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… :-)

Honestly. The taxes are only half the story.

The other half is that there are simply no company with massive revenues competing for engineers. Nothing to drive price up.

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).

I don't know finance much but I've heard the same about NYC indeed. People telling me half the quants at their previous jobs were French :)

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.