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As someone who runs an incubator in Paris but lives in Silicon Valley, let me add my 2cents: look at what cost an employee in France An engineer in France is
by alain94040 16y ago
As someone who runs an incubator in Paris but lives in Silicon Valley, let me add my 2cents:
look at what cost an employee in France
An engineer in France is way cheaper than an engineer in Silicon Valley. Taxes on salary are indeed higher, but the base salary is so much lower that in the end, France is cheaper. To give you an idea, a basic salary in Silicon Valley is $100K, the equivalent in France would be below 50K€. Those cost the employer about $120K and 75K€ respectively, so you can see which is cheaper.
On top of that, France has a pretty good tax incentive for R&D engineers. You can almost get all your money back as the employer, it's frankly crazy (it's called CIR). But nice for startups.
The main issue in France is the complexity of navigating all the government aid. It's a patchwork of measures that don't fit well with one another...
- cdavid 16y agoThe complexity of the bureaucracy is indeed a bummer from what I could see when I worked in small companies. One company I worked for lost a lot of money just by not getting in time some forms for some tax/"charges" reduction. Concerning the cost of an employee: one thing to keep in mind is that once you paid your employee, he already got his basic retirement and health plan in place, contrary to the US and pretty much everywhere else outside western europe. As an example, I earn more here in Japan than in Paris, the cost of living in Japan is certainly cheaper than in Paris, and taxes are low but in the end once I factor out the cost of health insurance, retirement, and maybe soon sparing money for children's education, France is really not so bad. I actually know several friends who came back to France after earning "so much money" in the US, especially once they had kids.