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Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

independent.co.uk

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Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#51

Post by tangent128 »

weberc2 wrote: post #43
krapp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was elected, despite his numerous faults - so he and his policies are emblematic of at least enough of the country to be politically relevant.

What does "political relevance" have to do with political longevity? We're not a fundamentally different country now than we were last year, and policies created with a pen stroker can be struck down just as easily. Anyone who thinks that Trump's policies are a good predictor of future US policy need to explain their rationale because it doesn't follow reason.

The rationale: we aren't a fundamentally different country now, and won't be fundamentally different after Trump's term is over.

Thus, no matter how progressive or good-neighborly future administration policies are, allies now have to build in the risk that every 4 years there will be a 50:50 chance that those policies will be reversed and any agreements voided.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#52

Post by wott »

camus2 wrote: post #19

French governments like to create all these grants and loopholes, but it doesn't mask the complexity and the hostility of french bureaucracy toward entrepreneurs. Don't be fooled by these PR stunts. If Macron really wants to change things he needs to start telling the tax office to stop treating every business owner as a de-facto fraudster and criminal.

French business owners have earned that reputation of fraudsters. To the point that salary-men, who cannot cheat much, used to have a tax reduction to compensate for that inability to cheat compared to business owners who were "expected" to cheat.

All small business owners around me, or whom I ever knew, are fraudsters. At the moment, the one right left of my house is a fraudster (he's been caught several times but doesn't care). The one 50 meters forward is a fraudster (he's not been caught yet). The friends of mine who own bars and restaurants are fraudsters, they generally don't get caught, or they only get caught for minor stuff, unrelated to their main fraud. The guy the wedding of whom I last attended got a several millions euros fine (so, same for not so small business!), he didn't blink. The bosses I worked for broke many work rules and that's just considered standard behaviour.

Cheating is a religion is this country.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#53

Post by weberc2 »

tangent128 wrote: post #51
weberc2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "political relevance" have to do with political longevity? We're not a fundamentally different country now than we were last year, and policies created with a pen stroker can be struck down just as easily. Anyone who thinks that Trump's policies are a good predictor of future US policy need to explain their rationale because it doesn't follow reason.

The rationale: we aren't a fundamentally different country now, and won't be fundamentally different after Trump's term is over. Thus, no matter how progressive or good-neighborly future administration policies are, allies now have to build in the risk that every 4 years there will be a 50:50 chance that those policies will be reversed and any agreements voided.

How do you suppose one Trump election drives those odds up so high? And what percentage of international agreements has Trump actually voided? As bad as things may be, the sky isn't actually falling, and it does us no good to pretend otherwise.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#54

Post by vmarsy »

surfmike wrote: post #49
vmarsy wrote: post #7

I can see those cuts in corporate tax being good to increase startup competition. Some of the other big remaining issues to see highly successful startups are salaries and lack of tech talent. We could argue that startup salaries aren't the highest anyways, so if salary isn't too big of an issue if French startup can provide equity easily. It seems that when you exercise stock options in France, you don't need to pay…

I disagree about the comment on French computer science education; I am continually blown away by the technical depth and effectiveness of my French colleagues (here at Google). Though maybe the problem is that a lot of the best ones moved here :)

Our comments are not incompatible, I'd say, given Google's and other companies recruiting standards, the difficulty of the immigration process, there must be a huge foreign engineers survivorship bias.

Despite a not-as-good-as-the-best-US-schools CS education, they managed to make it to Google.

Similarly, assuming each country has the same distribution of talent, and that the US is able to brain-drain from the top of the stack, the foreigners coming from smaller countries will look even more competent. I know very few Danish and Finnish programmers in the US, apart from Bjarne Stroustrup, Linus Torvalds, so I'm under the impression from that sample that Danish and Finnish are amazing programmers :)

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#55

Post by weberc2 »

linkregister wrote: post #36
dmix wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People were convinced Trump was going to turn the US into an authoritarian/fascist state well before he even proposed any actual practical policies. They continue to despite the fact he has failed to pass any meaningful legislation beyond congress/courts months after getting into office. With the exception of dropping out of the largely non-binding Paris accord. Sadly I doubt this will be dependent on what he actuall…

I agree that critics are far more shrill than they should be. However, there is some basis for their fears of an authoritarian push: significantly high proportions of his campaign speeches used authoritarian imagery and themes. His closest advisors were outspoken for advocating authoritarian viewpoints. In hindsight, he was using that rhetoric aspirationally with no intention of doing the intensely hard work and dedi…

Even with "authoritarian undertones", it's never been clear to me what sort of Very Bad Things Trump might do to warrant the hysterics. What is a realistic worst-case scenario? Do we really think he's going to make himself dictator or implement some soviet-esque authoritarian government? I don't see a scenario where he does more than temporarily obstruct progress for a few years. I guess it's just odd that everyone is terrified about "authoritarianism" without starting so much as a realistic concrete scenario.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#56

Post by surfmike »

vmarsy wrote: post #54
surfmike wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree about the comment on French computer science education; I am continually blown away by the technical depth and effectiveness of my French colleagues (here at Google). Though maybe the problem is that a lot of the best ones moved here :)

Our comments are not incompatible, I'd say, given Google's and other companies recruiting standards, the difficulty of the immigration process, there must be a huge foreign engineers survivorship bias. Despite a not-as-good-as-the-best-US-schools CS education, they managed to make it to Google. Similarly, assuming each country has the same distribution of talent, and that the US is able to brain-drain from the top of…

France is a pretty big country, and their talent seems way over represented compared to that of some of France's neighbors.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#57

Post by aweb »

GuiA wrote: post #15

A law passed in 2015 in France [0] that makes it mandatory, starting 1/1/2018, for any business (including "auto entrepreneur", what you have to register as to be a freelancer or such in France) to used "certified" software for accounting. Is a tool like Excel, which the vast majority of small companies are currently using, certified? Of course not! You have to pay for special software like Ciel Devis (9 euros/month)…

FYI they are planning to remove this requirement, so it should not be a bother much longer

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#59

Post by throwaway-1209 »

astrange wrote: post #44
throwaway-1209 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comey himself stated under oath that Trump was not under investigation.

The person, not the campaign. Besides, he's under investigation now for firing Comey… although not much to investigate when you admit committing crimes on TV.

Let me remind you that you know of this from the same sources which, until Comey's testimony, swore on a stack of bibles that Trump is under investigation.

Re: Emmanuel Macron presidency prompts French startup boom

#60

Post by aaron-lebo »

caf wrote: post #45
aaron-lebo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, people have short attention spans. You cite the dismal perception from 2006-2008, but what changed? In 2008 Obama was elected and everything is new again and he won the Nobel. Did the country completely change in 2 years? Has it changed that much in 8? Not really, that's why getting so riled up over singular negative events isn't worth your time. Things change fast, and countries have long histories. Germany and…

Germany hasn't even existed for "centuries", it wasn't unified until the late 19th century.

Right, never said otherwise. Prussia was militaristic and did lead the German states.
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