
I didn't leave France, I moved to the US - decebal
http://denoyel.com/post/81081988751/i-didnt-leave-france-i-moved-to-the-us
======
murbard2
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.

~~~
wallzz
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.

~~~
murbard2
It's not just the gloom, there's an age old and very prominent anti-
capitalistic mentality.

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DangerousPie
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.

~~~
bvrlt
There are several things to take in account.

Base salary for fresh out of school engineer is about 40 kEUR. You need to add
75% of social contributions, so that totals around 70 kEUR.

If you are a "young innovative company" though, you can have exoneration of
these social contributions and only pay ~40 kEUR for the first few years.

~~~
yulaow
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)

~~~
wallzz
I'm in an intership in France , and that's true , I get 15K EURO , that's the
maximum salary for interns in France!

~~~
tonfa
I never heard of a maximum compensation for internships...

~~~
Ecio78
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.

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yawz
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.

~~~
wallzz
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 !

~~~
rakoo
Well first we need everyone to speak the same language. Esperanto, here we
come !

~~~
gm
Everyone in EU already speaks English :-)

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.

~~~
Ecio78
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...

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baby
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...

~~~
MadJawa
Really depends on the universities. EPITA, EPITECH, SupInfo and the likes are
way overestimated and overpriced compared to some good universities.

~~~
baby
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.

~~~
m0g
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.

~~~
baby
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.

~~~
m0g
SUPINFO / EPITECH / EPITA are bac + 5, you make no sense

~~~
baby
Oh right, I've never met any people doing a Master of CS though so I don't
know the level. I was talking about bachelors.

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brm
I dream of a system that allows me to swap my citizenship with a similarly
qualified EU Citizen that wants to come to the US.

~~~
gm
Me too. I would absolutely love to do this...

(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)

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clement75009
Amen to that. I'm trying to do the same move, and I hate it when people say
"ah, you too want to leave France".

There are so many things coming into play in the decision to move to another
country - most of the time it's in no way a rejection of one's own.

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monksy
"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.

~~~
guard-of-terra
"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.

Could not find the downfall thing.

~~~
monksy
Thats my point. Google is a US innovation.

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balls187
> 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 :)

I think the author meant to use a ;)

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FD3SA
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.

~~~
rb2k_
I moved to Boston from Germany.

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.

~~~
tormeh
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.

~~~
mjn
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 are _always_ interesting talks and meetups happening, from regular
events like SpilBar ([http://english.dadiu.dk/invitation-
spilbar-14-0-surprise](http://english.dadiu.dk/invitation-
spilbar-14-0-surprise)) or Science & Cocktails
([http://www.scienceandcocktails.org](http://www.scienceandcocktails.org)) to
active hackerspaces ([https://labitat.dk](https://labitat.dk) and
[http://www.illutron.dk](http://www.illutron.dk)), a whole building hosting an
indie-game community ([http://www.dfi.dk/nyheder/filmupdate/2010/velkommen-
til-spil...](http://www.dfi.dk/nyheder/filmupdate/2010/velkommen-til-
spilhuset.aspx)), etc. Events at universities also feel more "open to the
public": if I want to hear a bunch of internationally famous visitors talk
about biotech or experimental mathematics, I can go to something like
[http://danstem.ku.dk/events/seminar_series_2014/](http://danstem.ku.dk/events/seminar_series_2014/)
or
[http://www.math.ku.dk/english/research/xm/seminar/](http://www.math.ku.dk/english/research/xm/seminar/)
respectively. Whereas apart from a handful of advertised public talks, the
large amount of stuff undoubtedly happening at Stanford or UC Berkeley didn't
feel like part of "my" neighborhood, something I'd hear about or go to as a
non-Stanford, non-Berkeley person (or necessarily even be allowed into).

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.

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jbeja
Is there any guide about how to leave your country and achive your dreams?

~~~
ryannevius
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.

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mavdi
Crazy or what?

"... 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.

~~~
gommm
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.

~~~
mavdi
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.

