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A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

visa.lafrenchtech.com

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Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#511

Post by hocuspocus »

user5994461 wrote: post #396
jeandejean wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is mostly because of the social welfare that is funded massively over salaries extortion. Take a random 60k€ salary for a senior software engineer in Paris, the employer is paying at least the same amount of taxes on top of that, making the cost for the company up to 120k€. It is not that far away from some foreign salaries for the same position, except in other countries highly skilled workers are not that massiv…

Honestly. The taxes are only half the story. The other half is that there are simply no company with massive revenues competing for engineers. Nothing to drive price up.

Exactly. France isn't an exception in Europe regarding high taxes and social contributions (even though the distribution employee/employer is making the salaries look a bit low compared to say, Germany).

And I'm sure some companies can drive salaries up, they just don't need to. Software engineering is looked down upon, most new grads want to become project manager, somehow working at a big bank / big consulting firm is seen as nobler. Even the recent trend in data science doesn't seem to leverage the education system that is particularly maths/physics heavy.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#512

Post by flurdy »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #495
renaudg wrote: post #425

Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price for you as in other European countries, more or less ! The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard : * a top not…

In other words, healthy educated engineers with no children who are motivated to work need not apply.

Or quite the opposite?

These engineers may find once migrated (especially after a few years, ie slightly older) that the option of having children not to be burden in such a system, might find the safety net of not worrying about health and insurance increase their ability to focus on being productive instance of simple grinders, especially if well educated and motivated.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#513

Post by mtinkerhess »

KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #495
renaudg wrote: post #425

Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price for you as in other European countries, more or less ! The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard : * a top not…

In other words, healthy educated engineers with no children who are motivated to work need not apply.

Sure, if you plan to never get sick, have kids, or get laid off. Or if you're not trying to settle in one place.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#514

Post by zo1 »

grzm wrote: post #503
narrowrail wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don't need novelty accounts that regurgitate slogans and add nothing to the discussion on HN (whether this is sarcasm or not).

"Novelty account" is an apt description. It's hard to judge these things without numbers, but have you noticed an increase in accounts of this type? Perhaps the past month or two? Edit to add: To be clear, I'm referring to single-use or single-topic accounts in general.

I definitely felt that I saw a "surge" in Trump references during, and after the election, in all sorts of articles. Usually bad/fear-mongering, even coming from established accounts. Sometimes subtle, without explicit reference to him; but reading their text one can't help but feel like they're talking about him being elected and what that means.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#515

Post by ensignavenger »

renaudg wrote: post #497
tornadoboy55 wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. which is usually capped. So you are covered for minor incidents, but anything above 200k (or whatever the cap is) will completely fuck you up. Because anything that will have that much cost will also be something serious enough to incapacitate you for a long time and leave you without income. EU healthcare usually doesn't have cap, nor a deductible of thousands of dollars.

...and has "preexisting conditions" clauses, right ? This doesn't exist in France.

No, there are no per-exisitng conditions clauses anymore.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#516

Post by ensignavenger »

tornadoboy55 wrote: post #450
ensignavenger wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part where he said he had health insurance paid for by his employer?

.. which is usually capped. So you are covered for minor incidents, but anything above 200k (or whatever the cap is) will completely fuck you up. Because anything that will have that much cost will also be something serious enough to incapacitate you for a long time and leave you without income. EU healthcare usually doesn't have cap, nor a deductible of thousands of dollars.

In addition to the other comments, I wanted to point out that many employers also provide Short Term and Long Term Disability Insurance, which would cover the "incapacitate you for a long time and leave you without income" scenario.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#517

Post by jeandejean »

Shebanator wrote: post #414
jeandejean wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, Google and Facebook jobs numbers in France are just anecdotal…

anecdotal? Not sure you used the right word there... FWIW, I work for google and have access to the numbers. Although I can't give specifics, I will say that although Dublin, London, and Zurich are all larger sites within Europe, the Paris office has a non-trivial number of engineers, and some cool projects going on.

It has roughly 100+ engineers. That is indeed VERY anecdotal, how could you claim something else? Even compared to Google worldwide (~25,000), but compared to big companies that employ thousands of engineers in France, Capgemini for instance: 22,000, Dassault Systèmes: 3,000…

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#518

Post by hk__2 »

renaudg wrote: post #425

Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price for you as in other European countries, more or less ! The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard : * a top not…

> * 5 weeks holiday + public holidays

In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#519

Post by user5994461 »

gcp wrote: post #498
user5994461 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are both in France. You have the official national healthcare that you're forced to pay "la securite sociale" and a wide range of private healthcare that you're forced to pay as well "une mutuelle".

private healthcare that you're forced to pay as well "une mutuelle" You're not actually forced to pay them, are you?

You are definitely forced to pay.

Noawadays, it's even picked and forced by your employer (but taken on your pay). You may not be able choose or deny the plan you're offered. It's messy.

Re: A Visa for founders, engineers and investors willing to join France

#520

Post by catwell »

di4na wrote: post #485
cdavid wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will ask citation on that one, as that's not my experience at all.

I can not find a quote because the numbers are hidden. But i am in an engineering school, i am in the top 10%, and it is true. There was even a note from the ministry this year asking engineering school to stop the mandatory semester in a foreign university for all engineering student, to try to reduce the drain.

The truth is it is a lot more complicated than you make it sound.

There are some schools which are relatively young and focus on coding. Historically they were expensive (for French schools), even though one of them is now free thanks to the generosity of a French billionaire. They recruit students with different profiles than the traditional "Grandes Écoles" and they get much less recognition from French employers, especially large companies. Because of that, their top students may indeed be inclined to move abroad, where degrees matter less.

In the more generalist, traditional engineering Grandes Écoles, however, the phenomenon is a lot less prevalent. Some students do move abroad, but my experience is that it is not correlated to their competence. Those with propensity to found companies are more likely to go to the US, but that is mostly because the ecosystem there is like no other. On the other hand, you may have noticed that some large US companies (Google, Facebook...) have been opening research labs in Paris, while top French companies such as Criteo send their marketing department to the US but keep development in France. This is not only because talent is cheaper (others have already explained how low salaries for not mean low costs) but also because top technical talent doesn't necessarily want to emigrate. This is cliché, but Fabrice Bellard is still living in France, and Yann Le Cun moved back. :)

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