What are salaries like for mid-senior level software engineers working in tech companies in Paris? What are the tax rates i.e pay after taxes?
Remove 25% of that to have an idea of your net salary. (Those 25% are mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. All of those are mandatory)
Expect to pay between 1 and 2 months net salary in yearly incomes taxes.
Monthly gross income: $10000
Federal tax $1494
Medicare $144
Social Security $616
CA Income Tax $751
CA Disability $89
Pretax deductions:
Medical $56
Dental $5
Vision $2
Monthly take-home amount: $6843 (68.4% of gross)
Is that total cost to employer for that employee? Or are there additional expenses that are not considered part of employee gross income but instead fall under "employer pays for them" category?
https://framework.gusto.com/the-true-cost-to-hire-an-employe...
Two random results pulled from a search:
http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/califo...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/millionaires-consider-l...
edit: s/mo/year :D
Basically if you're without any dependent, you may not see it as worth it, but once you have a family it really starts paying off.
The education system you're referring to is not free at all. The very substantial income taxes in France pay for it.
This is really an outlier. The US average for employee premiums is $104/month for individuals and $392/month for families.
I pay $0 for health insurance, for example, and what I get is perfectly good.
>I have a brother that works in a pretty normal job earning $42,000 per year (not an outsized salary in the US), he pays $27 per month for his health insurance through his employer, and it's a nice plan. That isn't unusual in the US
My point is that most people in 'pretty normal jobs' pay considerably more for healthcare.
That's like my whole point… You'll effectively get less money than in the US, but you're subsidising a fraternal economy which you enjoy too.
US universities are free. The money you don't pay in taxes covers the cost.
What evidence would you hold up to suggest the French fraternal economy system is the one to mimic? As opposed to Sweden, Germany, or the UK, which have all produced superior results the last few decades with different approaches from that of France.
What???
See for example: Sweden's economic deregulation and lowering of taxes, which prompted their significant economic boom.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0803/international-invest-...
You obviously don't have the slightest idea of what you're talking about, but you don't care, you keep talking and talking, the only thing that matters it to end with "Murica is better than anything else".
"Superior results" are, to be fair, quite debatable:
- UK got an edge via fiscal dumping, hurting its neighbours. This is also what Ireland is doing now, which really gives "good results", but is hurting all other EU countries (Luxembourg some the same, some other countries as well).
- Germany has a lower unemployment rate, but with way more precarious working conditions for many workers.
- I really don't know about Sweden so I won't speak about it, but I'm going to read the piece you linked, it looks interesting.
I could also say that France has superior results, if you look at other metrics:
- productivity per hour: the USA is #1 with a very very small edge over Germany and France, both #2. The UK, Japan are far behind
- Gini coefficient! This one is very dear to me. We're doing pretty well, and our evolution over 10 years has been better than most of our neighbours[1]
I believe that the biggest problem we're facing nowadays (and have been facing for a couple decades) is that increased globalisation allows companies to go "shopping" for their fiscal system, and put countries in competition. This creates a drive to get lower tax rates than your neighbours, which is a bad spiral and in the end deeply hurts countries (however, if you happen to disagree with that, then I'm afraid we have fundamentally different world view, and I don't really have the energy or will to debate if further, sorry). Ireland is a prime example of this.
> why would the "French fraternal" system be worthy of being copied given its weak results?
My goal is not for it to be copied a bit everywhere but, really, for it to be considered with fairness, and not just shunned and mocked because of propaganda and preconceptions.
I actually have a in mind couple great pieces I'd like to share on those topics; unfortunately they're in French. I'll look a bit around for potential translations.
1: some data: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/tgm/table.do?tab=table&language...
Lots of evidence to support that, delightfully summarized in "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett, among others.
That's not even close to cover the same things.
On top of that, I have to pay for health insurance, deductibles, and retirement savings, which I assume my French counterpart wouldn't have to separately pay for.
Life -- not work. Working there was a nightmare. The pay is low, and while you can live on it, you're not really saving. For a while I was part of the startup community there and while there are many great programs from the government, there is a bit of a local mafia deciding things. Investors were so unsophisticated that technology itself seemed to scare them.
All-in-all, if I could have made it work, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Living there is simply a small piece of heaven on earth. There's just no way to viably work there that I could find.
And I am happy to be leaving soon for job in London paying 85 kGBP gross.
65 k€ = 3358 € per months (on "12 mois") after all taxes, if single living alone.
85 k£ = 4712 £ per month, after all taxes.
Also, 65 k€ is a fairly good end of career in France whereas 85 k£ is a good middle experience in London (and you can get bonus, pension and perks on top).
That said, if you're thinking of dropping £1500 on a 1 bed you'll have no problem IMO. I was paying £1400 for a 2 bedroom with garden and huge living room in Leytonstone only a few months back. As long as you're not planning on living in Mayfair or Kensington that's a nice budget to work with.
The French culture on this is very different, people simply don't talk about money and salary.
I found a starting salary survey in a business magazine that indicated graduates of the top 5 engineering schools are getting about 40-55K/year
But that was not the point, the point was that people talk about "raw", or "after taxes", while it does not mean the same. In France when they talk about "income after taxes" (~23% salary taxes), it is before the equivalent of US Federal+State taxes. These ~23% are about "social contribution" (mandatory healthcare, retirement, unemployment, etc.). Only then, the income taxes are computed on what remains, depending on your family situation (having children impact a lot in France compared to the US). For a single person it can be up to ~ two-months salary.
(City taxes exist there as well after that).
I hope their system proves sustainable in the long run... I wish I had a way to participate in it (I could apply for the visa, I suppose), but it would be difficult for my US academic wife to break into French academia[2] at a suitable level.
[1] In a bad year, we're talking $13K in deductibles for a family of four on an average insurance plan.
[2] Now that I think about it, she studies French domestic politics. Hmmm...
35-40k for master's degree from everywhere else.
If you don't have a master's just forget about it ^^
If a French employer tells you they'll pay you 100k€ annually (just for the sake of the example), you can expect to receive 75k€. (25%, mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. Mandatory)
Then, if you input those 75k in this tool, it will tell you what you can expect to pay as income taxes. In the case of 75k, 17 218€.
Looking at what StackOverflow's Jobs tab spits out right now, I see: software engineer Java 38k-60k; software engineer Python 40k-55k; DevOps engineer (not your idea, I guess? there's a number of these) 40k-55k; developer for 3D applications 38k-48k; ...
Then there is one for a senior Java engineer for 47k-59k and right above another one for a senior Java engineer for 60k-120k.
These numbers are gross. Based on other posts, deduct 35-40% to account for things taken out of your paycheck (including health care) plus the income tax and rental tax you have to pay after. Rent for a small apartment in Paris starts about 1000 Euros per month and rises steeply.
My 35-40% figure includes the income tax and the rental tax. You must be in a crazy high bracket if you get 38% deducted every month. On my last pay slip, it's 17.5%, but I get paid around the lower end of the salary brackets I posted above.
> VAT is 22% on most products.
20%
> Gas is expensive (highways too!!!).
Maybe. I prefer spending my money on better things than a car.
Alten is a technology and engineering consulting company, which means, in the context of the French market, that when a company, need a particular profile (like java dev) to staff a position for a set amount of time (like for the expected duration of a project), they'll contract Alten for a developer, java, for x months.
Does it track market rates? I've worked for a company before that took fresh grads, and relied strongly on them never entering the market for themselves and realising what market rate was.
The problem is knowing the market rate.
Do you have a period of time you are contracted to work? If you can make friends in the Paris dev community, you might be able to find out how good/bad your pay is.
And I'm too much of a lazy ass to look for another job. Also I have few reason right now to seek a higher salary.
They're know for paying shit, and there are arrangements between agencies to not compete with each other.
Actual salaries at these places have been on a slow downward trend for many years.
Looks one you're one of them if that's what you've got? ;)
The schools are good, but they are also going to be very hard on your kids unless they are very young. Homework volume is high, and my own cynical view is that at least part of it is training kids for the experience of dealing with the difficulties of filling out lots of paperwork and dealing with the French civil service.
Source: Worked for two years in a French overseas territory.
The indigent and extremely poor have special programs whereby they are exempted from this. *You can buy additional insurance that will increase the coverage to 100% and/or remove the need to pre-pay. That comes with the tradeoff of having to use the provider network that the insurance company has (a la US healthcare).
It's. Not. Free.
Do you pay to use the highway, or do you drive on the highway for free?
If you can use a service without handing over money for the use of that service, it's reasonable to call it "free".
Yes, because part of my paycheck goes towards that. And every time I fill up. You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free." Politicians love to exploit this phenomenon for maximum effect.
You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over
money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free."
This is important, because it means that the service is independent of income. I don't need income to drive on the highway. I don't need income to have secure healthcare. Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
Don't need gas?
> Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
And they continue to operate so long as there are enough people who _actually pay for these services_. Maybe you don't fall into that category, fine. But there are a lot of people who do, and it all comes straight out their paycheck. It is not free for them by any stretch of the imagination.
More importantly, according to your definition, nothing is ever free. If I tell you that you can pick a fruit from a tree in a national park, you will probably use a ridiculous argument that national parks are protected, therefore somebody pays for the maintenance, etc.
So no offense, but please don't be an idiot, and by that I mean "someone who acts in a self-defeating or significant counterproductive way."