31 ms·

Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price

by renaudg 10y ago

Regarding French salaries again : yes they are lower than elsewhere but with some exceptions, French employers are not the problem : they do pay the same price for you as in other European countries, more or less ! The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard : * a top notch, virtually free healthcare system with no concept of exclusions or "pre-conditions" * Usually no student loans to repay because their higher education was free, unless they went for a private business/engineering school but that's still an order of magnitude cheaper than a US university. * a comfortable (unsustainable ?) state pension later on. * unemployment insurance that covers around 70% pay for months. * 5 weeks holiday + public holidays * Non San Francisco / London / NYC renting costs (although Paris is quite bad by French standards, and much worse than Berlin) If you're US-based, think about your monthly budget and what goes towards healthcare/co-pay, student loans, kids college fund, 401k, and building an emergency fund in case you get laid off / severely ill. None of that is strictly required in France (although some of it is available as extra private coverage, and a good idea) This is why cross-border salary comparisons are pointless, it's really apples & oranges. I'm French and living in London, and I'd personally rather have the freedom to have a higher take-home pay and contribute towards the above items myself as I see fit. But I'm not fooling myself thinking that because my take-home pay is twice as high each month, the math is as simple as that. I know that I'm so much more on my own here than at home...

otoburb 10y ago
Do you have the option to pay into the French state pension as a non-resident French citizen? For example, in Canada I'm not aware of any mechanism to voluntarily pay into the Canada Pension Plan for a strict Canadian non-resident. This would only be of note if you plan to retire in your original country of origin, in your case France.
- pmalynin 10y ago
  Canadian here, as far as I know you can't pay into the CPP if you're not working in Canada (I have a friend who is in the exactly that situation). But, that said you can put a lot of money into TFSAs and RRSPs.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - otoburb 10y ago
    >>Canadian here, as far as I know you can't pay into the CPP if you're not working in Canada (I have a friend who is in the exactly that situation) I came to the same conclusion unfortunately. Would gladly pay to contribute to CPP on the assumption that I'll (probably) be retiring back home. Unsure how it is in France, but in Canada (for now), I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today (i.e. supposedly we are paying our future retired selves). This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers. >>But, that said you can put a lot of money into TFSAs and RRSPs. I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but my understanding is that unless you have contribution room left for your TFSA or RRSP prior to your departure from Canada, there's little point to contribute since the "contributions" will not be recognized as such and hence the tax "benefits" in both cases will also go unrecognized. I think the only exception is for Canadian income (e.g. rental property). Transferring funds into Canadian TFSA/RRSP accounts may be possible, but the CRA will eventually ask for a reckoning unless your friends are willing to roll the dice. Based on personal experience, penalties and interest per year add up quickly.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      > I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today. This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers. I think you're conflating the basis for calculating the payouts you will receive, and the sources of payouts. I. e. most government pension schemes are use today's payments for today's pensioners, but will still give you a higher pension if you paid more/longer into the system.
- mathieuuu 10y ago
  If you are french working in a different country, you can contribute to the french pension plan through the "Caisse des Français de l´etranger" if you want to. However you would still have to pay the Canadian pension plan. There is an agreement between France and several countries including Canada. Once you will retire, if you have worked 10 years in Canada and 30 years in France, then you will get 3/4 of your money from the French Pension plan, and 1/4 from the Canadian one. This agreement works whether you are French or Canadian.
xutopia 10y ago
I can confirm this. I happen to be French and had a consulting firm in France for a couple years in the early 2000s. I was able to charge 90kEUR/year at the time for a mid-level Java programmer. They loved the idea that they could fire the devs at any given time and having Canadian engineers helped them get funding from local VCs.
briandear 10y ago
$130k in the US with paid health insurance, 2-4 weeks of vacation and dramatically lower taxes, vs. $50k in France with more 'benefits' and higher taxes.. Are those extra benefits worth $80k per year? Social charges really crush the ability for French companies to compete. Then with CDIs making it almost impossible to fire anyone, it results in a far less liquid job market. Now there's even talk of actually forcing men to take paternity leave in the name of reducing inequality between men and women in the workplace. I live in France and love it for the most part, but other than my tiny hotel business on the side, I would never consider starting a company here. Even filing the paperwork to form an SAS is arduous. I can incorporate in the US in less than a day and have a bank account opened the next day. In France, even something as simple as getting business-class internet requires a SIRET number for no logical reason. I could offer to pay €1000 per month and without some piece of paper saying you're a business, you can't even get a business phone line. However one really important area that ought not be missed is the amazing pre-k (free or nearly free) childcare. If I were in the US, that would amount to $20k+ per year (I have 3 kids.) That is definitely a plus. In France, you have less disposable income than you would in the US (even after benefits are counted,) however, France does have a great lifestyle if you can afford it. Though I can't say much for Paris -- expensive, somewhat dirty, a dreadful public transport system (try taking kids with strollers on the metro,) along with a very high cost of living and you have a pretty bad place to raise a family. Toulouse, Grenoble, Lyon, Avignon on the other hand -- really great places!
- renaudg 10y ago
  You make some good points, albeit most of them quite exaggerated. For example "almost impossible to fire anyone" : the up to 1 year trial period is pretty much hire-and-fire at will. After that, it's never too hard to fire a single employee. It's true that mass firings are quite heavily regulated though.
  - tostaki 10y ago
    Small correction: the trial period is capped at 8 months.
- tostaki 10y ago
KKKKkkkk1 10y ago
In other words, healthy educated engineers with no children who are motivated to work need not apply.
- flurdy 10y ago
  Or quite the opposite? These engineers may find once migrated (especially after a few years, ie slightly older) that the option of having children not to be burden in such a system, might find the safety net of not worrying about health and insurance increase their ability to focus on being productive instance of simple grinders, especially if well educated and motivated.
  - Joky 10y ago
    So, they will pay huge taxes to finance the public education system they didn't benefit, while at the same time repaying their student debt because they had to pay for university in their own country? I don't quite follow the logic...
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - wavefunction 10y ago
      If you live in a society, you benefit from its education system even if you didn't attend it, as all the folks who were educated in that society's educational system are the rest of the folks who contribute to the economic system and its health and robustness.
      - Joky 10y ago
        I didn't judge in my comment if it is good or bad to organize a society based on these values. That seems to me to be a bit unrelated to the situation at hand, where you have to move across countries and switch different systems. That fact that you may end-up paying "double" is what I was raising.
erowtom 10y ago
Update : Thanks for the feedbacks ! 1st update: Included mobile phone + Internet 2nd update: Huge update, completly forgot about one tax on the salary.. ----------------------- I'm French, I can give you some more details. I'm a full stack Ruby Developer, and I work at https://www.talent.io https://www.talent.io, the first recruitment platform for developers in Europe. (If you're looking to relocate in Paris, London or Berlin, you know where to look. ) I usually don't comment a lot on HN, but if it can gives people the desire to move in France / Europe to work, this is great for my country / continent. I'm gonna speak with raw cold numbers, for me it speaks more than some random "headlines". Here in Paris, developers are paid between 40K and 90K (there are developers that are far better paid - and unfortunately far less paid-), but this is a large "common" fork I'm giving to you. Those numbers are raw, meaning that you have to remove the tax. Here my own numbers, hoping it can help you imaginate with your current own situation. Note : I'm living with my GF, so I'm gonna divide all "common" expenses. We have equivalent salaries. ----------------------- Salary + flat ----------------------- My raw income last year was appx 45K euros. When you remove the first tax each month, I have 34600 left. I paid appx 2600 to the state in taxes, only for the salary. It's a quite good salary for a junior / mid developer here. (22 years old, 2 years of professionnal experiences in Fullstack Ruby / Rails developer). In Paris, for a 35m2 (365 ft2) with furnitures (meaning full equiped, from the Kitchen to the Bed to the sofa and desks), I paid 1K2 / month, so 14 400 for a year. (Living with my GF, so dividing it by 2 : 650 euros / month / person, so 7800 euros / year / person) You have to add the taxes, which was approximately a half month of rent : 650 (dividing by 2: 325 euros). So in total, I paid to the state for my flate + income taxes 5500 euros. Total net income : 32000 euros / year ----------------------- Common expenses - Insurances - Transportations - Food ----------------------- * Healthcare insurance ~ 40 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (240 / year) ----- This is not the best insurance ever, I could have go for a better one at greater prices. It covers for the basics. I'm young and in good health, I take care of my glasses and my dentition, so To give you an idea, I have to change my glasses every 1.5 year / 2years, the total price of my last bill was 322 euros, my glasses were full covered (with full treatment on lenses), I had to pay from my pocket 50 euros for the spectacle frame. I also had to replace a tooth because it broke at sport, on a 600 euros cost, I only paid 47 euros (going to a private clinic - not public hospital.). From a basic surgery, cost was appx 1000 euros, I didn't paid anything (public hospital) - bad note is that I waited 3 months for the surgery - it was not urgent at all -. Public healthcare in France is overbooked, but it's good. ----- * House insurance ~ 20 euros / month. Nothing to say. (120 euros / year /person) ----- * Transportation (Only counting public transportation, not Uber etc...) here we have the subway, bus, bike, tramway (and soon a boat :o), it costs 75 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (450 euros / year) ----- * Electricity nothing much to say, we pay appx 70 euros / month, so 35 euros / person / month, so 420 euros / person / year I won't talk much about food, because it REALLY depends your habits, if you live alone / with a family. Here for 2, we approximately pay 600 euros / month - We love food. We could have reduced it a little, but we try to eat locally / bio, it costs much more. Per year per person, it's appx 3600 euros / person. ----- * Mobile phone + internet It's quite cheap here. Mobile phone, unlimited phone calls in France (Even in europe I believe) + unlimited text + "unlimited" Internet (4GO / month of data 4G then caped) at "Sosh", I pay 25 euros / month (300 euros / months) Home internet, provider is called "Orange" + television, fiber 500 MBits fully unlimited, I pay 50 euros / month (600 euros / year, 300 euros / year / person) (And it works damn well). ----- total (tl;dr) : In total, last year, I earned 39500 euros, taxes deducted. I paid 3600 (food) + 450 (transportation) + 240 (health insurance) + 120 (house insurance) + 300 (mobile phone) + 300 (Home internet) + 420 (electricity) = 26570 euros net of income after all "life mandatory" stuff. ----- Please please please, do note that I did NOT included all restaurants, clubs, travels, clothings and all "fun" stuff. It really depends on your lifestyle, and I don't even know how much I paid for it. ----------------------- Education It's true, public education is almost free. It costs less than 1K euros / child / year to go to high school (I even think it's way less than that, but IDK since I went to a private school). You can even lower those costs because we do have a lot of helps from the state. When my brother went to a historian school, he paid nothing, and even more, the French state paid him 10K a year to go study (Because he was a damn good student) For my private computer science school (the "42" school of Xavier Niel is a perfect copycat of mine, but free - unfortunately it did not exists at that time), I paid (my parents did) 50K, and this is only for the school (5 years, so appx 10K a year) About the other bullet points @renaudg talked about, I don't have much to say, It's pretty self explanatory. I hope it does help people better evaluate the "cost" of life in France, if I forgot something / you want more informations, please do not hesitate to ask :).
hk__2 10y ago
> * 5 weeks holiday + public holidays In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)
- user5994461 10y ago
  Also means you don't get paid 8 weeks a year. I remember very well when French employers forced me to get more holidays, which destroyed the income I needed to actually afford any holidays at all.
  - NamTaf 10y ago
    French employees aren't paid on their standard holidays? It also seems strange that if you're working over the 35/hr week baseline and being compensated for it by extra leave, that you would not be paid during that leave. After all, you're working extra for that time off, so you've essentially just already worked those weeks in advance.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      In accounting terms, your pay is calculated as hourly rate * time working. It's averaged over the year and paid monthly. All the holidays are time not working over the year. So, yes, it is definitely lowering your pay.
      - hluska 10y ago
        Pardon my ignorance, but may I ask a question? The GP mentioned 5 weeks vacation + public holidays. To make my example easier, let's say that I worked in France and decided to take the month of July off (using the 5 weeks vacation). Would I get paid for that vacation? Or is the 5 weeks vacation unpaid?? In Canada, my vacation is paid, so if I take an entire month off, I collect my pay cheques as usual.
gutnor 10y ago
There are other things: * Cheap nursery. * Quality public schools. * Quality food for kids in public education. My bigger cost right now in London is my son. Nursery alone is way more than my rent and the price of renting in London is stupid even compared to Paris.
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  > * Cheap nursery. The problem is the limited number of places. All the persons around me struggle to find a place in nursery for their childrens. > * Quality public schools. It is highly dependent on which school. In lot of public school, it's shit.
morgante 10y ago
I love how people trot out universal healthcare or pensions as a reason to ignore that European salaries are so much lower. With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings. That $100k is more than enough to build up a massive nest egg which will provide for me better than any pension or unemployment insurance would. If you play your cards right, you can be financially independent after about a decade of working in the US tech industry. Your entire working career could be only 10 years. That would be insane to imagine in Europe, yet you think France has better quality of live? You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe. European developers are underpaid. Full stop. You could dramatically improve your financial circumstances by getting a job at a US tech company (though the visa situation makes that challenging).
- user5994461 10y ago
  > You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe. Doubt that. Contracting in London is very profitable. That's possibly the easiest money on the continent.
  - morgante 10y ago
    Sure, contracting in London is "very" profitable but it's still not as profitable as contracting in SV/NYC. It only looks good in comparison because full-time rates are shit. Also, if you're talking about contracting then all the supposed benefits of a better work-life balance or vacation time are out the window.
    - user5994461 10y ago
      Hum. I've seen your name before. I have the feeling we had a similar conversation some time ago over a similar article.
ianderf 10y ago
> The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard So, France could be great to be an employee, but it's horrible for entrepreneurs.
- throwaway1892 10y ago
  Yeah, if you're not a big firm, you'll have a lot of difficulties.

by renaudg 10y ago

otoburb 10y ago

Do you have the option to pay into the French state pension as a non-resident French citizen? For example, in Canada I'm not aware of any mechanism to voluntarily pay into the Canada Pension Plan for a strict Canadian non-resident. This would only be of note if you plan to retire in your original country of origin, in your case France.

pmalynin 10y ago
Canadian here, as far as I know you can't pay into the CPP if you're not working in Canada (I have a friend who is in the exactly that situation). But, that said you can put a lot of money into TFSAs and RRSPs.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- otoburb 10y ago
  >>Canadian here, as far as I know you can't pay into the CPP if you're not working in Canada (I have a friend who is in the exactly that situation) I came to the same conclusion unfortunately. Would gladly pay to contribute to CPP on the assumption that I'll (probably) be retiring back home. Unsure how it is in France, but in Canada (for now), I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today (i.e. supposedly we are paying our future retired selves). This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers. >>But, that said you can put a lot of money into TFSAs and RRSPs. I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, but my understanding is that unless you have contribution room left for your TFSA or RRSP prior to your departure from Canada, there's little point to contribute since the "contributions" will not be recognized as such and hence the tax "benefits" in both cases will also go unrecognized. I think the only exception is for Canadian income (e.g. rental property). Transferring funds into Canadian TFSA/RRSP accounts may be possible, but the CRA will eventually ask for a reckoning unless your friends are willing to roll the dice. Based on personal experience, penalties and interest per year add up quickly.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    > I believe future CPP payouts are based on contributions made today. This is unlike the US social system where current payouts are based on contributions made with today's generation of workers. I think you're conflating the basis for calculating the payouts you will receive, and the sources of payouts. I. e. most government pension schemes are use today's payments for today's pensioners, but will still give you a higher pension if you paid more/longer into the system.
mathieuuu 10y ago
If you are french working in a different country, you can contribute to the french pension plan through the "Caisse des Français de l´etranger" if you want to. However you would still have to pay the Canadian pension plan. There is an agreement between France and several countries including Canada. Once you will retire, if you have worked 10 years in Canada and 30 years in France, then you will get 3/4 of your money from the French Pension plan, and 1/4 from the Canadian one. This agreement works whether you are French or Canadian.

xutopia 10y ago

I can confirm this. I happen to be French and had a consulting firm in France for a couple years in the early 2000s. I was able to charge 90kEUR/year at the time for a mid-level Java programmer. They loved the idea that they could fire the devs at any given time and having Canadian engineers helped them get funding from local VCs.

briandear 10y ago

$130k in the US with paid health insurance, 2-4 weeks of vacation and dramatically lower taxes, vs. $50k in France with more 'benefits' and higher taxes.. Are those extra benefits worth $80k per year? Social charges really crush the ability for French companies to compete. Then with CDIs making it almost impossible to fire anyone, it results in a far less liquid job market. Now there's even talk of actually forcing men to take paternity leave in the name of reducing inequality between men and women in the workplace. I live in France and love it for the most part, but other than my tiny hotel business on the side, I would never consider starting a company here. Even filing the paperwork to form an SAS is arduous. I can incorporate in the US in less than a day and have a bank account opened the next day. In France, even something as simple as getting business-class internet requires a SIRET number for no logical reason. I could offer to pay €1000 per month and without some piece of paper saying you're a business, you can't even get a business phone line. However one really important area that ought not be missed is the amazing pre-k (free or nearly free) childcare. If I were in the US, that would amount to $20k+ per year (I have 3 kids.) That is definitely a plus. In France, you have less disposable income than you would in the US (even after benefits are counted,) however, France does have a great lifestyle if you can afford it. Though I can't say much for Paris -- expensive, somewhat dirty, a dreadful public transport system (try taking kids with strollers on the metro,) along with a very high cost of living and you have a pretty bad place to raise a family. Toulouse, Grenoble, Lyon, Avignon on the other hand -- really great places!

renaudg 10y ago
You make some good points, albeit most of them quite exaggerated. For example "almost impossible to fire anyone" : the up to 1 year trial period is pretty much hire-and-fire at will. After that, it's never too hard to fire a single employee. It's true that mass firings are quite heavily regulated though.
- tostaki 10y ago
  Small correction: the trial period is capped at 8 months.
tostaki 10y ago

KKKKkkkk1 10y ago

In other words, healthy educated engineers with no children who are motivated to work need not apply.

flurdy 10y ago
Or quite the opposite? These engineers may find once migrated (especially after a few years, ie slightly older) that the option of having children not to be burden in such a system, might find the safety net of not worrying about health and insurance increase their ability to focus on being productive instance of simple grinders, especially if well educated and motivated.
- Joky 10y ago
  So, they will pay huge taxes to finance the public education system they didn't benefit, while at the same time repaying their student debt because they had to pay for university in their own country? I don't quite follow the logic...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - wavefunction 10y ago
    If you live in a society, you benefit from its education system even if you didn't attend it, as all the folks who were educated in that society's educational system are the rest of the folks who contribute to the economic system and its health and robustness.
    - Joky 10y ago
      I didn't judge in my comment if it is good or bad to organize a society based on these values. That seems to me to be a bit unrelated to the situation at hand, where you have to move across countries and switch different systems. That fact that you may end-up paying "double" is what I was raising.

erowtom 10y ago

Update : Thanks for the feedbacks ! 1st update: Included mobile phone + Internet 2nd update: Huge update, completly forgot about one tax on the salary.. ----------------------- I'm French, I can give you some more details. I'm a full stack Ruby Developer, and I work at https://www.talent.io https://www.talent.io, the first recruitment platform for developers in Europe. (If you're looking to relocate in Paris, London or Berlin, you know where to look. ) I usually don't comment a lot on HN, but if it can gives people the desire to move in France / Europe to work, this is great for my country / continent. I'm gonna speak with raw cold numbers, for me it speaks more than some random "headlines". Here in Paris, developers are paid between 40K and 90K (there are developers that are far better paid - and unfortunately far less paid-), but this is a large "common" fork I'm giving to you. Those numbers are raw, meaning that you have to remove the tax. Here my own numbers, hoping it can help you imaginate with your current own situation. Note : I'm living with my GF, so I'm gonna divide all "common" expenses. We have equivalent salaries. ----------------------- Salary + flat ----------------------- My raw income last year was appx 45K euros. When you remove the first tax each month, I have 34600 left. I paid appx 2600 to the state in taxes, only for the salary. It's a quite good salary for a junior / mid developer here. (22 years old, 2 years of professionnal experiences in Fullstack Ruby / Rails developer). In Paris, for a 35m2 (365 ft2) with furnitures (meaning full equiped, from the Kitchen to the Bed to the sofa and desks), I paid 1K2 / month, so 14 400 for a year. (Living with my GF, so dividing it by 2 : 650 euros / month / person, so 7800 euros / year / person) You have to add the taxes, which was approximately a half month of rent : 650 (dividing by 2: 325 euros). So in total, I paid to the state for my flate + income taxes 5500 euros. Total net income : 32000 euros / year ----------------------- Common expenses - Insurances - Transportations - Food ----------------------- * Healthcare insurance ~ 40 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (240 / year) ----- This is not the best insurance ever, I could have go for a better one at greater prices. It covers for the basics. I'm young and in good health, I take care of my glasses and my dentition, so To give you an idea, I have to change my glasses every 1.5 year / 2years, the total price of my last bill was 322 euros, my glasses were full covered (with full treatment on lenses), I had to pay from my pocket 50 euros for the spectacle frame. I also had to replace a tooth because it broke at sport, on a 600 euros cost, I only paid 47 euros (going to a private clinic - not public hospital.). From a basic surgery, cost was appx 1000 euros, I didn't paid anything (public hospital) - bad note is that I waited 3 months for the surgery - it was not urgent at all -. Public healthcare in France is overbooked, but it's good. ----- * House insurance ~ 20 euros / month. Nothing to say. (120 euros / year /person) ----- * Transportation (Only counting public transportation, not Uber etc...) here we have the subway, bus, bike, tramway (and soon a boat :o), it costs 75 euros / month, the company pays half for it. (450 euros / year) ----- * Electricity nothing much to say, we pay appx 70 euros / month, so 35 euros / person / month, so 420 euros / person / year I won't talk much about food, because it REALLY depends your habits, if you live alone / with a family. Here for 2, we approximately pay 600 euros / month - We love food. We could have reduced it a little, but we try to eat locally / bio, it costs much more. Per year per person, it's appx 3600 euros / person. ----- * Mobile phone + internet It's quite cheap here. Mobile phone, unlimited phone calls in France (Even in europe I believe) + unlimited text + "unlimited" Internet (4GO / month of data 4G then caped) at "Sosh", I pay 25 euros / month (300 euros / months) Home internet, provider is called "Orange" + television, fiber 500 MBits fully unlimited, I pay 50 euros / month (600 euros / year, 300 euros / year / person) (And it works damn well). ----- total (tl;dr) : In total, last year, I earned 39500 euros, taxes deducted. I paid 3600 (food) + 450 (transportation) + 240 (health insurance) + 120 (house insurance) + 300 (mobile phone) + 300 (Home internet) + 420 (electricity) = 26570 euros net of income after all "life mandatory" stuff. ----- Please please please, do note that I did NOT included all restaurants, clubs, travels, clothings and all "fun" stuff. It really depends on your lifestyle, and I don't even know how much I paid for it. ----------------------- Education It's true, public education is almost free. It costs less than 1K euros / child / year to go to high school (I even think it's way less than that, but IDK since I went to a private school). You can even lower those costs because we do have a lot of helps from the state. When my brother went to a historian school, he paid nothing, and even more, the French state paid him 10K a year to go study (Because he was a damn good student) For my private computer science school (the "42" school of Xavier Niel is a perfect copycat of mine, but free - unfortunately it did not exists at that time), I paid (my parents did) 50K, and this is only for the school (5 years, so appx 10K a year) About the other bullet points @renaudg talked about, I don't have much to say, It's pretty self explanatory. I hope it does help people better evaluate the "cost" of life in France, if I forgot something / you want more informations, please do not hesitate to ask :).

hk__2 10y ago

> * 5 weeks holiday + public holidays In some companies you get even more weeks ("RTTs") to compensate for the hours you do over 35hrs/week. The company I work for gives me the usual 5 weeks plus 3 weeks of RTTs which brings the total to 8 weeks, i.e. almost 2 months per year (!)

user5994461 10y ago
Also means you don't get paid 8 weeks a year. I remember very well when French employers forced me to get more holidays, which destroyed the income I needed to actually afford any holidays at all.
- NamTaf 10y ago
  French employees aren't paid on their standard holidays? It also seems strange that if you're working over the 35/hr week baseline and being compensated for it by extra leave, that you would not be paid during that leave. After all, you're working extra for that time off, so you've essentially just already worked those weeks in advance.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    In accounting terms, your pay is calculated as hourly rate * time working. It's averaged over the year and paid monthly. All the holidays are time not working over the year. So, yes, it is definitely lowering your pay.
    - hluska 10y ago
      Pardon my ignorance, but may I ask a question? The GP mentioned 5 weeks vacation + public holidays. To make my example easier, let's say that I worked in France and decided to take the month of July off (using the 5 weeks vacation). Would I get paid for that vacation? Or is the 5 weeks vacation unpaid?? In Canada, my vacation is paid, so if I take an entire month off, I collect my pay cheques as usual.

gutnor 10y ago

There are other things: * Cheap nursery. * Quality public schools. * Quality food for kids in public education. My bigger cost right now in London is my son. Nursery alone is way more than my rent and the price of renting in London is stupid even compared to Paris.

throwaway1892 10y ago
> * Cheap nursery. The problem is the limited number of places. All the persons around me struggle to find a place in nursery for their childrens. > * Quality public schools. It is highly dependent on which school. In lot of public school, it's shit.

morgante 10y ago

I love how people trot out universal healthcare or pensions as a reason to ignore that European salaries are so much lower. With an American tech salary of $200k/yr, I can pay for all of that (health insurance, student loans, etc.) and still sock away $100k/yr in savings. That $100k is more than enough to build up a massive nest egg which will provide for me better than any pension or unemployment insurance would. If you play your cards right, you can be financially independent after about a decade of working in the US tech industry. Your entire working career could be only 10 years. That would be insane to imagine in Europe, yet you think France has better quality of live? You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe. European developers are underpaid. Full stop. You could dramatically improve your financial circumstances by getting a job at a US tech company (though the visa situation makes that challenging).

user5994461 10y ago
> You mention having more vacation. I know plenty of people who switched to contracting in the US so they could have more time to focus on startups and hobbies. They only work maybe half the year, yet still make more than developers do in Europe. Doubt that. Contracting in London is very profitable. That's possibly the easiest money on the continent.
- morgante 10y ago
  Sure, contracting in London is "very" profitable but it's still not as profitable as contracting in SV/NYC. It only looks good in comparison because full-time rates are shit. Also, if you're talking about contracting then all the supposed benefits of a better work-life balance or vacation time are out the window.
  - user5994461 10y ago
    Hum. I've seen your name before. I have the feeling we had a similar conversation some time ago over a similar article.

ianderf 10y ago

> The difference is that your average engineer in France costs them around 1.5-2.5 times the total take home pay, because of high, compulsory labor taxes. In exchange, employees get as standard So, France could be great to be an employee, but it's horrible for entrepreneurs.

throwaway1892 10y ago
Yeah, if you're not a big firm, you'll have a lot of difficulties.