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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

#631

Post by hueving »

Jare wrote: post #610
morgante wrote: post #588

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 don't understand; this is not about what YOU (or should I say WE, highly sought-after engineers) can have. The point is that it is an ENTIRE COUNTRY (for the most part) that has access to those benefits and standards of living.

You don't understand, you can't entice people who have it better with something worse.

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

#632

Post by aclsid »

xienze wrote: post #479
manarth wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free." The distinction is that it doesn't matter how much or little I use it, I pay no more. If I drive on the highway, I don't pay anything extra. If I choose not to drive on the highway, I don't get cash in my pocket. Use of the service doesn't cost anything - this is "free at the point of delivery". This…

> I don't need income to drive on the highway. Don't need gas? > Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of. And they continue to operate so long as there are enough people who _actually pay for these services_. Maybe you don't fall into that category, fine. But there are a lot of people who do, and it all comes straig…

Your logic is not sound though. Some people are not paying a dime while others pay more. And by far you are using way more road that you are able to afford, just like what happens with shared hosting.

More importantly, according to your definition, nothing is ever free. If I tell you that you can pick a fruit from a tree in a national park, you will probably use a ridiculous argument that national parks are protected, therefore somebody pays for the maintenance, etc.

So no offense, but please don't be an idiot, and by that I mean "someone who acts in a self-defeating or significant counterproductive way."

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

#633

Post by renaudg »

erowtom wrote: post #510
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…

Update : Thanks for the feedbacks ! 1st update: Included mobile phone + Internet 2nd update: Huge update, completly forgot about one tax on the salary.. ----------------------- I'm French, I can give you some more details. I'm a full stack Ruby Developer, and I work at https://www.talent.io , the first recruitment platform for developers in Europe. (If you're looking to relocate in Paris, London or Berlin, you know w…

>> * Healthcare insurance ~ 40 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (240 / year)

For the benefit of non-French readers, let's clarify that the kind of 40€/month health insurance you're talking about is called "mutuelle", which is optional extra private insurance that covers the remaining third or so of each medical bill, after mandatory state insurance ("sécurité sociale") took care of the first two thirds (slightly oversimplified explanation : the coverage ratio varies and you might sometimes still be out of pocket slightly)

In other words, France has a hybrid paying system which gets a lot of criticism, but I think is actually the best of both worlds : it means patients get almost complete freedom in choosing their private doctor/hospital, but most of the bill is still footed by state insurance. You don't have to attend a specific surgery as in most public systems (UK NHS), and there are no mandatory "provider networks" like with most US/UK private health insurance.

The drawback for the very poor, is that it's not entirely free (but there's special help available to get on a "mutuelle")

In the UK where I live, on the other hand, the National Health Service is almost completely free for patients and often has great staff, but is chronically subject to government cuts, unavailability of "non-essential" treatments, and unacceptable waiting times.

So, most people in the UK who can afford it buy private insurance (if they don't get denied because of "preexisting conditions", a notion that doesn't exist in France) and go to completely different doctors / hospitals than the NHS. It's a two-speed system which doesn't feel right when you're used to the French one.

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

#634

Post by ePierre »

hk__2 wrote: post #518
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 (!)

Yep... Some of my ex-classmates from engineering schools who stayed in France now have 45+ holidays per year. One even has 52 holidays per year. FIFTY TWO! And that's excluding bank holidays!

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

#635

Post by Jare »

morgante wrote: post #612
Jare wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand; this is not about what YOU (or should I say WE, highly sought-after engineers) can have. The point is that it is an ENTIRE COUNTRY (for the most part) that has access to those benefits and standards of living.

Uh, I do understand how socialism works. The point is that, from an individual financial perspective, you're much worse off in the EU. I'm not making a normative judgement, just a financial one.

Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement. In any case, I certainly don't expect a tech visa in France to hope to attract people whose life goal is to retire in 10 years, so on that we probably agree.

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

#636

Post by renaudg »

jfbus wrote: post #536
erowtom wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Update : Thanks for the feedbacks ! 1st update: Included mobile phone + Internet 2nd update: Huge update, completly forgot about one tax on the salary.. ----------------------- I'm French, I can give you some more details. I'm a full stack Ruby Developer, and I work at https://www.talent.io , the first recruitment platform for developers in Europe. (If you're looking to relocate in Paris, London or Berlin, you know w…

Don't forget to include internet/mobile access prices : * 30€/mo unlimited fiber internet access (TV, unlimited calls included) * 20€/mo mobile (4G, 50GB data, unlimited calls/SMS)

Several French mobile phone carriers have run a yearly Black Friday sale that got you that kind of 20€/mo plan for 3.99€/mo or so for a year !

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

#637

Post by Jare »

hueving wrote: post #631
Jare wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't understand; this is not about what YOU (or should I say WE, highly sought-after engineers) can have. The point is that it is an ENTIRE COUNTRY (for the most part) that has access to those benefits and standards of living.

You don't understand, you can't entice people who have it better with something worse.

You can't entice EVERYONE, but you can definitely attract or tip the scale for some or many. Your ideas of "better" and "worse" seem rather limited.

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

#638

Post by hueving »

geodel wrote: post #433
School-Cotton wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are literally in a forum discussing tech worker salaries. Yes, I make an amount of money that puts me in an extremely high percentile relative to the world population. But pointing that out in a context where it's completely relevant is just conversation, not bragging. Do you think I go around showing my W2 to random financially struggling strangers, or something? I don't. By the way it's not as atypical as you mi…

This is great. Though I must say that more than few people here believe they deserve $200K+ pay for next generation CRUD app.

There are more than a few people that believe they deserve $1m+ for throwing or kicking a ball. I hope you look down on them as well.

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

#639

Post by [deleted] »

hluska wrote: post #611
user5994461 wrote: post #602

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In accounting terms, your pay is calculated as hourly rate * time working. It's averaged over the year and paid monthly. All the holidays are time not working over the year. So, yes, it is definitely lowering your pay.

Pardon my ignorance, but may I ask a question? The GP mentioned 5 weeks vacation + public holidays. To make my example easier, let's say that I worked in France and decided to take the month of July off (using the 5 weeks vacation). Would I get paid for that vacation? Or is the 5 weeks vacation unpaid?? In Canada, my vacation is paid, so if I take an entire month off, I collect my pay cheques as usual.

[deleted]

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

#640

Post by ianderf »

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…

> 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

So, France could be great to be an employee, but it's horrible for entrepreneurs.

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