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Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

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Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#231

Post by thbt »

grp wrote: post #220
graniter wrote: post #216

I live and work in France and I am well versed in this type of Visa. It's a very nice arrangement, but it's still France. It's still dealing with the same administrative burdens for everything else. You don't get treated special, you just have a special deal. I've said before that if France wants to attract foreign talent what they need to do is assign someone in the French administration to help workers get establis…

You'll need to go to Paris for a medical check that you can do your job. All French employees must do this. And you have to do it every two years. Pee in a cup. Undress over there. Is it a joke? Never heard of that in 30 years..

I work in tech in France and in my personal experience, this is fake. You do have to get a medical exam upon employment but that's it. You'll have to get your shirt off for a heart exam. But it doesn't have to be in Paris, no peeing in a cup, and you won't have to do it every 2 years.

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#232

Post by tangue »

grp wrote: post #220
graniter wrote: post #216

I live and work in France and I am well versed in this type of Visa. It's a very nice arrangement, but it's still France. It's still dealing with the same administrative burdens for everything else. You don't get treated special, you just have a special deal. I've said before that if France wants to attract foreign talent what they need to do is assign someone in the French administration to help workers get establis…

You'll need to go to Paris for a medical check that you can do your job. All French employees must do this. And you have to do it every two years. Pee in a cup. Undress over there. Is it a joke? Never heard of that in 30 years..

Yep the "visite médicale d'embauche" shocks a lot of foreigners... It was suppressed in January [0] for white collar workers but in risky jobs it's still mandatory.

[0] http://www.lemonde.fr/emploi/article/2017/03/16/la-fin-de-la...

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#233

Post by graniter »

thbt wrote: post #231
grp wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll need to go to Paris for a medical check that you can do your job. All French employees must do this. And you have to do it every two years. Pee in a cup. Undress over there. Is it a joke? Never heard of that in 30 years..

I work in tech in France and in my personal experience, this is fake. You do have to get a medical exam upon employment but that's it. You'll have to get your shirt off for a heart exam. But it doesn't have to be in Paris, no peeing in a cup, and you won't have to do it every 2 years.

Well I did on the visa being mentioned so I have first hand experience. Not fake.

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#235

Post by cm2187 »

raverbashing wrote: post #207
zdkl wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree in spirit with your point, I cannot help but imagine the shitfest of goal realignment that must follow the first your-eyes-only presidential briefing from the intel agencies.

Correct. It would be irresponsible to remove it now.

Not really. There is no more terrorism now than there has been for the past 50 years. We forget it but Europe, and France in particular has been constantly the target of violent terrorist attacks. The OAS for a while, then far left extremists and pro-Palestinian movements, then state-sponsored terrorism (Iran, Libya), the Algerian islamists (FIS), now a broader stream of home grown islamism, and of course all sort of other movements (corsican nationalists, far rights, etc).

I don't see why there would be a need for a Etat d'Urgence now but not in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s...

Plus the scale of casualties of terrorism is dwarfed by common crime for which the state response has been the exact opposite than to terrorism (i.e. to reduce or eliminate jail sentences).

And if this Etat d'Urgence was used solely against terrorism, it could be debatable, but instead it is clearly being used against lots of non-islamist terrorist targets (including preventing people from demonstrating against the previous government labour laws...) so I believe we are in a clean cut abuse of power situation.

More worryingly, Macron's exit from the Etat d'Urgent Permanent strategy involves basically making these exceptional measures permanent by adding them to common law.

So low expectations...

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#236

Post by thbt »

corford wrote: post #46

It looks great on paper but the devil will be in the detail and how well they execute on the admin/bureaucracy side. If my experience a few years ago with the auto entrepreneur scheme and URSAFF are anything to go by, you'll need a lot of patience, the ability to speak half decent French and a sense of humour if you want to avoid ripping all your hair out :) I love France (have even married one of their citizens!) bu…

I have the Auto Entrpreneur status (even though I'm currently employed). If you understand french, registering to it is a breeze, otherwise you can find help online, I agree that it could be improved though.

You can use an online bank if you think you'll move around a lot. Plus today it has become very easy to switch bank thanks to Loi Macron, and most bank now take charge of everything to attract new customers.

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#237

Post by user5994461 »

d--b wrote: post #230
graniter wrote: post #216

I live and work in France and I am well versed in this type of Visa. It's a very nice arrangement, but it's still France. It's still dealing with the same administrative burdens for everything else. You don't get treated special, you just have a special deal. I've said before that if France wants to attract foreign talent what they need to do is assign someone in the French administration to help workers get establis…

I am French and I went through the process of immigrating to both the UK and the US. While I agree that France is particularly painful about burocracy, what you describe is not a breeze elsewhere either. You have to compare with other systems, cause I don't know of any immigrants who can say "oh coming here was so easy". That is unless you're sent by a big company who takes care of everything.

As a French who migrated off, going to the UK was so easy.

I can't begin to imagine the burden a non speaking French person would have to go through to migrate to France.

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#238

Post by graniter »

d--b wrote: post #230
graniter wrote: post #216

I live and work in France and I am well versed in this type of Visa. It's a very nice arrangement, but it's still France. It's still dealing with the same administrative burdens for everything else. You don't get treated special, you just have a special deal. I've said before that if France wants to attract foreign talent what they need to do is assign someone in the French administration to help workers get establis…

I am French and I went through the process of immigrating to both the UK and the US. While I agree that France is particularly painful about burocracy, what you describe is not a breeze elsewhere either. You have to compare with other systems, cause I don't know of any immigrants who can say "oh coming here was so easy". That is unless you're sent by a big company who takes care of everything.

I agree that other countries are difficult, too. France moreso I think, but not alone in all of this. Which is why I'm arguing the difficulty in working in or starting a company in France is not money, it's navigating all the administration you need to do. And you won't know all there is to do until you do it. And since the laws change periodically, not even the prefecture will always know. I had immigration lawyers get the prefecture to correct the residency card they were issuing for me because they did it under a different program. How are you to know if the administration is doing it all correctly? And how do you know what all there is to do? And it is all in French. You better learn French or bring a translator. That's what I did.

And we haven't even mentioned income tax. As a US citizen you still have tax liability for income you make in France, meaning you still pay the US a decent amount of taxes you make in France. The US is one of the only countries that does this. So you'll need to hire an accountant familiar with this to do your US taxes, and you still have to pay your French taxes.

And forming a business? Better find someone who knows what to do, and be prepared for it took take a long time, like a year. Small businesses aren't too bad, but if you want employees...that's a totally different story.

Solve the above problems I listed and then France will be attractive to foreigners. Maybe there's a business idea: help companies and people navigate French administration. It's worth a ton of headache.

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#239

Post by xiaoma »

ramblerman wrote: post #219
xiaoma wrote: post #213

They're requiring masters degrees for entrepreneur visas. One thing Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Lei Jun, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanic and Cheng Wei all have in common is a lack of a master's degree. Why would France add a restriction to their visa that would have eliminated the founders of Amazon, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Xiaomi, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Ub…

There is a Founders Visa and an Employees visa. Only the employee's visa requires a masters degree. All the big names you dropped were people that never intended to be employees. I'm not sure what the problem is. > It's just making France look worse. This is just silly.

Ah, that's good it doesn't apply to founders. On the other hand, it's still pretty disastrous if your startup does well and you need to hire people. Nearly all the key early hires at the companies I listed above also lacked master's degrees.

> "This is just silly."

It's worse than silly. It's a baked in design flaw that literally would have prevented the foreign successes the program is in theory trying to replicate. It is silly to heavily credentialize an industry focused on doing new things, but it's also destructive.

The US has some enormous hurdles related to immigration, but it also has a network. Once someone is looking at the world outside SV/SF, there are many other places in the world trying to attract startups. Some of them have both stronger tech scenes and less regressive (though I still wouldn't say visionary) immigration requirements.

Why would a founder pick someplace like France, instead of South Korea or Australia where they could have a path to citizenship and a much easier time hiring talent?

Re: Welcoming Tech Talent from Around the World to France

#240

Post by realusername »

graniter wrote: post #238
d--b wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am French and I went through the process of immigrating to both the UK and the US. While I agree that France is particularly painful about burocracy, what you describe is not a breeze elsewhere either. You have to compare with other systems, cause I don't know of any immigrants who can say "oh coming here was so easy". That is unless you're sent by a big company who takes care of everything.

I agree that other countries are difficult, too. France moreso I think, but not alone in all of this. Which is why I'm arguing the difficulty in working in or starting a company in France is not money, it's navigating all the administration you need to do. And you won't know all there is to do until you do it. And since the laws change periodically, not even the prefecture will always know. I had immigration lawyers…

While France isn't the best country in the world for easily paying your taxes, it's clearly much better than the US if it's what you are afraid of.
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