Only the employee's visa requires a masters degree. All the big names you dropped were people that never intended to be employees.
I'm not sure what the problem is.
> It's just making France look worse.
This is just silly.
It doesn't make sense in French to look for less than a master level, whereas the standard is the bachelor in the USA.
"Everyone" has a master in France. The curriculum is 5 years straight in France (either 2 or 5 years). There isn't really such a thing as a 3-4 years bachelor level in engineering.
Some numbers: 60% of programmers have at least a master in France, less than 30% in the USA.
> "This is just silly."
It's worse than silly. It's a baked in design flaw that literally would have prevented the foreign successes the program is in theory trying to replicate. It is silly to heavily credentialize an industry focused on doing new things, but it's also destructive.
The US has some enormous hurdles related to immigration, but it also has a network. Once someone is looking at the world outside SV/SF, there are many other places in the world trying to attract startups. Some of them have both stronger tech scenes and less regressive (though I still wouldn't say visionary) immigration requirements.
Why would a founder pick someplace like France, instead of South Korea or Australia where they could have a path to citizenship and a much easier time hiring talent?
It's sad, there is so much myths and fantasies around those specific guys.
To the best of knowledge any of them would have needed a visa to go to France, and one of them did in fact live in Canada and then the US on visas before naturalising and starting three separate billion dollar companies along the way.
special visa doesn't mean no visa.
myths and fantasies are not about their degrees but more on the public image we have of us who do more harm than good in my opinion.
"Rather than placing tech leaders on a pedestal, we should put their successes in context..." [1]
I would never advise someone to drop school without a strong family background, a solid bubble opportunity or just luck. And I don't like schools, for me they are clearly not the best places to learn, just to network.
[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/539861/techs-enduring-gre...