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Exactly. I've worked both in France and the US. My salary was indeed double in the US. But with everything factored in, it was not really different salary-wise. Also, I have much more free time in France which is very important for me. I really loved the US for the whole living abroad experience and would go back in a heartbeat for this reason, but my quality of life is better in France (not in Paris though). EDIT: (I also didn't have to pay anything for my education.) I'm a bit tired of those articles that announce a brain drain because France is supposedly so unfriendly to talented people or entrepreneurs. We live in a global world now and it would be a shame not to experience living in other countries. Doesn't mean that France is doomed to bankrupt because our economy isn't as liberal as it is in the US for instance.

I don't know about 'unfriendly' but these appear to be the numbers:

"The French consulate in London estimates between 300,000 and 400,000 French citizens live in the British capital" which compares to city populations as follows:

    Paris - 2.3m
    Marseille - 859,000
    Lyon - 488,000
    Toulouse - 447,000
    Nice - 344,000

whereas "20,500 of the 135,000 expat Brits in the country live in or close to Paris".

The 2011 Census showed that there were 66,654 Londoners born in France. The numbers from the consulate were completely made up.

Those numbers don't prove anything except that London is more appealing or open to the French than Paris to the Brits. Doesn't mean that France most skillful workers and entrepreneurs are persecuted and they feel the urge to flee their country. There are many things that could explain this disparity.

Maybe it's because Brits have much more trouble to learn French than French have to learn English.

You forgot to add the unemployment allowance and paid retirement, which are a huge benefit. In particular in the tech scene, the unemployment allowance means that you can be paid up to 80% of your previous salary for almost two years (… way to seed startups!).

All this plus what parent poster mentioned are what we call the "deferred salary", it's hard to evaluate precisely but in now way it's negligible.

Also I don't know in which Parisian university you went, but I bet that it would be a lot more than $5000/year to get an equivalent "service" in the US.

You need to have been fired for that - you won't get the unemployment benefits if you quit your job. On the other hand, unemployment can be a cushion for employees of a failed startup.

I don't know if founders of failed startups can get the unemployment though.

The rules have changed a bit a few years ago. It is now possible to negotiate a separation with the employer and still get the benefits of unemployment (sorry I don't have the details in mind). It was part of a set of changes intended to make the French job market a bit more flexible.

Then I can guarantee that as a co-founder of a start-up you can get unemployment benefits, as I've been in this situation.

That's not true. To be eligible for the unemployment benefits you must not break your contract with your employer. That is, you can leave if you respect the terms of the contract.

It's unclear. It says here [0] that in principle you can't get unemployment benefit if you leave your job on your own, although there are exception to that, mainly if you leave your job for family reason (your partner got an opportunity in a different geographical area), or if you experimented unprofessional behavior at your previous company, such as sexual harassment.

In the link I gave, it says that you can get unemployment if you leave to create your own company, but here [1] it says that if you leave to create your own company and it doesn't take off, you will be able to get unemployment benefit ("Démission pour reprise ou création entreprise : Et, si pour des raisons qui ne sont pas de votre fait cette nouvelle activité s’arrête, vous pourrez alors récupérer le cas échéant votre droit à des indemnités de chômage.").

I am a French expat so my knowledge of this might be a bit off, but I am still interested in that subject.

[0] sorry, in French: http://www.toobusiness.com/portail/conseil/loi-juridique/all...

[1] still in French: http://allocation-chomage.fr/demission-chomage-pole-emploi/

Sorry for the late reply S4M.

I think there is a confusion between "leaving your job on your own" and leaving in a consensual way with your employer.

Most of the time, when you decide to leave, you make a departure plan with your employer. If your employer agree with your decision, you generally leave after 3 month or so (depending on the terms of the contract).

You can then ask for you unemployment benefits.

For me it's very ambiguous and I would really check it before leaving my job if I was planning to use unemployment benefit to finance a startup. What are your sources?

Source : Years of employment. +

http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/particuliers/F19708.xhtml

Université Orsay Paris-Sud XI, ranked as the best university in France in the Shanghai rankings in 2011 (doesn't mean it's an absolute best, but still somewhat of an indicator). So yeah, rather top shelf.

I don´t know in France, but in Spain unemployment benefits have quite a few catches:

- You must be fired (if you just walk out you are not entitled).

- There is an absolute cap, regardless of your previous salary (little more than 1000 EUR)

- You "earn" days of unemployment as you work (one day for each 3/4 days of work, I don´t remember exactly) up to two years.

I can´t say I disagree with any of those: in the end, it´s supposed to be a temporary support while you find a new job, not paid vacations.

Indeed, and the children make a big difference. There's a lot of support related to raising kids in France, and as you point out the cost of education is widely different.

When I considered staying in the Silicon Valley ~15 years ago I looked into this a bit --- rough assessment, not detailed study. It seemed at the time that with up to a single kid SV was more interesting money-wise, but with 2 kids France became more attractive again. As an inexperienced foreigner I may have missed some cost factor for SV, and the sky-rocketing cost of education in the US may give a different result today.

In the end I came back to France for reasons unrelated to money: there's just no place like home ;)

Wrt 1. Are the numbers in the article not before taxes (including the income tax withheld by the employer)?

In general the cost of living in United States is lower than in Europe. Not higher. Even when you compare the hotspots (like New York to London).

Almost every European country have payroll taxes, sometimes going up into the 15%-20% range, and those are rarely counted as part of income (the exception tends to be libertarians on an anti-tax crusade...). Withheld income tax is a different matter - that would definitively be counted.

However California has a state payroll tax that isn't much out of line with many European countries, so I don't that part affects the salary difference that much (I've not bothered to look up what the French payroll tax rates are).

Note that based on those numbers Paris is "cheap" when compared even to "nearby" European cities like London.

>> For that kind of quality, I would have easily paid something like $5000 or more in the States.

like $50000 or more in the States.

You missed a '0'. FTFY

> 5000$

way more, and you have to buy textbooks as well.