How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France • Hacker News Board

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#191

Post by kanwisher » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 12:17 AM UTC

Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote: post #149

nix23 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>reality check After taxes it's 80k which is NOT allot outside France (not even paris) and you are in the high-income class, you see when you want good people you have to pay them the right amount of money so they can pay everywhere for a good life. It's like saying, but 20$ a day is a perfect income for Morocco, why don't we have the best tech peoples around??

sigh... I assure you the top 1% earner of a high income per capita country enjoys a very high standard of living. A net income of 120k/y leaves with you with a real income of 94_080€/y (see sibling comment) or ~7840€/month when you're single. You'll have no problem renting a 30 sqm² for 1000€/month in a beautiful neighborhood in the center of Paris. Money isn't the problem, your "best tech people" are just too greedy…

So your in top 1% of salaries and you are suggesting a 30sqm apartment is good? That’s a tiny box for a “top” income earner

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#192

Post by realusername » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:29 AM UTC

P-ala-din wrote: post #146

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then your underlying assumption is that religion isn’t part of cultural integration. Why is religion separate from culture? I would say it’s a subset of culture.

- I mean freedom of religion is a human right. - So In a majority christian state, is it ok to discriminate against jews?

> - So In a majority christian state, is it ok to discriminate against jews?

People would still be discriminated for wearing a big cross in France as well, it's just not that common.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#193

Post by user5994461 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 1:42 AM UTC

athenot wrote: post #163

xur17 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is called "tax" in the US.

Not quite: health insurance is not called tax in the US, yet is a benefit under the French system with premiums paid by the employer.

Not quite: An employer in France must provide a private health insurance plan to employees. It is paid out of the pocket of the employee and they can't refuse it.

France has good public health service but it's also pushing private health insurance down the throat of everybody through their employers, quite like the UK or the US. The large majority of the population has double coverage.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#194

Post by realusername » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 2:14 AM UTC

exhilaration wrote: post #132

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then your underlying assumption is that religion isn’t part of cultural integration. Why is religion separate from culture? I would say it’s a subset of culture.

What about your name? Do you have to give that up too to culturally integrate? I'm sure you've seen the articles about CVs rejected by French firms for having Jewish and Muslim names: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2015/11/2...

> What about your name? Do you have to give that up too to culturally integrate?

In the past you had that too yes, your name was transformed into a French equivalent.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#195

Post by Qiu_Zhanxuan » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 9:33 AM UTC

kanwisher wrote: post #191

Qiu_Zhanxuan wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh... I assure you the top 1% earner of a high income per capita country enjoys a very high standard of living. A net income of 120k/y leaves with you with a real income of 94_080€/y (see sibling comment) or ~7840€/month when you're single. You'll have no problem renting a 30 sqm² for 1000€/month in a beautiful neighborhood in the center of Paris. Money isn't the problem, your "best tech people" are just too greedy…

So your in top 1% of salaries and you are suggesting a 30sqm apartment is good? That’s a tiny box for a “top” income earner

You live in Paris for the extensive catalogue of activities accessible : architecture, museums, monuments, unique places and restaurants, locus of power, demonstrations etc... all squeezed in 100km². The city is one of the most densely crowded area in the world for a reason.

I don't think I need to lecture you about the ubiquitous problem of housing prices in "world-class" cities.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#196

Post by yodsanklai » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 10:10 AM UTC

mardifoufs wrote: post #136

yodsanklai wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. Whenever topics on France arise on HN, it's amusing to see many opinionated/politically biased comments from French people. I personally have no idea on how France compare with other countries as far as startup creation go, but I'd take with a pinch of salt any comments making very strong claims.

It's crazy to see how defensive some people get! Especially when any criticism of EU countries gets brought up. I get that some of the criticism is unwarranted. But as an outsider with intimitate knowledge of both europe (france in particular) and north america, it's just mind boggling to see the difference between the HN/online discourse and reality. France is an amazing country don't get me wrong, but you can't jus…

> I couldn't imagine that type of argument not getting absolutely destroyed if it was a thread about the US, the UK or Canada.

I think it's what I was trying to say with my initial comment. The occasional discussions involving US politics seem to be moderated more effectively.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#197

Post by BiteCode_dev » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC

ldng wrote: post #186

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aren’t you just repeating some stereotypes you heard elsewhere? If France were as hostile as you pictured it, how would it have such a dense startup ecosystem and even (God forbids!) some very successful ones? Where are they? Cause as a French, I've been living on the startup scene for 10 years, and I don't see those anywhere. There are successful companies, but startup? I hear about a 1000 more US ones than french…

Is it fair to compare France to USA though ? In term of scale maybe comparing to Europe would be better. Are you both saying that you are "living on the startup scene" but don't see any startup ? Or any successful ones. On the top of my head I can already cite you Blablacar, CapitaineTrain, Dailymotion, Deezer as relatively successful for the French market ... Of course if you're looking for planetary mastodon as sig…

Those are not successfull start ups, those are companies that make money.

There are plenty in france.

The startup model assumes you use VC cash to drive explosive growth.

Bla bla car took 13 years to slowly becomes the average company it is, being covoiturage.fr before. Deezer barely makes a dent in spotify market despite the fact it was born before. Even french don't know about daily motion, it survives because of all the pirated content it contains. Captain train had a moment, and lost it. The oui sncf service has won. At least if you disagree, none of them scream "explosive growth" in my mind.

I'm not saying there are no successful startups. Meetic and free are examples of that in there times.

But there's not a lot of it. Next door, ledger was midly successful, and maybe kryll will do something if they manage to get binance on board and then add the forex to their targets, but I don't see a uber, stripe, dropbox, etc. anywhere.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#198

Post by jobigoud » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 12:03 PM UTC

908B64B197 wrote: post #169

Uberphallus wrote: post #3

Honestly, this reads as those books titled "How to make money selling books on Amazon". Living in France, I can tell, France is very startup hostile. The amount of taxes a company has to pay and the amount of paperwork to do (or money to delegate it) is just absurd. The only way a small tech company can make any money and be sustainable (let alone grow) is having all employees as associates (with all the organization…

The French model of high taxes that can potentially be offset by subsidies and grants is an interesting one. I've heard stories of companies getting an employee early on who's sole purpose was applying for these grants and subsidies. Now, I think the one issue the French (and really European) tech sphere should tackle is low salaries for engineers. France has stellar engineering schools but lose so much talent becaus…

I can confirm. At my previous job we were about 20 employees and we had one person dedicated to this. Grants for R&D, so her work was to make the paperwork explaining and documenting why it was R&D. Also there was another gov help to pay half the salary of employees for which it was the first job after their thesis or something along these lines.

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#199

Post by 908B64B197 » Sat, Aug 22, 2020, 5:37 PM UTC

jobigoud wrote: post #198

908B64B197 wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The French model of high taxes that can potentially be offset by subsidies and grants is an interesting one. I've heard stories of companies getting an employee early on who's sole purpose was applying for these grants and subsidies. Now, I think the one issue the French (and really European) tech sphere should tackle is low salaries for engineers. France has stellar engineering schools but lose so much talent becaus…

I can confirm. At my previous job we were about 20 employees and we had one person dedicated to this. Grants for R&D, so her work was to make the paperwork explaining and documenting why it was R&D. Also there was another gov help to pay half the salary of employees for which it was the first job after their thesis or something along these lines.

Wow. The inefficiency of having to dedicate an employees to that paperwork (and probably the same manpower on the government side to receive it and take action) make it sounds like a welfare/job program.

Would be way more efficient to simply drop the tax rate and make these 2 positions redundant, freeing more money for actual R&D.

The post-thesis bit is interesting: How is it the taxpayer's job to finance that? I get funding the thesis themselves but why should a company get funding for hiring someone who completed one? Shouldn't the thesis make the employee more valuable thus negating the need for this welfare?

Re: How I got the French Tech Visa to start my company in France

#200

Post by hansvm » Mon, Aug 24, 2020, 3:58 PM UTC

krstf13 wrote: post #170

user5994461 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

French has multiple words historically (impots, taxes, charges) with subtle differences in meaning. However they've not been observed strictly in a long long time. It's all money taken out of the employee pocket at the end of the day. In English it's all translated to "tax" and rightfully so. English languages and cultures don't have subtle semantics like French does. For example everything in the UK is a tax, corpor…

Nope,that’s not correct. Even in English health insurance is not tax, unemployment insurance is not tax... And by the way what you call ‘charges’ is historically‘cotisations’ (fees).

In my circle of acquaintances, the distinction lies not in what the money is funding (e.g. health care), but in where it's going:

Health coverage goes to some entity that isn't the government and is usually optional, so it's viewed as a benefit and taken into account when computing total compensation.

Unemployment insurance on the other hand is taken out of every paycheck and handed to the government without an opt-out. Yes, of course you get something for it; the whole point of taxes is that society gets something in return. They're still taxes.