Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There? • Hacker News Board

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#211

Post by enriquto » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:11 AM UTC

Legogris wrote: post #86

Just sharing another experience: I am a technical manager at a small-size big data company. We opened a new office in Paris three months ago and our largest struggle by far is recruiting talent. Despite what other comments here are writing, the startup scene is booming. Station F[1] is huge. The four WeWorks are full and they are opening two more soon. Global companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Naver are g…

> there is simply not enough supply of senior engineers in France to meet the demand.

This argument is ridiculous, the problem is that you are not willing to pay enough. (I am working in Paris)

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#212

Post by throwaway13337 » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:13 AM UTC

clon wrote: post #137

adventured wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's derived from KPMG's global tax tables for 2018, and confirmed from: https://investinestonia.com/business-in-estonia/taxation/ Estonia's corporate income tax rate is not essentially zero, unless you plan to never distribute any profit. Otherwise it's 14-20%. It would be unusual for most businesses to never distribute profit. Last year Estonia collected something like €368m in corporate income taxes. Or €283 per c…

Estonia's corporate income tax is set at 20%: https://europa.eu/youreurope/business/vat-customs/company-ta... As for the budget share, a significant part of that is going to be govt-owned corporations that are used as cash-cows, for example the energy production / distribution monopolies, national lottery, Tallinn Port etc. Last month's news - this year they contributed 157MEUR dividends: https://www.aripaev.ee/uudis…

I'm currently trying to understand estonian corporate taxes so your comment was helpful. Thanks.

The question I have is whether you're required to claim a salary (instead of capital gains) as a sole employee of your corporation if you're a full tax resident there.

This might be too specific for HN discussion, but feel free to email me.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#213

Post by amelius » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:15 AM UTC

Why does the concept of "startup region" even exist? Given that work has become more and more intellectual rather than physical, and products more virtual than physical, I would expect that geographical location matters less and less.

Is it based on superstition of investors?

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#214

Post by roel_v » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:16 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #155

roel_v wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're being held at knifepoint by a mad man in a home invasion, your best course of action is to take the first opportunity to either escape or neutralize the kidnapper with violence. When you're symbolically held in an office for press coverage and you know you'll be fed, and released in a few days, your best course of action is to sit down and play on your phone for 24h. I'm not pro union, but is that so hard t…

No, it's not hard to understand: it's illegal. If someone restricts your movement against your will then depending on how much force they are prepared to bring to bear they should let you go or suffer the consequences. There is nothing symbolical about this, it is actual kidnapping.

OK, it's actual kidnapping. And it's illegal. Now walk me through this:

1. you are held hostage in a home invasion. You kill a kidnapper. The police won't arrest you (in the Netherlands - maybe other European countries they will, I don't know many details of all EU countries - but this is just for argument's sake anyway). Most likely you will not be convicted of anything (depending on the exact circumstances).

2. you are held hostage during a strike by a union group. They put you in an office, bring you some water maybe, then lock the door (or let's make it more extreme - let's say they tape your hands together, just like the burglar in the scenario above). You wriggle yourself out, take the knife on the side table that is usually used to cut cake for someone's birthday, and when the door opens, you stab the guy on strike in the eye and run out.

What do you think will happen? Will you be charged and/or convicted in this second scenario?

If there is a (in terms of legal repercussions) difference in outcome between the two scenarios, why do you think that is? Would the defense in the court be 'oh but I was actually being held hostage, this was justified self defense'?

(note that I'm not talking about what 'ought to be' here, I'm talking about 'what is'. I'm not interested in arguing hypotheticals based on legicentric fantasy legal theory. Although one might argue what a person in such a case could reasonably expect to happen, which is a real consideration in a legal argument on self defense.)

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#215

Post by p0nce » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:17 AM UTC

pilooch wrote: post #41

I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...). For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov tax…

And programmer salary can be rock-bottom too, it's not unheard of to hear people earning 20k€/year (at a cost of ~28k€ top for the employer thanks to CIR). In US dollar that is $33k. (that said, retaining developers is very very hard)

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#216

Post by p0nce » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:22 AM UTC

kakwa_ wrote: post #195

pilooch wrote: post #41

I run a machine learning company in France. Call it a startup or not, doesn't matter. Most of what I read in the comments here is not exactly true nor relies on statistics (sound like my story is...). For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov tax…

CIR is a huge joke, it doesn't help small companies that much. Big companies are far better at collecting it than start-ups. On paper, CIR is for research and development efforts, basically it's for efforts that improve the state of the art. But in practice CIR is a tax break/subvention in disguise for medium to big french companies like Orange, Thales, bnpparibas... Just to give you an idea, at one of my former job,…

It's even worse than that because CIR is correlated to having people with the highest degree, which creates a perverse incentive to have over-qualified staff. It subsidizes long studies implicitely and distort the job market.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#217

Post by imdutch » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:26 AM UTC

geezerjay wrote: post #161

maeln wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_in_the_United_States 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth.

> 65 Millions is a bit exaggerated but not too far from the truth. The only objective number mentioned in wikipedia's article is 43 million, but apparently that figure appears to be made up, as it is based on a single citation of an obscure and unavailable document published by an organization that calls itself Talk Poverty. Nevertheless, even if we take that 43 million number at face value, that means that OP's exag…

Cry me a river.

It's data from the US Census Bureau, it took me 7 seconds to find the correct reference: https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

It does not matter the guess was a bit off, the argument still stands.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#218

Post by p0nce » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #201

systemtest wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing is that you can get away with paying a good software developer only €2500 per month. You can get four French developers for the price of one American.

This is below France median salary. If you think you can get away with that, you either : - Have developers that are actually not that good - Have good developers that will realise that you are vastly underpaying them and will jump ship Salaries in France are lower than in the US, but if you think good developers are settling for remunerations below the median salary of the country they live in, you will get a wake u…

> This is below France median salary.

No.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#219

Post by noir_lord » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:31 AM UTC

IMTDb wrote: post #201

systemtest wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best thing is that you can get away with paying a good software developer only €2500 per month. You can get four French developers for the price of one American.

This is below France median salary. If you think you can get away with that, you either : - Have developers that are actually not that good - Have good developers that will realise that you are vastly underpaying them and will jump ship Salaries in France are lower than in the US, but if you think good developers are settling for remunerations below the median salary of the country they live in, you will get a wake u…

I'm in the UK (not France) and I make ~3050EUR a month (pre tax), I take home after tax ~2400EUR.

I've been making money from selling code since 1996 and a full time developer over a decade.

While my salary would be low in London (I'd be worth at least another 10-15K down there) in the North of England and particularly where I live that gives me an excellent standard of living, rent on a decent sized two bed is US Salaries are way higher than UK salaries even in London and if you exclude London then the gap is hilariously bad.

Average software engineer in my region earns £25K.

I could move down south but frankly I don't want to, I like it up here, I have a good mostly low stress 9-5 job.

There is more to life than take home pay.

Additionally I have complex (therefore potentially very expensive) health issues that don't affect my ability to work but would affect my ability to get healthcare insurance in the US - if I adjust for that then things look much better from this side of the pond tbh.

Re: Macron Vowed to Make France a ‘Startup Nation.’ Is It Getting There?

#220

Post by musage » Mon, May 28, 2018, 10:32 AM UTC

llcoolv wrote: post #178

llcoolv wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Great. A whole bunch of downvotes and not a single decent argument :D

Saying that anyone and everyone who needs welfare is just lazy is so disgusting considering the wide ranges of hardships and diseases that can befall people, I would absolutely punch you in the mouth for it. Fuck clicking a button on a website.