As soon as French salaries come ANYWHERE CLOSE to similar salaries in London or the US or even Berlin, then maybe I'd consider it. France just isn't competitive on the salary front, hence the brain drain.
France bids to reverse tech brain drain
61–70 of 135 posts
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#62I'm french, while it's true a lot of startup / opportunities in tech appeared in the last few years, most of them don't pay anything. They all advertise "good work ethic", "good environment", "good whatever" like it justifies for you to be paid like a graduate for an experienced position. You want talent? Pay the price.
With a few 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 "p…
I think his comparing startup vs established.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need cash in Germany, but not a lot of it – everything big takes a debit card. That does not help strangers with their credit cards though, so they get the wrong impression.
I pay cash at the bakery, to get a coffee, to load my canteen card at work, and to buy bus tickets in small cities at the driver, that's it. Buying used cars is usually done by cash (even 10k and more). Almost everywhere else you can pay with a German debit card (Girocard). But credit Cards are coming fast to Germany. Since a few weeks even the cheapest supermarkets, including Aldi, started to accept MasterCard and V…
Thanks for correcting, not being there too often currently things like credit cards arriving there I miss. That was unthinkable three years ago.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should read the introduction of this article about this "mere curiosity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
290,000,000 speakers (including secondary speakers.) out of 7,000,000 people on the planet. 4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. Fortunately for French, the core native speakers in France are rich, and most of the planet is still poor. As the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes more accurate over time.
And it is a dramatic error.
If 4% of people only speak a functional programming language, does it mean that you never need to learn one? Just because the vast majority historically speak imperative doesn't mean it's the best for your business. Same for OSes.
Diversity is source of wealth.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#65France is lucrative mostly to french native speakers, who have quite a massive phobia when they have to speak any other language rather than their own. It looks ridiculous and shameful, especially when noone cares about speaking it outside french bubble. The language had it's prime time long time ago and now it's a mere curiosity. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. Then there is amazing countryside, b…
I'm getting tired of hearing always the same uninformed comments about the French language and how the French perceive it. We're not very good with English because of the terribly inefficient way it's taught in school, not because of any kind of "phobia". A Frenchman speaks on average 1.8 languages, which is slightly less than Germans (and much less than Swedes and Norwegians), but still more than Spaniards and Britons for example.
And French is not a "mere curiosity". It's the official language of 29 independent countries. It's also the second most employed language in diplomacy, being a working language of countless institutions, and the second most common mother-tongue in the EU. Not to mention that with the growing alphabetization of Africa, and its potential for economic and developmental growth, it could very well know a powerful rebirth in the near future.
It's true that French is not the easiest language to learn though, but if you don't find it very pretty that's your opinion, however it's really subjective.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#66France is lucrative mostly to french native speakers, who have quite a massive phobia when they have to speak any other language rather than their own. It looks ridiculous and shameful, especially when noone cares about speaking it outside french bubble. The language had it's prime time long time ago and now it's a mere curiosity. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. Then there is amazing countryside, b…
You should read the introduction of this article about this "mere curiosity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
The GP has a "West-centric" view that, in that context, is largely correct. French used to be far more prominent in the West. It used to be the language of diplomacy. It's still the second most spoken language in the EU but it's declining [1]:
"French is the second most widely spoken language in the European Union and the second most widely learned language in the world, but despite its strong international position, the outlook for French in Europe is not so encouraging. Over the last four years, the number of French-speakers in the continent has fallen by 8%."
It has of course been supplanted by English as the lingua franca.
French is still prominent in large parts of Africa but is facing increasing competition from English and Arabic.
The huge number of human languages is a product of a bygone era of isolation. A Darwinian process has ensued that is seeing that number constantly whittled down and outside of truly primitive cultures (there are still people in the world living effectively in the Stone Age) I imagine within 100 years you'll see a smaller number of languages spoken by a larger portion of the global population.
[1]: http://www.euractiv.com/sections/languages-culture/french-la...
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#67I don't have hard data, but only a feeling that it should be easier to bootstrap in France than in US. Assuming you have worked previously, you can get unemployment benefits, around 60% of your previous salary for a year, and are covered by universal healthcare. So even if you need to have open heart surgery, you won't bankrupt your family for the next 7 generations. Actually someone (very brilliant) in my team is le…
Our startup was created in France 2,5 years ago. Here is our experience: Some of us started working on the project while getting unemployment benefits (huge boost). We get (very) affordable office spaces from the city and various incubators (we are located in Paris). We are able to live on first customers + 0% loans from the state + hundreds of thousands of euros in various grants for innovation ( http://www.bpifranc…
French expat here, considering coming back. I just checked bpifrance.fr you linked, and... it's really badly designed. The navigation is really made really complex (you need to know exactly what you are looking for in order to get the information to it, and you can't go back without changing the URL of the page) and the page is slow as hell.
I may still come back to France, but this page is not encouraging.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#68Maybe France really changed a lot. But be not mistaken: It is still the most bureaucratic country on earth. Anecdote: I'm doing a PhD in France. Each year, one has to do a re-inscription. In Germany, that means sending money to the university. In France, that means sending in – let me count, I have them on my desk – 17 documents, and to pay as well of course (preferred way: with a check. Like it is 50 years ago). The…
Spain is exactly the same. Pointless paperwork again and again, asking for things they already know, asking for multiple copies of documents, etc. In fact, when I finished my PhD, in order to graduate they asked me for a birth certificate. A birth certificate!
I guess they don't want replicants to graduate.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#69Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should read the introduction of this article about this "mere curiosity". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language
290,000,000 speakers (including secondary speakers.) out of 7,000,000 people on the planet. 4% of the planet. If 4% of America spoke a language, most of us wouldn't be in much of a rush to localize. Fortunately for French, the core native speakers in France are rich, and most of the planet is still poor. As the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes more accurate over time.
Secondary speakers are not people who learned French in school and live outside a French speaking country. If you took French in high school in the US you are not recorded in these numbers. Secondary speakers are people like, for example, those who grew up in Morocco, speak French but have Arabic as a mother tongue (for example).
Plus those numbers only account for speakers who can read and write. As I said in another comment, the alphabetization of Africa over the next few decades is expected to boost these numbers significantly.
So, as the rest of the planet catches up, "curiosity" becomes LESS accurate over time.
Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
I pay cash at the bakery, to get a coffee, to load my canteen card at work, and to buy bus tickets in small cities at the driver, that's it. Buying used cars is usually done by cash (even 10k and more). Almost everywhere else you can pay with a German debit card (Girocard). But credit Cards are coming fast to Germany. Since a few weeks even the cheapest supermarkets, including Aldi, started to accept MasterCard and V…
Thanks for correcting, not being there too often currently things like credit cards arriving there I miss. That was unthinkable three years ago.
I was surprised, too. Remember that they introduced cashless payments just ten years ago.
I think it has much to do with the EU capping interbank fees.