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Comment by ismailmaj | Hacker News Reader

Pay isn't the main problem with Paris, it's quality of life.

Housing near work is mostly old Haussmannian buildings that are rent capped and where demand far exceeds supply, so most of the stock is unmaintained. You either accept bad housing in the city or live in the suburbs and commute — not ideal.

To make matters worse, French companies (especially old-school ones) have a culture of presenteeism for white collar jobs, it's uncommon for people to leave before 6PM and staying late is rewarded as high engagement.

Lastly, you might consider buying and renovating a house so you can escape this dilemma, but it isn't cheap: 2-bedroom (T3) around 700k euros, that represents 20 years of frugal savings on 90k gross.

Vacation, cheap and good healthcare, and unemployment benefits are great in France, but the current government has been eroding these social benefits, and those are not unique to France for well-paid tech workers anyway.

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Well said, these talking points pushed by EU politicians for decades need to stop. US white collar workers have access to pretty much the same benefits than EU ones, but have a much higher after tax compensation, even taking health care into account.

And nowadays, with the erosion of the social safety net pushed by the French government, the gap is even more narrow. There definitely are huge inequalities there, US are far from being the heartless place EU politicians like to depict.

pto/vacation, healthcare, and unemployment differences between US and EU mean nothing to high skilled tech workers in the US

1. all good tech jobs in the US have unlimited pto

2. all good tech jobs in the US have good healthcare plans that will continue after being let go until you get a new job

3. you will be able to claim unemployment, but a good tech company in the US will also give you a severance

1. Does unlimited actually mean unlimited? If I want to take 2 months off every year will there be absolutely zero repercussions?

The others are valid though.

unlimited does not mean unlimited because then you would take 365 days off each year. it means you don’t accrue or worry about a balance. i work at an “unlimited” company i see most engineers taking 25-30 days of PTO. it’s a bell curve and there’s outliers on either side but 4-5 weeks/year is quite reasonable

> it means you don’t accrue or worry about a balance

The flip side of this, is that you don't have a visible balance, so you have to calibrate what is an "acceptable" number of vacation days against what your coworkers take, and in competitive environments, that necessarily tends towards zero.

Plus, when you leave/are fired, the company doesn't have to payout a vacation balance, so they laugh all the way to the bank

Well, I take about 2 month off every year. Not all at once, but a week here, week there. No issues.

I also worked in company where this guy was on PTO 6 months a year, but he kept working during his PTO, just on his own schedule. However, at the same company, I recall one coworker had to cancel his flight and company booked him another flight because "we need you to finish this pls". His manager basically beg him to stay one day.

However, in another company, I had issues taking a few days off because "your teammate been here for 2 years didn't a single day off" (I gave them my notice the same day)

So to answer your question from my experience: coin toss and you won't know it until you signed with them. I'd rather take 5 weeks for sure and no calls/emails/texts after the work day.

I'd say the Paris job provides noticeably greater day-to-day life vs Los Angeles with the same before tax salary.

>1. all good tech jobs in the US have unlimited pto

Its usually 15 days paid time off, and unlimited unpaid.

not the good jobs. not the jobs that were comparing to mistral level equivalents in the US. i haven’t had metered PTO since 2015 and everyone i know is the same

How many days do you actually take?

This isn't a rebuttal of any of your point but to give a precision, the City of Paris is absurdly small, most of the Paris Area is "suburbs". The US equivalent would be if NYC was only Manhattan, and places like Brooklyn were suburbs.

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