2 ms·

1. The French engineers cost less than SV or Zurich because the lower salaries make up for the higher labour taxes. Google pays well for the market but it's sti

1. The French engineers cost less than SV or Zurich because the lower salaries make up for the higher labour taxes. Google pays well for the market but it's still lower than other locations. 2. They need an office for business reasons, period. Whether they have engineers or not does not change their obligations to the French law and their ability to escape taxes. 3. Google's strategy is not to attract French engineers specifically, but to have offices everywhere to hire talented people where they are.

DannyBee 10y ago
You keep changing your comment, so it's hard to respond :) 1. This is, AFAIK, not accurate for Google. 2. This was not the question. The claim was "surely they need some great presence in the 6th greatest economy", and the answer is "no, they don't". Unless you mean "an office with 2 people in it", which is kind of irrelevant to the broader point of whether google would pull out of france. Most people would see closing the engineering office as pulling out of france, the same way closing the russia engineering office was seen as pulling out of russia, etc. I'll simply avoid engaging about what their obligations are, because it's not my area of expertise. I also don't care much, because i know that if every country tries to extract billions from google and others, like they are trying to now, there aren't enough billions to go around. So it won't end well for someone. 3. Errr, no. This is not Google's strategy, it's actually quite the opposite. Google asks people to relocate to one of the existing eng centers, and if they are unwilling, passes on them. Google very much does not want hundreds of engineering offices, much to the disdain of a good number of people. Google's distributed office strategy is a point of contention even within Google :)

2 ms·

1. The French engineers cost less than SV or Zurich because the lower salaries make up for the higher labour taxes. Google pays well for the market but it's sti

by eloisant 10y ago

DannyBee 10y ago
You keep changing your comment, so it's hard to respond :) 1. This is, AFAIK, not accurate for Google. 2. This was not the question. The claim was "surely they need some great presence in the 6th greatest economy", and the answer is "no, they don't". Unless you mean "an office with 2 people in it", which is kind of irrelevant to the broader point of whether google would pull out of france. Most people would see closing the engineering office as pulling out of france, the same way closing the russia engineering office was seen as pulling out of russia, etc. I'll simply avoid engaging about what their obligations are, because it's not my area of expertise. I also don't care much, because i know that if every country tries to extract billions from google and others, like they are trying to now, there aren't enough billions to go around. So it won't end well for someone. 3. Errr, no. This is not Google's strategy, it's actually quite the opposite. Google asks people to relocate to one of the existing eng centers, and if they are unwilling, passes on them. Google very much does not want hundreds of engineering offices, much to the disdain of a good number of people. Google's distributed office strategy is a point of contention even within Google :)