I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
31–40 of 67 posts
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
I moved to Boston from Germany. I haven't experienced the "lack of consistent healthcare, lack of social safety net and much lower quality of life". Those probably all exist, but they have no real influence on my everyday life. Some of the things that I enjoy over here: - Everything is exciting and I'm learning a lot. Just the act of getting bank accounts, how to buy gas, ... Everything is new. That'll probably wear…
This. Europe, because of lingual and cultural differences, lack the sort of high-density clusters you get in the US. There's no Cambridge, MA or bay area because moving around is such a big deal here. Berlin is the closest we have, but it's not nearly enough. Basically, Europe is too spread out. Americans always talk about the US' low population density, but the population density of NY and LA is incredibly high. It'…
There are always interesting talks and meetups happening, from regular events like SpilBar (http://english.dadiu.dk/invitation-spilbar-14-0-surprise) or Science & Cocktails (http://www.scienceandcocktails.org) to active hackerspaces (https://labitat.dk and http://www.illutron.dk), a whole building hosting an indie-game community (http://www.dfi.dk/nyheder/filmupdate/2010/velkommen-til-spil...), etc. Events at universities also feel more "open to the public": if I want to hear a bunch of internationally famous visitors talk about biotech or experimental mathematics, I can go to something like http://danstem.ku.dk/events/seminar_series_2014/ or http://www.math.ku.dk/english/research/xm/seminar/ respectively. Whereas apart from a handful of advertised public talks, the large amount of stuff undoubtedly happening at Stanford or UC Berkeley didn't feel like part of "my" neighborhood, something I'd hear about or go to as a non-Stanford, non-Berkeley person (or necessarily even be allowed into).
There was certainly interesting stuff in SF as well, but it felt less like it was always happening, and more like I had to seek it out and drive anywhere from San Jose to Oakland to get to it, more like a "trip" to an event (like SuperHappyDevHouse, which is great) than a feeling that stuff is always happening all around me. The videogame-dev scene in particular was very scattered, with a good number of studios generally in the area, but that meant anywhere from Marin County to Santa Cruz, so you didn't really end up at the same events on a regular basis.
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are several things to take in account. Base salary for fresh out of school engineer is about 40 kEUR. You need to add 75% of social contributions, so that totals around 70 kEUR. If you are a "young innovative company" though, you can have exoneration of these social contributions and only pay ~40 kEUR for the first few years.
Woah, 40kEUR for a fresh out of school engineer is a lot considering my zone (IT, GE, FR). Maybe in a corporation or something like that, but in startups and similars it's already a good start to have 20kEUR out of school (taxes included) If you have a stage/intership contract it can be also less then 12-15kEUR (taxes included)
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are several things to take in account. Base salary for fresh out of school engineer is about 40 kEUR. You need to add 75% of social contributions, so that totals around 70 kEUR. If you are a "young innovative company" though, you can have exoneration of these social contributions and only pay ~40 kEUR for the first few years.
- Base salary for fresh out of school engineer is about 40 kEUR Are you talking about France?
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#35Are french developers really better than US ones though? We have EPITA, EPITECH, and the recent 42. But besides that I feel like the CS formation of our universities is very poor... I know a lot of people who've done/are doing CS in university, and their level is pretty low I would say. But maybe I tend to overestimate the US coders' level...
Really depends on the universities. EPITA, EPITECH, SupInfo and the likes are way overestimated and overpriced compared to some good universities.
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#36It's really hard (if possible) to make such comparison. I studied and worked in France. Now I live in the US. In some respect it's not fair to compare "US" to "France" as a country. US has many technology poles and most of the time feels like a group of countries sharing the same language and currency.
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#37I dream of a system that allows me to swap my citizenship with a similarly qualified EU Citizen that wants to come to the US.
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#38Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really depends on the universities. EPITA, EPITECH, SupInfo and the likes are way overestimated and overpriced compared to some good universities.
I know a lot of people coming from both sides of the fence and there is a huge difference of level. I challenge you to find just one university in France that gives you a formation equivalent to those of epitech et al.
Re: I didn't leave France, I moved to the US
#40"... written recently about French entrepreneurs leaving France because it was a terrible place to start and grow a business but ...... if your users, partners and possible future investors are here, you have to consider having at least a foot here."
And why do you think that is the case Einstein? The reason your users, partners and future investors are not in France is that France is no longer competitive.