As soon as French salaries come ANYWHERE CLOSE to similar salaries in London or the US or even Berlin, then maybe I'd consider it. France just isn't competitive on the salary front, hence the brain drain.
When I moved the the UK, my first salary was 44000 GBP/y, so that was bringing me around 2500 GBP a month, /post taxes/ (PAYE).
I could not believe my EYES when I saw my payslip... These 12000FF were the equivalent of around 7000FF (post tax) so by crossing the channel, I multiplied my pay by easily 3.5. And I had a great time at that company, despite my pretty accented english. Of course life was generally more expensive, but /nowhere/ near 3.5 times more expensive.
Of course, income might have levelled up since, but since then, I've had 15 years of working for the best companies in the industry (ie, worldwide names), increased my experience and income, and all of that with minimum red tape. I created my own LTD company with just 240 GBP almost zero bureaucracy; you can pretty much calculate your tax bills in your head too.
I love it. I'd never go back, I'd never had dreamed of the stuff I have achieved here during that time, when I was still living in france.
Of course, there are downsides, it's a lot closer to the US in the fact you need to handle your own pension strategy, healthcare etc, but for people who have a drive and will to do stuff, it's a LOT easier to get things done here.
- no pension for your retirement (you have to save)
- prohibitive health care costs even with insurance
- prohibitive higher education costs, and even for younger kids if you don't go the public school route
- vacation policies up to the employer (can be ok as a software engineer though, but definitely not up to what you'd get in France)
- maternity leaves up to the employer
All in all, sure I have more money than when I was in France, but my quality of life is not significantly better. I can afford more stuff, but that's about it, and I'm not sure it's still true once you have a family.
And in general no safety nets, you have to build your own. You can be fired at will in a lot of states.
My biggest gripes with France are:
- most of the interesting tech jobs are in Paris. I don't like Paris (it's personal, I just hated living in Paris).
- absurd tech consulting companies (ssii, 90% of them exist solely to make up for how hard it is to [hf]ire in France)
- management vs engineering: engineers are under compensated compared to managers, a brilliant engineer has to become a manager at some point to evolve in their careers. Companies like to pretend that they have a management and a tech track, but you're almost always better off taking the management track. This can be somewhat true in some industries in the US, but it's not as prevalent as it is in France.
To a twenty-something however, pension & healthcare don't seem like very compelling arguments compared with just being paid 80% more for the same job. The only thing that has kept me in Paris until now is that all my friends live here, but the London salaries attraction is getting stronger every month.