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.
