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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

#641

Post by morgante »

Jare wrote: post #635
morgante wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Arguing why "people trot out" socialism from a purely individual financials POV is in large part a normative judgement.

You don't seem to understand what a normative judgement is. I'm not saying whether socialism is good or bad, just that it objectively does not balance out with the less compensation. The OP literally framed it as you getting "these benefits" in compensation for the lower salary and they are simply wrong.

> 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.

If France isn't hoping to attract people who are hoping to make enough money to retire in 10 years, I question how they'll get any good founders. Successful founders are almost always in a position to retire within 10 years.

It sounds like you're arguing that a socialist state will have trouble attracting capitalists. On that I agree. I don't really see how you imagine startups being built without capitalists though.

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

#642

Post by renaudg »

netman21 wrote: post #629

Surprised that the comments here are from the perspective of an employee considering moving to France when the purpose of the visa is to attract founders . Try founding a tech company when you are paying all those employment taxes for everyone you hire. And then they are only allowed to work 35 hours a week. I helped a startup during the dot com boom in Paris. They said the "employment police" would stake out their b…

>> And then they are only allowed to work 35 hours a week. They said the "employment police" would stake out their building to ensure nobody worked too long.

This is a myth. 35 hours a week is a reference figure (likely to go the way of the dodo with the next president btw) after which overtime regulations are triggered for some types of employees (mostly blue collar). White collar hours aren't regulated at all in the same way, they're just supposed to get some extra days off ("RTT") since that law came in force.

It's true the "employment police" in France can indeed be full of nasty anti-business commies (a famous hard left politician in France spent his whole career there), but it's a total urban legend they'd be staking out a building looking for overtimers.

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

#643

Post by toomuchtodo »

morgante wrote: post #627
mhlakhani wrote: post #616

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Are you sure you're counting it as 200k and not a higher number? With taxes in the bay area, at least 70k of that is gone and surviving on 30k/year is kind of tough if you want to save a full 100k.

> Are you sure you're counting it as 200k and not a higher number? Yes, I'm quite sure. This is based on my personal life. The trick is to do your saving it tax-advantage accounts and to take any deductions you can. Still, the taxes are the primary reason I'm not based in SV.

If its a tax advantaged account, its only a 401k at that income level; a traditional IRA is off limits, and while you might be able to do a backdoor Roth conversion, rumor is that loophole is going away.

So what tax advantaged account are you using to stash away the other $77500/year?

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

#644

Post by morgante »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #643
morgante wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are you sure you're counting it as 200k and not a higher number? Yes, I'm quite sure. This is based on my personal life. The trick is to do your saving it tax-advantage accounts and to take any deductions you can. Still, the taxes are the primary reason I'm not based in SV.

If its a tax advantaged account, its only a 401k at that income level; a traditional IRA is off limits, and while you might be able to do a backdoor Roth conversion, rumor is that loophole is going away. So what tax advantaged account are you using to stash away the other $77500/year?

I'm not doing all my savings in tax-advantaged accounts, but I get a fair bit through backdoor Roth, solo 401k, and HSA savings.

Plus, as a small business owner I can deduct a lot of my expenses.

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

#645

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

#646

Post by zump »

morgante wrote: post #588
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…

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…

I love how every thread eventually devolves into this.

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

#647

Post by toomuchtodo »

morgante wrote: post #644
toomuchtodo wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If its a tax advantaged account, its only a 401k at that income level; a traditional IRA is off limits, and while you might be able to do a backdoor Roth conversion, rumor is that loophole is going away. So what tax advantaged account are you using to stash away the other $77500/year?

I'm not doing all my savings in tax-advantaged accounts, but I get a fair bit through backdoor Roth, solo 401k, and HSA savings. Plus, as a small business owner I can deduct a lot of my expenses.

That's fair, but you should point out that you're using those advantages that aren't available to a typical employee (solo 401k where you can customize the plan, deducting your business expenses, etc).

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

#648

Post by morgante »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #647
morgante wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not doing all my savings in tax-advantaged accounts, but I get a fair bit through backdoor Roth, solo 401k, and HSA savings. Plus, as a small business owner I can deduct a lot of my expenses.

That's fair, but you should point out that you're using those advantages that aren't available to a typical employee (solo 401k where you can customize the plan, deducting your business expenses, etc).

That's true, but on the other hand I don't get any free vacation and have to pay for my own insurance.

Whether employed or self-employed, you're still financially much better off in the US.

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

#649

Post by hluska »

mdup wrote: post #622
hluska wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In your example, your month of July would be paid. You're out of work the whole month yet your payslip is the same as any other month.

Thank you very much!

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

#650

Post by rifung »

morgante wrote: post #628
Pyxl101 wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$200K would be a high salary , meaning a fixed cash payment someone receives on a periodic basis (with $200K being the yearly sum). However, as the value of total compensation , meaning cash salary plus stock plans, retirement plans, the value of healthcare insurance, expected bonuses, etc., then yes I agree it's pretty normal. Indeed, the starting total compensation of college graduates at top tech companies like Am…

I'd say $200k is very typical (if not on the low end) of salary + stock for big companies. Not including other things like insurance or retirement plans which are hard to attach a quantifiable dollar amount to. In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.

Do you have a source for this? Or can people chime in? I could see this for Google or FB which are known to pay pretty well, but is this really "typical"? And even for Google or FB, I imagine $200k would require that you include annual bonuses too.

> In terms of straight dollars, you can easily earn $200k+/yr doing contracting.

But.. is contracting really ever easy? I mean it's hard work getting clients and how many people are qualified enough?

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