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

visa.lafrenchtech.com

591–600 of 751 posts

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

#591
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

France's pension system (for public employees in particular) is in deep trouble, as our many of its other 'free lunch' policies. Its debt is looking similar to Greece shortly before '09. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/france/government-debt-to-gd...

FWIW, that's lower than the US, and not that much higher than the UK (and we don't really know what is a good debt/gdp ratio). Also, those numbers are not directly comparable (e.g. in Germany a lot of what used to be counted as gvt is now private: the work done is the same, as are the obligations, but it appears in a different "bucket").

It is indeed worth something -- most western countries are in deep trouble. And yet many pundits predict a strong dollar under Trump... For the vast majority of these countries, virtually the only way to meet debt obligations over the next decade will require rapid debasement of the indebted currency. Get your gold mining stocks/Bitcoin while you can.

Bad things will happen when the average person realizes what this means: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WALCL

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

#592
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#593
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've misunderstood. I get 26570 euros at the end of the year, after paying taxes, food, electricity, flat, insurances, common life stuff. This is the "bonus". I also moved to another company and greatly increased my revenue :).

I don't know man, I'm with user5994461, after all my bills monthly ($2,000 monthly rent, $350 new car, $200 insurance, $30 phone, $200~ utilities, ~$500 food) I have +/- $60,000 USD at the end of the year after taxes in surplus with only one year of experience and no diploma..

I'm in the UK. The comparison makes more sense.

US salaries are a different story entirely. (We can't even get there because of VISA anyway).

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

#594

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.

You seem to have no idea how health insurance works.

Any good healthcare plan, especially post-ACA, will not have a cap like that.

People way overvalue free healthcare. Yes, it would be nice but it's nowhere near worth the salary differential.

I pay $160/m for my health care. It's a high deductible plan, but even if I were to reach the deductible every year then my total expenses would be $9,070=(160*12)+7,150.

The compensation differential between the US and Europe is way more than $10k.

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

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And high rents, but then they're also among the highest earners. It's not like you can easily find a $200k+/year software dev job in Montana. edit: s/mo/year :D

You can easily find $2,400,000 / year software development jobs in California?

spez'd: parent edited OP to /yr from /mo

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

#596
post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> * 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 (!)

Also means you don't get paid 8 weeks a year. I remember very well when French employers forced me to get more holidays, which destroyed the income I needed to actually afford any holidays at all.

French employees aren't paid on their standard holidays? It also seems strange that if you're working over the 35/hr week baseline and being compensated for it by extra leave, that you would not be paid during that leave. After all, you're working extra for that time off, so you've essentially just already worked those weeks in advance.

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

#597

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…

I love how people trot out universal healthcare or pensions as a reason to ignore that European salaries are so much lower. With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings. That $100k is more than enough to build up a massive nest egg which will provide for me better than any pension or unemployment insurance would. If…

> You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe.

Doubt that. Contracting in London is very profitable. That's possibly the easiest money on the continent.

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

#598

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love how people trot out universal healthcare or pensions as a reason to ignore that European salaries are so much lower. With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings. That $100k is more than enough to build up a massive nest egg which will provide for me better than any pension or unemployment insurance would. If…

> You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe. Doubt that. Contracting in London is very profitable. That's possibly the easiest money on the continent.

Sure, contracting in London is "very" profitable but it's still not as profitable as contracting in SV/NYC. It only looks good in comparison because full-time rates are shit.

Also, if you're talking about contracting then all the supposed benefits of a better work-life balance or vacation time are out the window.

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

#599
post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know man, I'm with user5994461, after all my bills monthly ($2,000 monthly rent, $350 new car, $200 insurance, $30 phone, $200~ utilities, ~$500 food) I have +/- $60,000 USD at the end of the year after taxes in surplus with only one year of experience and no diploma..

I'm in the UK. The comparison makes more sense. US salaries are a different story entirely. (We can't even get there because of VISA anyway).

Hmm, it seems that if I wanted to go work somewhere over there though, that it would be a crazy pay cut even if we factor in all the benefits

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

#600
post #530
post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, they will pay huge taxes to finance the public education system they didn't benefit, while at the same time repaying their student debt because they had to pay for university in their own country? I don't quite follow the logic...

If you live in a society, you benefit from its education system even if you didn't attend it, as all the folks who were educated in that society's educational system are the rest of the folks who contribute to the economic system and its health and robustness.
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