I not only moved to NYC, I most definitely, very emphatically left France. That country is doomed, the culture there is viciously opposed to success and ambition.
I totally agree , as an Algerian who is studying in France , I find that there is a general feeling of frustration and gloom,that is being powered by the media, and the political parties.
Is it actually true that "a developer in France will basically cost you half the price of a US one"? I have always been under the impression that labor was a lot more expensive in Europe (and particularly France) because of high taxes and a large amount of social/welfare contributions.
This is not to say that there aren't good reasons for having these contributions or that workers in one place or the other are necessarily better "value", but I have never heard anybody argue that labor in Europe is significantly cheaper.
Woah, 40kEUR for a fresh out of school engineer is a lot considering my zone (IT, GE, FR). Maybe in a corporation or something like that, but in startups and similars it's already a good start to have 20kEUR out of school (taxes included)
If you have a stage/intership contract it can be also less then 12-15kEUR (taxes included)
I don't know about France but I'm sure in Italy there's a limit[1] similar to that (no more than 1000-1200€ per month) because on internship ("stage") the company is not paying a lot of taxes - almost nothing - so you can't expect to allow them to pay an intern 3000€ per month as the tax saving would be huge and they'll use crappy contract more than they're already used to do.
[1] I'm not sure it's a hard-coded limit in the labour law or if it is something more related to the fact that if the wage is "excessive" you could have problems with the tax authority.
I'm not a Euroresident but I'll guess that while minimum wage (or whatever you can haggle) employees are indeed more expensive in Europe, software developers might be less accustomized to six figure salaries that Valley is known for. Therefore, you get them for less base money, plus tax breaks. Plus life might be cheaper in Europe than in the Valley while still maintaining better quality.
This in total gives EU GINI americans die for (some even literally).
Well, Europe's a big place. The average may be higher, but the minimum wage in some countries is lower - for example here in Portugal, it's equivalent to $4.16/hour.
There is no such thing as "Europe" when it comes to wages, laws, culture, etc. - these things vary to an extreme degree within Europe and even within the smaller subset of European countries known as the EU. http://soimovedhere.wordpress.com/2013/03/04/stop-generalizi...
Some European countries have higher wages, but that doesn't necessarily mean that employers end up paying more than they would have in Silicon Valley - partly because US employers often pay for health care / dental (not always the case in Europe), and partly because high living costs in Silicon Valley have pushed wages up.
I'm currently working in Europe as a US citizen, and my impression is that, yes, labor is going to be cheaper if you're hiring native workers in Europe for white collar jobs.
However, there is a ton of friction in the hiring and firing process (from an anecdotal point of view), and it intuitively seems like the kind of friction that is more easily handled by a larger company rather than a startup.
A older college student who just came back from his IBM (Watson) ~research internship told us his salary. There was a few seconds of deep space silence. Something like twice the amount of a real job in France. Of course you have to pay for more things but still.
It's really hard (if possible) to make such comparison. I studied and worked in France. Now I live in the US. In some respect it's not fair to compare "US" to "France" as a country. US has many technology poles and most of the time feels like a group of countries sharing the same language and currency.
We are mostly comparing EUROPE to the US , Europe also has big technology poles (Grenoble ,Berlin, Paris ...) , the problem is that big tech giants in europe work independently of each other or work with US firms!, the UE must create one single technology pole where all the firms will be implemented! Paris can't handle more than what it handles now !
Not trying to be an ass by saying that, but if you go to Europe claiming to be Canadian :-) and speaking English, you will not have a hard time pretty much anywhere, at least in Western EU.
I'm not sure where you've been but I'm still finding people not able to speak English in Luxembourg City (that is supposed to be really multi cultural as Luxembourgish citizens speaks French, German and Luxembourgish and also there a a lot of foreign companies, UE institutions and like 45% of the inhabitants of the town are expats).
And of course if I think about my country (Italy) I can think of plenty of people that are unable to say a word in English, and another huge amount of people that can't go over few words.
But I can concede that things are probably getting better as new generations are more exposed to English and they're doing better, but there's still a long way to go...
Yes, a lot of people in europe understand English and could deal with somebody else in English. But the general level is for from being enough to make everyone comfortable with it. Technology poles are possible, but they will remain technologic, because non-tech people don't want to speak English, even if they technically can. That's why I don't think we will see much more mixing in Europe for a little while.
Are french developers really better than US ones though? We have EPITA, EPITECH, and the recent 42. But besides that I feel like the CS formation of our universities is very poor... I know a lot of people who've done/are doing CS in university, and their level is pretty low I would say. But maybe I tend to overestimate the US coders' level...
For what it's worth, I studied CS in Lyon, in a good engineers school. While courses were clearly not the best, I met a lot of very clever fellows, some of them were hired at mozilla or Google. Some others joined start ups or started their own.
I think that we've got a lot of talents in France, but they are sometimes underestimated or simply ignored. They are basically too often off the grid. But really, they are here, in France.
(hint: have a look at mozilla employees here in Paris)
I remember when I was in 'prepa', I was interested in going to a pure programming 'grande ecole', but unfortunately, only ENSIMAG and IIE would qualify (the ones you mentioned have expensive admission fees - by French standards). There are lots of 'grandes ecoles' offering programming, but mixed with Electronics and/or Mechanical Engineering. At the end I went to another 'grande ecole' that was doing maths and statistics, with a few programming courses.
Also in France we don't have programming classes in high school (at least not when I was there in the nineties), which I think is/was a waste.
I know a lot of people coming from both sides of the fence and there is a huge difference of level. I challenge you to find just one university in France that gives you a formation equivalent to those of epitech et al.
Well, I come from a CS master's of the university of Nantes and I don't feel _at all_ like I have a lower level than if I went to one of those schools. It's clearly the other way around.
I would hope so since Epitech/Epita is bac+3 whereas a CS master is bac+5. Although I doubt many universities would still reach those schools level even after a master.
CS master of Nantes is a really high level diploma comparing to some other universities , I will get mine from the same university this year (hopefully)
(The reason is that I'm tired of the political crap going on here, it would be refreshing to see different political crap :-). Plus I absolutely love Europe. Would like to live there till I'm sick of it)
"Tax cuts for startups are real, and it means a developer in France will basically cost you half the price of a US one, and there is good chance he’ll be better :) "
In the last paragraph the author stated that France had it's share of problems, but then it states that their developers are "better." Really? Who has had a huge respectable dominance in the IT world in the last few decades? How much have the French contributed to that?
Lastly the article goes to claim that "the us is in a downfall and France will lead the way."
Next they'll tell me that they're going to take over the startup scene in Berlin.
"Who has had a huge respectable dominance in the IT world in the last few decades?"
Umm, Google does? This fact doesn't help you the slightest when you're competing with them hiring developers for your itsy bitsy startup.
In France perhaps developers have less Googles, Facebooks and Dropboxes to choose from so you can indeed access better developers. Or maybe it isn't so. Still worth considering.
Calm down there, u know how big france is compared to the states?
And if u take europe as a whole (equivalent population more or less) and compare it to the states u would probably get equal if not more innovation in europe in the last 50 years.
> Tax cuts for startups are real, and it means a developer in France will basically cost you half the price of a US one, and there is good chance he’ll be better :)
Always interested in the factors being optimized when making these decisions. I would think that for people engaging in an inherently risky endeavor such as entrepreneurship, the most important goal would be to hedge against failure.
France, and the EU in general, have some of the best social safety nets in the developed world. What exactly does moving to the USA accomplish in 2014? The EU has no shortage of educated engineers or professionals. Is the potential tax savings of incorporating in the US worth the visa and immigration hurdles, lack of consistent healthcare, lack of social safety net and much lower quality of life (vicious judicial systems, abnormal incarceration rates, high crime rates, militarized police, draconian drug laws, etc.)?
It is always better to assess a situation rationally, rather than impulsively pack everything in a suitcase after reading a Paul Graham essay. Unlike most of his readers, PG is a Harvard grad and a US citizen.
I haven't experienced the "lack of consistent healthcare, lack of social safety net and much lower quality of life". Those probably all exist, but they have no real influence on my everyday life.
Some of the things that I enjoy over here:
- Everything is exciting and I'm learning a lot. Just the act of getting bank accounts, how to buy gas, ... Everything is new. That'll probably wear off.
- Everything is convenient. Companies seem to care more about my general being happy than they do in Germany. All of the promotions are a bit annoying, but at the same time, processes seem a bit more streamlined.
- Things happen sooner over here. Stripe, the iPhone, Netflix/Hulu, Amazon Prime, ... All of them show up in the US first. At some point they might show up in other countries. This keeps being the epicenter for technology innovation.
- I can buy groceries on a Saturday (or on Sunday at 2 am for that matter)
- There is a lot more self reliance. I'm not forced to pay into a state retirement fund, I can handle that stuff myself.
- There are a LOT of smart people bunched up in a relatively small area. Wherever you go, there is usually somebody with something interesting to say.
The social climate is probably worse, apartments on the east-coast (especially Boston) are more expensive and usually not in a good shape, I can't find a proper bathtub, I can't drink a beer in public, lots of other parts of the country are inhabited by people with incompatible views on life and the political system is horrible.
All in all, I am not living in "the US", I'm living in a nice little bubble in a very affluent part of the east-coast and I very much enjoy it.
I could have probably also moved to Berlin, but for somebody that is more into Science/Engineering, this place seems pretty nice.
This. Europe, because of lingual and cultural differences, lack the sort of high-density clusters you get in the US. There's no Cambridge, MA or bay area because moving around is such a big deal here. Berlin is the closest we have, but it's not nearly enough.
Basically, Europe is too spread out. Americans always talk about the US' low population density, but the population density of NY and LA is incredibly high. It's in the cities that most creative endeavors get done. The flyover states and the countryside is only of interest to cartographers and the people who live there.
Could be what I'm looking for and how far I'm willing to drive to get somewhere, but as a subjective feeling, Copenhagen feels like it has a bigger concentration of intellectually stimulating "stuff" happening on a regular basis than either the SF Bay Area or Atlanta did (the two places I lived previously). This is probably not literally true numerically, but in terms of things I hear about, are accessible to me (usually for free), and easy to get to, I run into a lot more, despite being a foreigner who doesn't even speak Danish, which you'd think should be a handicap.
There was certainly interesting stuff in SF as well, but it felt less like it was always happening, and more like I had to seek it out and drive anywhere from San Jose to Oakland to get to it, more like a "trip" to an event (like SuperHappyDevHouse, which is great) than a feeling that stuff is always happening all around me. The videogame-dev scene in particular was very scattered, with a good number of studios generally in the area, but that meant anywhere from Marin County to Santa Cruz, so you didn't really end up at the same events on a regular basis.
Entrepreneurs aren't moving here because of taxes. They are moving here to access a huge market and to join an ecosystem that fosters entrepreneurship (with money and other forms of support). A law-abiding professional and entrepreneur isn't going to spend a moment thinking about incarceration rates, drug laws, and "militarized police."
Big things can happen in the US in a short amount of time, which is the dream young entrepreneurs are chasing. If things don't work out they can always head back to their safety net. So, spending your risk-taking years here makes perfect sense.
> the potential tax savings of incorporating in the US
Whether there are tax savings at all also depends on your specific situation. If you're an employee, income taxes are almost certainly lower in the U.S. than most of the rich countries in Europe. But if you're starting a company or working for yourself, it depends a lot more on which U.S. states and/or European countries you're considering, and what kind of business you're planning to do (sector, number of employees, etc.).
Two places Europe can sometimes end up cheaper:
1. If you're a one-person sole proprietor. American income taxes are relatively high here, and the need to cover your own health insurance, disability insurance, etc. adds some extra expense and paperwork. Here are some numbers I estimated a few months ago for Silicon Valley vs. Copenhagen tax rates: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6192339
2. If corporate income taxes are relevant to your business. There are ways to minimize their impact (especially if you're willing to pay for good tax consultants), but the headline rates are generally higher in the U.S. than in Europe, though rates vary widely in Europe so it depends on where you're considering in particular. Ireland generally has the lowest rates; in the U.S., NYC has particularly high rates (and some complex rules for registering businesses).
3. If you want to do your taxes yourself. American business taxation is nearly impossible to figure out correctly without professional assistance, and there are myriads of pitfalls and penalties.
One that varies a lot is "flexibility". My impression is that the French labor market is rather inflexible, and in general the American one is the most flexible. However on specific issues the American one is somewhat inflexible. There is a particularly big difference between "full-time" and "part-time" employment in the U.S., because the employer is expected to provide "benefits" (at least health insurance, often many other things) to full-time employees. In some of Europe the employer doesn't need to worry about these kinds of things at all (which also cuts down on the amount of HR you need to do). In Denmark it's relatively common, at least in tech startups, for people to work part-time schedules, e.g. 2 or 3 days a week.
> I would think that for people engaging in an inherently risky endeavor such as entrepreneurship, the most important goal would be to hedge against failure.
The thing is, social safety nets aren't especially relevant to that kind of risk. Those of us with the luxury of education aren't going to end up starving on the streets if our startups fail, we'll just go get jobs. The people who really need social safety nets aren't in a position to start startups.
So the more tangible risk is how others in your profession will perceive failure. This is an area where America shines.
> lack of consistent healthcare, lack of social safety net and much lower quality of life (vicious judicial systems, abnormal incarceration rates, high crime rates, militarized police, draconian drug laws, etc.)
Those are all serious issues, but you're misunderstanding them if you think they apply to typical startup founders.
America is very unequal. Those problems persist precisely because the relatively wealthy can easily stay insulated from them. And any educated European coming here to start a technology company falls comfortably into that class. He or she would be living in one of the nice cities, surrounded by people with similar values and education, enjoying quality-of-life metrics that are significantly higher than the broader American averages.
> He or she would be living in one of the nice cities, surrounded by people with similar values and education, enjoying quality-of-life metrics that are significantly higher than the broader American averages.
Where would that be, though? I've lived in a few cities (Atlanta, Houston, Chicago, L.A. area, S.F. area), and even though I lived in relatively nice areas of those cities, I wouldn't say any of them are nice cities full-stop. For one thing none of the urbanized areas are actually particularly safe, unless you are very careful where you walk (and if you drive, careful where you park your car). I lived in Midtown Atlanta for years, and it certainly wasn't; you had to only take one street a few blocks in the wrong direction to go from $1m houses and $2k/mo lofts to "I wouldn't walk there alone after dark".
You can run into those issues in Europe as well, but mostly in "poorer" cities. The amount of care you have to take walking around Chicago or Atlanta, taking note of which streets and neighborhoods are safe and which aren't, feels more the kind of caution you need to exercise in Istanbul, Sofia, or Athens, rather than Copenhagen, Frankfurt, or Brussels.
In practice I find most upper-middle-class-and-wealthier Americans just don't walk anywhere, especially not after dark. That is a way of mitigating the issue, but leads to a different lifestyle. In my opinion, a lower-quality-of-life one, though many Americans genuinely seem to like the car-centric lifestyle, so that may not be others' opinion. One place America does excel is if you like suburban living. But I don't think it does cities nearly as well as it does suburbs.
> In practice I find most upper-middle-class-and-wealthier Americans just don't walk anywhere, especially not after dark.
We're actually in the midst of an urban renaissance. Being able to walk everywhere is one of the perks of being wealthy in America. Especially among people under 40. This is why there's so much angst over "gentrification": walkable neighborhoods are being rapidly bought up by the relatively wealthy. And because America is saddled with so much terrible sprawl, there are only so many walkable neighborhoods to go around -- hence skyrocketing real estate prices.
Along with gentrification comes lower crime. In fact there's no longer any overall correlation between crime and density in America. Crime in the cities (taken in aggregate) has fallen to the point where there's no longer any statistical difference between urban and suburan/rural crime rates.
Lots of people don't believe that, but that's just because they hold out-of-date beliefs, which they maintain through confirmation bias.
Where are these mythical cities where you can walk everywhere, though? I've lived most of my life in the U.S. (29 years), and I still spend about 2 months a year there (I moved abroad in 2011). But few people anywhere I've lived, or where I currently visit, will walk places, especially solo after dark (especially women, it seems). And the people who do are extremely cautious, absurdly so from a Danish perspective: the idea that a young woman aged ~20 could bike home drunk at 4am on a Saturday night by herself seems reckless to Americans, but entirely normal to Danes, because Copenhagen is safe in a way that no American city is. In the U.S. in my experience, most people are very cautious late at night in urban areas. Perhaps they shouldn't be, but it's a very noticeable cultural difference.
I could be looking in the wrong places, I'll admit. I spend most of my time in the U.S. in Houston and Atlanta, where I have friends and relatives, secondarily in L.A. and S.F. Maybe those are bad choices, despite being some of the most economically booming cities in the country? I could imagine much of Manhattan is safe these days, so that's one possibility. Is there anywhere else? Houston, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco certainly don't lend themselves to random walks at night; people tend to carefully delineate which areas they'll walk in at night, if at all. Much of NYC is still sketchy; parts of Brooklyn are safe but you have to be knowledgeable about which ones. My brother lives in the Mission in S.F., and while it is sort of safe nowadays, past midnight walking safely really depends on what street you're on, and you don't exactly just take the shortest path on Google Maps to get somewhere else in S.F., especially not if it takes you through the Tenderloin.
I mean actually safe, fwiw, not just relatively safe: as in, you will definitely not be mugged, even walking solo at night. That's to me what it means to live in a safe city. A large proportion of the people I know who walk in an American city have been mugged at least once (off the top of my head, one person in Brooklyn, one in Atlanta, one in San Francisco, three in Los Angeles, one in Houston, I lost track of how many in Chicago). Whereas if you're mugged in Copenhagen, it's so rare that you'll make the newspapers— especially if you're mugged by someone carrying a gun, which will produce front-page headlines and a multi-week police investigation trying to figure out how this person could've gotten a gun. Overall, I just feel much safer here, despite being born and raised in the U.S. and feeling more "at home" in the U.S.
If you mean that there exist small upper-class walkable neighborhoods in the U.S., sure: that's also true of Istanbul. But are there walkable cities?
For France at least, the retirement and unemployment safety nets don't apply to CEOs. But they get health insurance which is already a lot (and way cheaper than a private one).
I'm doing it now, and have been for the past 6 months.
Basically, you save up, sell what you don't need, pack the essentials, buy a plane ticket, and get on the plane. Pretty straightforward, really. Depending on where you go, you may also need to apply for a visa ahead of time.
I compiled mini-guides for the most common destinations: http://longerpath.com (it was mostly made for my own curiosity, but I'm sure others will find it somewhat useful)
"... written recently about French entrepreneurs leaving France because it was a terrible place to start and grow a business but ...... if your users, partners and possible future investors are here, you have to consider having at least a foot here."
And why do you think that is the case Einstein? The reason your users, partners and future investors are not in France is that France is no longer competitive.
Well the size of the respective countries also has an impact... It's easier to localize once in english to target all the north american market compared to trying to localize for all the different EU countries, so targeting the US market makes sense.
I don't think in a digital market, size and language of a country matters. We see a lot of excellently successful Israeli start ups for instance. Small country, Hebrew language and different alphabet too.
The fact of the matter is, bright young French people are leaving their country behind. I see many of them in London, and most of them are very successful here. France is no longer an enterprise centre where cool things happen and innovation is celebrated. Hopefully that will one day change.
