France bids to reverse tech brain drain • Hacker News Board

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#111

Post by meatysnapper » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

gozo wrote: post #47

david_p wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Why would we want to start run company anywhere else?" Rent? And living expenses in general. It's going to be you largest expense bootstrapping, especially since it's post tax. It also gets harder to invite people you know to come work with you and getting a larger/better suited apartment in general (location, contract terns, layout, furnished etc). Not that this is that different from other big cities and I persona…

In Berlin apartments are absurdly cheap. You can live on < 1000 euros a month nicely. Contrast that with SF where you have your media $3700 a month apartment!

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#112

Post by mafribe » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

germanier wrote: post #70

onli wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think the real reason is that Germany had working debit cards for a very long time already, there was simply no need for credit cards. Every bank and store was accepting every banks's debit card. Since the big international credit card companies cream of a couple of percent when you pay with a credit card, but German debit cards don't, retail was really reluctant for a long time to accept credit cards.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#113

Post by derekja » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

raverbashing wrote: post #38

onli wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. And virements (bank transfer) are really strange, at least with my bank (wait 24 hours to send money, I never saw that before). For me, that fits well into the image of a country that is not at all modern. But: That at least changed. They are still popular like you said, but by now you can get by without them (I for example have none), many stores do not accept them anymore. That is new.

What to say about the US (and Canada) where cheap transfers between bank accounts don't exist (at least from individual to individual) Yes, where it exists it's rarely instantaneous across banks

Sure they do, in Canada anyway. Interac email transfer is quick and painless, although it costs a dollar or so.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#114

Post by zamalek » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:52 PM UTC

jazzyk wrote: post #82

renaudg wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France has one of the highest per-worker productivity in the world, well ahead of the US. You may want to read more

Yes, they are productive - just not when filling out all these government forms.

Exactly what I meant.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#115

Post by denzil_correa » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:57 PM UTC

mafribe wrote: post #108

denzil_correa wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with credit cards in Germany is that they don't use 2FA. It's the same old signature system. Even online transactions don't require 2FA.

That really depends on the specific bank. I've got a debit card from a Sparkasse with Chip+PIN and 2FA for online transaction for quite a few years.

The discussion was on "credit" not "debit" card. The "debit" card for Sparkasse does have 2FA but the TAN based 2FA is atrocious. You need to carry a separate device, match diodes to your screen code OR insert at least 4 sets of numbers before you get your 2FA code. Yes, I know you could use SMS but it isn't the best idea particularly if you are traveling.

Finally, is the EC Maestro card from Sparkaasse really a debit card? A lot of online merchants would not accept it.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#116

Post by drzaiusapelord » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 4:58 PM UTC

renaudg wrote: post #55

Mimu wrote: post #14

I'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…

This a million times. Tech entrepreneurship works in the US and fails in other states because we're in this sweet spot of low taxes and low corruption, with high levels of education and easy access to a large and powerful economy.

Euro states have most of the above, but the high taxation and labor protections strangles little shops and scares investors (would you invest in a French startup? I wouldn't). Corrupt autocracies might have some of the above, but the corruption strangles these companies as well (invest in a startup where the assets could be nationalized instantly? Or having to pay a % of profits to endless bribes?)

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#117

Post by Nothorized » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 5:12 PM UTC

pythondz wrote: post #77

I grew up in France; gradutated from University (so not from French Ivy League known as "Les Grandes Ecoles"). I'm currently in a consulting position and tried to launch several startups-ideas at the end of my MS degree with the "Auto-Entrepreneur" status and it was very difficult to find investors because french people are very pessimistic by nature and the atmosphere created by the state and the media is really opp…

Il y a plus de 200 écoles qui sont des grandes écoles, donc ça n'a plus vraiment de signification. Si tu devrais le refaire une nouvelle fois, qu'est ce que tu conseillerais, et dans quel pays te serais tu installé?

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#118

Post by S4M » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 5:16 PM UTC

notNow wrote: post #90

saiya-jin wrote: post #52

France 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…

What's with the bashing of languages excluding English & countries that are not part of the English speaking world as of late on HN? It's getting annoying and bordering on obnoxious chauvinistic & ethnocentric rhetoric. Not the prettiest nor easiest one to learn either. What makes you think that English is any better? Actually and this is an objective assessment English is one of the hardest languages to learn at lea…

French here. I do believe that English is very easy to learn, because not really error prone. Do you conjugate verbs? No (well, kind of). Do the English nouns have genders? No. It's true that English is not straight forward to pronounce, but that's pretty much the only difficulty of the language.

On the other hand, I would say that French is very error prone: it's like Spanish or Italian (in the sense that you need to know lots of conjugations and the gender of the nouns), and the spelling of the words is very complicated, for example the sound 'o' can be spelled 'o', 'au', 'eau', 'ô'. In fact the spelling is so hard that I am suspecting it has been made hard on purpose so people who are not educated could be spotted straight away when they write a letter.

Please note that I am not writing this out of content ("Look how we French people are smart for mastering such a complicated language"), but because I like the simplicity of the English language. In fact, I believe anything made hard in a language is just some incidental complexity in how we express our thoughts, and if I had to create a language I would use English as a base.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#119

Post by WildUtah » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 6:01 PM UTC

_of wrote: post #44

fdej wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression living in France for the last year is very similar to yours. It's the mecca of paperwork (but doing taxes was relatively easy). And if you're required to supply some documentation from another country, you're likely to be required to get it translated to French by an official translator (which not only takes time but can be quite expensive). In contrast, I've never had a problem handing in German docume…

The catch-22 applies to U.S. as well. Renting an apartment requires a credit score, which you get from having a credit card, which you can only get by having a credit score.

I've been an American 40 years and never had a credit score or a credit report and never borrowed any money (the three agencies don't know who I am). Nevertheless, I can rent apartments. I just have to have a lot of cash available for deposits.

Re: France bids to reverse tech brain drain

#120

Post by WildUtah » Wed, Sep 16, 2015, 6:18 PM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #116

renaudg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This a million times. Tech entrepreneurship works in the US and fails in other states because we're in this sweet spot of low taxes and low corruption, with high levels of education and easy access to a large and powerful economy. Euro states have most of the above, but the high taxation and labor protections strangles little shops and scares investors (would you invest in a French startup? I wouldn't). Corrupt autoc…

"Tech entrepreneurship works in the US and fails in other states because we're in this sweet spot of low taxes and low corruption, with high levels of education and easy access to a large and powerful economy."

Corruption in the USA is typical for west Europe or NE Asia and taxes plus health care costs are slightly higher in the USA. Education levels are the same or lower than typical in Europe and NE Asia. None of that is essential in creating whatever advantage the USA has in tech entrepreneurship.

Labor 'protections' can strangle startups and a large economy with unified rules, unified payment systems, a common language, and unified distribution does help. But something about Silicon Valley in particular seems to be at the root of the difference.