Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

As a French person who lives in SF and has gone through FAANGs and startups, I saw a few things that might be of interest:

- In France, people often complain about the cost to hire, and how hard it is to get rid of an employee once you hire one. While most employees like these labor laws that are supposed to protect them, I would guess a number of employers are annoyed by it and end up hiring mostly contractors.

- A lot of good engineers end up in large employers that are working on a lot of government money. Think airbus, tales, safran, etc. These places are quite depressing, far from any big city, and tend to innovate in non-directly-user-oriented products.

- The hustling, and overworking culture that's extremely prevalent in the bay (people don't stay up late, work hard most of the week, mostly talk about work) is not really a thing in France. I once heard "people in France work to live, and people in the US live to work" and I totally agree with it. Hell, my childhood friends back in France get an insane number of holidays compared to people here in the US. (Some of them are forced to take 3 consecutive weeks every year, on top of their other PTOs.)

- A lot of large companies/employers are also old families that got rich and have completely horrible/racist management and treat developers like low labor. Think telecoms, banks, etc.

- A number of good engineers leave because the US pays more. I wouldn't think that it's a huge number though, as I noticed that very few people are willing to leave the country to study/work in general.

As a French person living in Sweden this does not match my experience about overworking. Working hours can be unreasonable in France and people in startups hace a much better life/work balance in Sweden. I know plenty of engineers working 8-19 or so in France, whereas in Sweden it basically does not seem to exist at all. You do your 40 hours and not more. In France officially it is 35 but outside the big companies you actually end up more around 50-55.

One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead.

Regarding the cost to hire I think it's a false issue. It actually costs more to hire in the US because salaries are higher. Job safety and how hard it is to fire people largely depends of your company culture as well, in my experience for startups it is a very secondary problem. Usually if an employee is a clear misfit they also feel bad and are happy to take an exit package and get a job somewhere else that fits better. It is however a concern for larger companies when you have an employee of 20 years that would never find another job at the same salary level, is without motivation, and is nearly not possible to fire (you have plenty of those in the big french companies, having worked their whole carreer there and just waiting for retirement while doing the minimum not to get fired with cause). But that should not really impact innovation as you wouldn't find those employees in a startup.

I don’t know where your French data come from… but I live in the French Riviera and no one here works overtime… my company office is empty by 5h30 (and the boss is the first to leave). And all my friends in the region share the same experience.

> One thing I noticed in France on the other hand is the importance of the diploma. In Sweden it has very little value, whereas in France it sometimes shapes your whole career. And the good students coming from a good school directly get high paying jobs in big comfortable companies so that does limit the incentive to risk it all in a startup instead.

That's interesting. A lot of the insanely good engineers I've worked with (and work with) either don't have diplomas or didn't even finish high school. Perhaps France is missing on this a lot by being pretty discriminatory when hiring.

Also, one thing I'm thinking about now, I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants (e.g. adderall) whereas I doubt this is really a thing in France.

> I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants

Can you define "a lot"? That's a pretty bold claim.

Yeah it’s hard to prove anything, I have some friends who tell me that everyone in crypto is doing adderall or others. I’m not, but I’d be willing to believe that a much bigger percentage of people do it compared to france

> Also, one thing I'm thinking about now, I think a lot of people in the US are on stimulants (e.g. adderall) whereas I doubt this is really a thing in France.

I've also read about many students in elite (mostly US) universities using stimulants. Presumably many of them also continue using them after graduating. Here in Finland, I've never heard of anyone taking e.g. ADHD medication for performance enhancement.

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