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I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go with
by Voodoo463 10y ago
I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go with job infrastructure, Paris is non functioning. The city itself is inherently flawed in job growth and management. There is a lack of variety in jobs. There ARE a variety of jobs, but the disparity between amount and desire is huge.
When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money. People then majored and specialized in Money. It is where the Money is; Money is where the jobs would be.
Don't let the media blitz carry you away at the announcement of Station F, it is a media wave designed to tell people, 'look... we are diversifying our economy' as Berlin and London have also been attempting (rather... ineffectively for Germany). The media blitz is a way of telling individuals in France (and all of Europe actually) that this is where tech jobs can be found... so make the decision to major in tech.
What I imagine will happen is: many people from Eastern Europe (strong scattering of micro tech scenes without sufficient exposure) will flock to Station F to take advantage of it's proximity to all of the local funding that can be found in Paris. Paris is a place like London and New York where people park their money for expansion. Station F is just another place for these people to park their funds.
We could be seeing the beginning of a rocking station F, or, we could be seeing the beginning of a very large media hype designed to encourage diversifying the economy that will be the beginning of a very slow 'meh' Station F.
- VeejayRampay 10y agoRead that whole barrage and all I could think about is: "Man it must suck to be a pessimistic person, you only get to think about the failure of a school that hasn't yet opened instead of seeing the potential".
- tajen 10y ago> pessimistic person France makes people sad. One in 3 adult takes psychotropic drugs[1]. I lived in Australia and I was happy every day, in France there's just no good news. A brilliant example is, GP mentionned buildings are under-maintained, that's an excellent summary. It's the no-politics week so I won't dive into the past-and-future causes of this chronic stress, but it exists. [1] http://www.france24.com/en/20140520-france-drug-addiction-1-3-psychotropic-medication http://www.france24.com/en/20140520-france-drug-addiction-1-...
- VeejayRampay 10y agoNot really specific to France though. We just have a huge pharmaceutical sector here pushing pills with heavy marketing.
- kentiko 10y agoWhat you are saying makes me really sad. I live in Paris and I just graduated (CS). I am currently working as a java developer in a large company, the job is incredibly boring and I feel like I am not learning anything. Interesting jobs seems out of reach of a junior developer. I don't think Station F is going to improve things much. I am now thinking about moving somewhere else to find a better job.
- theparanoid 10y agoI went remote.
- y04nn 10y agoWhere?
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- pyrale 10y agoThere are good places ; if you aren't happy, move. Just don't pick a contractor job, and make sure you don't pick a job where people just expect you to move dirt around.
- user5994461 10y agoThere are good places in Paris but they can be counted on your fingers. That's not enough jobs even if we only consider the population of 3lite 10x developers.
- jclos 10y agoChange job and relocate, even if temporarily! Devs jobs are plenty, and you should take advantage of it while it's still the case. Working abroad for instance is a good way to get out of your comfort zone and keep on learning.
- stymaar 10y agoI know that feeling. Big companies are a scam. The good thing is: there is a lot of start-ups in Paris, many of them with open positions. It's not that hard to find a place to work in Paris, it's hard for employers to find good candidates. I've spent most of the year looking for developers at Streamroot [1] and we struggled to have applicants. We hired 5 persons in the first 6 month of the year and still have a lot of open positions. [1] https://www.streamroot.io/careers https://www.streamroot.io/careers
- jmeister 10y agoI don't see why this is bad - I echoed this sentiment in my previous comment. Not every city/country needs to turn into SF/US. Most people associate Paris with old world charm, weltsmerchz, brooding philosophers and artists, sassy and fashionable women etc. - none of this is compatible with neckbeards with macbooks, obsession with money/productivity/growth that a thriving startup scene inevitably brings. Let it stay that way.
- ewolf 10y agoI strongly agree. Nonetheless, many places aspire to be a second Silicon Valley, and it's certainly worthwhile pointing out how close or far away they are from that goal. In particular, those behind Station F probably want their project to develop in a SF/US-like direction. It would be interesting to see if there can be a third way - an attractive location for startups with a culture that is open to entrepreneurship without being overly obsessed with quick unicorn money and without being entirely dominated by startups and VCs?
- Heraclite 10y agoI agree as well. I find it bordeline cringey to see how other countries try to imitate "SV culture". it's one thing to be inspired by something, and no question we should all admire what SV has created. On the other hand, I dream of France creating products that reflect its own identity and culture. It's not like we don't have anything in the past ot get our inspiration from. I wish we didn't try to become SV, but try to become our better self, so to speak.
- walterstucco 10y agoParis is a terrible city to live and work, unless you are there because of your job in financial/political institutions.
- leaveyou 10y agoI don't know why the downvotes.. Very high rents for rather low quality (by the european standards). Long and unpredictable commutes, frequent problems on the overcrowded lines. Serious pollution: today the subway/metro was free of charge for everyone in order to encourage people to use the (already crowded) public transportation instead of cars to reduce the thick smog which accumulated over the city. http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/transports/ile-de-france-la-pollution-persiste-pas-de-decision-sur-la-circulation-alernee-05-12-2016-6415938.php http://www.leparisien.fr/info-paris-ile-de-france-oise/trans...
- Heraclite 10y agoI think you're seeing the glass half empty. Paris is not perfect but I don't see how this kind of initiative couldn't be a move in the right direction. About the money part, Paris is far from being London or NYC, the gravity center isn't financial services, at least you don't feel it when living there. There is great talent (engineer+design), I'd say the marketing overall is weak and too timid.
- user5994461 10y agoI confirm that. There is indeed a huge amount of wasted talents because there is no one to hire them.
- y04nn 10y agoIt's true that Paris is not best choice, but there is many tech company on the outskirt of Paris, albeit small ones.
- _kyran 10y agocan you share any examples?
- y04nn 10y agoI don't know why but from my experience there is many PME woking as startups in the south west of Paris specially in embedded dev and video. Maybe for web dev they are more located "intra-muros".
- walterstucco 10y agoI can: Blizzard for example. But I would never live in Paris in my life
- alain94040 10y agoThe successful ones are now Parrot and Criteo. Remember those? But there are plenty of small startups that are doing challenging stuff. Interested in machine learning? Check out mipsology.com If you want to be paid well, you need to work for a company where the technology is the product. Writing Java for a bank? The software is not the product, so you won't be respected like in Silicon Valley.
- user5994461 10y agoDepends what you mean by Bank. If you talk Investment Bank, Edge Funds and HFT you'll probably be fine ;) But those are in NY/London, not Paris.
- Taylor_OD 10y agoI met a senior developer who worked for a large consulting firm in france. He got a greencard and moved to the USA. He was making something close to 50K USA in France with 9 years of C# development experience. It took a while to convince him that he could land a position at 100K+ here. Is it lack of jobs that causes this disparity?
- Heraclite 10y agoI's also a cultural one, at least regarding the developers. The status of the developer is still considered lower as middle management. It's slowly changing though, as developers are becoming more and more respected. But we're far from SF where developers have a higher symbolic status and where the good ones get huge salaries. I never understood why some companies in France are reluctant to pay well their developers, especially startups with funding.
- younes0 10y agoBecause SF startups ROI are much higher ?
- renaudg 10y agoYou really can't compare pre-tax salaries between countries with such a completely different taxation and benefits structure. The take home pay certainly is much, much lower in France than in the US, but it comes with access to top-notch free healthcare, free university, pension contributions, 5-7 weeks paid leave and generous unemployment insurance amongst other things. It all adds up. I'm French, working in London and I've been happy with the trade off of more pay for a thinner social safety net, but I know it would be foolish to compare wages directly. I suspect the difference is much less spectacular with everything taken into account.
- user5994461 10y agoWe shouldn't compare... Right. Let's just say that it's hard to make much more past 2000 EUR per month after taxes in Paris. And the accommodation costs the same number as in London (at 1 EUR = 1 GBP).
- stymaar 10y ago> When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren't there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money. Working as a software engineer in Paris, and having most of my friends doing the same, I think your were juste living in a bubble. Furthemore, french people don't go to university to study engineering, they go to engineering schools, which are dedicated structures. Some are public, generalist, and really famous (École Polytechnique where Fabrice Bellard comes from, École Centrale where VLC was created, École des Mines) but there are also a lot of smaller private and specialized school (Epitech, Efrei, Epita or “42” for computer sciences for instance). In France, people mostly go to university to study law, medicine, social sciences or humanities.
- walshemj 10y agoso Engineering degrees are second class institutions then ?
- nfc 10y agoIn fact it's university that is seen as second tier with respect to engineering schools except for a few majors like medicine and law. (I'm not french but have lived in France a few years)
- user5994461 10y agoYes. The french have had dedicated engineering schools for a while, which are good, and most are very cheap (state sponsored). There are many universities and they cover all topics (also state sponsored). Including law, finance, engineering, medicine, psychology, social sciences... Some stuff (law/medicine) can only be done through a university (they're the only one to get the state-certificate to exercise the job). When it comes to engineering, universities offer it but the degrees are considered "shit-tier". Note: They are not that bad per-se. They just get no considerations for old cultural reasons.
- laurentoget 10y ago
- joncp 10y agoInteresting point, which reminds me of one theory about why Silicon Valley took off: it was thousands of miles from the meddling money people on the East Coast, back when those miles mattered.
- hocuspocus 10y agoThat's a very interesting theory. In London you can clearly see the finance industry's influence on the shape of the tech sector.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gbersac 10y agoI am a software developer in Paris and never heard about shortage of dev jobs. In fact this the opposite, all recruiters struggle to find devs.
- stymaar 10y agoI can totally relate to this !