Country Ratio dev:avg
Netherlands 0.851031639465174
France 0.891326705519369
Canada 0.944941413632355
Finland 1.00083791080905
Australia 1.01779098644302
Germany 1.05075128717033
New Zealand 1.07384561596284
UK 1.18906064209275
Sweden 1.29738400207581
Norway 1.3082871202062
Switzerland 1.31657113498065
Denmark 1.34069094159251
USA 1.48617853958189
Israel 1.85359454758035No, it isn't, but I do think you're right in that I should have used the nominal wages. I found the original article and that does not appear to be purchasing-power adjusted:
https://www.daxx.com/article/it-salaries-software-developer-...
Using the nominal wages gives the below, with France now in the middle of the list:
Country Ratio dev:avg
Australia 0.81
Netherlands 0.85
Canada 0.90
New Zealand 0.92
Finland 0.92
France 0.92
Switzerland 0.93
Norway 1.02
Denmark 1.05
Germany 1.12
UK 1.15
Sweden 1.15
USA 1.49
Israel 1.53
The real problem for startups is the lack of American style VC funding. European startups need to get profitable much earlier than US startups.
Early funding for startups is OKish. You can grow from 0 to 10-50 million, but after that it's better to sell the business to some big international firm, because you really struggle getting smart money that the ability to take the big risk.
Apple has been very good at buying out European startups. They got bargain prices for sleep monitoring, eye tracking, and computer vision startups in the last year.
This is a common refrain, but the reality is that VC is both out of reach and not the right fit for the vast majority of US ventures. Likewise, knowing the number of firms that get VC but will collapse anyway, I often wonder if it is a benefit that in other countries there is a slower, more profit-driven path that would seem to build legitimate companies for the long run rather than vehicles that border on financial engineering in the name of short-term potential success.
It absolutely should not be. It makes no sense to provide high-risk big dollars to majority of anything.
The name "startup" means different things for different people.
Paul Graham definition for startup means salable hyper-growth. Platform economies like Google, Amazon, FB, Twitter, grow trough network effects. The reason why US leads in this new economy is because they have their eye in winning big.
One big hit justifies losing lots of money in 100 mediocre startups or low growth enterprises.
Let's start with a labour budget of $300,000 to hire a lead programmer or other critical person.
France: 41.35% of the gross salary is paid to the Government in payroll taxes, leaving $175,938 paid as income to the employee.
After income taxes, $90,167 is left for the employee to spend.
That employee then wants to spend their entire salary on flat-screen TVs? They have an effective spending power of $75,139 after 20% VAT.
Government taxes account for about 75% of this labour budget! As you can imagine, this creates a huge incentive for tax evasion.
The US, for the same original budget:
4.09% is paid as payroll taxes, leaving $287,717 as income.
After (Californian) income taxes, $178,773 is left for the employee to spend. 7.25% sales tax then gives $166,300 finally.
So, an extra $91,161 ends up with the American worker (much more if they are married to a zero-income spouse and move out of California). Sure, you have to pay things like property taxes, 401K contributions, health insurance in the US - but would those account for $91,161?
Europe needs to completely scrap its payroll taxes and replace them with income taxes. Employees should not have to pay anything merely for hiring an employee, as it places a disincentive on using labour. On a global level, it also makes France uncompetitive - American companies hiring globally will be much more attractive.
Sources: http://www.uhy.com/employers-now-pay-average-employment-cost... https://www.francetaxcalculator.com/?salary=149508
In France it's the same, but here's a major difference once you add kids to the equation:
Each kid of a couple counts the same as "0.5 zero-income spouse", up to 3 kids. After the 3rd kid (or if the kid has handicap), they count the same as "1 full zero-income spouse"
So for a couple with one spouse with a salary of X , one spouse without job, and 2 kids, the taxes would be calculated as if there was 3 persons making X/3 each, instead of 2 people making X/2 in the US. Given that the tax brackets are even more progressive than in the US, the impact seem huge.
And that's why income taxes revenue pale in comparison with payrol taxes. Presidential candidates can claim to lower those every time they want better polls because they know it is not where the money is coming from.
2017:
- income taxes = 78 billions
- business taxes = 60 billions
- VAT = 203 billions
- social security = 480 billionsNot to mention, low salaries garantees that not much international talent will relocate in France
If you're senior, in France, you can get a fairly good salary as a developer. There is definitely no glass ceiling at 40k; you can get more than 50k easily, and above 70k if you have can find the right company with a good fit.
Comparison with SF is hard because it's such a weird place in terms of housing, US healthcare etc. So if you compare to Germany or UK, you still make less in France, but the gap is much smaller than 10 years ago and it's still contracting.
That started before Macron actually. You can find jobs in well-funded startups (instead of the starving startups of 10 years ago happy to raise a million), and more and more international companies (US and others) are now recruiting engineers in France.
Note that if you cross the sea to the UK, London. The salary is double and it's in British pound.