For companies acting within the science or innovative space, France is a haven. CIR is a tax return that covers 30% of R&D personnel, JEI is a status that halves the taxes on personnel for 8 years, and nullifies gov taxes the first year, halving them the second year. Add to this the region and gov backed projects that match 50% of your investment in a project.

The truth is it is much much cheaper than in the US, and probably unmatched in Western Europe. Now, all this preexisted Macron.

Some hurdles remain investment, low margins for companies around 20 employees and 2M yearly, they get stuck at that stage and lack of transparency.

One major pain is interacting with large French corporations, with payment delays unheard of in the US. This slows many startups down when it does not kill them. Once bootstrapped it seems to get better.

I'm not sure what a startup nation is not whether I'd like to live in it, but France is certainly in good position to fuel early small innovative & scientific companies, not more but not less :)

Business formation (i.e. forming a legal entity, getting a bank account, hiring your first employee and getting paid for your first service) in France is much more expensive than in Britain, Luxembourg or Poland. And the U.S. is faster and cheaper still.

That said, if you have the right connections, it can be a haven. There is a lot of inefficiency in the French economy. And it contains an incredibly well-educated and commercially-reasonable population.

https://www.gov.uk/limited-company-formation/register-your-c...

On paper, CIR is for research and development efforts, basically it's for efforts that improve the state of the art.

But in practice CIR is a tax break/subvention in disguise for medium to big french companies like Orange, Thales, bnpparibas...

Just to give you an idea, at one of my former job, an email was sent to every employee of the division. This email asked us to provide our CV rewritten with "research terms" (ex: replace implementing by prototyping, debugging by experimenting, etc). We were CIRing projects in pure maintenance, we were CIRing the same thing over and over each years. It was clearly abusive.

I've heard stories that are even worst than that, like banks CIRing an overall of their website.

I need to second that. I really struggle with working directly with big companies. My own case, a big engineering company in Germany is quite putting my business at risk. Others have paid only after I send them a letter from a lawyer. And so on.

A friend of mine got his whole business busted by the EC itself. The processes are sooo burocratic, so that he got his money after two years. But he closed the company meanwhile. Impossible to sue the EC itself...need another 10years....

I've seen payments delay happens with French companies (one of my last jobs, we were blacklisted from buying servers from Dell directly, the company was a bit short on money, so this late payment was in fact an internal unsaid policy to reduce the need for working capital).

But I've also seen it with a big US company, professional phone subscriptions of all employees were suspended for a day because of late bills, and we were afraid at one point to have some of our racks cut-off because unpaid datacenter bills. I don't know in that case if it was because of an internal policy or plain old bureaucracy and internal delays in this company.

Not only Europe, but much of China as well. Besides the basic "no tax for a new company below $N annual revenue for 5 years," there are megatons of all kinds of obscure, but very generous state grants.

If stars align well for the company, it can effectively live off grants while having 0 revenue. This was most extreme during "The Solar Bubble" when companies were collecting from $3m to $6m for just having word "solar" in company name.

The oversight has since improved a little little bit, and you are less likely to get money with 0 revenue company.

Writing the applications is really easy, when you have already written a few dozen and have the templates ready.

Higher salaries do exists, so people will move away as soon as something better shows up.

What companies paying 20K€ end up doing is provide "free" training and experience, to the benefit of the companies that ultimately will end up signing the employees, paying what they are actually worth.

I've seen many people worrying about not being able to fire people once hired. But what I've seen in facts are only two people needing firing, and it was done without any problem. What I saw incredibly more often is company getting into panic because their good developers would leave. It's not firing that is hard, it's retaining.

Why did they do it? Because they were downsizing in the region (we went from 100 employees 6 years ago to 3 currently). So claiming I created that company to damage them, they pay 0€ as opposed to ~20000€. Now, make it times 100 and you got a non trivial amount of money even for a relatively big company. People were constantly "encouraged" to leave, benefits cut, comité d'entreprise dissolved they day we hit 49 employees, they accounted losses from other branches so we didn't get profit sharing either, and I know quite a few cases like mine with a variety of wonky excuses.

Now, in my own company I don't have a salary. Can't afford it, it's so insanely expensive to pay a salary, we're talking each month you pay total twice and a half as much as the employee sees BEFORE TAX. We don't hire people, we hire other companies and freelancers to do the job, then take dividends. There's no other way unless you're a cash flow workhorse.

Also, Paris might be different, but here all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding. It's just so expensive that even cities with significantly higher wages are cheaper.

I'm in Paris and here how my salaries break down:

Currently I'm at ~50K a year "Brut" (before taxes on the employee side), which means ~35K a year "Net" ("go home" salary).

I'm costing ~75K per year to my employer in term of salary (before taxes on the employer side).

My other taxes are around 6K per year.

I'm an SRE/software engineer with ~8 years experience.

I'm not sure ~75k is that expensive compared to other European countries, let alone Silicon Valley salaries.

> all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding

Are you sure this was related to the cost of employees? As pointed in the article, London is the historical tech hub in europe, so moving to London after funding can have many reasons.

You're right though, having employees is really expansive. I'm afraid it's not just a France problem, though :) It costs you double than what employee gets pre-tax, but all in all it's not more expansive than in other countries. In US, a good dev salary is $100k a year (€85k).

EDIT: for non french people, a good dev salary in France is €45k, so it may cost at most and roughly double than that, but you have a lot of tax cut you can take advantage of to reduce it

Bottom line : a good dev salary of €45k costs about €65k, before any tax reduction.

Not completely sure; the best case I know is of a company where one of the founders told me such thing. It is a very technically advanced and polished ride sharing app, made to solve very particular problems in this region, investors had a look at the product, at their books, and offered 2M/year for 3 years on condition of moving it to Berlin or Sofia (Bulgaria, don't ask me why).

For small start-ups these problems can be debilitating. For large companies they're a non-issue, they can afford it. But when you're somewhere between 10 and 20 employees this can be a real problem. To pretend there is no problem is causing the problem to persist. Source: know a lot of French start-ups, have seen more than one struggling with letting go of people that do not perform once outside of their trial period.

The size of France's economy has nothing to do with any of this. What is telling is the average pay of very good French developers, which is a small fraction of what they get abroad.

Whaaa? As a fellow european, this sounds too bizarre to be true.

Neither does your comment...

- Have developers that are actually not that good

- Have good developers that will realise that you are vastly underpaying them and will jump ship

Salaries in France are lower than in the US, but if you think good developers are settling for remunerations below the median salary of the country they live in, you will get a wake up call sooner or later.

Corollary: If you are a good developer in France, working for 2500 EUR / month & is looking for a raise, send me a message ;-)

I've been making money from selling code since 1996 and a full time developer over a decade.

While my salary would be low in London (I'd be worth at least another 10-15K down there) in the North of England and particularly where I live that gives me an excellent standard of living, rent on a decent sized two bed is <25% of my salary alone (excluding my partners entirely) about 15% if we include hers.

US Salaries are way higher than UK salaries even in London and if you exclude London then the gap is hilariously bad.

Average software engineer in my region earns £25K.

I could move down south but frankly I don't want to, I like it up here, I have a good mostly low stress 9-5 job.

There is more to life than take home pay.

Additionally I have complex (therefore potentially very expensive) health issues that don't affect my ability to work but would affect my ability to get healthcare insurance in the US - if I adjust for that then things look much better from this side of the pond tbh.

As a contractor you can earn near 20k per month pre-tax (around 7k per month post-tax) and live in a big home that costs you 1k per month in mortgage. That leaves you a lot of money for your spare time, fun activities and early retirement. I'm planning to retire at 35.

A little calculation for your average senior developer in a corporate for-profit environment. On average you can do about 1850 billable hours a year, which means you are taking 7 weeks off for holiday, illness, courses, certifications. At an average rate of 90 euro per hour, that is €166,500 per year. With VAT added you can bill the customer €201,465 per year.

But other tech companies are also starting to give away company cars as part of the compensation package, to attract developers.

For the employee it is cheaper to have a company car than to buy one yourself if you want a brand new car. If you don’t care about driving an old car it could be cheaper to buy your own car and get the travel reimbursement of €800 pre-tax.

The big thing about company cars is that for most it’s a status symbol. Straight out of university and you will have a brand new car with all the bells and whistles. You don’t have to save money and it will not impact any credit scores.

And if the engine blows up or you drive into a lake, you will get a new car one hour later. At most it will cost you the €100 deductible if you were in neglect.

Also, golden cage. I know some developers that don’t want to switch to a better job without a company car because then they will have to spend a couple thousand on a “dirty old used car”.

I.e. "You submitted your mileage report to the payroll department and it said you drove 214km on company business since last pay period, so your paycheck will have an extra 214 * 0.29 = 62EUR in it."

Actually, in the US it need not even be that complicated. If you are using your car for work purposes, you can simply claim the mileage once a year when you do your taxes. Company cars are, as you mention, mainly a status symbol for high-level executives, possibly including a driver. Even then, I've only heard about it in movies and books. All the real executives I am aware of just get paid enough that they can definitely afford a BMW if they want one.

[I use EUR0.29/km here because it is the US Federal mileage rate (54.4 cents per mile), converted for currency and units. With gasoline prices much higher (not sure about insurance, maintenance, etc) in Europe, I would imagine the reimbursement rate would need to be higher.]

Also, who pays for the gas? Do you get a company credit card for fill-ups?

Or you can have the company just pay you the money. If you do 2000 kilometers per month of business travel, you can have 2000*0,19=€380 paid out tax free and you need to pay taxes over the remaining €800-€380 = €420. Worst case you are in the 52% bracket and you post-tax "mobility budget" is €600.

Also with a company car the company pays for everything, including parking and gas.

Does that mean that taxes are (20 - 7) / 20 * 100 = 65% in NL?

I knew that taxes in some EU countries (west, north) were high, but didn't know it was that high in NL. (I am aware that you get many benefits in return for the high taxes, but thought it was in the range of 40 to 50%, in some of those countries - per what I read.)

It’s a lot but life is good here. Wouldn’t trade it for anything else.

One of these days remote working will start to make a difference in this inequality.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-654846... round the corner from the street where where I grew up, it's a nice solidly middle class area with decent schools, parks.

200K for a detached 3 house with garage and a reasonable garden, In a good chunk of London the equivalent would be 2-4x more expensive and in the city proper more than 5x.

So suddenly £32K where I am starts too look pretty good compared to 55-60K in London.

Also it's not just the housing that is cheaper up here, almost everything is cheaper.

Supply and demand, if I could earn 90% of a London salary in the North of England I'd be about 13500-20,000 better off.

This includes researches in CS and AI.

Researchers in companies, especially in AI fetch between 60% and 100% more.

According to [2], 2500€ is top 85%, way higher than median!

(Numbers from 2013 and sources in french but I guess it is understandable for everyone. I expect salaries to have slightly increased in the last 5 years but not moving by +40%) [1]https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/1370897

[2]https://www.alternatives-economiques.fr/salaire-mensuel-net-...

No.

30k a year is the salary of a junior developer after employee taxes, and it's the low end of the spectrum.

A company will at least pay 50 to 60k euros per year in total for a junior developer.

It depends on the company, as a junior I'm only getting 36k/year, before income taxes.

In the Paris area it's a standard salary for a junior developer fresh out of engineering school.

It can be higher if you are coming from a top school like Centrale or Supelec (~38/40k). It can also be higher if you work in banks/finance.

I'm not 100% sure, but 30K could be a medium salary for students fresh out of IUTs (2 years professional formation after high-school). But most of the time, the best students will continue for another 3 years in an engineering schools.

But keep in mind that 36k a year before YOUR income taxes ("salaire brut"). Before that, the employer has to pay his side of the taxes/social security ("charges patronales"). In the end, he has to pay around 4 for 5k per month if I recall correctly (sorry, I don't have the exact figures), which means roughly 50k to 60k a year. You can take a look at your payslips for the exact figures.

> But keep in mind that 36k a year before YOUR income taxes ("salaire brut"). Before that, the employer has to pay his side of the taxes/social security ("charges patronales"). In the end, he has to pay around 4 for 5k per month if I recall correctly (sorry, I don't have the exact figures), which means roughly 50k to 60k a year. You can take a look at your payslips for the exact figures.

I've recently checked and, for my salary of 36k, my employer has paid 54K.

Taxes on small to medium businesses are downright confiscatory.

Most French people still see business owners as exploiters of their workers.

In French culture the “boss” is traditionally considered as an asshole.

While I’m not saying there aren’t bad bosses out there, this kind of hostile culture towards management doesn’t really help anything.

Taxes are awful as well, and filing them is a pain, even for a sole trader.

There is a real mindset of "Us vs Them" where "Them" is your boss or manager and you should despise them no matter what.

I have left France 5 years ago due to those issues, I am now much happier in a country where your skills come first and nobody cares what you did before so long as you can do the job that is required of you.

France will most likely never be like that.

However, in Small & Medium Businesses, the startup movement has changed that a bit and the diploma is way less important than before.

In terms of mindset, it seems that it is an important part of our culture: Philippe d'Iribarne calls it "The logic of Honor" [1].

To sum up the differences between French and US management (at least, according to Iribarne)[2]:

- French relies on the concept of honor and duty. French employees consider that their honor and rank is way more important than their contract. You must manage with this in mind, and accept to be flexible in order to show consideration. You must also explain what are the limits so that employees will not go over them. Managers must give free space to their employees, being "invisible" when everything works out, respecting their honor, but must also go on the field when it goes wrong in order to show "how it's supposed to be done" and to inspire respect by example.

- US relies on honesty, and on the transparency of a work contract. Managers must control the work on their contractors on a periodic base in order to show interest and respect, as part of the contractual relationship.

=> In France, according to this study, the "Us vs Them" should be accepted by management as long as the companies goes well.

[1] https://www.ecole.org/fr/662/VA021205-ENG.pdf

[2] http://lirsa.cnam.fr/medias/fichier/diribarne2html__12633047...

Now I'm working in the USA where nobody cares. I don't consider myself a rocket scientist, but it's still quite sad for France to see all the comments about other French people that were similarly pushed out.

Last time I went to a meetup in SF about tech work in France, one of the French employers advertising there answered a question about the FR/US wage gap with "we aren't looking for mercenaries", essentially trying to fault workers' character for daring to ask for more. If I ever go back to France, it will be with solid plans on how to work remotely for a foreign company if the situation hasn't changed.

When they found I had not been to university - they looked at me like I had just taken a dump on the floor.

Even assuming you have a degree, how are you supposed to get the experience when pretty much all the jobs require previous experience? And no, the trick of applying despite not having experience and making up for it at the interview doesn't work - job requirements are very rigid in France; either you'll get rejected right at the start, or if you do make it through all the interviews they will still reject you at the end once they find out (and possibly even consider you as a fraud for applying anyway despite not having the experience).

It really limits how far and where you can go to whoever your parents and family had connections to.

As an anecdote, even with my current experience (mid-range backend engineer) I would be struggling to get any IT job in France (because I didn't spend 5 years in higher education, which for them would trump my actual experience), and if I do get one by some miracle I'd be paid around the same that an intern would make in my current country (UK).

Kidnapping a CEO because the company isn't making any money and shutting its doors is the culmination of an ultra-unionised population.

Don't get me wrong, unions were vital in the 40-70's as there was a clear abuse of the workforce. But today, the workforce can't wrap their heads around how a balance sheet works.

And all those social laws make hiring and firing very hard, which is at the core of startup culture.

  - Weekends (40 hour week)
  - Minimum wage
  - No child labor
  - Workers compensation
  - Not being massacred by your employer¹

¹ See, e.g., the Ludlow Massacre, the Thibodaux Massacre, Battle of Blair Mountain.

But some want the potential (low probability but out-sized) upside at no risk and strain.

The economy hasn't stopped developing however. 80 hour work weeks at the factory have been replaced with 40 hour weeks with 20 hours of unpaid overtime. Child labour has been replaced with unpaid internships. Minimum wage often doesn't match increases in inflation and cost of living, not to mention regional changes in cost of living.

Also productivity has practically doubled in the UK since 1980, yet labour laws have largely stayed the same. It could be time to implement 32 hour weeks, or ban unpaid overtime, or raise the minimum wage. All of these require strong unions IMO.

Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie.

(EDIT: Downvoting me doesn't make the economics literature less conclusive on this point, and there's no reason why we should expect it to be otherwise. The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups.)

But one by one:

>"Unpaid" internships are good -- they allow people who don't provide much value to learn and build their capital

Unpaid internships are not available to anyone who doesn't have the necessary capital to go without income for a year or so. Which is very few people, and mainly the rich. Or people who can take internships near their parents home provided their parents earn enough to support them and provided they're not in an abusive family situation which is still far too exclusive.

>People who want to work more than 40 hours should be allowed to work more than 40 hours, and should be allowed to make agreements with their employer that don't double their expense per hour at 40 hours.

Sure, but that's still paid overtime, I was talking about unpaid. And a lot of the time it's not a case of "people who want to work more than 40 hours" it's "people who have to work 40 hours". I didn't get a choice at my last job, I either did it or I got fired, and that was with the EU working time directive (it wasn't very effective)

>The minimum wage is just a price floor, and doesn't actually determine wages for more than an extremely small margin of workers, and raising it can increase unemployment among the most vulnerable populations.

A fifth of the UK workforce earned less than the living wage in 2017 [1] and the living wage here isn't that much higher than the minimum wage. I wouldn't describe that as a small margin. All those workers would benefit from increasing the minimum wage. Furthermore regarding increasing unemployment, this isn't a valid argument: it's well established in quite a few countries that minimum wage is not enough to actually live on, so if a business cannot afford to pay the minimum wage people need to survive then they are not an effective business. I really can't emphasise that enough. If people are unemployed because of reasonable increases in minimum wage, it is entirely the fault of the business owners for not being profitable, not the fault of minimum wage law.

>Unions have the economic effect of boosting working-class wages and well-being for people in a particular group: high-skill working class people. They depress wages, increase unemployment, and reduce well-being for the most vulnerable groups, particularly minorities and those with low education. There is no broad positive effect on labor from unions; we know from the data that the benefits accrue to a certain type of worker, and it's nowhere near the lowest classes of worker. These gains are relative, and do not enlarge the pie.

Source please.

>The labor struggle is an intra-class struggle between the more-employable working-class subset and the less-employable, which is exactly what you'd predict looking at who makes up the groups

IMO plain wrong. The labour struggle is between workers and owners of capital, in fact pitting the working class against each other has been a tactic those in power have used for millennia.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/uk-populati...

You can't take something that works in Switzerland out of that context and then apply it to some other country with the arguement 'it works in Switzerland'.

Not necessarily. Economic development can be limited to the owners of the companies whilst exploiting the employees. That is what gave rise to unionization, it was a reaction to abusive practices.

That unions later on became self sustaining and that they work against the interest of some of the people that are employed (seniority system for instance) has nothing to do with why they exist in the first place.

This is often heard but there is little truth to it. The more developed a market is, the larger the opportunities for employees to move to other jobs, and therefore exploitation is a problem that goes away by itself. Many countries in South East Asia have close to zero unions yet benefit from very high living standards and reasonable working hours (at least very much equivalent to the US).

If the "union" theory had any truth in it, then you would expect unions to be everywhere in the world before and during economic development to lead social conditions improvement. Yet social/working conditions improve regardless of unions presence.

I suppose no political organizations are necessary in places where there are decent and enforced laws, not even political parties, but that's not how humans work. Decent laws aren't the result of generosity from those in power - decent labor law isn't a result of corporate altruism - but of political struggles between different elements of society. Democracy doesn't work magically; it works by the people who have a seat at the table competing and negotiating. Those without a seat are ignored - their obvious needs, their priorities (you can always identify those without a seat: the others say about their needs: 'they're exaggerating; it's not that big a deal'), and needs that only they have the experience to know or anticipate. Individual factory workers don't have a seat, but their union does.

The rest of the parent is just hyperbole.

In economies where minimum entitlements are sufficient to protect workers from exploitation, unions serve no useful purpose at all, they are simply leveling mechanisms. Meaning the do not protect workers from getting less than their worth, they simply pull people down and prevent people from advancing themselves beyond the average. Worst of all they make it nearly impossible to fire the incompetent, which itself seems like exploitation to me, forcing the component to pick up the slack of those who aren’t.

They serve the purpose of making sure workers get their legal entitlements.

For example, Unions right in Australia are tackling the problem of underpayment of legally mandated wages “wage theft” and have succeeded in getting a state government to adopt as policy the treatment of deliberate underpayment as a criminal matter with criminal penalties.

Sounds like you agree with me. In a democracy, unions are just about the least efficient way you could possibly address inadequate enforcement of labor laws. If all you want is a workers lobby group, then why do you think the best way to achieve that is with organisations that exploit people with collective bargaining agreements, and enforce a tyranny where nobody can be fired? Want to know why it’s so impossible to fire a corrupt cop? Unions. Want to know why incompetent teachers can last a whole career defrauding our children? Unions.

There’s no rational connection between wanting to better enforce labor laws that are already on the books and wanting unions. Democracies offer many far superior ways to address such issues.

Not only that, you seek to put words in my mouth about exploitation and tyranny.

I'd also like to point out that beyond your (in my view) irrational distaste for unions, you have a very US-centric view of what a union is. Those of us looking from the outside in are constantly bemused by people like you.

Please only respond to the things I actually say, not the things that you think I will say in the caricature you have built.

According to who? By what standard? And regardless of their current state, shouldn't workers get as much as they can for themselves, just like everyone else? Corporations sure do everything they can for themselves; IMHO even enlightened self-interest, such as net neutrality or reasonable tax laws, is not a limitation.

You clealy have no idea about what you're saying. For your comment to make any sense you need to believe that any worker acting exclusively by himself has the resources to enforce those laws agains any company and suffer no repercussion during the process. This idea is utterly absurd.

Meanwhile, unions do offer specialized legal services and do pressure managers to not overreach or overstep their authority, and do so as a proxy to any employee and even while preserving his anonymity if needed.

In fact, if anything you've said made any sense then unpaid overtime or unpaid weekend work would be unthinkable, but instead it's the norm in some abusive companies without any union.

Again, you clearly have no idea about what you're talking about. It's quite obvious that a law means nothing if you have no way to enforce it or if there are serious repercussions if you try. The moment a lone employee acting alone creates a problem for his immediate supervisors or higher ups, he singles himself out as a target. In jurisdictions that follow an at-will employment doctrine, where any employee can be immediately fired without any justification, then any employee that raises any problem to the company's managers can be fired just for being a nuisance.

That's not what I said at all. Please don't attribute to me a claim I never made.

> It is employers role to comply with the law, the department of labor enforces it. You don’t need your employers permission to report law violations to the department of labor.

Again, you keep missing the point. What I've said is quite obvious: an employee acting alone has very few, if any, resources to go against his employer, and in the rare cases an employee goes against his employer then even if he wins he is left wide open to repercussions. I don't understand how you failed to get the point I've made when I've mentioned the effect that at-will employment doctrines has on this.

In addition to that, it is also trivially easy for an employ to launch a civil suit. Any case with even an ounce of merit will attract lawyers willing to work on commission.

Even further, you have offered no justification at all for why you think unions are necessary to enforce the law, instead only resorting to the fallacious line of reasoning that it is up to employees to argue with their employers for minimum entitlements.

Lawyer here. Your second sentence is incorrect: (1) Litigation is far more expensive that you seem to realize; most rank-and-file employees can't afford it – when my wife, also a lawyer, and I were younger, we used to joke that we couldn't afford us. (2) The default rule in the U.S. is that each party pays its own attorney fees unless otherwise stated in a specific statute or in a contract. The availability of class actions helps plaintiffs' lawyers achieve cost savings and increase the likelihood of getting paid, but the conservative wing of the Supreme Court just helped put the kibosh on that by ruling that employers could avoid class actions by insisting on one-at-a-time arbitration, which results in massive duplication of costs. (3) An individual employee's likely damage award is almost never enough to entice a lawyer into taking the case on a contingent-fee basis, i.e., where the lawyer only gets paid if the employee prevails. (4) Consequently, it's extremely difficult for an employee to find a lawyer to take on a garden-variety case against her employer.

In addition you get all the "retirement" packages where former politicians are hired by the companies they were supposed to regulate.

Why shouldn't the employees have the same right?

The fact of the matter is that when you make progress in an area you can’t just sit back and relax. You have to continue to work hard to prevent regression, especially when there are strong economic pressures in that direction. This is why unions are as important today as they were in the mid-19th century.

...That doesn't seem to fit the general "frivolous law" theme...

eg

"18 USC §1465 makes it a federal crime to produce an obscene, lewd, lascivious, or "filthy book" for sale in interstate commerce."

"10 USC §2674(c) & 32 CFR §234.11(a) make it a federal crime to drink alcohol at the Pentagon without written authorization."

"40 USC §6307 & 36 CFR §520.4(h) make it a federal crime to play a ball game at the National Zoo, except in an officially-designated ball game area."

"21 USC §§331, 333, 343(g) & 21 CFR §139.150(b) make it a federal crime to sell "egg noodles" that aren't ribbon-shaped."

"18 USC §46(b) makes it a federal crime to knowingly barter for out-of-state water chestnuts."

"16 U.S.C. §§707(a), 718g & 50 C.F.R. §91.14 make it a federal crime to submit an entry in the Federal Duck Stamp contest that you copied from a picture on the internet."

I looked up "21 USC §§331, 333, 343(g) & 21 CFR §139.150(b) make it a federal crime to sell "egg noodles" that aren't ribbon-shaped."

21 USC §331 is just about regulating fraud in commerce. It starts:

"The following acts and the causing thereof are prohibited:

(a) The introduction or delivery for introduction into interstate commerce of any food, drug, device, tobacco product, or cosmetic that is adulterated or misbranded.

You could show that to someone a couple thousand years ago, and nothing would prevent them from understanding the purpose of it. You could probably get someone from the time of Hammurabi to understand the concept.

21 CFR §139.150(b) doesn't make it illegal to sell egg based pasta that isn't ribbon shaped, it defines "egg noodles" as such, as opposed to tubular shapes which are not "egg noodles". Standards to facilitate commerce are normally considered legitimate even by libertarians who wish to radically shrink the federal government. So unless you are an anarchist or particularly wish to abolish egg noodles or inhibit commerce in them, I don't understand where you're coming from.

I've heard about 'bossnapping' - is it literally as described? How on earth does this not end in bloodshed? If someone tried to kidnap me I would be immediately fighting for my life. Do the Police do hostage rescue? How are people not getting hurt?

My father was the lead of Human Resources (don't know how it translates in English) in a bank.

He was once hold for a night during a strike, with 3 other persons. The union leader told him "It's not you sir, we like you as a person, but it's what you represents that we hold here".

So they ordered pizzas and managed to sleep on coaches and were "freed" the next day. No one was hurt.

He didn't liked it in any way, but what was the point of torching the offices down ?

For the record, it was in the French West Indies, where unions are far more powerful than in metropolitan France.

Besides that managers have kids & spouses to get home to as well.

When you're symbolically held in an office for press coverage and you know you'll be fed, and released in a few days, your best course of action is to sit down and play on your phone for 24h.

I'm not pro union, but is that so hard to understand? Are you really going to make a keyboard warrior claim here that you'd stick a fork in the neck of a union member holding you 'hostage' the first opportunity you get?

1. you are held hostage in a home invasion. You kill a kidnapper. The police won't arrest you (in the Netherlands - maybe other European countries they will, I don't know many details of all EU countries - but this is just for argument's sake anyway). Most likely you will not be convicted of anything (depending on the exact circumstances).

2. you are held hostage during a strike by a union group. They put you in an office, bring you some water maybe, then lock the door (or let's make it more extreme - let's say they tape your hands together, just like the burglar in the scenario above). You wriggle yourself out, take the knife on the side table that is usually used to cut cake for someone's birthday, and when the door opens, you stab the guy on strike in the eye and run out.

What do you think will happen? Will you be charged and/or convicted in this second scenario?

If there is a (in terms of legal repercussions) difference in outcome between the two scenarios, why do you think that is? Would the defense in the court be 'oh but I was actually being held hostage, this was justified self defense'?

(note that I'm not talking about what 'ought to be' here, I'm talking about 'what is'. I'm not interested in arguing hypotheticals based on legicentric fantasy legal theory. Although one might argue what a person in such a case could reasonably expect to happen, which is a real consideration in a legal argument on self defense.)

If they locked a door I would try to break it down or break a window to get out. They'll either let me leave, or they're going to have to start to use force to stop my leaving, right? At that point they're the ones escalating it. The more force they used to try to stop me leaving, the more force I'd try to match it with.

If they get to the point where they're trying to make me stay using a knife, then yes I would literally stab them to escape, which would be totally reasonable force.

If it's really as 'just a prank bro' as you say, I guess they'd just let me leave at the point where I start breaking things to get out. If they're willing to use violence to keep me then I'm going to try to overmatch that with more violence.

The problem with just sitting there and accepting being captured is that you don't know how far it will escalate, and you have no control any more over what happens to you. You need to resist when you have the chance, not leave it until the point where things turn really ugly.

There were several cases of bosses being stripped recently weren't there? They must have been terrified they were going to be raped. Any reasonable person is going to fight for their life in that situation.

If they tape your hands together it is probably game over anyway, short of you being McGuiver. But before they tape your hands together they will have to resort to force and I'd be more than happy to escalate that gradually right up to the point where they'll fuck off. And if they don't that's their problem, you have a right to defend yourself against attackers with proportional force.

Stabbing someone in the eye sounds like it is a step too far especially since you have the option to threaten with the knife first. Holding someone against their will is not a 'play crime' but a very serious one.

It's not symbolical if the person is not allowed to leave.

You can't really blame legislation for needing more than 6-8 months to realize that an employee is not a good fit.

It can indeed hinder start-ups a little because of uncertainty in any new ventures.

But keep in mind that the vast majority of workers are not working in a startup environment. Relaxing a law to fit the legitimate needs of a small number of start-ups with an even smaller proportion of the work force at the detriments of the vast majority doesn't seem like a good idea.

And I've seen people getting fired when redundant and/or toxic for the company. The administration will keep an eye on you if you fire more than a dozen employees per year (for a 1500 employees company), when firing "en masse" (ironically named "plan de sauvegarde de l'emploie") an employers has some obligations like giving opportunities for training, maybe finding another position in the firm, firing people close to retirement with some compensation until their actual retirement (pre-retraite).

Lastly, this protection goes both ways, if you, as an employee, you end-over your resignation, you must remain in the company for 3 months, that way the employer has time to find a replacement and schedule a knowledge transfer in good conditions.

Not my experience in the jurisdictions where I've worked, but certainly a widespread belief among many French people.

>>Relaxing a law to fit the legitimate needs of a small number of start-ups..<<

I think the French labour laws need to be relaxed for the good of the French economy, not just for start-ups. The current system benefits those already in employment by entrenching their positions, but to the detriment of younger people seeking work.

The average national rate in Europe is around 18%, and 21% for the EU.

France is competing with this:

Austria 25%, Spain 25%, Netherlands 25%, Italy 24%, Norway 23%, Denmark 22%, Sweden 22%, Portugal 21%, Slovakia 21%, Estonia 20%, Finland 20%, Iceland 20%, Russia 20%, Poland 19%, UK 19%, Czech 19%, Switzerland 18%, Ireland 12.5%

Armenia 20%, Belarus 18%, Ukraine 18%, Romania 16%, Lithuania 15%, Albania 15%, Moldova 12%, Bulgaria 10%, Hungary 9%

Staying up in the 30s would put France at a severe disadvantage vs the rest of the EU and Europe. Germany will also be forced to lower its rate eventually.

The world average was near 40% ~35 year ago. The rate in the US came close to matching with the world average in the late 1980s. After that, the world average began declining consistently while the US remained high. When the world average is 22% and you're at 35%, you have a problem.

The actual average in France is 23% (in 2016, it's probably lower now) so nothing really extraordinary. The maximum rate is also being progressively brought down from 33% to 25%.

https://investinestonia.com/business-in-estonia/taxation/

Estonia's corporate income tax rate is not essentially zero, unless you plan to never distribute any profit. Otherwise it's 14-20%. It would be unusual for most businesses to never distribute profit.

Last year Estonia collected something like €368m in corporate income taxes. Or €283 per capita. Equal to about 4% of their budget. Not a huge sum, also not anywhere close to zero. In the US for 2018, corporate income taxes will be about 5% to 6% of tax revenue (4% to 5% of the budget). The US corporate income taxes collected, broken down on a per capita basis, will be around $650 to $700 for 2018, for comparison.

You can plainly see that Estonia collects corporate income taxes:

https://www.stat.ee/53719

https://www.oecd.org/tax/revenue-statistics-estonia.pdf

The primary unusual thing Estonia does, is not tax profit until distribution.

As for the budget share, a significant part of that is going to be govt-owned corporations that are used as cash-cows, for example the energy production / distribution monopolies, national lottery, Tallinn Port etc. Last month's news - this year they contributed 157MEUR dividends: https://www.aripaev.ee/uudised/2018/04/19/riik-votab-ettevot...

In the end, "regular" companies end up paying less than you imagine. I think it could be a sign that the policy is working - companies are investing into the future and "paying it forward". Or they are doing creative feats like taking out profits as loans to parent companies, which is also known to happen, specifically the big Scandinavian banks here.

Specifically for startups, it is going to make a big difference if you do not need to pay yearly corporate tax at an arbitrary date (in relation to your business) and can a) postpone this until profitability or b) never pay a dime if your idea never pans out. You can even steer your company towards an exit without ever having to think about it.

Many people I know personally only distribute as much profit as they need for themselves. It is not double taxed with personal income tax, so it is spending money already after paying the corporate tax. This has lead to a debate as to whether this actually constitutes "entrepreneur salary" with entrepreneurs therefore paying less taxes than employees (the salary taxes are much higher: http://palk.crew.ee).

That is why for a startup you can "essentially" forego thinking about it. When you do, you know you have made it :)

The question I have is whether you're required to claim a salary (instead of capital gains) as a sole employee of your corporation if you're a full tax resident there.

This might be too specific for HN discussion, but feel free to email me.

The current trend is to externalize ALL the computer-related work, which is crazy as in the companies I've worked at, we (contractors) were in charge of the "crown jewels" of the company; without us, nothing would have worked. Nothing. So, yes, we are easier to fire (by simply stopping a contract), but our knowledge is lost, so the productivity takes a HUGE hit everytime (and don't ask me about documentation or knowledge transfer, those are considered a loss of time by the management!)

There are laws against it, to prevent the "disguised worker" phenomenon, but those laws are useless and ignored or there are work-arounds. The truth is, when you stay for more than 3 years in the same job (like I did), it's obvious that you ARE acting as a regular salaried worker.

Nowadays, it's much more difficult to find a job at a company than it was 20 years ago (or more). Consulting/contracting companies have replaced all those workers. with HUGE negative consequences on productivity, loyalty & workers' attitude.

In the -big- telecom companies I've worked at, as a contractor, you had 50% to 80% of contractors in the teams!

About 15 years ago, I worked in a BIG telecom company, who stopped ALL their contracts before the end of the year (to have numbers that looked "good"). All activity ground to a halt, because the people who "did stuff" were the contractors. Nothing was done during the 3 months period it took to rehire (mostly the same people). Salaried coworkers who were there during that period told me that the corridors were empty, and that it felt really weird to come and work in mostly empty buildings... Of course, they lost many people who had started other contracts. A smaller company would probably have gone bankrupt.

1. If your contractor has just you as a client for a long time, if you stop the mission he can sue you for « economical dependance »

2. The real estate market does not let you rent without a solid employee contract, making it very hard to independent contractors to find a house.

The important market is not in contractors but rather in « contractors supporters », basically buying contractors time and selling it to big corporations.

These « middlemen » take the juridical risk, which make the big corporations accepting the contractors, and help the contractors finding missions.

These middlemen also take fees on missions.

Here in the UK, if your contractor works for you for a long time the government could argue that they're a "disguised employee". This a type of tax dodge, so they will come down on them like a ton of bricks, and might come after you as well.

>The real estate market does not let you rent without a solid employee contract, making it very hard to independent contractors to find a house.

My previous employer found this out the hard way, as they tried to get a developer to work in Paris for a few months. But because he was employed by the London office and not the French one, they didn't want to give him a French work contract. The whole thing fell through when the developer did a lot of research (which I feel the company should have done before making the offer) and said he wasn't going to move unless they helped him with all of the paperwork to make it fully legal. The company realised how much work was involved and then said he didn't have to come, haha. They also looked at renting AirBnB rooms for the whole period but Paris is clamping down on AirBnB so it wasn't worth it.

>These « middlemen » take the juridical risk, which make the big corporations accepting the contractors, and help the contractors finding missions.

Yeah, contractor recruiters are very big in IT here, especially in London. Most IT contractors use recruiters because they do all of the legwork, and also take most of the risk. But the government is starting to put a lot of pressure on them because they are so worried about disguised employment (which to me seems like a non-issue anyway).

This kind of thing is a subtle form of protectionism at the local level, IMO; it makes it hard for people to move about the country for work, let alone from outside.

This is before we get into the question of immigration rules with circular dependencies ..

The status of a job for government is tha tyou CAN'T be fired ! Whatever stupid thing you do, whatever you work or not, you can't loose the job.

It's also less payed than a job in a private company, and you almos know exactly what will be your income on the last year you'll work, but it's safe.

And for big companies, the union are mandatory, so it's almost the same. Hard to be fired.

And that's why beeing an entrepreneur in France is so hard and not understand by most people. Why take risks ?

Brazilian here. It seems that we have a lot in common.

However, entrepreneurship and self made man/business culture has been getting increasingly popular (mostly at São Paulo) although lawmakers have not been following the trend.

edit: formatting.

My major fear living in Paris is losing my apartment while being between jobs or even still in the trial period.

I am a technical manager at a small-size big data company. We opened a new office in Paris three months ago and our largest struggle by far is recruiting talent. Despite what other comments here are writing, the startup scene is booming. Station F[1] is huge. The four WeWorks are full and they are opening two more soon. Global companies like Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Naver are growing their presence. New companies are popping up all the time. Despite the academic strength of France in Computer Science, there is simply not enough supply of senior engineers in France to meet the demand. A couple of years ago Paris was lukewarm and we managed to open up in the midst of frying heat. I have met both Berliners and Parisians who say that there is more happening in Paris than Berlin right now.

The language divide is definitely a thing. We are an international English-speaking company and that works both for and against us.

(We're called Kaiko[1] if anyone reading this wants to reach out and connect)

[0] https://stationf.co/

[1] https://www.kaiko.com

Also, Paris is a crime-ridden city that is way overpriced.

From where I live I could work in Paris with the same commute time than I do by working in Luxembourg, but I get a better paycheck.

Renting a 2 bedroom costs 700€ a month where I live, in Paris it would cost 2 to 3 times this.

I don't get the "there's not enough engineering available", this is just not true, reality is that people will earn a lot more in London, Luxembourg, Switzerland, so they chose that.

Not by much [1][2], and rent is worse in London[3]. I think income tax is fairly comparable.

From personal experience the same salary goes further in Paris and quality of life is better than in London, although I never officially worked in Paris so can't comment too much. The nightlife is certainly better. Also Switzerland is crazy expensive so even if you're earning more it won't matter, pretty much everything you buy day to day is about 2x as expensive compared to anywhere else.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/london-software-enginee... [2] https://www.glassdoor.co.uk/Salaries/paris-software-engineer... [3] https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?cou...

So, proof of the pudding and all - how much are you paying a senior engineer? To make it easier to compare, take an hypothetical software engineer with a cs degree and 10 years of experience in mainstream technologies?

This argument is ridiculous, the problem is that you are not willing to pay enough. (I am working in Paris)

We're having trouble even finding relevant people to open up the conversation with. I am interviewing pretty much daily and I can count the number of candidates that we have even been talking salary with on my fingers. I bet it's a different story with web or app devs, though.

If there are few candidates, of course you'll have to pay a lot of money.

Do your ads have a salary range? Employed people tend to ignore those who don't.

Can anyone comment on this? Is this way off base?

First, you must pay a lawyer or formation agent to write and register your by-laws. Next, you must seek an introduction to a bank manager. With that secured, you get to draft a book report of a business plan. This is tedious and pointless. Once completed, the bank manager reviews it. (They will also ask for lots of personal documents, each requiring expensive notarization.) If they approve, you get a business bank account. Into this account you must deposit no less than €4,000. Unfortunately, these funds are frozen until you get your extrait Kbis. That won't happen for at least two weeks.

Now you have to buy an ad in a French newspaper. These are expensive. After a week or two, papers will arrive in the mail. You take these to the Commercial Court, where a bunch of agencies on different floors will stamp them. With those stamped papers in hand, your €4,000 will be unfrozen. (Usually. On the next business day.) Finally, you have to appoint a French accountant. They continually monitor your business and continually charge you fees. Now you can business!

Meanwhile, in Delaware, 24 hours and a few hundred dollars buys you an LLC. A bank account, set up online or in person, can get you going the next day.

Basically, taxes are always delayed and to calculate the exact amount that you owe to the diverse government agencies, it takes an army of accountants.

Even sometimes the accountants do not know what is going on as the tax laws are always changing, sometimes at the last minutes. Meanwhile, you have sold your asset, your money is stuck in escrow for more than 6 months, you have no revenue and no money. Welcome to France!

Source: my parents sold their business in October last year and just got their money a week ago.

And government doesn't like that. At all. So if you're small, they won't miss you when they backfire at you :-)

2. The newspaper ad thing still exists, is a reminiscence of the past but only adds 100 euros or something to the overall cost.

3. "Into this account you must deposit no less than €4,000." = probably if your company's capital is $4000. You can start with 1 euro of capital if you wish (but that's probably not the greatest idea).

4. Overall, the easiest way is to first find a good accountant, and let them deal with the administrative side of things for ~1000 euros or less. If you do everything by yourself, you're probably good with 250-300 euros of expenses.

See https://www.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/vos...

I incorporated a "SAS" in France with the help of an online accounting service. It cost 500€ in fees, required a few hours of paperwork and the company was ready 2 weeks afterwards (KBis, bank account…).

Now I pay 90€ / mo for the accounting service, and 10€ / mo for the (online-only) bank account. That's it.

Note that you do business alone, with not too much volume, you can opt-in for the easier "microentrepreneur" status. It has low taxes, easy accounting and is straightforward to set up.

More worryingly for the French, it’s as easy as it is in Delaware in other nearby EU countries, and cross-border EU commerce is easier than cross-state commerce in the US

I'm curious where you get this impression. Cross-border commerce is very lightly regulated in the US. For most industries, you literally have to put zero thought into the matter.

Uh, what? What does this have to do with interstate commerce? ACH doesn't operate on a state by state basis.

ACH can take a couple of days to clear (usually 2), but that's not really relevant, because most business isn't done through bank transfers. And for invoices that are due net 30 or 90, having a two day latency for the final transaction doesn't make a difference.

Interstate commerce in the US is generally trivial, mostly because the Constitution makes it very clear that states have next to no ability to regulate or prevent it. The only main exceptions are industries that are heavily regulated within a state (ie, if you want to set up a new health insurer in a state, most states require you to get a license from that state - which isn't really regulating interstate commerce, but having state-specific regulations you need to be aware of. This is uncommon).

For general businesses like we usually talk about on HN, there are very few barriers to interstate commerce in the US, especially compared to the EU.

even before getting your idea down you'll have to handle a monstrous bureaucracy. incorporating is easy given enough money but you'll need some expert to handle all the paperwork for getting your tax exemptions properly. also handling vat moss requires some specialized knowledge, which as a specialized programmer one is likely missing. hiring is quite complex too, and even if you don't want to dive into payrolls contract works are quite the paper generators too, so you're looking at a huge overhead - garage startup are basically nonexistant.

there are venues by which you can get seed funding for your ideas. you start, you get traction, and then there's the second issue: your market is way smaller and more fragmented than the american. each country expects being serviced in each language, with a large upfront cost if you aim to reach a wide audience.

say you grow, you reach a point where your idea is out there, the model is valid and your leverage positive, so you could really start pushing the growth. there's the third issue: private ventures are way smaller than american, the one that are here almost inaccessible and quite risk averse. so you'll have a very hard time to get that critical first round to push your growth.

and then, after all the effort and sweat, an american startup comes to realize that the same need exists (because startup aren't generated in the void) do all the same but with 10x the seed and an easy first round and you'll find yourself competing with a company that has twenty times the employees and a monthly adword budget that's your yearly revenue.

I say private VCs, because there are quite a few pseudo-VCs funded by public money. They're usually pretty constrained in how they can deploy the funds. People will often end up with pretty unfundable structures (amongst many other issues). I can't speak for all countries, but in Poland it's an absolute scourge on the startup industry.

There is the so called small entrepeneur, which costs about 25€ (depending on which commune you live in) and require relatively little paper work (taxes are a simple Profit-Costs calculation). You're also liable for stuff which some people don't like.

There is also the entrepeneur association with limited liability (also called "UG (haftungsbeschränkt)", you can't omit the word in the parens). It requires a base capital of usually 1000€ but atleast 1€. Atleast 25% of all yearly profits must be held back and added to the base capital until you reach 25k€ after which you can in future years spend the 25% otherwise, increase the base capital or convert to a regular LLC (GmbH).

Both are largely simply a case of "walk into your local people record office (Meldeamt) and deposit whatever money necessary" until you can do business. (And of course filing taxes)

However, the government is running two programs that will try to improve these elements[1][2].

For instance:

- the French Public Investment Bank (BPI) will receive more money in order to create a better leverage for fund raising, co-investing with private funds in startups;

- France will work with European Union to create the european equivalent of the DARPA challenges;

- France Expérimentation will provide exemptions to some startups trying new business models;

- new APIs will be provided to help accomplishing administrative tasks automatically;

- public contracts will have lower entry barriers;

- public aids (which are really important in France) will be simplified;

- the HR thresholds will be reviewed in order to promote startup growth;

- a study will be conducted on "renting contracts" for startups (most contracts have a 3/6/9-years engagement clause, which is not adapted to startup growth);

- corporate tax will be lowered;

- ...

This is not perfect and we are indeed accustomed to a lot of rules and administrative work, but still: it is good and motivating to see that the government is trying to do something.

Moreover, we have great landscapes and food, so let's give France a try :).

[1] https://www.numerique.gouv.fr/actions-startups/elements-de-p... (in French)

[2] https://www.pacte-entreprises.gouv.fr/

[edit] styling

Considering the Silicon Valley mantra of “hire slow, fire fast”, it will be interesting to see how things evolve in France. Will they relax their labor laws/customs, or will they find a different way for startups to grow?

1: https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-13/france-employers-reso...

Regular employment is still much protected for the employee.

The difference is that the wellfare taxes as Auto Entrepreneur are very low compared to en employee, for the same service in hospital or doctors.

- high taxes

- a lot of buerocracy

- language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees

- lower salaries

- fragmented political system in the EU

- much lower population in France comparing to USA and if you want to cover the entire EU, you have to support many different languages, currencies, etc...

Make fun of the stupid apps and the copycats but so many undergrads at my American alma mater were trying something, and that is already so much more than what I saw in France. I have seen some undergrads in America make serious money through their side projects and big companies are more often seen as a stepping stone towards something else. In France, the holy grail is to get a CDI (permanent employee contract) at a big company and that’s often pretty much it. They can be great employees but making money within a structure simply does not require the same resourcefulness. I don't know if the culture is contagious once you arrive in a country, or if universities attract different profiles (probably both), but I thought it was also interesting to note that the immigrants were often resembling the locals in both countries.

In my opinion, even the best version of Macron’s plan is bound to produce underwhelming results. While French taxes and bureaucracy might not help entrepreneurship, I do not think that’s why France isn’t a startup nation. Rather, it’s the fact that France isn’t a startup nation that explains why bad policies and bureaucracy have been tolerated for so long. Understand me well: my comment is the opposite of an attempt to diminish the accomplishments of French entrepreneurs, who exist and face higher administrative hurdles than their American counterparts, but is simply written to share some observations on campus culture and entrepreneurship at two top schools.

Well, there are reasons for this. Good luck getting a loan for your next house / car / whatever if you don't have a CDI.

Simplified is very relative. Also, while there might be slightly less paper, attitudes are the same.

> fragmented political system in the EU

To be honest it feels about as fragmented as US state law is.

> language burden to attract high qualified foreign employees

Language burden is very much still an issue for France. It's getting better but english is still not fluent even with younger people. I'm unsure if I could move there to work and never even worry about not speaking a word of the local language (like you can if you move to e.g. Amsterdam or Stockholm). I'm guessing english works OK for small Paris startup now, but moving to work with a larger company would probably require French?

Edit:

Also do remember that the US isn't really a startup heaven: the US hasn't got THAT many startups per capita. Just a lot of people and few per capita. One should probably be careful in assuming that the environment for startups in the US is the one to aim for.

Under-rated point, this. California is a single giant market, but for lots of services the US has much less of a "single market" than the EU. Especially banking, finance, insurance, healthcare.

It's bad, but perhaps not as bad as I thought it was (disclosure : I'm a French business owner)

This is actually good news for Macron. Because that is something he can fix.

However, I have no idea why any early-stage startup would go to France and last 3 months, while with the same money they could go to Poland and enjoy the same level of support from the government, availability of highly-skilled tech people, and twice-4 times the buying power compared to any other similarly attractive country in Europe.

While I've never even come close to creating an even barely successful anything, I would think that being able to survive for 6 months can make the difference compared to running out of money after 3 months. I mean, the 3-months guy would totally miss a big contract at month 5.

I have thought about setting up an office in Krakow. I've been impressed with every software developer I've worked with from Poland. But settling there has some serious political risks.

Poland seems to have the best of both worlds, with an independent currency, but otherwise inside the EU. It is worrisome that the Poles feel the desire to destroy this.

Poland is absolutely NOT hostile to Europe, on the contrary (sorry, I couldn't find a source right now). Italy and other countries are a huge percentage more against Europe than not Poles.

Poland simply doesn't need to lower its wages like Germany did, and has therefore no interest in letting in any of the extra hundred of thousands of migrants that hang around across Europe thanks to Germany opening the borders to them. That would significantly increase crime--which is virtually not-existent in terms of personal safety in Poland--like it happened in Italy and I assume other countries, and cost a ton of money that is currently put into much better and more productive use.

The government is extremely stable. If you read about extreme Catholic-based laws, it's just because that's what they believe in, and after a few years of "West no matter what" following their independence from the Soviets, they are now trying to find their own identity--which is like it or not extremely Catholic and nationalistic. I don't necessarily love those laws, but I'm not Polish and I have different values. The US has it even worse, with laws dictating what sexual positions are legal and which ones are illegal in many states--and no one is complaining.

From a business point of view, I have a company that I opened in 1 day. You have the right to issue invoices from the minute you apply, the government has 1 week to send you a tax ID # (I got mine via email after 3 days). Everything is done electronically, via a trusted profile like your bank account. It's extremely efficient. Taxes are a joke compared to what I'm used to (Italy at 45%): 19% flat. My accountant is EUR 40/mo., but you can find cheaper ones (by comparison, my accountant in Italy cost me EUR 120/mo. because of the bureaucracy involved).

Many people don't know a lot about Poland, and what they know is pretty far from the truth.

Are they? Or are they simply not bowing to the will of Germany?

I think the political risk to the EU is coming from Italy and Germany at the moment. I see less risk of political problems in Poland than with

The EU is not that rosy, not for Eastern Europeans anyway. It works fine for Germany but the other countries, Central and Eastern European ones specifically are second class citizens in the EU. Fortunately most of us still have our own currencies and are not totally at the mercy of the EU. It's still better than being "friends" with the USSR though.

- Companies are exploitative of their workforce and should be strongly regulated to protect workers;

- Excess company profits are a sign of unfairness and abuse, and maximum profits should be controlled to protect against such unfairness;

- The role of an organisation is to provide employment;

- Unemployment can be reduced by making it more difficult to fire employees or make their positions redundant;

- France's international uncompetitiveness, especially vis a vis Germany, could be solved by making other countries similarly uncompetitive by imposing similar burdens.

My partner is French and a Human Resources consultant to medium and large organisations. The horror stories she recounts would make most entrepreneurs run a mile.

My business is online and I can locate it anywhere. I've chosen Ireland for a variety of reasons. Eurozone, English speaking with good multilingual talent availability, good international transport and relatively light touch regulation. Tax rate wasn't a significant factor because the effective rate of tax (after factoring in state subventions) is relatively similar between the two countries.

France is a great place to live but a terrible place to run a business or to hold capital assets. The high taxes pay for a very good public health system and a good transport system. Unfortunately, they also pay for a huge amount of public sector waste.

France for startups works well if you're well connected, in which case you're made. Connections are, however, largely forged early in life, in Lycees and Grand Ecoles, so connections and networks are much more difficult for an outsider to penetrate.

As an example of French business mentality, my friend's business (online/social) has few actual users and no paying users and is 100% supported by a mix of grants and supports from a myriad of government organisations, and by large corporations who are obligated by government to set aside an annual budget for supporting such endeavours. My friend's business is considered a success in France. I consider it a personal success for him, insofar as he has navigated the system quite well. But it's not my definition of business success.

The previous governement created a fund for that. It is nearly totally unaffected (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bpifrance).

He does nothing because there is nothing to do. France destiny is sealed by european threaties. To change something the treaties must be broken but people are afraid by that. France is in a waitstate until something happens at a global scale (like a war).

There are, give or take, 65 million people in France. (Incidentally, this number is also, give or take, the amount of Americans who live in the most abject poverty seen in the developed world.) Not everyone among these 65 million is fit to 'move fast and break things'. Not everyone wants to be flexible, adaptable or able to sell themselves in a world of fast hires and firings. Not everyone is a young and dynamic entrepreneur full of 'innovative' ideas (whatever that means). In short, not everyone is a twenty-to-thirty- something with a moderately high level of education and relative affinity with the tech world.

On the other hand, everyone needs a steady job to make a living. Everyone needs the healthcare, retirement plans and other benefits our current labor laws entail with that steady job. In short, everyone is a human being with basic human needs.

Startups have one thing in common - they tend to fail. Maybe your average HN reader will be able to endure the typical working conditions with no guarantee of a stable income in the future, but they are the exception, not the rule. It is preposterous to imagine that an entire country's labor laws and regulation should align with the needs of such a narrow demographic so that foreign investors will maybe deign to notice it and shower said demographic with money.

Yes, there are many things wrong with our current labor laws. Yes, maybe some regulations are needlessly tight and stifle the growth of blooming startups full of bright people. No, that does not mean the US as a 'startup nation' is an example to follow. And if that means the next Facebook or Instagram won't come from here, so be it. Many of these startups tend to produce services that are superficially useful at best or actively harmful at worst. We don't need them.

(By the way, I have a familial anecdote (really not significant, it's just pretty fun) on was I said about confidence in technological progress : my great grandfather was a blacksmith, as his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and so on. And what did he do when automobile replaced horses ? He became a car mechanic.)

I think so too. Not being French but reducing France to just being France if it keeps it's inefficiencies is what made it take the role of "Europe's sick man" from Germany.

As if having a permanent base of 20% unemployed youth (and 10% in general) is a price worth the cost of being a "well-meaning" nation.

PS: And no, youth unemployment is not a new thing in France as it stood around 27% in 1997. Pre-Euro and Pre-German-Labor-Reforms.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.