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So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with la

So you say the best thing about France is that we can hire someone else than French people. And you are kind of right: We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference (something like a rest of revenge against the rich), and make them simply not possible, hindering the ability to build megacorporations. Apple wouldn’t have been possible here. We simply halt growth at median size and earn a good second spot on the market. That was true at the time of Dailymotion (second of Youtube), that is true in the times of AI.

alexey-salmin 3y ago
Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.
- eastbound 3y ago
  By focussing on immigration, you missed the main point. I’ll simplify as: French people eat the rich.
  - forty 3y ago
    It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so don't worry.
    - pjerem 3y ago
      I agree with you, and French people have nothing against riches as long as they don’t try to evade taxation. We have plenty of rich people who just contribute to the social system and live their life. What French people don’t like is when elites try to steal our social system. However your example isn’t really fair to be honest : Arnault and Bettencourt are really not self-made families, they are both from historical bourgeoisie. But we do have our fair share of new millionaires from the startup ecosystem.
      - homarp 3y ago
        But Niel is a good example on how you can get rich in France.
        pjerem 3y ago
        Yes, but that’s also the only one self made billionaire I can think of so that make him more an exception than an example. Granted I limit myself to people who created successful businesses with real added value and mostly satisfied customers : businesses that are positive for the society.
      - forty 3y ago
        Yes, I was just illustrating that we don't eat the riches, it's indeed not good examples of becoming rich in France (though the truth is our traditional "social elevator" is being broken more and more as free public schools are left in a worse and worse state by politicians who send all their kids to fancy private schools, which makes it harder and harder to move to the upper class)
    - sdenton4 3y ago
      I met the head of one of the largest French corporations once, and was pretty shocked at the degree of elitism, hierarchy, and concern about prestigious schools... SV is bottom up - you hire smart people and let them collaborate freely. The typical French approach is too silo the people from prestigious schools from the rest of the organization, so the 'smart' ones can work on ideas that the rest will implement. It's a great way to limit the understanding of the designers (no hands in the mud) and limit the total utility of design. You end up solving the problems of the elites, only, since no one else is in the room.
      - forty 3y ago
        It is true in some fields and in large corporations and especially in former public and semi public corporations. However in computer engineering startups for example, solving technical tests and/or a nice GitHub can open you the same doors as an engineering degree. There are very elite engineering schools (mostly l'école polytechnique and the ENS which in kind of another beast) which are so selective that people from there are IMO in a different league from other engineers (not necessarily in a good way btw)
    - eastbound 3y ago
      I’m saying the opposite of “migrants are bad”. I’m saying the French culture is not pro-business (it’s generally about bullying the locally-richer, as a proxy for the real elites, which is misguided), and the best thing about French culture is that you can create a company here and hire none of them, which is what the top comment said.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    lol, no ! That’s a myth. Ultra-rich and rich people are as powerful in France than anywhere else. The myth "French people eat the rich" probably comes from the fact that our system discourages social upheaval. It’s not the French people but the elites in power who don’t like people being rich if they are not from the same cast (prestigious schools). French people only eat the richest when they want to steal our social benefits, and even that is becoming more and more rare since most media are now owned by billionaires and are spreading neoliberal narrative.
yobbo 3y ago
The problem is product/market/financing; not in personnel or organisation. Airbus and Dassault are doing fine because they have well defined stable markets and (probably) government funding.
- maigret 3y ago
  This doesn't fit LVMH which had tech-like growth in the last decade.
  - Rinzler89 3y ago
    Veblen goods aren't like tech products.
forty 3y ago
The issue is not that Apple is not possible here, but more that it is possible there and we allow them to operate normally in Europe (though things are starting to change on this front, as more laws are targeting them). Corporations that are so large have financial power that can threaten democracies, and have an overall negative impact on economy and innovation by destroying/preventing fair competition, and we should treat them as such threat/problem.
andrepd 3y ago
>We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference Yeah why would anyone dislike the idea of a run of the mill techbro making 50x more money than the janitor. I also don't see what this observation has to do with hiring immigrants or not.
- eastbound 3y ago
  Immigrants do not care about the presence of rich people. French people do (a lot), and they’re systematic in getting rid of them. So French people are kind of undesirable when you build a company in France and the best thing about France is, indeed, that you can hire people from somewhere else.

alexey-salmin 3y ago

Silicon valley was largely built by immigrants too. I believe in this concept, people who have enough determination to move are already above some potential energy threshold. And this threshold despite being relatively low still cuts off a huge part of local population who didn't have to pass it. I've seen it at work both for internal and international moves.

eastbound 3y ago
By focussing on immigration, you missed the main point. I’ll simplify as: French people eat the rich.
- forty 3y ago
  It's very possible to be very rich in France. It's not the result of random luck that both the richest man and the richest woman in the world were french not that long ago (Bernard Arnaud and Liliane Bettencourt). You should not buy the right wing discourse that in France rich people are too taxed and they flee blabla. This is just a way to push their right wing agenda. I'm myself quite rich and I'm doing well, so don't worry.
  - pjerem 3y ago
    I agree with you, and French people have nothing against riches as long as they don’t try to evade taxation. We have plenty of rich people who just contribute to the social system and live their life. What French people don’t like is when elites try to steal our social system. However your example isn’t really fair to be honest : Arnault and Bettencourt are really not self-made families, they are both from historical bourgeoisie. But we do have our fair share of new millionaires from the startup ecosystem.
    - homarp 3y ago
      But Niel is a good example on how you can get rich in France.
      - pjerem 3y ago
        Yes, but that’s also the only one self made billionaire I can think of so that make him more an exception than an example. Granted I limit myself to people who created successful businesses with real added value and mostly satisfied customers : businesses that are positive for the society.
    - forty 3y ago
      Yes, I was just illustrating that we don't eat the riches, it's indeed not good examples of becoming rich in France (though the truth is our traditional "social elevator" is being broken more and more as free public schools are left in a worse and worse state by politicians who send all their kids to fancy private schools, which makes it harder and harder to move to the upper class)
  - sdenton4 3y ago
    I met the head of one of the largest French corporations once, and was pretty shocked at the degree of elitism, hierarchy, and concern about prestigious schools... SV is bottom up - you hire smart people and let them collaborate freely. The typical French approach is too silo the people from prestigious schools from the rest of the organization, so the 'smart' ones can work on ideas that the rest will implement. It's a great way to limit the understanding of the designers (no hands in the mud) and limit the total utility of design. You end up solving the problems of the elites, only, since no one else is in the room.
    - forty 3y ago
      It is true in some fields and in large corporations and especially in former public and semi public corporations. However in computer engineering startups for example, solving technical tests and/or a nice GitHub can open you the same doors as an engineering degree. There are very elite engineering schools (mostly l'école polytechnique and the ENS which in kind of another beast) which are so selective that people from there are IMO in a different league from other engineers (not necessarily in a good way btw)
  - eastbound 3y ago
    I’m saying the opposite of “migrants are bad”. I’m saying the French culture is not pro-business (it’s generally about bullying the locally-richer, as a proxy for the real elites, which is misguided), and the best thing about French culture is that you can create a company here and hire none of them, which is what the top comment said.
- pjerem 3y ago
  lol, no ! That’s a myth. Ultra-rich and rich people are as powerful in France than anywhere else. The myth "French people eat the rich" probably comes from the fact that our system discourages social upheaval. It’s not the French people but the elites in power who don’t like people being rich if they are not from the same cast (prestigious schools). French people only eat the richest when they want to steal our social benefits, and even that is becoming more and more rare since most media are now owned by billionaires and are spreading neoliberal narrative.

yobbo 3y ago

The problem is product/market/financing; not in personnel or organisation. Airbus and Dassault are doing fine because they have well defined stable markets and (probably) government funding.

maigret 3y ago
This doesn't fit LVMH which had tech-like growth in the last decade.
- Rinzler89 3y ago
  Veblen goods aren't like tech products.

forty 3y ago

The issue is not that Apple is not possible here, but more that it is possible there and we allow them to operate normally in Europe (though things are starting to change on this front, as more laws are targeting them). Corporations that are so large have financial power that can threaten democracies, and have an overall negative impact on economy and innovation by destroying/preventing fair competition, and we should treat them as such threat/problem.

andrepd 3y ago

>We have a thing against companies with large high-low salary difference Yeah why would anyone dislike the idea of a run of the mill techbro making 50x more money than the janitor. I also don't see what this observation has to do with hiring immigrants or not.

eastbound 3y ago
Immigrants do not care about the presence of rich people. French people do (a lot), and they’re systematic in getting rid of them. So French people are kind of undesirable when you build a company in France and the best thing about France is, indeed, that you can hire people from somewhere else.