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Comment by dnomad | Hacker News Reader

People like to make a big deal of France's employment laws like there are some extraordinary overwhelming problem that businesses must struggle to overcome. This is silly. France is the 5th largest economy in the world. Finding highly educated, hard-working engineers is straightforwards thanks to the coordination between the government employment agencies and the excellent universities. Just like in America or anywhere else if you're engaged in high-tech work you're going to vet your potential employees to make sure there's culture and skills fit. And in the worst case scenario you need to fire somebody there are several agencies who will help you "transition" people out of the company. In the end the employment laws are not a big issue for most companies and certainly not an issue for most startups and small businesses under 10 people.

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As a french developer with a 10+ years career, I second that. I've also been a CTO, so I'm well aware of the employer point of view.

I've seen many people worrying about not being able to fire people once hired. But what I've seen in facts are only two people needing firing, and it was done without any problem. What I saw incredibly more often is company getting into panic because their good developers would leave. It's not firing that is hard, it's retaining.

As a developer in France, and to compare to OP of this thread: I got fired because I created a company without telling my company. So I have both views in this matter. I got fired because there was a clause of "non-concurrence", but the market focus was different, geographic focus was different, all different except for doing tech. I brought it to court, it's ongoing.

Why did they do it? Because they were downsizing in the region (we went from 100 employees 6 years ago to 3 currently). So claiming I created that company to damage them, they pay 0€ as opposed to ~20000€. Now, make it times 100 and you got a non trivial amount of money even for a relatively big company. People were constantly "encouraged" to leave, benefits cut, comité d'entreprise dissolved they day we hit 49 employees, they accounted losses from other branches so we didn't get profit sharing either, and I know quite a few cases like mine with a variety of wonky excuses.

Now, in my own company I don't have a salary. Can't afford it, it's so insanely expensive to pay a salary, we're talking each month you pay total twice and a half as much as the employee sees BEFORE TAX. We don't hire people, we hire other companies and freelancers to do the job, then take dividends. There's no other way unless you're a cash flow workhorse.

Also, Paris might be different, but here all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding. It's just so expensive that even cities with significantly higher wages are cheaper.

Sorry to hear about your abusive firing, wish you success.

> all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding

Are you sure this was related to the cost of employees? As pointed in the article, London is the historical tech hub in europe, so moving to London after funding can have many reasons.

You're right though, having employees is really expansive. I'm afraid it's not just a France problem, though :) It costs you double than what employee gets pre-tax, but all in all it's not more expansive than in other countries. In US, a good dev salary is $100k a year (€85k).

EDIT: for non french people, a good dev salary in France is €45k, so it may cost at most and roughly double than that, but you have a lot of tax cut you can take advantage of to reduce it

> Are you sure this was related to the cost of employees?

Not completely sure; the best case I know is of a company where one of the founders told me such thing. It is a very technically advanced and polished ride sharing app, made to solve very particular problems in this region, investors had a look at the product, at their books, and offered 2M/year for 3 years on condition of moving it to Berlin or Sofia (Bulgaria, don't ask me why).

Actually, I double checked (can't edit anymore), the total cost is the double of net salary, not brut salary. Employer taxes are 43% of the brut salary.

Bottom line : a good dev salary of €45k costs about €65k, before any tax reduction.

> we're talking each month you pay total twice and a half as much as the employee sees BEFORE TAX.

I'm in Paris and here how my salaries break down:

Currently I'm at ~50K a year "Brut" (before taxes on the employee side), which means ~35K a year "Net" ("go home" salary).

I'm costing ~75K per year to my employer in term of salary (before taxes on the employer side).

My other taxes are around 6K per year.

I'm an SRE/software engineer with ~8 years experience.

I'm not sure ~75k is that expensive compared to other European countries, let alone Silicon Valley salaries.

> People like to make a big deal of France's employment laws like there are some extraordinary overwhelming problem that businesses must struggle to overcome.

For small start-ups these problems can be debilitating. For large companies they're a non-issue, they can afford it. But when you're somewhere between 10 and 20 employees this can be a real problem. To pretend there is no problem is causing the problem to persist. Source: know a lot of French start-ups, have seen more than one struggling with letting go of people that do not perform once outside of their trial period.

The size of France's economy has nothing to do with any of this. What is telling is the average pay of very good French developers, which is a small fraction of what they get abroad.

> And in the worst case scenario you need to fire somebody there are several agencies who will help you "transition" people out of the company

Whaaa? As a fellow european, this sounds too bizarre to be true.

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