Kudos to the team who made it happen. I'm French and happy this comes to life.
I still have the feeling this is more of a stunt to bring attention on Station F than on the startups themselves. Beyond the buzz, there is very little vision. It's a giant intensive farm in a denser, currently-under-redevelopment neighborhood.
In this super dense setting, they're piling up various talent for sort-of-low-cost rents, hoping to raise unicorns thanks to nearby campuses, increased VC flow in Paris and general attention towards startups. This strikes me as a formula thought out by people who have never actually been in a successful startup (Roxanne Varza has been successful at _talking about_ startups, never at actually building things).
One outcome is that all those points successfully connect together. Another, more probable outcome is that it will turn out impossible to keep focus, talent and purpose in a giant, open space (also probably soon to be under-maintained judging by French standards).
If I may add a bit of context: while Station F is indeed a project of Xavier Niel (Free/Illiad/Kima/42...), it is also a project with considerable public support.
Several french regions have their (semi-)publicly funded equivalent of Station F (Lille with Plaine Images & Euratechnologies, Nantes with La Cantine, ...) and while there is a considerable quantity of startups in Paris, there is no local de facto hub. I'd argue that Le Sentier area plays that role, but it's a neighborhood where lots of startup happen to be located. In the early 00s it was dubbed "Silicon Sentier".
Plaine Images & Euratechnologies have been built in former industrial complexes with the aim of redynamizing local ecosystem as a whole. Anne Hidalgo, the Paris mayor, hopes to do the same to the XIII arrondissement.
Thanks for that context man. People like to b*tch about taxes all the time, but the thing is, taxes sent me to school and university, it paid for my stays in the hospital, my mail delivery, our internet infrastructure and awesome projects like Station F.
Most of the time wealth is the by-product of pursuing a talent or passion. I'm not sure high taxes would disincentivize somebody from reaching the height of their ambition.
Presented with the option "improve performance and you'll receive an extra 100k a year although you'll only see 50k of that" would you:
A. plod along with current work-ethic and current salary
B. move to where you'd see 80k of that
C. Continue to perform and be 50k wealthier
France loses the talent of those that choose option B (See: London) but option A seems illogical.
This is actually is a lot more subtle. Sure there are heavy taxes about which that some (ideologically interested) people love to complain about. But there are also a lot of public subsidies that those very same people will never publicly acknowledge benefiting from (again pushing an agenda).
One of the main points of VC funding is that it is easy to get... compared to state funding.
An early stage venture ain't developing anything if they are busy filling government paperwork and optimizing taxes. They should be busy using their resources for growth and creation, not busy trying to protect their resources from the government.
The schemes for tax avoidance in France are very complex, as much as the schemes to get government help [for a company], and they can totally backfire if there is anything misdone or an unexpected change in government.
The economic system is anti-startup and pro-big companies. That's why there are very few SME in France.
You're right about the system being tailored toward Big Co.
Yet I've seen SME managing to get subsidies. There are tricks and shortcut. Networking is key here to find out about them.
I've seen a lot of startups joining up to have access to bigger founds they would have had alone. It also split the bureaucracy burden as it is in everyone interest to succeed so paperwork is mutualised.
The "Wealth Tax" (Impôt sur la fortune) can be cut in half via investment into SMEs.
Pro-tip when you raise capital in France: do it early in the fiscal year, as April is the deadline for this tax avoidance scheme ;)
There are lots of tax optimisations in the french tax code. The weirdest one has to be investment into "sofica" companies, which are shell companies for movie productions. You have to make sure that the movie will fail to maximise your tax credit. So you have to pick wisely: do not invest in the next Asterix or Luc Besson movie, you'd end up loosing money to the IRS. That's one of the reasons hollywood accounting is also a thing in France. The idea is not to massively undercut the author, but to make sure the investors aren't hit with back taxes!
You can still get rich even with high taxes, and even if you didn't, it turns out that most folks care more about putting meaning into their own lives than they do about money.
When I was in Nantes this summer, I kept seeing subtle little details that made me think something interesting was going on. Compagnie La Machine (with its multi-story robotic spiders http://www.lamachine.fr/) seems to be surrounded by a maker scene, and even perfectly ordinary magazine shops carried Open Silicium (http://www.opensilicium.com/) a really nice embedded systems magazine that covers advanced hobbyist and professional concerns. This is a lot harder core and more specialized than the Linux Journal, for example, and when I've shown it off to US booksellers specializing in "maker"-related publications, they just about drooled.
Combine that with the French startups I saw at La French Touch in New York a couple of years ago, and some of the recent legislative changes the government was supposedly working on, and I kinda wanted to hang around and see what was up. I have a sneaking suspicion that the French have all the raw ingredients for an excellent startup scene, but that funding might still be something of a struggle.
It's located in a former textile factory and combines both openspace/co-working spaces, private offices in varying sizes. It also has a strong focus on creative industries (gaming, VR, audio...). Several companies that have started there have an excellent track record and several world-class leaders are in talks with them.
If you mix public subsidies + good space design + integration in the socio-economical fabric + specialization on a vertical, you end up with very high potential and growth. That's exactly what's happening right now at Plaine Images, even though it's not very well known outside of Europe.
Funding is not that much of an issue, tbh. As I stated elsewhere in this thread, I raised little, but had I wanted more, London & Berlin are literally next door and many large european VCs are familiar with the french ecosystem. The business angels I chose have exactly that track record (early 90s-00s, create company in France, raise a few hundreds k€ in France, large rounds in the US, IPO on Nasdaq, get rich and become BA/VCs).
I'm not going to list the usual "french unicorns" such as Blablacar or Criteo, but see Devialet, a hw "startup": they have closed a 100M$ round with a Korean fund two weeks ago so access to capital definitely exist...
By the way, La Cantine unfortunately had a massive fire two weeks ago, so we will have to wait and see if the phenix rise from the literal ashes :'(
That opensilicium magazine seems pretty awesomely cool. Does anybody know anything similar in English or maybe German? I'm afraid my french ain't that good.
VC funding is extreeeeemely hard to acquire in France, basically. So we're probably not going to get startups growing insanely fast, and they're going to be bootstrapping themselves. Which might not be a bad thing really.
I've actually worked for a startup that was formerly at la Cantine (which has actually burned down less than two weeks ago), and I can confirm Nantes is a lovely place to work at.
This neighborhood had many good bits but no center. La pitié, BNF, Bercy, lots of new business buildings. Maybe this will end up as some sort of cultural core.
(Also French)
I have been an intern at a startup that was hosted at a similar incubator in Paris in the late 00's. The legislation around work was more of a problem than neither the rent (which was indeed cheap) or the proximity to other companies -Paris is not that big.
In 2016, hiring is still an issue, and investing is always seen as a risk instead of an opportunity.
Hey, thanks so much for your comments - always love feedback. We've only announced the very beginning, there is a lot more that we have not commented on yet. We're surrounded by lots of brilliant people (not to mention Xavier Niel and I think we can all agree he knows how to build things) - it's not just me (Roxanne), don't worry :) Thanks again for your comments.
I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go with job infrastructure, Paris is non functioning. The city itself is inherently flawed in job growth and management. There is a lack of variety in jobs. There ARE a variety of jobs, but the disparity between amount and desire is huge.
When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money. People then majored and specialized in Money. It is where the Money is; Money is where the jobs would be.
Don't let the media blitz carry you away at the announcement of Station F, it is a media wave designed to tell people, 'look... we are diversifying our economy' as Berlin and London have also been attempting (rather... ineffectively for Germany). The media blitz is a way of telling individuals in France (and all of Europe actually) that this is where tech jobs can be found... so make the decision to major in tech.
What I imagine will happen is: many people from Eastern Europe (strong scattering of micro tech scenes without sufficient exposure) will flock to Station F to take advantage of it's proximity to all of the local funding that can be found in Paris. Paris is a place like London and New York where people park their money for expansion. Station F is just another place for these people to park their funds.
We could be seeing the beginning of a rocking station F, or, we could be seeing the beginning of a very large media hype designed to encourage diversifying the economy that will be the beginning of a very slow 'meh' Station F.
> When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money.
Working as a software engineer in Paris, and having most of my friends doing the same, I think your were juste living in a bubble.
Furthemore, french people don't go to university to study engineering, they go to engineering schools, which are dedicated structures. Some are public, generalist, and really famous (École Polytechnique where Fabrice Bellard comes from, École Centrale where VLC was created, École des Mines) but there are also a lot of smaller private and specialized school (Epitech, Efrei, Epita or “42” for computer sciences for instance).
In France, people mostly go to university to study law, medicine, social sciences or humanities.
Hi, how is the scene for software engineers in Paris? I am getting a master degree in Computer Science soon (I hope) and I would love to relocate to Europe, mainly something like Madrid, Paris or London. How hard is to get a job in Paris? How is the payment? Is it good to have a good life or barely to rent a small apt? Thank you.
Paris has a lot of companies hiring, with a lot of variation in term of job quality or salaries, but it's usually a lot less than in the US. You can probably get between €40k* and €50k* a year for your first position after studies.
Cost of living is pretty high (still less than London but the gap narrowed in the past few years). Count €1000+ if you want to live in a comfy flat in the inner city, which you do if you want to have reasonable commute duration, and enjoy the nightlife/culture.
I've been living in Paris for 3 years now, and before I lived almost a year in Boston, 6 month in Berlin and several month in London. Paris is really close to London on many topics (cost of living, commute time, nightlife, cultural events) but the quality of life is way better (weather, food) and Paris as a city is really beautiful. Berlin is really different from Paris, but really enjoyable also ! But eastern Germany's economy is still lagging far behind overall Germany and Berlin's job market is quite poor.
The biggest problem I have with Paris is the real estate, renting a flat is expensive but not extreme, but as soon as you want to buy something, it becomes crazy.
*salaries are usually counted before taxes. With a €40k salary, you'll earn around €28k after all taxes.
According to personal examples, Atos (service company in IT) paid 34k. If you're good, you may indeed change jobs 6 months later and get 40k, but for 50k out-of-school as a programmer, no.
To me the real problem with housing in Paris is, landlords request to see 2 years of tax sheet. When coming back from Australia, I just decided it would be too hard for me to find housing in Paris, and created my startup in Lyon.
From experience, Lyon, Toulouse and Montpellier are all around much better places to live & work in than Paris (especially if you are just relocating from another country).
> To me the real problem with housing in Paris is, landlords request to see 2 years of tax sheet.
Landlords are insane in Paris ! I had a friend who made 48k in his first job, he came from Grenoble and his parents weren't rich enough to "vouch" for him, so he spent almost a month before finding a flat, because landlords rejected him all the time, despite his salary.
50k+, probably none (at least with a CS background, finance with a math background is another story).
With a diploma from a good engineering school and a previous work experience (internship and/or apprenticeship) the companies I talked about in [1] will pay you above 40k when coming out of school. With the two financial companies in the beginning being above 45k.
The main problem I see with developer employment in Paris, is the weight of the diploma in the remuneration. People with a university degree being offered around 30k most of the time.
Pay is shit. I have friends who make more in all other countries of Europe (Austria, Germany, Poland) and that's not even considering the costs of living (that is inferior to Paris).
You will have huge trouble because you don't speak French.
You will have huge trouble for all administrative stuff. Like, it's hell to rent a flat even if you could pay 12 months in advance, because there isn't any AND the agencies will reject you because you don't have a history in France nor French parents with income to "vouch" for you.
Most importantly. There are no good jobs. The startup ecosystem is a joke and there is no Google/Facebook/Apple/Uber/AirBnb to work for.
And finally, the quality of living is mediocre, at best.
1. You are mostly right, but you are also exaggerating : in Poland you barely make half of what you get in Paris. (But the cost of living is also way inferior)
2. that's absolutely right, but working in Germany without speaking German wasn't really a good experience of mine either.
3. that's cute. Administrations are horrible everywhere, and it's even worst if it's not your country because you don't know what “everybody knows”.
4. Google is in Paris, but if you're looking for a good job, you probably don't want to work for Google anyways. (At least I don't, since I've had several bad feedbacks from both French or American offices)
5. this is highly subjective, I won't argue over this one.
1. My polish friends's payslips say "nope". [Though there is a big variance on polish salaries from lower to higher.]
2. Just meant to better consider staying or going to a country one speaks the language. No European countries speak or learn french, too badd ^^
3. There are variable levels of challenge. Some of which can be now circumvented with airbnb :D
4. Google ain't -really- in Paris. The first thing that comes up in the interview for frenchies is "that position only exists in Zurich or Dublin or London, do you have a preference?".
I relocated from Paris to SF as a senior dev, and I am going back after 1 year. Yes I was making like 3x more in salary, but then housing in SF cost at least 2x more than in Paris, commute is just as bad, healthcare is a mess etc. And taxes are not that low :) - lower than in France, but you do not get much back, ie no healthcare, no retirement, not very good infrastructures etc. For me overall financially it is more interesting to go back.
Regarding jobs, I never had any problems to find interesting jobs in Paris, but I am working in embedded/low-level/networking/telcos systems, and I think Europe is skewed towards this kind of stuff whereas SV is skewed towards web/mobile.
To be honest I think it really depends of your lifestyle and priorities. I really enjoyed my year in SF, it is a beautiful city with great peoples, but I'll be happy to get back to Paris.
Honestly, my best advice for youngsters would be to leave the country for a few years. That's just the best option on the long term. They can come back to France, if they ever want to, and their experience will [hopefully] allow them to get interviews in the very few decent Parisian places.
I'm in distributed large scale systems. Not much of those in Paris I'm afraid ^^
In fact it's university that is seen as second tier with respect to engineering schools except for a few majors like medicine and law. (I'm not french but have lived in France a few years)
The french have had dedicated engineering schools for a while, which are good, and most are very cheap (state sponsored).
There are many universities and they cover all topics (also state sponsored). Including law, finance, engineering, medicine, psychology, social sciences...
Some stuff (law/medicine) can only be done through a university (they're the only one to get the state-certificate to exercise the job). When it comes to engineering, universities offer it but the degrees are considered "shit-tier".
Note: They are not that bad per-se. They just get no considerations for old cultural reasons.
I don't see why this is bad - I echoed this sentiment in my previous comment. Not every city/country needs to turn into SF/US.
Most people associate Paris with old world charm, weltsmerchz, brooding philosophers and artists, sassy and fashionable women etc. - none of this is compatible with neckbeards with macbooks, obsession with money/productivity/growth that a thriving startup scene inevitably brings. Let it stay that way.
I find it bordeline cringey to see how other countries try to imitate "SV culture".
it's one thing to be inspired by something, and no question we should all admire what SV has created. On the other hand, I dream of France creating products that reflect its own identity and culture. It's not like we don't have anything in the past ot get our inspiration from.
I wish we didn't try to become SV, but try to become our better self, so to speak.
I strongly agree. Nonetheless, many places aspire to be a second Silicon Valley, and it's certainly worthwhile pointing out how close or far away they are from that goal. In particular, those behind Station F probably want their project to develop in a SF/US-like direction.
It would be interesting to see if there can be a third way - an attractive location for startups with a culture that is open to entrepreneurship without being overly obsessed with quick unicorn money and without being entirely dominated by startups and VCs?
I don't know why the downvotes.. Very high rents for rather low quality (by the european standards). Long and unpredictable commutes, frequent problems on the overcrowded lines. Serious pollution: today the subway/metro was free of charge for everyone in order to encourage people to use the (already crowded) public transportation instead of cars to reduce the thick smog which accumulated over the city.
What you are saying makes me really sad. I live in Paris and I just graduated (CS). I am currently working as a java developer in a large company, the job is incredibly boring and I feel like I am not learning anything. Interesting jobs seems out of reach of a junior developer. I don't think Station F is going to improve things much. I am now thinking about moving somewhere else to find a better job.
There are good places ; if you aren't happy, move. Just don't pick a contractor job, and make sure you don't pick a job where people just expect you to move dirt around.
There are good places in Paris but they can be counted on your fingers. That's not enough jobs even if we only consider the population of 3lite 10x developers.
Change job and relocate, even if temporarily! Devs jobs are plenty, and you should take advantage of it while it's still the case. Working abroad for instance is a good way to get out of your comfort zone and keep on learning.
I know that feeling. Big companies are a scam. The good thing is: there is a lot of start-ups in Paris, many of them with open positions.
It's not that hard to find a place to work in Paris, it's hard for employers to find good candidates. I've spent most of the year looking for developers at Streamroot [1] and we struggled to have applicants. We hired 5 persons in the first 6 month of the year and still have a lot of open positions.
Read that whole barrage and all I could think about is: "Man it must suck to be a pessimistic person, you only get to think about the failure of a school that hasn't yet opened instead of seeing the potential".
France makes people sad. One in 3 adult takes psychotropic drugs[1]. I lived in Australia and I was happy every day, in France there's just no good news. A brilliant example is, GP mentionned buildings are under-maintained, that's an excellent summary. It's the no-politics week so I won't dive into the past-and-future causes of this chronic stress, but it exists.
Paris is not perfect but I don't see how this kind of initiative couldn't be a move in the right direction.
About the money part, Paris is far from being London or NYC, the gravity center isn't financial services, at least you don't feel it when living there.
There is great talent (engineer+design), I'd say the marketing overall is weak and too timid.
I met a senior developer who worked for a large consulting firm in france. He got a greencard and moved to the USA. He was making something close to 50K USA in France with 9 years of C# development experience. It took a while to convince him that he could land a position at 100K+ here. Is it lack of jobs that causes this disparity?
You really can't compare pre-tax salaries between countries with such a completely different taxation and benefits structure.
The take home pay certainly is much, much lower in France than in the US, but it comes with access to top-notch free healthcare, free university, pension contributions, 5-7 weeks paid leave and generous unemployment insurance amongst other things. It all adds up.
I'm French, working in London and I've been happy with the trade off of more pay for a thinner social safety net, but I know it would be foolish to compare wages directly. I suspect the difference is much less spectacular with everything taken into account.
He is earning 50k more in the US. Are you insinuating that the social welfare state of France provides close to 50k worth of services!? Because that would have to be true for the position in the US to be at all comparable.
This ignores the much lower price of consumables in the US as well.
Unicorn story. How about the more common case of "healthy young person with no assets or savings bears a disproportionate burden by being taxed an outlandish amount for an inefficient health care system mainly catering to the elderly"? I suppose that isn't suitable for an LA Times piece.
Whether the case is "more common" is debatable (and besides the point, unless you'd like to challenge the whole premise of sharing risk through insurance).
As it turns out, I am that healthy young person from the country with socialized healthcare who temporarily went to work in the neighboring country with higher take-home pay, so I think I can tell you a thing or two about the trade-off.
As much as I usually love to hate on the French system, it's hard to describe to someone who never experienced it the feeling of security that comes with the knowledge that every treatment decision for you is made by your doctor on the basis of best medical outcome, period.
Never before I moved to the UK and discovered private insurance through work had I even heard about "preexisting conditions", "lifetime limits", and the whole idea of having to talk to some guy in a call center about your ailments to get pre-approval, which you might or might not get based on whether this will affect their finance guy's Q4 targets.
I'm not American. I'm from a country with somewhat socialized healthcare (New Zealand).
Americas healthcare is not truly private either - there's a lot of state intervention in it. They manage to get the worst of both worlds due to the inefficiency of the federal government.
Let's just say that it's hard to make much more past 2000 EUR per month after taxes in Paris. And the accommodation costs the same number as in London (at 1 EUR = 1 GBP).
2400€ per month = 48k€ gross per year (on 13 months).
Are you really getting that as a junior? I highly doubt so.
I bet that you're not accounting for what would be translated literally as "the income tax". Wait till you get the 3k€ tax bill at the end of the year ;)
42k doable. Not easy, but doable. (I suppose fairly reasonable if you're from a Parisian school, you know the area and live there already, plus you can handle the Google interviews).
My calculator gives 2336 EUR per month on 12 months. (2156 EUR on 13 months).
The thing is, you're on 12 months so it's better than the estimation I gave initially. You're lucky in a sense, many places are forcing 13 months contract nowadays, which instantly steals 1/12 of your income.
Anyway, I consider that it fits the definition of "not much more than 2k". That will plateau [counter-]exponentially fast, don't expect to get 3k anytime soon :D
Let's say you have a contract written "26k gross over 13 months".
It means, you're paid 2k per month (26/13).
In December, you'll get 4k at once. [If you're still there, and worked the whole year, and didn't give your notice, and weren't sick more than X days... There can be some pretty nasty conditions to try to not pay you].
---
The dishonest way to put it (what French people think and what company say): say that the salary is 26k. Except it's really not that, you can NOT rely on that money.
The programmatic way to put it: You're paid 24k gross, 2k per month. You MAY get 1 month of [mostly] guaranteed bonus at the end of the year.
The left-France-For-Abroad way to put it: French companies not only pay bad but they try to fuck with your income and ostensibly lie to your face. Americans/London tech did not do that, they give the real number for your salary, and they add ON TOP generous bonus/RSU/profitshare plus free catered food and insurance.
I have 38k gross a year. A little bit over 2400 after tax a month. I know friends who earn more. I don't know how much tax I'll get at the end of the year. Probably going to hurt :(
"Let's just say that it's hard to make anything past 2000 EUR per month after taxes in Paris. "
If we are speaking of software engineering salaries that's really low. In Helsinki capable professionals can get 'easily' 3000€ after taxes per month (not in all companies though). If one has proven track record, is undoubtedly in 'smart and gets things done' category, etc.
> Let's just say that it's hard to make anything past 2000 EUR per month after taxes in Paris.
Really ? Shortly after I graduated, I've been hired at 2700€ (net salary minus income tax). If you have professional experience and are paid below 2500€, you really need a new job ! (all my friends are hiring, feel free to contact me on twitter)
That's a hard number to get for someone with 5-10 years experience. Sorry to say but there is no way you got that after graduation ^^
Even if you are part of the "privileged schools" with a special network of friends and "copinage", in finance. That's really really tough.
Would you mind sharing the gross salary number actually written on the contract and the name of the company and the careers page :D ?
> If you have professional experience and are paid below 2500€, you really need a new job ! (all my friends are hiring, feel free to contact me on twitter).
I had some professional experiences at the time and there was no way I'd get anywhere near that.
I've left the country since because I'd rather leave the street than live in the street.
Let's talk business. Let's imagine for a minute a guy who is handling the core trading infrastructure, for a financial institution, responsible for over 1 bazillion dollar in assets.
What kind of career would you or your friends offer back in France for that kind of profile?
As I already replied to your other comment, your calculation is flawed (partially because of your 13 month stuff but not only)
> Even if you are part of the "privileged schools" with a special network of friends and "copinage", in finance.
I'm from that kind of school, and in finance you don't really need network or "copinage" to get 55k a year. With it, a few manage to reach above 100k.
> Let's imagine for a minute a guy who is handling the core trading infrastructure, for a financial institution, responsible for over 1 bazillion dollar in assets.
I'm not really in the financial business, but I'm not sure you could find work in «trading infrastructure» here in Paris. Maybe BNP has some stuff, but I know many banks have settled in London for that part of their business.
That being said, you could easily find a job above 60k in Paris with this background. Streamroot[1] had a position for this exact profile several month ago. Of course it's probably not much compared to what you earn in the trading business, but saying that 2500€ a month is impossible in Paris is just wrong nowadays.
I don't know how the market was several years ago, but I think you really underestimate the shortage of developers in Paris at the moment.
All the SSII and the few dev shops I've seen are doing 13 months. Just my experience ^^
> I'm from that kind of school, and in finance you don't really need network or "copinage" to get 55k a year. With it, a few manage to reach above 100k.
I just checked your linkedin (and you should see mine). You're from the Ecole Centrale Paris. You absolutely have the network and you're privileged. You absolutely underestimate how hard it is to get a job from someone who is not from one of these schools, didn't study in Paris and has no friend/family in Paris.
> With it, a few manage to reach above 100k.
Yeah sure the legendary top 1% that every one heard about. Do you actually know the guy and checked the payslip?
Either way. It's both non representative AND it's still not on-par with London/SV for the cream of the crop.
> I'm not really in the financial business, but I'm not sure you could find work in «trading infrastructure» here in Paris.
I don't care especially about financial businesses. It's just one offer ready-to-sign I have on my desk. I try to make a collection of those. I guess it's like people who came from desert that now hoard water... I come from a job desert and I hoard job offers to maintain my mental sanity :D
This is really just one of the many jobs in there. I knew noone, I have zero network. I sent a few resumes and I got that.
That's the way it works in London. That's not the way it works in France :(
> That being said, you could easily find a job above 60k in Paris with this background.
With the taxes and costs of living. I estimate 60k€ in Paris to be like £50k in London (possibly less).
If we go higher, the difference will becomes more dramatic. No point to have a good salary in France with all the taxes, it's just stealing everything.
> but saying that 2500€ a month is impossible in Paris is just wrong nowadays.
There is a hundred people every year, who are in Paris, from the top schools in Paris, who may approach that. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'd say it's very limited and Paris sucks for the rest of the world.
> Of course it's probably not much compared to what you earn in the trading business
Way more or way less than what you think. It could go either way. But I'm still young and whatever I do now is just a step on the infinite ladder of the universe :D
> I don't know how the market was several years ago, but I think you really underestimate the shortage of developers in Paris at the moment.
0) A shortage that only applies to dudes from centrale and normale. Too bad for me.
1) There is no shortage in France. There is no money and there is no good company.
2) What are the odds of a good position in Paris without knowing the right people? High risk, low reward.
4) Even if France paid on-par. The tax would hurt so bad that it would still suck. Better make money elsewhere that doesn't steal it right away.
5) There is no such thing as a "shortage", the only thing is an "over abundance of companies who pays shit". Obviously, the international markets has increased my standards :D
6) In SV/NY/London. There is a small [but very real] market for the top talent, the few guys who knows what they are doing and what they're worth and are ambitious enough to pursue it. There are real options for the top 1%, in Paris there aren't.
Conclusion:
Your linkedin profile says that you're looking for a job, in France or abroad. You just surrendered. Even you, you do NOT believe in your country :p
I's also a cultural one, at least regarding the developers. The status of the developer is still considered lower as middle management. It's slowly changing though, as developers are becoming more and more respected. But we're far from SF where developers have a higher symbolic status and where the good ones get huge salaries.
I never understood why some companies in France are reluctant to pay well their developers, especially startups with funding.
The successful ones are now Parrot and Criteo. Remember those? But there are plenty of small startups that are doing challenging stuff. Interested in machine learning? Check out mipsology.com
If you want to be paid well, you need to work for a company where the technology is the product. Writing Java for a bank? The software is not the product, so you won't be respected like in Silicon Valley.
I don't know why but from my experience there is many PME woking as startups in the south west of Paris specially in embedded dev and video. Maybe for web dev they are more located "intra-muros".
Interesting point, which reminds me of one theory about why Silicon Valley took off: it was thousands of miles from the meddling money people on the East Coast, back when those miles mattered.
Station F is a well-meaning project that may succeed. The French government plays a large, interventionist role in the nation's economy, and infrastructure projects like this are one way it can express itself. I lived in Paris for over a decade, and I happen to disagree with both the hype and some of the criticisms in this thread.
While Paris is the economic center of France, it is not where the money is. That would be London, NYC or Shanghai. Maybe Brexit will drive finance back to France, but France started driving them away with the early 80s nationalizations of Mitterand.
I think Station F could present a great, regional hub for EMEA. France and other European countries turn out amazingly talented technologists. But those same countries don't always provide an environment for them and their businesses to thrive. That is partially due to how people invest in Europe, partially due to how governments regulate, and finally to a discomfort with marketing in France itself.
There are holes in the European funding ladder moving from pre-seed to IPO that drive European entrepreneurs to Silicon Valley. Those holes are due to a lack of investors who are willing and able to identify opportunities at every stage and take a risk. Most European money is old, and it prefers real estate. If that money allots a percentage for VC, a lot of it will end up with Silicon Valley firms, because the top ones have unrivaled track records and the money does require a plane ticket to travel. And the SV VCs see all the best European entrepreneurs come through to pitch anyway.
The second problem is regulation, and something close to that which I don't quite have a word for. The best analogy would be to compare the Napoleonic code, which attempts to legislate for all contingencies from the beginning, with common-law systems, in which a body of precedent rulings and thought develop in response to the world. My impression of France is that it creates analytically rigorous and often misguided policies, and seeks to apply them to quickly evolving situations. I believe that thinking also infects many decision-makers who affect tech, who aren't responding and creating as quickly as they might in another cultural context.
Finally, tech needs hustlers and hype. New things must be sold. France has a history of inventing amazing technology before other countries, and not marketing it well (Minitel).
With luck, Niel's Station F will address and mitigate those risks.
I've been renting at a co-working space for the past few months, in the city I'm currently parked in (Fertilab in Springfield, OR). It's actually not so bad. Kinda like a coffee shop, only everyone else is also working. I'm historically very much opposed to open offices, but if there aren't phones ringing, and there's not a lot of "hey, can I ask you about X?" cross-talk, it's not so bad.
I've turned down jobs in the past because they were in open offices, and I might still do so today. I basically agree with you that it's a bad idea to work full-time in an open office. But, for a three days a week kinda work place, just for a change of pace and an excuse to take a walk out of my house, it's been really nice. I plan to start checking for co-working spaces when I first get to a new city. It gives me some much-needed variety in my work day, gets me communicating with other people in tech in the city I'm in, and provides some other benefits (some of those benefits: there are distractions but they're different than at home and at coffee shops, the internet is faster than my home internet or most coffee shop WiFi though this may not be true for everyone, quieter than coffee shops, not home so I can fixate on work and not whether dishes or laundry needs doing, etc.).
I'd like to visit Paris one of these days, maybe once my French is stronger. I could see signing up for this for a while.
I like the social part of talking to random people but in startupland there are much more wannabes that real entrepreneurs, so at the end the conversations are very naive. And with entrepreneurs I mean people who can build a real business not the next Facebook.
Yes, that's one of the negatives, probably. I kinda like where I am now, though, as most of the people working out of this space are not "startup entrepreneurs", they're small business owners. The Eugene location might be different, since there's more of a tech scene there, but the folks in this branch are pretty no-nonsense, just here to get some work done, not try to sell me on their poorly thought out, poorly researched, derivative ideas.
That said, I also spent some time at the ATX Hackerspace which did have a bunch of startuppy types, and it was mostly free of bullshit, too, because so much of the focus there was on the hacking and not the "I just need to raise $x million and this thing's gonna explode!" mindset. So, conversation in that space were about laser CNCs, 3D printing, and electric cars, rather than everybody trying to give their (too-long) elevator pitch to as many people as possible.
Interesting, if different groups who don't know themselves are seriously motivated and working it might end up "as" quiet as a library. Unlike one company's open space where everybody tries to talk to everyboyd and compete for spots.
Also, 90% chance the English will be sub-standard (just to clarify, I am a 36 year-old Frenchman and I know for a fact that my average fellow citizen's command of the English language is rather poor).
It is, especially when you get the inevitable few people who think the rule about working quietly doesn't apply to them
I have a private office now and, amazingly, it costs no more. But the irony is that I only found out about it through someone I'd met in the previous open office.
For French entrepreneurs reading this: make it extremely easy and painless to start/run/shutdown a company in France.
I dream of being able to start a company by completing a form and sending a copy of my French ID. And all the rest (accountants/HR/law) would be handled by online third party services smoothly. Same should go for banking services associated with the company.
I think France has great potential but it needs simplification of processes. I'm not expecting the government to do it, hence my desparate call to other French entrepreneurs.
As someone who created a small business in France then did the same in the UK, I wholeheartedly agree.
Unfortunately, there's not a lot entrepreneurs can do, it's up to the authorities to be brave and reform the infamous "Greffe du Tribunal de Commerce". Simply changing your registered address required, last I checked : filling out a 10 page or so form, amended company formation documents, mandatory publishing of an expensive ad informing of the change in one of the government-sanctioned newspapers, and writing out a cheque (!) for 47.52€ or something.
This is insane. Emmanuel Macron, as an economy minister tried to dismantle this whole craziness but faced strong lobbying. Here's hoping he's more successful as a presidential candidate.
> Emmanuel Macron, as an economy minister tried to (...)
Besides that Emmanuel Macron absolutely made things worse for companies, it's the Politics Detox week on HN, so please refrain from talking politics: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13108404
While I think that supporting startups is a good idea, creating a campus without a nearby network of rich investors is like sowing seeds in sand. I've been part of more than one startup in Europe and it is far more difficult to secure early-stage investment than in SF. Until Europe has an equivalent VC presence, SF will always have the edge. I hope that this campus will attract that sort of attention from investors but we have a long way to go.
There are plenty of SF startups (and full-sized companies like Twitter etc.) that never make a profit. But startups in SF that can make a profit will still win out over European equivalents since they're granted such huge runways to perfect their product before they're under pressure to go to market.
I agree that the incentive system for startups right now is broken, as so many are simply aiming for an IPO before they're exposed as jokes but there's an inherent advantage to being in SF for any type of fledgling tech business.
"perfect their product before they're under pressure to go to market."
This maybe the wrong way to think about it. Outside of hard-tech I see very few companies that are benefitted by building in a void.
Though your larger point still stands, once you have product market fit, the funding regime in SF gives an unfair advantage to companies that know how to use it for their particular domains.
Restricting access to funding will exclude companies that are capital intensive. This means that rather than incubate, say, a company seeking to build technology related to the "smart" electrical grid (time-horizon ten years minimum) we'd see incubation of things like greeting card companies. (Mature market, very little risk.)
This and also if that campus is active promoting itself (meetups, hackatons, events, accelerators…), the VC's will come over themselves – they need the talent. Europe is small and geographically that's really not a problem.
In Paris, you can get good senior developers for $100-150k, all inclusive. This includes job loss protection, health care, and the founders can keep their jobless allocation for the first couple of years of starting their company.
Also the investment tissue has considerably developped, the funding stages become a pain mostly at series C.
Honestly, I would be surprised if there is no VC development.
I'm an American senior developer who also happens to be fluent in French. I would kill to work in Paris, but every time I have looked the rates for senior engineers were 1/3 what you're describing and there's no way I'm moving for that.
I believe he meant 150k as the whole cost to the company for a decent engineer while in the end it's split like 80k of taxes and 70k of salary.
The cost of living is a bit lower than in an expensive US city and of course you contribute directly to the social security system and much more. Hidden in all those taxes are the free healthcare, free education (including universities), up to two years of reduced salary if you lose your job, pension and much more...
While the number on the paper looks much lower, in reality your standard of living isn't much different.
1) You get your [not really] free education in France not in Paris because it's crazy expensive [unless you live there with your family who own something].
2) Get your master [you can only do master level here and everything else is highly underated].
3) You try to leave to America and you can't because H1B are crazy impossible to get.
4) You move to London.
5) You realize your master is useless there and you could have got all the same with only a bachelor, save the money and a few years of your life.
6) You go back to France once a year for the engineer school job fairs to recruit interns and help Frenchies leave their country.
150k is the fully loaded all inclusive cost (and in France, that a lot of inclusive) to the employer, so 50k being the salary part is consistent with that.
For senior developers in Paris the median may be around 50-60, (most of software engineer jobs are in consultancies) but there are tech companies that pay up to twice as much . I know mine does, and is looking for developers from all around the world, if you're interested :)
Got me. That being said there's been quite a lot of funding happening in Paris lately, and there are a few French companies (some of them startups) which are starting to match Criteo's compensations.
Murex, eFront, Theodo, Smart AdServer, SAP, Streamroot, Klee Group …
Basically all the companies I know someone in pays this kind of salary to people with 3 to 5 years of experience !
Are we really living in the same city ?
Right. Now you hopefully see the difference between what they would like to pay and what they will have pay [to bring back top French talent from abroad] ;)
I can't imagine myself programming in such huge, open space full of people and distractions. Maybe it might work for sales, marketing or costumer support, but not for a type of work that requires concentration.
In 42, the school presented in the article too, is constant open-spaces full of people. It's noisy but students get the habit of working in that kind of environment and get in the flow even with distractions. Some other French IT schools, like Epitech or SupInfo are the same (or close to).
Even if I agree that it's not ideal, it can work.
Although, I assume that most of people are not used at all to this kind of environment.
Well, you can do programming with one hand tied to your back too, but that doesn't mean it's an optimal or encouraged practice. There are multiple papers proving that noisy environment impairs cognitive abilities, so it seems logical to me to avoid working in such places when concentration is required.
It depends on the type of work you're doing. If you're bit fiddling, then sure maybe you need an office or some noise cancelling headphones. If you're an application developer in a team, the communication benefits of sitting in an open plan group can overcome the cognitive issues (which aren't so bad since you're just gluing components together).
Why would a startup with 1-5 people (as an example) even rent a place at all? I understand if you do any kind of hardware stuff, but for software companies it makes zero sense to me.
They could just as well be at home, saving that money and putting it in the startup instead?
Most Parisian apartments are tiny. You can forget about owning a free standing house. If you can afford that, you don't need investors in your start up... Or you're not in Paris at all. Think Manhattan. Paris' overall population density is comparable to Manhattan and much higher than overall NYC density.
Depending on the product you're building, the Skype/Slack communication may not be enough. If, for example, you're a game designer, artist and an engineer who're iterating together on a gameplay mechanic, it's certainly not enough. And apart from the work-related communication, you guys would need to have much more friendly chats and lunches together just to build the team together.
Nowhere on the Station F website was indicated the adress of the actual building, which is a glaring omission, for someone working near Paris and wondering where it is.
It was a critic against the website missing an important piece of information. And also a bit of a complaint since I spent five min looking for the address on the site before resigning myself to Google it, thinking that such piece of information could not have been omitted.
Even though it just seems like a big open-space with less services included (people mentioning no free coffee), I would presume that more "startup oriented" services will be available.
Paris has a super vibrant startup community and some small incubators are already in the city center, providing awesome followup.
3000 people in one room in an old train shed. With occasional shipping containers. This is is their idea of a startup campus?
Someone else mentioned [1] Nantes' La Cantine. That looks more usable; it's a big collection of little shops under one big roof. Looks like a repurposed mall. Repurposing an unused mall for this sort of thing might make sense. Rentable spaces of different sizes, good HVAC, power, and sprinklers, plenty of parking, not much heavy construction required.
Well, just outside Paris. Many big companies moved to La Defense, which is just outside the city limits and allows skyscrapers. The result looks like this.[1]
I always thought the things that prevented Startups in France would be more to do with employment laws - rules about weekend working, very hard to fire people, etc etc.
Is 195 euros/desk their solution? Really? Its going to bring in 1000 startups somehow? And why do they keep bringing up facebook? Its not a start up and could care less about other start ups succeeding (rightfully so).
Weren't a bunch of high profile French actually leaving France because of HUGE taxes in france?
Any French here can answer
this question?: for a start up making 5000 euros a month - how much would you pay in taxes?
But corporate tax alone is not a good way to evaluate the opportunity of creating your company in France.
As a startup you are supposedly doing innovative stuff and R&D so you actually get tax credits[0].
Crédit Impôt Recherche &Crédit Impôt Innovation brings you up to 30% of your R&D investment.
As a startup in France you are eligible to the Jeune Entreprise Innovante status which basically means you pay nearly no social contributions on the salary of your R&D personnel (which is a huuuge amount: as a rule of thumb, total cost of 1 salesperson is roughly twice his/her net salary. Paying half of that for your engineers is...cool).
As a startup in France you also get grants from BPI (Banque Publique d'Investissement) and colateral for your private loans.
As a startup in some regions of France you can get local grants which can be a huge amount as well (and Paris is not one of them).
If you want to try to get into the French Tech Ecosystem, there is a program similar to Startup Chile, French Tech Ticket[1], but the grant is only 25k€
To give an anecdotal example, I raised south of 1M€ of private equity (which is obvious a very small amount by US or european standards), but I got almost as much public grants/tax credits/local help. My colleagues/competitors located in the Paris region got substantially less local help for the same amount of money raised and comparable market/R&D programs.
Taxes are actually lower than in most US states, when it comes to profits. Obviously we have a lot of added taxes when it comes to salaries (by paying an employee 2000€/month, as a company you can expect to pay ~4000€ when you add up everything).
But as a startup, you have so many ways of diminishing your taxes. You can deduce your investment into R&D when it is a least 20% of your costs, up to 80.000€/year, "young innovative enterprises" (JEI) get a 50% tax break for 7 years, the CIR is quite literally 30% of your R&D paid by the state, I can't even list them all because there are so many.
As a startup, you are most likely going to choose to pay impôts sur la société, which is taxed at 15% for the first 38.120€ of benefits, then 33.3%. In your example, 5000€/month adds up to 60000/year, so the first tax bracket takes 5.718€ out, and the second one 7.220€, for a total of 12.938€ in taxes per year. Once again, that is before any tax rebate, which can very easily get your down to maybe 6.000€/year[1]
The high profile french leaving were leaving for tax havens, so I'm not sure that's really a good example.
Ok. What happens when you cross that "not a start up anymore" line, lets say in a successful fast growing business in a year or two. Sounds like a lot of rebates and freebies disappear and taxes and other liabilities increase, as of course expected.
Im all for the idea, but 195euro/desks are not a solution IMO. If you want to create thriving business scene (in any country) - drop small business tax rates (and other liabilities) to 0-5% and lock them there for first 5 years. Then if business makes it successfully to the commercial stage in 5 years - increase taxes to the current "market rate".
Ka-ching! Then You really have a new start up mecca!
I still have the feeling this is more of a stunt to bring attention on Station F than on the startups themselves. Beyond the buzz, there is very little vision. It's a giant intensive farm in a denser, currently-under-redevelopment neighborhood.
In this super dense setting, they're piling up various talent for sort-of-low-cost rents, hoping to raise unicorns thanks to nearby campuses, increased VC flow in Paris and general attention towards startups. This strikes me as a formula thought out by people who have never actually been in a successful startup (Roxanne Varza has been successful at _talking about_ startups, never at actually building things).
One outcome is that all those points successfully connect together. Another, more probable outcome is that it will turn out impossible to keep focus, talent and purpose in a giant, open space (also probably soon to be under-maintained judging by French standards).