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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 th

by 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.

by forty 3y ago

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.