I don't really have the energy or will to debate if further, sorry). Ireland is a prime example of this.
> why would the "French fraternal" system be worthy of being copied given its weak results?
My goal is not for it to be copied a bit everywhere but, really, for it to be considered with fairness, and not just shunned and mocked because of propaganda and preconceptions.
I actually have a in mind couple great pieces I'd like to share on those topics; unfortunately they're in French. I'll look a bit around for potential translations.
You say pure bullshit, as in all your messages in this thread. Almost all European countries share the same principles about education and universities, and their funding, that's what is was about.
You obviously don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about, but you don't care, you keep talking and talking, the only thing that matters it to end with "Murica is better than anything else".
I think it depends on where in the US. In NYC, I pay around 32% of my gross income in federal and local taxes, social security, medicare, etc. That's almost 4 months of my salary.
On top of that, I have to pay for health insurance, deductibles, and retirement savings, which I assume my French counterpart wouldn't have to separately pay for.
Exactly. The first 25% I mentioned includes health insurance for your whole family with close to 0 deductibles (usually a few euros here and there), retirement plan and unemployment insurance (if you get fired, you can expect to get ~60% of your previous gross salary the first year, slowly decreasing after that) and at the very least 5 weeks of paid annual leave.
Christ, the top end of those numbers (both for gross salary and income taxes) is 3600 euros net per month, which is only 20-40% more than you get in Warsaw. Meanwhile, Paris real estate is (from what I'm hearing) extremely expensive.
You'll definitely earn way less, but you'll be entitled to a lot of vacations (5~7 weeks of paid vacations).
The Americans I know that went to work to France don't want to go back
I'm an American that just spent five years in France. My experience, for what it's worth: I can't say enough nice things about it in every aspect outside of work. I lived in the south of France and I now realize how nice life can be.
Life -- not work. Working there was a nightmare. The pay is low, and while you can live on it, you're not really saving. For a while I was part of the startup community there and while there are many great programs from the government, there is a bit of a local mafia deciding things. Investors were so unsophisticated that technology itself seemed to scare them.
All-in-all, if I could have made it work, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Living there is simply a small piece of heaven on earth. There's just no way to viably work there that I could find.
Another data point (throwaway for privacy reasons) -- senior data scientist, 5 years experience, in Paris, working for a large American networking company. I am making 65 kEUR gross incl. bonus, i.e. 40 kEUR after all taxes.
And I am happy to be leaving soon for job in London paying 85 kGBP gross.
I still expect to be better off there. I rent a 1BR place in Paris for 850 EUR, and I expect to find something comparable in London for 1500 GBP. That means that the flat in London costs about 800 EUR more, which is less than the salary increase I'll be making.
65 k€ = 3358 € per months (on "12 mois") after all taxes, if single living alone.
85 k£ = 4712 £ per month, after all taxes.
Also, 65 k€ is a fairly good end of career in France whereas 85 k£ is a good middle experience in London (and you can get bonus, pension and perks on top).
I live in Harrow in a nice one bedroom for £995. It's in Zone 5 which is far out, but the Metropolitan line has fast trains that go straight to Zone 2 in the morning so you can be in Liverpool Street in around 40 minutes.
That said, if you're thinking of dropping £1500 on a 1 bed you'll have no problem IMO. I was paying £1400 for a 2 bedroom with garden and huge living room in Leytonstone only a few months back. As long as you're not planning on living in Mayfair or Kensington that's a nice budget to work with.
I just graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris, usually second on engineering school rankings after Ecole Polytechnique. I found a job in web development in a small startup in November and am making ~45k a year.
40-45 for master's degree from a very few select schools, like the one from the OP. (Think of it as an equivalent of MIT/standford/harvard. Only a few hundreds lucky people get out of there every year).
35-40k for master's degree from everywhere else.
If you don't have a master's just forget about it ^^
But that was not the point, the point was that people talk about "raw", or "after taxes", while it does not mean the same. In France when they talk about "income after taxes" (~23% salary taxes), it is before the equivalent of US Federal+State taxes. These ~23% are about "social contribution" (mandatory healthcare, retirement, unemployment, etc.).
Only then, the income taxes are computed on what remains, depending on your family situation (having children impact a lot in France compared to the US). For a single person it can be up to ~ two-months salary.
Right, but we also pay 7.6% in social security in addition to income taxes, along with hefty healthcare premiums + deductibles which you don't have to worry about[1]. We also don't have the benefit of free higher education. Despite the depressed technical wages, overall, I think the French have a better deal from a quality of life perspective -- especially if, as you say, they have children.
I hope their system proves sustainable in the long run... I wish I had a way to participate in it (I could apply for the visa, I suppose), but it would be difficult for my US academic wife to break into French academia[2] at a suitable level.
[1] In a bad year, we're talking $13K in deductibles for a family of four on an average insurance plan.
[2] Now that I think about it, she studies French domestic politics. Hmmm...
I am using https://salaryaftertax.com/fr to compute the net salary, but I am not sure whether it offers the complete picture.
Could anyone familiar with the taxation in France offer more details?
This seems to be accurately calculating the income taxes, but that's not taking into account the corporate taxes.
If a French employer tells you they'll pay you 100k€ annually (just for the sake of the example), you can expect to receive 75k€. (25%, mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. Mandatory)
Then, if you input those 75k in this tool, it will tell you what you can expect to pay as income taxes. In the case of 75k, 17 218€.
> What are salaries like for mid-senior level software engineers working in tech companies in Paris?
Looking at what StackOverflow's Jobs tab spits out right now, I see: software engineer Java 38k-60k; software engineer Python 40k-55k; DevOps engineer (not your idea, I guess? there's a number of these) 40k-55k; developer for 3D applications 38k-48k; ...
Then there is one for a senior Java engineer for 47k-59k and right above another one for a senior Java engineer for 60k-120k.
These numbers are gross. Based on other posts, deduct 35-40% to account for things taken out of your paycheck (including health care) plus the income tax and rental tax you have to pay after. Rent for a small apartment in Paris starts about 1000 Euros per month and rises steeply.
38% + about 1 month of net income to pay each year as income tax.
There's absolutely no visibility on retirement plan. You just know that you earn "points", with no idea what they're worth.
Also, when you rent in France you have to pay a tax (similar to property tax) which, depending on the city, can be quite high (~1 month of rent/year).
VAT is 22% on most products. Gas is expensive (highways too!!!). Train (TGV) is ridiculously expensive.
> 38% + about 1 month of net income to pay each year as income tax.
My 35-40% figure includes the income tax and the rental tax. You must be in a crazy high bracket if you get 38% deducted every month. On my last pay slip, it's 17.5%, but I get paid around the lower end of the salary brackets I posted above.
> VAT is 22% on most products.
20%
> Gas is expensive (highways too!!!).
Maybe. I prefer spending my money on better things than a car.
I would say 46+ k€, before taxes, which are 33% corporate tax rate and ~30% on personal income. But I'm not sure how it applies to people with tech visa.
46k is really low in France for an experienced dev and that's outside of Paris. Junior dev engineer earn at least 45k when they begin in Paris, and it gets to 60k in about 5-10 years. Also corporate taxes are about 23% but you're right on personal income.
I've had my Engineer's Degrees from ISEP last year and I'm working at Alten since October 2016. My official title is development engineer (Ingénieur d'études).
Before that, I've done two six-months internship as a junior java dev.
Alten is a technology and engineering consulting company, which means, in the context of the French market, that when a company, need a particular profile (like java dev) to staff a position for a set amount of time (like for the expected duration of a project), they'll contract Alten for a developer, java, for x months.
Does it track market rates? I've worked for a company before that took fresh grads, and relied strongly on them never entering the market for themselves and realising what market rate was.
Yep, same as the company I worked for. Market rate is hard to discover, but harder still if you have an entity working against you - the company I worked for had a binding contract with any client preventing them from revealing how much they paid for temps.
Do you have a period of time you are contracted to work? If you can make friends in the Paris dev community, you might be able to find out how good/bad your pay is.
From what my former classmates told me, for profiles that are roughly equivalent, it looks like to be closer to 40k. But then they are not in consulting companies.
And I'm too much of a lazy ass to look for another job. Also I have few reason right now to seek a higher salary.
If one of those reasons is "I'm still learning", note that agency jobs can often be exactly the same as non-agency jobs, except with a middle-man sapping away a portion of salary.
France doesn't offer "free healthcare". If you go to the doctor on an outpatient basis, you pay for the visit up front* and will be reimbursed 80% of the reasonable and customary charges. If you need to go to the hospital, then you're not paying anything. Medicine is reimbursed at a lower rate with it's own plusses and minuses: Many items that would be over the counter in the US require a prescription (e.g. lactase enzyme). So it's a hassle to get it, but you'll also get reimbursed for it if you need it.
The schools are good, but they are also going to be very hard on your kids unless they are very young. Homework volume is high, and my own cynical view is that at least part of it is training kids for the experience of dealing with the difficulties of filling out lots of paperwork and dealing with the French civil service.
Source: Worked for two years in a French overseas territory.
The indigent and extremely poor have special programs whereby they are exempted from this.
*You can buy additional insurance that will increase the coverage to 100% and/or remove the need to pre-pay. That comes with the tradeoff of having to use the provider network that the insurance company has (a la US healthcare).
An important point you seem to be missing, is that stuff that are not free but deemed a necessity (e.g.: family doctor consultation, drugs...) are capped. What they are allowed to charge at most is decided by law (in exchange, they get to control how many people gets to go to (~free) Medical School every year -- it's far from ideal, but not a terrible balance).
Yes, because part of my paycheck goes towards that. And every time I fill up. You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free." Politicians love to exploit this phenomenon for maximum effect.
You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over
money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free."
The distinction is that it doesn't matter how much or little I use it, I pay no more.
If I drive on the highway, I don't pay anything extra. If I choose not to drive on the highway, I don't get cash in my pocket. Use of the service doesn't cost anything - this is "free at the point of delivery".
This is important, because it means that the service is independent of income. I don't need income to drive on the highway. I don't need income to have secure healthcare. Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
> Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
And they continue to operate so long as there are enough people who _actually pay for these services_. Maybe you don't fall into that category, fine. But there are a lot of people who do, and it all comes straight out their paycheck. It is not free for them by any stretch of the imagination.
Your logic is not sound though. Some people are not paying a dime while others pay more. And by far you are using way more road that you are able to afford, just like what happens with shared hosting.
More importantly, according to your definition, nothing is ever free. If I tell you that you can pick a fruit from a tree in a national park, you will probably use a ridiculous argument that national parks are protected, therefore somebody pays for the maintenance, etc.
So no offense, but please don't be an idiot, and by that I mean "someone who acts in a self-defeating or significant counterproductive way."
I always found that calling the healthcare "free" in France is a large part of 1) how much people can abuse it and 2) don't appreciate it for its real value.
> Family: “Talent Passport – Family” residence permit granted to spouse of the main applicant, guaranteeing identical family treatment and automatic labor market access (as an employee, business founder, etc.).
I opened the link to see how it would treat families. Much to my surprise, it gives spouses access to the labor market, too.
I'm in US right now, 1 semester left for degree and have interned at a respectable company.
I wonder if they're looking for experienced engineers over fresh ones.
I've read so much that work life and culture is so much better in France, so heres hoping...
> I've read so much that work life and culture is so much better in France, so heres hoping...
Yes and no. There's certainly room for a healthy work-life balance, but don't believe that you're guaranteed to get an interesting job AND great work-life balance. You can find it, but it's not 100% of the market.
Not France, but if you're looking for work-life balance and about to graduate, maybe check out the working holiday visa in Ireland. You can show up with the right to work, instead of having to convince someone to hire you while living abroad.
If interested, I would suggest doing your research quickly since the program has been watered down on the US side and I would expect some tit for tat as time goes on.
You know, a lot of CS people in the US seem to really love the US and say stuff like "it sucks not to be in the US." They usually mention how they can afford everything since they make so much money and how they prefer to work 600 hours a week instead of having forced days off and that health care through Employer is so much better than through government.
Admittedly, this was on Reddit, which is just a huge echo chamber, which led me to stop using it.
However, I wonder how your point of view on this subject is?
I believe a lot of tech people are the type that prefer a computer as everything around them is madness in disguise.
A lot of people I know over time build mental walls that resemble what the US culture respects and pushes on everyone. Work is #1 and money is everything. I see people that never use their vacation days and feel bad when they do!
I believe if there was more focus on philosophy teachings in the US, things would be different and maybe more healthy individuals would exist. I think it's easier in the US to fall into a unhealthy pattern of life and not realize it. Some people are dumb founded by the notion or just don't think about it as they don't see alternative options available. I've had luck of working with many older engineers that advise if they had done things differently in life...
Yes. This is how I feel when reading those comments as well. I am from Europe, but living in the US at the moment, but will be moving back soon again. Obviously, people who never experienced an alternative cannot really see how what they have now might be bad.
Having been in both Europe and the US I can easily compare both lifestyles and conclude that Europe is more suited for me, even if it means that I will not own a 5 bedroom house with 6 TVs.
When I worked in tech in the US, I got three or four weeks off. This was considered an incredible degree of largess on the part of my employers. Unfortunately, though, my partner generally got only a week off per year (she works in museums, a tough industry).
In Europe we both get a month off every year by law, which means we can both enjoy it. My salary is lower, but hers is higher. In general, we find we have more fun this way.
To me (working in London), the biggest difference in France is the attitude towards healthcare : it's not a business, rather a right. I first heard the words "Preexisting condition" when I moved to London and researched private insurance there.
"the attitude towards healthcare : it's not a business, rather a right"
"I first heard the words "Preexisting condition" when I moved to London and researched private insurance there."
Might that be a reflection that it's private healthcare in a country which already provides free healthcare?
The human right to healthcare is already catered for in the UK, through the NHS, so private healthcare doesn't have to accommodate the right, it's simply a business.
You have the official national healthcare that you're forced to pay "la securite sociale" and a wide range of private healthcare that you're forced to pay as well "une mutuelle".
Noawadays, it's even picked and forced by your employer (but taken on your pay). You may not be able choose or deny the plan you're offered. It's messy.
It's not a benefit when you're forced to take it AND your wife is forced to take one as well (that both cover both of you). So you end up paying double. Then not only it's taken away from your pay directly by the company but it's also a taxable benefit so you pay taxes on top. Just saying.
> how they prefer to work 600 hours a week instead of having forced days off
Your idea of jobs in the US is wrong. I work 40 hrs a week and sometimes that goes up to 45 or 50 but not often. I get breakfast and lunch provided to me (also dinner but I don't stay for it because I would go insane) and I make 150k + 80k a year in equity. You could also however work at amazon and get paid the same but also work 60 hours a week (Amazon is the exception and has a very bad reputation).
> health care through Employer is so much better than through government
Health care through the employer can be significantly better than through the government. It can also be worse.
If you are a high performer in the US, it is perfect.
I think you misunderstood what I meant with that. I was trying to make the point that whenever people say the US is great, they mention that they would rather work 60 hours a week than maybe 40 and being forced to take every other Friday off or whatever. I am not saying all jobs are like this, but people who say that everything else than the US sucks use this argument.
And why do you think that getting insurance through the employer is better than government? Maybe it is only great for people who know they won't get laid off. In Europe if you get laid off you are still insured. If you are working and wish to have better insurance, you can always go with a private insurance company. I am just not fond of the idea that basic social services are tied to your employment status, since getting laid off could put you in a negative cycle.
Absolutely! I feel like once you get out of your 20s, finding the right work-life balance and general quality of life becomes more important. You can also better appreciate cost of living - gross salary isn't as important as what you have left over after you pay all your bills. Once kids come into the picture, the big expenses in the US like child-care, school, and coverage for your family on your health insurance plan takes a huge chunk out of your salary anyway. It's not a tax like in many European countries, but it's not money going into your savings either.
No big deal, I have a pretty good idea what that means, even though I don't speak French, but if they're trying to market to an English-speaking audience, me thinks they should at least have a version of that message in English.
I strongly recommend against moving to France if you do not speak French (unless you have strong language aptitude and are willing to make serious, concerted effort to learn quickly).
France is not like Sweden or Iceland where everyone speaks English.
> How is this analogy with Ireland even remotely relevant?
the point is, what is 'official', and what is 'in practice' can differ. Quoting the official language of Ireland says nothing about what actually goes on.
Similarly, The the official language of France says nothing of how easy it is to speak English there, especially in large tech-hubs (the context of this conversation), nor how this might change in the future.
"This specific visa can be used for talent coming from anywhere in the world. As an example, we are aware of a recent senior hire from the US that got his visa returned to him in his passport exactly 28 days from submission. This specific visa puts an individual on track to Indefinite Leave to Remain and Citizenship with no need to stick with a particular employer."
For anyone that is really interested in this, I would first recommend reading Stephen Clarke's "A Year in the Merde". It's a humorous look at what it's like to live and work in France. Despite being over the top, there is still a large element of truth to the stories.
Trying to add my piece of advice here with some interesting readings...
I'm French, not a parisian (yes, we do exist), working in south of France. So for my (strictly) personal point of view, I hope to never work in Paris as this is a "too intense" city (this is just my way of life). But, creating a startup there is almost mandatory : lot of VC living there, important infrastructures ( https://stationf.co/ for example, and many others).
As many people said it, administration is hell (but it's getting better over years, thanks you www). So to avoid your hr, legal, financial stuff, take an accountant so you can do your job... Maybe it's 200€/m, but 200/m is like what ? a 2 days budget/month ? trust me, you don't want to waste your time on this.
On the tax part, yes, there are a lot, and it's a better move for a french student to move to the US than an american student to move to France. Why? We don't have a 100k student credit to pay for (Very good public schools, and when I say public, it's between 500€ and 2500€ / yr).
But more and more, administrations and institutions help startup founders financially. Maybe you should look for someone to take care of public grants (even if they take a commission on it) so you don't have to take care of this? Health insurance included, etc. It's a lot in the end but... meh, we always need a reason to whine you know.
On the language part, yep. We are terrible. But in all the industries around my work, english is mandatory. In my comp, requirements are in english, project management tools are in english, etc. It's simple, it's mandatory to work in english in our techy fields, so we can't avoid that. But yes, going to the bakery and speaking in english might be hard first. But once you know how to pronounce "Croissant", you'll be okay.
Oh, and we have good food (but haven't found a good beer (yet) :).
Sincirely hope you will be more than pleased if you plan to come to France though...
If you take a look at the french economy, their political system, their tax rates and social security system you don't actually want to work and/or live there as a startup founder, so no need for a visa. Nice try, France.
// edit: ah, not to forget about their unwillingness to treat you as human being when not speaking their language.
Great move. This is how US started a golden age. Encouraging outlooking and talented migrants with ZERO public money spent on getting them to that level. Free talent. And btw, outlooking and talented migrants are exactly the kind that will want to blend in and cause no problems.
Isn't it like super hard to setup a startup in France? That being said, the talent coming out of all the grandes ecoles seems definitely underutilized.
> Isn't it like super hard to setup a startup in France?
It's been getting way easier each year. This book[1] by Criteo's founder explores the question in details.
> the talent coming out of all the grandes ecoles seems definitely underutilized
I'm really not sure what you're hinting at here, though. Some of the concerned people will choose more relaxed jobs over intensive ones, but that's a personal lifestyle choice, and not really frowned upon.
As an interim CTO who helped a number of clients find good hires, I can say I'm definitely under the impression that a large part of grandes ecoles talents is siphoned every year by FB, Google, MS and the likes (which makes it harder for new startups to hire).
I work at a startup and my cash comp is inline with cash at Google et all. The expected value of equity (read: last valuation prices) is also in line but obviously illiquid.
I got ripped off at the first two startups I worked for but learned my lessons.
Don't be busy, create obvious value along the actual company line.
You're most likely not working for the founders, it's really the stakeholders and at least some of these have money. Make sure the money is found for your salary (believe me they find the money for the lawyers).
Be prepared to move if necessary.
It's an uneasy compromise at first, but eventually it becomes clear the best interest is not having the best employees constantly flirting with a healthy stream of recruiters.
There's very little risk in joining a startup in France. You'll get almost exactly the same benefits as someone working at a big co. Work hours, vacation, retirement, healthcare, unemployment: everything is regulated by labor laws.
But when a new grad from a top school can get 40k at a startup, no bonus no equity, or 70-80k total comp at Google, it's a no-brainer.
I think the problem is going to more in closing the startup. I don't know much about labor laws but it seems to me that it's easier to hire/fire people in the US. Startups by definition are very risky and therefore, it's likely you might scale people quickly and reduce if there is no market.
Interestingly, I used to believe that until I discussed with a French founder, who confirmed that yes, there is a lot of bullshit paperwork. On the other hand, you can benefit from your (public) unemployement insurance as a founder. In other word, you can willingly quit a previous job and keep on benefiting from a substantial chunk of money for a few months/year. Along with health benefits and all the other "free" stuff you get.
The "4-year renewable" visa would make me hesitate, unless you don't mind going back to where you came from in case your business didn't work out or you got laid off. The feeling that you're in a temporary situation can't be very nice, and will prevent you from fully committing and settling down properly.
Why not offer a Green Card or some other kind of Permanent Residency?
For the startups: Don't think so. Corporations need to generate profits to pay taxes. ;)
The personal income taxes apply though.
The other huge problem with France (and Europe in general) is the problem that you can't fire bad/unneeded employees easily.
Continental Europe is a bad environment for young companies that need to be agile. Too much red tape and regulation. And when you survive all that, the state is going to take most of your profits as taxes and compulsory social contributions (and compulsory non-social contributions cough German IHK cough).
EU countries can come up with as many visa and incubator schemes as they like. But they won't attract many entrepreneurs. Because if I'm an entrepreneur in the position to start a business in another country then I'm going to choose the best one: The USA.
> For the startups: Don't think so. Corporations need to generate profits to pay taxes. ;)
You are contradicting your own point. A startup with zero profit can still be taxed at a very high rate and pay almost zero taxes simply because there is no profit to be taxed. But the rule would still apply in this case.
On your 30k, you get 1925€ per month (23k/yr) after corporate tax/social security etc. We call this "net" even though income tax is due on top of that.
For income tax, you pay taxes according to the following brackets (on yearly income) :
- 0€ to 9700€ : 0%
- 9701€ to 26791€ : 14%
- 26791€ to 71826€ : 30%
That means for a single person with no children, you pay an incone tax of 234€/yr, or 20€/month.
The system here is that you can get tons of subventions and tax credits for being in IT.
So yes, corporate tax and personal income tax applies, aswell as other stuff. You just have to figure out how much of this tax will be cancelled or refunded (usually this is the kind of infos that get shared in french startup networks).
Surprised that the comments here are from the perspective of an employee considering moving to France when the purpose of the visa is to attract founders. Try founding a tech company when you are paying all those employment taxes for everyone you hire. And then they are only allowed to work 35 hours a week. I helped a startup during the dot com boom in Paris. They said the "employment police" would stake out their building to ensure nobody worked too long. And good luck holding on to anything if you sell. Sorry France. Nice try.
>> And then they are only allowed to work 35 hours a week.
They said the "employment police" would stake out their building to ensure nobody worked too long.
This is a myth.
35 hours a week is a reference figure (likely to go the way of the dodo with the next president btw) after which overtime regulations are triggered for some types of employees (mostly blue collar). White collar hours aren't regulated at all in the same way, they're just supposed to get some extra days off ("RTT") since that law came in force.
It's true the "employment police" in France can indeed be full of nasty anti-business commies (a famous hard left politician in France spent his whole career there), but it's a total urban legend they'd be staking out a building looking for overtimers.
Does anyone know how big of an impediment is not knowing French?
EDIT: I should have articulated my question better by saying "in the short term." I agree its foolish to not learn the local language if you plan on staying. But if the office language is French that is going to be almost a non-starter for someone who doesn't already speak it.
It can be intimidating enough changing jobs in your native language. I know Sweden and Berlin use English as the lingua-franca of the office. I just don't know about the French tech scene.
I've said this before in another relocation thread: I'm an expat working in Paris in tech. Sure, everybody at work is able to speak broken English, but most don't enjoy it. Of other expats I know, the ones who went to the effort of learning French, even just the basics (and are working on improving it), are happy here. The ones who came without intending to learn French are miserable. Many French people aren't exactly welcoming to people who don't show effort. If you work in a startup, your ten French colleagues won't happily switch to English during lunch breaks just so you can follow the conversation. (As opposed to Scandinavia, say.)
You're welcome to come, it's great here. But don't come without wanting to learn French. You'll be unhappy.
French here. You have to learn french, people in the french administration aren't going to communicate with in you English.
Obviously in Paris more and more people know English since it's a touristic area. But it isn't like Berlin,Amsterdam or Brussels where you can live with very little local language knowledge. Correct french is a pain in the ass to learn, the language is needlessly complicated.
Frankly If I were a "foreigner" (outside the EU) who wants to move to a non English speaking European country, I'd go to Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden or Austria. I lived and worked in all these countries without problem and with little knowledge of the local language.
Just don't come here with 0 french and expect to find work, that's not realistic. If you are an "expat" (i.e. you already have a guaranteed job in France), then by all means...
I'm sorry, but ... typical French reaction (I'm French myself)
The government and the administration is trying to improve the climate on founders/visa/startups/tech, and yes, it's far from being perfect and there are a lot of pieces missing and a lot that could be improved, but, at least, they seem to be trying.
And then you come, and just tell people they should go somewhere else "because it will be too hard".
So, I'm all for warning that it won't be all pink and easy, but I don't think it ought to be as hard as you seem to imply.
One thing which is definitely true is learning a few words and know how to say "Hi" in French and that you don't know the language will go a long way.
After, that, if you feel like you want to stay in the country, you will naturally go towards learning the language anyway.
I lived 7 years in the Netherlands, and you can go mostly fine with just English (even though, in some more rural areas, it can still be hard despite the reputation of the country), but learning Dutch helped me integrate and "unlock" situations where English would not have been enough, just because it showed to the people involved I was willing to integrate better in the country and make efforts to be understood.
I think the problem is that there is a complete disconnect between those in government that are "trying" as you say, and those who execute the day to day bureaucracy.
Let's take an example directly from this announcement:
"Apply to the French Tech Visa for Investors: Contact your local French Consulate or the local "Prefecture" (if you already reside in France) and follow the general route to apply for a "Passeport Talent"
Only those who live here will understand what this entails. The prefecture is a branch of regional government that is totally gridlocked with unnecessary paperwork.
- they tell you explicitly you can contact the consulate, that's when you're not in France
- If you're already in France, there is a big chance you've already been in contact with the prefecture, so you'll know what it is. Besides, it's very googleable.
Finally, yes, the prefecture is definitely not the best place to hang out, but I'd be surprised if they did not get very precise and direct instructions on how to take care of those candidates.
Well, getting lost in translation is something normal, isn't it? I have been 1 year in Germany and I tried to learn German. If you don't want to learn a new culture/language it's going to be difficult for sure. Why a whole country should adapt to you?
Some english speaking guys don't want to make effort to adapt and I really think that they miss the most important & fun part of travelling/living abroad.
You can raise money in english in France. No issue on that.
We have nice startup here and nice developpers. But you can also find nice thinghs in other EU countries. Business is everywhere...
I was in Berlin, and I was never spoken to in German (since I don't really look German), and I would ask the person if they spoke English just to be polite before I started speaking to them, and they would almost get offended. Actually, I hardly heard any German being spoken.
On the contrary, in Warsaw I had problems getting basic directions in English even if I asked young people on the street. They were either self-conscious or didn't know English, but either way they wouldn't speak to me in English. When I went to mini-markets and places where you'd find less educated people at the cash register, absolutely zero. Not even "bag".
My point wasn't that it's not a problem in the long term, but that in some countries it's also a problem in the short term.
In Poland I really felt unwelcomed on many occasions. The fact that they're extremely nationalistic doesn't help, I guess. I was surprised that even 18-year-olds wouldn't speak English to me. I'm now learning Polish.
That's odd, I felt very welcome when I was there hiking this summer. But then it might not have been in the same areas, plus the usual difference between the country and cities.
If you are happy to live in an expat bubble then it works, but if you want to connect with the locals it doesn't. Most friend groups won't change their language to english to include you.
In Warsaw and Wroclaw, if I was brought in by one of the group, the whole group would speak English to not be rude. If it's random people, they wouldn't. Single guys or girls not in a group will speak English to you if you're hanging out with them.
I think it largely depends on who it is you're dealing with.
"uneducated" people and the elderly will be less likely to speak or wanting to speak English (cashiers are the worse, in my experience). Most young people will speak English. Programmers and startup people all speak English. Doctors speak English, etc.
From dating a Polish girl, and meeting some of her relatives and friends in Poland, I'd say it's mostly a problem of confidence. Once they started talking there was rarely a problem (at least for non-rare words), but a lot of them didn't speak English to non-Poles often enough to feel like they actually could.
I too believe that young people are just self-conscious, perhaps because they're not used to speaking it.
A lot of old people dislike foreigners to a certain extend, however, and I bet some of them wouldn't speak it on purpose even if they could. For instance, an old lady at a drugstore complained to the cashier at the register because I took too long picking some medicine, while "there were Poles waiting in line".
Let's just say that Berlin was more foreign-friendly in my experience.
I've met people who did well in Hong Kong for decades without learning the local language (Cantonese) and then haven't bothered to learn Mandarin since China took control 20 years ago.
It's pretty doable in Sweden, too. In Japan, Russia or Argentina, though, you'd be at an enormous disadvantage.
To be fair, HK is bilingual, at least in the sense that all government/utility/etc. forms are available in both Cantonese and English (these days also in Simplified Chinese).
Article 9 of the Basic Law stipulates:
"In addition to the Chinese language, English may also be used as an official language by the executive authorities, legislature and judiciary of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region."
So, it's quite easy to get along without Cantonese or Mandarin (or without English, for that matter).
However, without Cantonese, one only has limited access to what's going on in politics, civil society, show biz, etc.
In Switzerland (we already have 4 local languages) it is very common for people not to speak the local language. I have seen people leaving in Geneva for more than 20 years and still not speaking french. The swiss government is even translating the laws in English for foreigners.
If you live in Paris, you would probably be fine, but outside Paris you may have hard time finding people speaking english (that is, in the street, shops, etc). Sadly, foreign languages are not proper priorities in our education.
I lived in Rennes, and frequently visited Paris. Your post summarizes my experiences exactly. What's more--I learned French in university, but my accent and the native accent were mutually unintelligible for quite a long time.
Given France history (and bagage with England), many French people are very proud of their language. I believe that if one wants to really enjoy France, develop good friendships there, etc., one has to speak French. Or at least be learning it.
massive... I am actually relocating to France in a few days. French lessons are very high on the list, as few people want to speak English day-to-day. The workplace might be different, and Paris might be different, but for the rest - French is a must. The second amendment of the french constitution reads "The language of the Republic is French" they take their language seriously.
To summarize:
It depends where you'll end up and which tech area you're specialized in.
Paris is often a good spot, south east as well (Monaco, Cannes, Nice) if you're specialized in hardware.
Regarding the south-east part, english might not be too much of a problem since international tourism is a big part of the local economy, I even heard that Google used to look for a spot there until some local political figure blew it up due to personal interests conflicts.
Also for the record, Paul Allen's yacht is frequently seen cruising around when it's time for the Cannes festival.
Human brains are wired to soak up languages. Anybody immersed in another language making a minimum effort, will be fluent enough in six months.
People who say they have experienced the contrary typically go to great length to speak and read their native tongue. It doesn't matter how much you tried at home with a book etc... Once you're immersed and have made the decision to understand and speak the local language, it's like your brain goes on steroid. It is difficult to imagine until you've experienced it.
I believe this is entirely too dismissive of a very complex and important subject.
As a native English speaker living in France, I would strongly advise anyone considering living and working here that it is absolutely critical to speak, read, and write a competent level of French if one is to be successful.
Sure, if you're going to just live in the center of Paris and spend all your time in the Expat crowd, you can get by, but it's disingenuous to claim that someone wouldn't be at a significant disadvantage in a French company if they only speak English.
I'm aware of several companies that claim they operate in English, but what this really means is that formal meetings and (some) emails are written in English, and all other conversation is in French.
Won't it be a problem when looking for funds though? People who can fund startups tend to be a bit older and might not have a good level of English (or will simply be more likely to help the startup if they can communicate in French).
You raise an interesting point. I mostly answered from the point of view of an engineer, for whom it's not the biggest issue not to speak french.
For a founder though it'd make things more complicated. They'd need to have someone close who speaks french, especially since there is a bunch of paperwork to do to start a company here and some physical interactions with french administration where english speaking might not be guaranteed.
They will also be more impressed and glad that some foreigner is trying to create value in their country. I don't think language is really a barrier in this case.
Definitely not a problem with French investors. They're business people who will of course speak English.
The real challenge for a non-French speaking founder would mainly be in dealings with local authorities. You can't expect public servants to speak any English or have any English-translated documentation / forms available.
Real question for me is that how good french people are at speaking English? If I go there, I wouldn't be able to speak any French on day 1, so It would be nice if there is a decent percentage of people speaking English so that I get by until I learn Essential French.
> Real question for me is that how good french people are at speaking English?
Mostly irrelevant unfortunately, because the French will expect you to speak French once you are in France. I've experienced this many times in Paris among French people I know can speak English well enough to have a conversation.
When compared to a country that has high levels of English literacy such as the Netherlands, there's a major difference here.
You will be able to get by just fine in Paris for things like restaurants and hotels, but as soon as you have to deal with the government in any fashion, you absolutely must speak French.
In places other than Paris and the tourist areas of some major cities, it will be very difficult if you don't speak any French.
It doesn't allow people to work anywhere else than in France. The "Schengen" part of it (which basically any national residence permit contains) just allows holders to freely travel to the rest of Schengen for up to 90 days in each 180 day period but not perform any paid work in other countries (something which citizens of some countries – including the US – already enjoy without any visa).
And after the trial period you can't easily be fire (usually in startup you just negotiate sometimes to move and found a new job). And if the company die your missing salary will be paid by the state.
Great move by the French government. There are many things that could be improved vis à vis entrepreneurship in France, but at least we're giving it a real shot. Good going!
No mention on the website that I can see, but my guess be they won't explicitly require French language exams for the visa, but not speaking French in France is going to be difficult, particularly in the North (including Paris).
It may well be that the right firm, in the right part of France (the South is normally a little friendlier), you're going to be fine. In Paris though? It seems like it is almost a national sport to be a little rude to non-native speakers, and a lot more rude to people who just try and get by in English.
But if you're planning to move to France, to start a French start-up business, and employ French employees, it is probably a good idea to learn some French.
As an English speaker, the michelthomas.com courses point out that you already know a lot more French than you think. :-)
I was looking into this for Canada and English or French proficiency is necessary. It would be odd to take a proficiency test for English but that is the rule.
Don't a lot of people in France look at you badly if you only speak English? I read that this is especially true in more "proud French areas" like Paris etc.
Yes and no. It was still there in the late 90's and early aughts. That said Parisians just don't like anyone not from Paris. They look down on other French people not from Paris. When you're from Paris, then you'll be judged on your arrondissement. Basically, Paris is a really judgy place but the rest of the country isn't. This isn't all that different from other countries' major cities (NYC, London, etc).
That said, you'll get by, meet a lot of nice people from all over, get to vacation regularly in places which are "once in a lifetime travels" for most Americans, etc.
Clearly not in start up environments. What do bother some shopkeepers or restaurants owners for example, is when tourists speak english to them very fast and naturally assuming everybody speaks english. But then if you ask first politely "i'm sorry i don't speak french", then you'll only receive warm welcomes.
What's the general deal with startup visas? Your startup fails, you have to quit the country? Seems like it raises the stakes for very little reason unless the country is otherwise startup-favourable.
I'm a tech founder who is in Paris through a very similar program with Paris & Co, French Tech. If you have questions I'll loop back around to answer them based on my experience.
Note: I didn't come with the French Tech Ticket (which was a different program that was more structured). I have an existing software company which I am expanding to France & Europe.
Applied to the program with my last company. There was no response and no interview other than a rejection email. The business is now running millions in orders and several hundred thousands a year in revenue.
I had wanted to go and thought the company was a shoo-in since it was 100% bootstrapped and profitable at the time of application. Also growing like a weed. So I have no idea what they are doing, but they don't seem terribly competent and it was a waste of time to apply.
Props on growing your business. Mine is also bootstrapped and doing well. Sorry that was your experience. They so seem to have particular types of businesses they are more interested in (though I don't know what that criteria is).
Germany offers a special visa for people who want to be self-employed. [0]
Additionally, if you have a Bachelor/Master degree in STEM, you can easily get a Blue Card if you receive a contract paying over 50,800 EUR/year. [1] Lower salaries would still enable you to obtain a regular work visa (which is specific to the job title and company).
I've heard Germany is a difficult country to establish a company (GmbH). I can't speak as an entrepreneur, but as an employee it isn't difficult at all to get a work visa from the government. I'd say the only difficulty is that you need to have every document prepared, with a spare copy, and make sure you've provided all the necessary information. German bureaucrats are especially irritable when things are missing/incomplete.
Germany is desperate for skilled workers. You don't even need to speak German to get a job in a big city like Berlin or Frankfurt.
As someone from North America, I'd highly recommend you consider Germany if you'd like to work for a start-up. Berlin is the start-up capital of Europe, and there are so many companies looking for talent you can quickly climb the corporate ladder/salary by moving companies every 12-18 months. You won't be paid as much as in Silicon Valley, but rents are sane and I'd say the quality of life is higher than in the US.
I moved to Berlin almost three years ago, and extended/expanded my company here. I am not a start-up, though I am developing a product, but more of a one-man consulting shop.
Getting a self-employed VISA is not easy unless you have some serious credentials. My partner has three degrees, two post-graduate, from highly regarded US universities; an extensive profile of speaking engagements; a very, very solid financial standing; and a solid business plan. The IHK (who reviews all business plans for self-employed applications) still said "No" but begrudgingly gave the green-light when presented with a book contract from a well known technical publisher.
I have no degrees, but a financially viable consulting business of some years, and a lengthy professional background. Three years later, over 12 foreigners office appointments, a UG (affectionately known as the mini-GmbH) with over 12K founding capital, a high-priced lawyer, over a 120K in USDEUR transfers, and a visit from the police to confiscate my passport over Christmas, my self-employment visa is no further along than the day I first submitted it.
Still, incomparably better than US immigrations. I'm certainly stuck in some weird, exceptional state that has confused even my lawyer.
Consider Berlin. It is wonderful here, definitely. Rents are rising, however, and (sadly, in my opinion) you do not need to learn German. I know of far too many people who have spent numerous years here without speaking more than a phrase or two of deutsche.
If you want to start a company/be self-employed DO NOT follow the (typische amerikanische) DIY process. Factor in costs for tax advisers and lawyers.
If you recently graduated or are still in school: Irish working holiday
I'm sure there are others, but those are what come to mind if you're an American who wants to live/work and Europe and you don't have a sponsor and aren't funded (if you have capital, you have far more options, of course).
Also, note that if you _do_ get a Blue Card it lets you work in most of the EU
"..The Blue Card is an approved EU-wide work permit (Council Directive 2009/50/EC)[1] allowing high-skilled non-EU citizens to work and live in any country within the European Union, excluding Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom.."
Though that is subject to change depending on the political climate.
Chile and Ecuador would be the countries with the best platform for that kind of thing. Check startupchile.org and Ecuador's city of knowledge website http://www.yachay.gob.ec
Uruguay for some reason is home to one of the more active development communities. But as far as visas I think you need one of those retirement visas or something.
Panama might be the easiest to get into, register companies etc. althought that technically is Central America. All in all, even in places like Venezuela with its crazy economy but that happens to be extremely favorable for service export, you will find good opportunities for startups due to extreme low cost of living, good university networks and general lack of competition and innovation. Internet speed leave a lot to be desired but it is workable. Electricity prices in some of this countries is way cheaper so that lends itself well to datacenters. Of course, those savings will need to cover stuff like private security, which is kind of a necessity.
Something important to keep in mind for founders and investors I haven't seen mentioned yet: in France, capital gains are taxed at 33%. And there is an additional tax for wealthy people (ISF, impôt sur la fortune) to pay each year.
If you want to be a millionaire in France, get ready to pay hundreds of thousands of euros in taxes.
Regardless of what you take home at the end, do not move to France for the salary/wealth. Move to France for the way of life and the overall social and personal security. Some people prefers not being in a perpetual rat race and having more time to enjoy life, by being with your family everyday (not just on week-ends!), doing sport with friends or knowing that you won't go bankrupt/uninsured because of some stupid accident like growing old.
If you're really into the rat race, awesome, keep doing it, but yeah, you probably should not move to France.
I'm personally expatriated because my current mood is settled for the rat race. As I'm growing older, I have the feeling I'll regret it if I don't slow down and I'm very much considering moving back to Europe/France.
Good to see things like this. Even though I would not participate in this particular scheme because I cannot speak French and have no interest in living in France it's still great to see this sort of thing happening if only for freedom of movement for hard working talented people.
There's a healthy number of startups in Paris where English is the working language. It's true that day to day life may be more challenging without speaking any French, but probably less so in Paris than elsewhere
I disagree. I've heard this from people here, however after living here for some time, I believe the reality is that if you don't speak fluent French, you will be at a severe disadvantage.
I guess it really depends on the company culture, and one shouldn't over-generalize. I have non-French colleagues who don't speak French (and made barely any progress from their French lessons, but hey it's clearly not their priority ;) and are just fine. But where I work everyone naturally switch to English as soon as there's a non-French speaker in the room.
So my advice to new comers would be to pay attention to this when you visit for interviews. Do you feel reluctance, are people hesitant and searching for words when speaking English? Could be a sign they're not used to it. If they speak casually OTOH (even with strong accent and the odd mistakes) it's likely they're used to it: good.
If you want to move to Europe and work for a "leading startup" or a big tech company -- anything established that pays market rates for senior talent -- then you should also ask your favorite immigration lawyer about Germany's Permanent Residency for Highly Talented professionals, aka "Paragraph 19."
This gets you permanent residence, the same thing as a US Green Card. The minimum qualifications IIRC are an advanced degree in something tech/science-y, and a "high" salary in the legitimate job waiting for you anywhere in Germany (meaning you have to get the job first). For scientists the salary limit is lower than for engineers.
>I have dreams of living and coding by the Mediterranean Sea. :)
Not to rain on your parade, but France is still highly centralized around Paris. You'll have _extreme_ difficulty finding clients and building relationships if you're not working (by which I mean: spending most of your time) in Paris.
Check out Aubagne, it is too freaking nice there. But yeah, as far as work goes, make sure you are doing remote stuff or willing to sell something to traditional companies.
I have really high hopes that starups/high tech companies will also flourish outside of Paris. France has some really great medium sized cities - compact, livable, full of character and with much lower costs. I'm hoping that some of them will develop the core of a startup scene that will draw in more people and generally make them exciting. Toulouse already has this to an extent with Airbus being there, generally very active in aerospace and robotics.
Paris is great, grew up there. You just have to be comfortable with the fact that more than half of your money get taken by the government for taxes and social security.
I think it's more like 40%. But at least we have free schools, free universities (ok, sometimes 500EUR/year) and a decent public health service.
I also grew up and lived in France for 20+ years and have lived in UK for 5+ years. It's true that I earn more in UK than in France but for example to compare public health systems, although both are free, NHS is really the worse and it does not seem it's going to get any better in the future.
What have those non-free, taxation based, universities produced?
25 years of economic stagnation, low innovation, increasing marginalization of France as a consequential economy in the global order (they've been sinking down the list for 40 years), perpetual high unemployment, and a GDP per capita that has failed to keep up to such a dramatic degree that it needs to climb 70% to catch the US.
With results like those, the tax payers are clearly not getting a good return on their non-free education system.
Other than GDP (which frankly benefits 5% of US population), everything is better in France. Better roads, better public transportation, high speed rails, healthcare, education. Even small and remote villages in France have high quality roads, rail connections etc. and doesn't look run down and entrenched in poverty.
GDP only benefits 5% of the population? Oh really. That doesn't sound right at all given the fact that the US median disposable income is far higher than France.
Not to mention the median wage growth is four to five times faster in the US than in France. So much for your theory.
Demographically France is about 80% white. The US median white household has an income of $73,000 as of 2016 ($108,000 with a college education) and a median net worth of nearly $150,000. Both higher than France. I use the direct demographic comparison, because it would be absurd to compare an 8th generation French family to a first or second generation Latin American family in the US (the US is 63% white by comparison, with far more immigration on a percentage basis in the last 40 years than France has seen).
The US has a superior university education system. It's not even remotely close. That has been the case globally since WW2. The rest of the world has been trying to catch up and copy what the US accomplished with its universities, for decades. The top 50 US universities put France to shame.
The US has a far lower unemployment rate. The US is a high innovation economy, France is a low innovation economy, which you can witness across nearly every economic area in comparing the US to France. The US is superior to France in: manufacturing, agriculture, aerospace, software, Internet broadly, mobile, medtech, biotech & pharma, and energy. The US has a far more dynamic small business economy than France does, with a much more liberal entrepreneur culture. The US has less air pollution than France; NYC has dramatically cleaner air than Paris.
Per the OECD better life index, the bottom 10% in the US are far better off than the bottom 10% in France. The US poverty line is also much higher than it is in France.
Better infrastructure in France? Eurozone spending on infrastructure per dollar of GDP, is now below that of the US, and that's really saying something because the US level is far too low. How long do you suppose France can continue to maintain what it does have, with such persistently low wage growth, such persistently low GDP growth, such high taxes and high regulation?
> US median disposable income is far higher than France
Did you subtract health insurance premiums, co-pays, and deductibles? Nowadays, for a family of 3 that could run around $500 out-of-pocket per month for employee premiums alone. And that's before adding employer-paid premiums, which are usually 80-90% of the entire premium cost, which could otherwise be going straight to employee pocket.
> I use the direct demographic comparison, because it would be absurd to compare an 8th generation French family to a first or second generation Latin American family in the US
And yet you're comparing a 5th generation New England family in the US to a first generation Lebanese family in France? OK then. And yes, Lebanese would be statistically white.
> The US has a superior university education system.
And a superior college debt system. Did you subtract college debt payments from your "median disposable income" as well by the way?
> The US is superior to France in:
Capitalism. Yes, US is indeed superior to France in that. Which is exactly what GP meant by benefiting 5%.
All I will say is that you should close Wikipedia, go learn French in Southern France for 3 months and then comeback and reread what you wrote.
Just because other countries have different systems, does not mean it is not working out for them, or that we need to start doing silly number comparisons that say nothing about the culture of each country.
France is doing pretty good in the engineering department, naval, nuclear and aeronautics are top notch. I would guess that the university system is not that bad eh?
The US has a great learning system for higher education, and the expensive part is covered with the high salaries you get afterwards. Plus the best part of being in America, always be in the front row for new movies, videogames, etc (well, Japan sometimes gets the games first, but oh well)
So don't be a hater, just go out and explore stuff. Diversity is what makes us great.
So what you are saying is that it is a great place if you are content with the government deciding how to spend a very large portion of your hard earned income?
Is there even an incentive to work? What are the unemployment benefits?
That portrayal of the French system is a little bit biased. You could just as well say:
So what you are saying is that it is a great place if you are content with the government saving your life when you are ill without expecting hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills that will ruin the rest of your life? Without considering whether you are able to pay, as if you were a human being that deserves help and humanity? And helping you if you lose your job??!?!
As you see, neither of them helps the discussion a lot, as they are aggressive and the typical reaction would be to take a defensive position.
> Is there even an incentive to work?
Most of the people there work. A little bit later, as they take more vacation. And they survive. And on average wouldn't trade it for an American lifestyle.
It is a matter of life choices. And the point is that these programs enhance mobility so more people can choose, which is better.
If by "due to their existing regulations" you mean not being able to fire any employee overnight after they pass their renewable 3-month trial period, then yeah, it sucks. (But let's be honest: you seriously need more than 6 months to figure out if someone's a good fit?) If you meant anything else it's mostly an urban legend IMO: speaking for myself, I found the administration to be more streamlined than most I've interacted with (including that of the US).
Startup friendly capital is scarcer in FR than in the UK or the US, but there's still some and you can always head to London (which you can reach by TGV) to meet startup friendly VCs.
And yes, the tax rate is high, blah blah blah. But try other EU countries for even worse. You're covered for healthcare, retirement, get 5-7 weeks of paid vacation, etc., and public services, good infrastructure, etc. all of which come at a cost indeed.
I think it's covered:
The “skills and talents”, “EU Blue Card,” “employee on assignment” and “scientist-researcher” temporary residence permits provide full rights to a “private and family life” permit for family members accompanying a non-EU national.
(from http://ec.europa.eu/immigration/what-do-i-need-before-leavin...)
I quickly skimmed the page, but could not find information on a basic question. Does this visa allow an engineer to immigrate to France as a permanent resident/citizen in the long run? If so, what is the time horizon one is looking at?
With most developed nations looking to focus on tech and an inverting age curve threatening pension systems, I wonder how long it'll take for everything to shift from rampant nationalism to more open borders (at least economic borders).
Labor laws are not favorable ; french like to feel protected by their state.
"At-will employment" doesn't exists but since 10 years we have an easy-to-get freelance status ("auto entrepreneur") with low tax for under 36 K€/year.
That "but" is dubious advice. There also is a hefty fine/clawback awaiting you if you "hire" the latter as "employees" and treat them as such. It's not specific to FR, in that the criteria that make employees that are mostly the same as those in CA, but FR taxmen and labor inspectors probably pay more attention.
I really don't see the point unless there are grants and labor based tax credits. Canada has the right model but it's still tough for small businesses to secure grant.
I went to Paris in January of 2016 for a conference. Spent 3 days there, got spat on twice and yelled at. Would not go back even if I was paid to do nothing.
> Are you trying to imply that Syrians and Tunisians have NO positive economic impact?
Why is this comment dead? It was more or less my point, which that a lot of unqualified migrants, mostly from Africa and Asia, has no positive economic impact, since we have NOTHING to offer to them (no job, no future). So I am opposed to more unqualified migrants coming for economic reasons. Syrian refugees, on the other hand, I think we should help them.
Off the top of my head, large-ish French tech software companies (I would not call them startups at this point) include: Criteo, Dailymotion, Leboncoin, Withings, Parrot, BlaBlaCar, Sigfox... You could also include older companies like Murex or Ubisoft, as well as OVH. You may also want to look at other fields where France is recognized for its expertise (energy, pharmaceuticals...).
The thing is, it's in Toulouse (a major French city). That might be the only good place[1] in a 100 miles radius.
I find it incredibly risky to play all hopes on a single company with zero backup plan. (I've worked in France, I've seen how bad it gets when you loose your job).
[1] I have higher standards than the average Frenchie, just like anyone who's worked at top web and financial companies.
Everyone who has ever done recruiting in a french IT company noticed that 80 to 90% of the resumes you receive come from North African countries (old colonies, mainly Algeria and Tunisia), that try to get a job in order to get a Visa. Most of them are unqualified, but they just "go for it".
Now, is this initiative going to lead to most of them pretending to want to start a company ? And how is the program going to filter qualified individuals to opportunists ?
There are only 70 start-up incubator visas available, so I assume competition is exceptionally fierce.
This aside, for the engineer visas, it requires getting a job offer from one of the "100+ leading French Start-Ups", which means you presumably have to pass whatever requirements those hiring managers impose on you as well.
Ok, thanks for the info. For the engineer visas, I thought that obtaining a Visa once a company has agreed to hire you was already possible. So what's the difference with this program, in the "engineer" case ?
"Novelty account" is an apt description. It's hard to judge these things without numbers, but have you noticed an increase in accounts of this type? Perhaps the past month or two?
Edit to add: To be clear, I'm referring to single-use or single-topic accounts in general.
I definitely felt that I saw a "surge" in Trump references during, and after the election, in all sorts of articles. Usually bad/fear-mongering, even coming from established accounts. Sometimes subtle, without explicit reference to him; but reading their text one can't help but feel like they're talking about him being elected and what that means.
Don't go there. The limit of freedom of speech is real and can block you. Even when you run a startup that has nothing to do with local politics or anything controversial. Plus, we are still in "state of emergency", that gives the state more rights than the patriot act. Go to the US, Canada or New Zealand.
Freedom of speech issues in France ?? I'd say a good reason not to come here is bureaucracy and taxes, but not issues with freedom of speech... Do you have some facts you'd like to share ?
I don't think most of the issues with freedom of speech in France would be of much concern to a putative startup founder, but they are real.
For example, "expressing support for acts of terror" is an imprisonable offense, and it has been interpreted incredibly broadly by the courts, to the point that drunk people have been sent to prison for years over tasteless jokes. Similarly, simply browsing websites that are deemed in support of terrorism: a man from Chartres recently received a two-year sentence for the latter.
It's fair to say that the current climate is pretty Orwellian. But if you're not a brown person or a Muslim, you're not what prosecutors are after.
France tries to regulate what people wear while sitting on the beach. It seems downright opposed to multiculturalism and diversity. Freedom of expression isn't just the right to write blog posts.
I sure do see a lot of people here who have zero actual experience of France, ready to pass judgement based on whatever clickbait they happened to read a few years back, after it's gone through a couple of translation layers.
Speaking as somebody who's lived in France, Greece, the UK, the US and Sweden: France is by far the most "multiculturalism-friendly" place of all these. Yes, even more than Sweden.
Like most French people, I'm not proud of my country. But this is something I can be proud of.
(Disclaimer: Some cities are of course less kind to strangers than others; it's not a uniform utopia)
That's false. The government of France never tried to pass such a bill. It was a mayor of a small town that tried to ban burkinis but this bill was suspended by a higher court.
it's generally opposed to multiculturalism because the dominant mentality in France is integrationism, not multiculturalism, it's the opposite approach to the US/UK.
If I remember correctly, You are more or less responsible for whatever appears on your website. If your users use your service for forbidden speech, then you are liable.
In Germany, you might be responsible for things you link to under certain circumstances. But I don't think that's really a big deal for startups in Germany.
To assess this properly, it would be interesting to know what startups in different countries pay to lawyers.
"Man names Wi-Fi network “Daesh 21,” prosecuted under French anti-terror law. New law forbids “public praise” of terrorism, punishable by up to 7 years in prison."
Some opinions are not only socially incorrect, they can get you to jail.
Examples of forbidden topics: homosexuals, non-white people, jews, saying that you don't need health insurance…
Of course not endorsing anything about those topics, just saying that forbiding any debate on those topics may not be a long-term solution to solve those societal questions. We get the popular far-right party FN for some reason I think.
You either have no idea what you're talking about or you're lying on purpose. Or both. Nobody has been jailed for "saying they don't need health insurance".
Our freedom of speech, like in the rest of europe, is slightly more restrictive than in the US (as in: there is a concept of restricted hate speech) but the fact that the FN even exists should go a long way to showcase that you don't get jailed for stuff like that.
And in the future, if you're going to bring extraordinary claims to HN, bring a damn source.
Edit to your edit: I don't think you yourself have read those sources you linked.
I have updated my original post to provide some sources. It gets slightly off topic and noticeably too political for HN, so maybe we should stop debating about this here.
I don't think this is off-topic. But you are completely off the mark.
Health insurance: What you linked is an amendment that adds sanctions to illegally refusing social security coverage. Whether you think that's OK or not is irrelevant - it's not a speech issue.
"saying you should not do abortion": You are grossly misrepresenting what that is. Abortion is considered an integral right for french women. What your link says is that it's illegal to try to prevent them.
> Cet article punit d'un emprisonnement de deux ans et/ou d'une amende de 30 000 francs le fait d'empêcher ou de tenter d'empêcher une interruption volontaire de grossesse ou les actes préalables : soit en pertubant l'accès aux établissements d'hospitalisation publics ou privés satisfaisant aux dispositions de l'article L. 176 du code de la santé publique ; soit en exerçant des menaces ou tout acte d'intimidation à l'encontre des personnels médicaux et non médicaux travaillant dans ces établissements ou des femmes venues y subir une interruption volontaire de grossesse.
To translate: Preventing, or attempting to prevent a voluntary abortion is punished by two years in prison and/or a 30000 francs fine. "Either by preventing access to hospitals or threatening/intimidating working personnel or patients."
About state health insurance, this link should be clearer, despite not being an official source. People with more Google-fu than me can post other links if they wish.
"Depuis le 1er janvier 2007, des sanctions contre toute personne qui, par quelque moyen que ce soit, inciterait les assurés sociaux à ne plus s’affilier à un organisme de Sécurité sociale ou à ne plus payer leurs cotisations sont applicables. Elles prévoient, entre autre, une peine de six mois de prison et/ou une amende allant de 7 500 euros à 15 000 euros."
Translation: incitating people to have no health insurance at all can get you to jail (up to 6 months).
"Si l’amendement du gouvernement est voté, le délit d’entrave concernera désormais les sites qui véhiculent «des allégations ou une présentation faussée, pour induire en erreur dans un but dissuasif sur la nature et les conséquences d’une IVG»".
If it is not limitation of freedom of speech, I think it is very close.
"Si le texte est voté, ces faits seront punis des mêmes peines que l’entrave physique à l’avortement ou à l’information sur l’avortement, soit deux ans de prison et 30 000 euros d’amende."
So presenting biased information about abortion (at least in the "wrong" direction) can get you to jail (up to 2 years). If my sources are correct, this proves my points.
PS: sorry for French quotes. Too lazy to fully translate them.
> [inciting] people to have no health insurance at all can get you to jail (up to 6 months).
As your previous source said, not having health insurance is illegal in France. We're a far cry from your original "saying that you don't need health insurance". You can say that as much as you want. You just can't push other people to put themselves in an illegal situation.
> If it is not limitation of freedom of speech, I think it is very close.
[Translated context: It would become illegal to falsify facts about the consequences of abortion]
I want to be very clear: The american concept of "Freedom of speech" does not exist in most of Europe. In most of the world outside of the US in fact. It's even a stretch to say it exists in the US.
When people think "limitations on freedom of speech" they immediately think China and Iran. But in the US, I can't threaten the president (or people in general, but nobody's gonna jail me for that). I can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I could give you a lot of american examples which are far more grey area than what you've given me in these sources. The US has these limitations, generally for public safety.
In the context of a US-centric forum, claiming that "you can get jailed for speaking against abortions" is abhorrent because the US is still at the stage where abortions are not considered a fundamental right, and there is an ongoing debate about it. Therefore, you think "well, then, half the US would go to jail".
In the context of a country that does have a framework around abortion, that does make it a fundamental right and where it's essentially a non-issue... then it's a lot easier to see why it's illegal to publish false information about it.
This is a country where gays and muslims are treated with respect, where women's rights are respected and where public health is highly valued. In that context, these restrictions are, like american ones, a matter of public safety.
First, thank you for changing the overall tone of your comment.
You assume that the state is always right. I agree it is right in most cases, but not always. And calling arguments like "public safety", like "fighting terrorism", is a way for a government to have more power than it ought to (at least from the point of view of its libertarian citizen).
Voting a law should not necessarily close the debate around it. Societal truths may change: "false information" may just be opposite opinions. Saying it is false is not enough to discard it. A non-issue for you (e.g. abortion) may be an issue for the guy or girl next door.
Activists should not be banned from having strange opinions as it is the root of democratic debates. Let them be ashamed in society, but do not jail them. Today's fundamental rights may be revoked tomorrow because society may someday realize that it was, in the end, not such a good idea.
This is basically a political tradeoff between public safety and free speech/freedom in general. I personnally and currently support more free speech. You look like rather supporting public safety. I'd be happy to read your opinion on that topic.
I said this in another thread, but I want to make it clear here as well:
> I generally agree that "inciting" is a loosely defined term and I, too, dislike how easy of a tool it can be for political censorship.
I don't particularly like the idea of restrictions on free speech. But I also don't particularly like when people's health and livelihoods, public safety, the earth's climate are all damaged by sleazy tactics from people who want to make a quick buck.
I don't like that said restrictions are a tool that can be abused by those in power ... but isn't that just about everything? Surveillance? Police forces?
We make tradeoffs because our world is not made of absolutes. The US makes those tradeoffs as well, the line is just elsewhere. Being a "terrorism sympathizer" in the US will potentially earn you a free trip to Cuba. And that is also a tool that has been used for political censorship.
When I look at the end result, though, we have a country where abortion is a right and saying "god hates fags" is not. The US is the other way around. I know which outcome I prefer.
You're linking a source that you don't understand. "Toute personne qui refuse délibérément de s’affilier ou qui demande à ne plus être affiliée à un régime de sécurité sociale"
This has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
And since when is it illegal to talk about homosexuals, non-white people or jews ?
I don't know Zemmour other than by name. So I went on his Wikipedia page to take a look at that. The french one appears to have more information.
- Condamnation pour incitation à la discrimination raciale en 2011
- Condamnation pour provocation à la haine envers les musulmans
- Condamnation d'I-Télé pour "rupture abusive de contrat"
One is about racial discrimination. One is about inciting hate against muslims. The last one is about a private company. The guy also happens to have written a book about gays where... I'll just quote wikipedia: ""gays" would have been stigmatized and isolated, like the lepers of old."
Help me out here. How do you get from there to "You're only allowed to talk about gays if you say 'they're great and I love everything about them'"?
I can see how your general point about political censorship could be true (I don't know enough about this to pass judgement), but I'm asking specifically about your comment on homosexuals.
Just to recontextualize this: This is a thread about the viability of startups in France. As I mentioned a bit further up, there are "no hate speech" rules all over Europe. Germany for example is far, far stricter than France about it ... and Berlin has a vibrant startup scene.
I generally agree that "inciting" is a loosely defined term and I, too, dislike how easy of a tool it can be for political censorship. But there's worlds between those details and some of the claims I'm finding in this thread.
Hmm we may have a misunderstanding. I didn't make a comment about homosexuals, specifically. My point was rather that there are, de facto, state-enforced standards for political correctness in France and that this maps directly onto a form of censorship.
In France, freedom of speech is limited for terrorism, hate speech, hating religions e.g. For example, encouraging racism, lauding Hitler or ISIS, or extreme versions of islam or christianism which limit women's rights etc.
The only difference with US or Canada is that religion extremism is more "tolerated" in those countries, but that is NOT an issue for startups. Unless you're doing a religion startup??!?
The real issue for startups going to France is not freedom of speech. It's red tape, lack of practicality, a bit more corruption (compared to Canada or New Zealand), and the lack of openness from the general population towards capitalism and innovation.
There is a vast amount of what would be considered incendiary or illegal discussion in France, that occurs on Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and dozens of other US platforms.
Those types of services, Google included, are gateways & amplifiers that enable a much larger ecosystem for tech start-ups. Censorship drives or keeps them away, which is one of the reasons why the US will perpetually dominate such in the West.
The latest anti free speech movement taking over Europe, is the "fake news" authoritarianism. Having bureaucrats decide what is legally to be considered news; aka an excuse for increasing government censorship. Major European nations are moving aggressively to strictly limit such. Should Breitbart be covered by freedom of speech? I think it's obvious that they should. In Germany or France it would not be, they'd immediately seek to destroy them.
Facebook is a $369 billion tech behemoth that could never exist anywhere but the US. It's probably worth more than every public technology company in all of the EU combined.
>In France, freedom of speech is limited for terrorism, hate speech, hating religions e.g. For example, encouraging racism, lauding Hitler or ISIS, or extreme versions of islam or christianism which limit women's rights etc.
Could you expand on that? I'm French, living and working near Paris and I would be interested to hear what limits do you think of.
Personaly I think it is no worse that any other Western country.
Edit: The limits I can think of are more from media watchdogs, which can be ignored (just look at Dieudonné). Or you can be sued by anti racist/anti _____phobe associations for slander, but I would not qualify that as a limit on freedom of speech like can exist in other countries.
Also, maybe people will want to wait for next elections results (in may 2017) before considering moving in :)
I don't see either what you mean with freedom of speech problems, except maybe if it's about holocaust denial or things like that which are punished by law, here. But I guess most people won't be bothered.
State of emergency is indeed a problem, not to mention that there's a high chance we'll be targeted again by terrorism.
> The limit of freedom of speech is real and can block you. Even when you run a startup that has nothing to do with local politics or anything controversial.
Give a specific example or avoid baseless accusation.
I'm warning everyone: don't come to France (or Belgium). The worst thing that could happen to you, is that your startup actually becomes hugely successful. You will get ripped off left and right by an pugnacious socialist state, supported by a spoiled population that still hasn't fully digested just how irrelevant they have made themselves in the world.
> a spoiled population that still hasn't fully digested just how irrelevant they have made themselves in the world.
I think the problem was more with the various gov we had since De Gaulle than the population. And also with the massive immigration and the political exploitation of the migrants.
In exchange, employees get as standard :
* a top notch, virtually free healthcare system with no concept of exclusions or "pre-conditions"
* Usually no student loans to repay because their higher education was free, unless they went for a private business/engineering school but that's still an order of magnitude cheaper than a US university.
* a comfortable (unsustainable ?) state pension later on.
* unemployment insurance that covers around 70% pay for months.
* 5 weeks holiday + public holidays
* Non San Francisco / London / NYC renting costs (although Paris is quite bad by French standards, and much worse than Berlin)
If you're US-based, think about your monthly budget and what goes towards healthcare/co-pay, student loans, kids college fund, 401k, and building an emergency fund in case you get laid off / severely ill. None of that is strictly required in France (although some of it is available as extra private coverage, and a good idea)
This is why cross-border salary comparisons are pointless, it's really apples & oranges.
I'm French and living in London, and I'd personally rather have the freedom to have a higher take-home pay and contribute towards the above items myself as I see fit. But I'm not fooling myself thinking that because my take-home pay is twice as high each month, the math is as simple as that. I know that I'm so much more on my own here than at home...