You can expect something from 50k to 70k€ (gross salary) dependending on the company and your experience.
Remove 25% of that to have an idea of your net salary. (Those 25% are mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. All of those are mandatory)
Expect to pay between 1 and 2 months net salary in yearly incomes taxes.
California is consistently at the top of polls ranking by taxes paid. Sooo... it's not entirely fair to extrapolate to the USA from California, despite its size.
> Just to use round numbers, here is a breakdown for a single person making $120k/yr in California at a typical tech company.
Is that total cost to employer for that employee? Or are there additional expenses that are not considered part of employee gross income but instead fall under "employer pays for them" category?
People making the kind of money being discussed here, such that you trigger higher bracket income taxes, have great health insurance in the US as well. Further, decent jobs in the US almost always include health insurance compensation above the salary. I have a brother that works in a pretty normal job earning $42,000 per year (not an outsized salary in the US), he pays $27 per month for his health insurance through his employer, and it's a nice plan. That isn't unusual in the US, health insurance compensation is almost universally ignored in salary comparisons (while the inverse isn't true, the tax based health coverage in other nations is always noted as a perk that should be considered with salaries).
The education system you're referring to is not free at all. The very substantial income taxes in France pay for it.
Show me the US median instead of the average. The average will usually be substantially tilted higher by extreme examples at the top end. I'd be willing to bet the median is closer to $60-$70. That's not expensive.
Here's the same exact same free education logic applied to the US system:
US universities are free. The money you don't pay in taxes covers the cost.
What evidence would you hold up to suggest the French fraternal economy system is the one to mimic? As opposed to Sweden, Germany, or the UK, which have all produced superior results the last few decades with different approaches from that of France.
I think it depends on where in the US. In NYC, I pay around 32% of my gross income in federal and local taxes, social security, medicare, etc. That's almost 4 months of my salary.
On top of that, I have to pay for health insurance, deductibles, and retirement savings, which I assume my French counterpart wouldn't have to separately pay for.
Exactly. The first 25% I mentioned includes health insurance for your whole family with close to 0 deductibles (usually a few euros here and there), retirement plan and unemployment insurance (if you get fired, you can expect to get ~60% of your previous gross salary the first year, slowly decreasing after that) and at the very least 5 weeks of paid annual leave.
Christ, the top end of those numbers (both for gross salary and income taxes) is 3600 euros net per month, which is only 20-40% more than you get in Warsaw. Meanwhile, Paris real estate is (from what I'm hearing) extremely expensive.
You'll definitely earn way less, but you'll be entitled to a lot of vacations (5~7 weeks of paid vacations).
The Americans I know that went to work to France don't want to go back
I'm an American that just spent five years in France. My experience, for what it's worth: I can't say enough nice things about it in every aspect outside of work. I lived in the south of France and I now realize how nice life can be.
Life -- not work. Working there was a nightmare. The pay is low, and while you can live on it, you're not really saving. For a while I was part of the startup community there and while there are many great programs from the government, there is a bit of a local mafia deciding things. Investors were so unsophisticated that technology itself seemed to scare them.
All-in-all, if I could have made it work, I would have done so in a heartbeat. Living there is simply a small piece of heaven on earth. There's just no way to viably work there that I could find.
Another data point (throwaway for privacy reasons) -- senior data scientist, 5 years experience, in Paris, working for a large American networking company. I am making 65 kEUR gross incl. bonus, i.e. 40 kEUR after all taxes.
And I am happy to be leaving soon for job in London paying 85 kGBP gross.
I still expect to be better off there. I rent a 1BR place in Paris for 850 EUR, and I expect to find something comparable in London for 1500 GBP. That means that the flat in London costs about 800 EUR more, which is less than the salary increase I'll be making.
65 k€ = 3358 € per months (on "12 mois") after all taxes, if single living alone.
85 k£ = 4712 £ per month, after all taxes.
Also, 65 k€ is a fairly good end of career in France whereas 85 k£ is a good middle experience in London (and you can get bonus, pension and perks on top).
I live in Harrow in a nice one bedroom for £995. It's in Zone 5 which is far out, but the Metropolitan line has fast trains that go straight to Zone 2 in the morning so you can be in Liverpool Street in around 40 minutes.
That said, if you're thinking of dropping £1500 on a 1 bed you'll have no problem IMO. I was paying £1400 for a 2 bedroom with garden and huge living room in Leytonstone only a few months back. As long as you're not planning on living in Mayfair or Kensington that's a nice budget to work with.
I just graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris, usually second on engineering school rankings after Ecole Polytechnique. I found a job in web development in a small startup in November and am making ~45k a year.
40-45 for master's degree from a very few select schools, like the one from the OP. (Think of it as an equivalent of MIT/standford/harvard. Only a few hundreds lucky people get out of there every year).
35-40k for master's degree from everywhere else.
If you don't have a master's just forget about it ^^
I am using https://salaryaftertax.com/fr to compute the net salary, but I am not sure whether it offers the complete picture.
Could anyone familiar with the taxation in France offer more details?
This seems to be accurately calculating the income taxes, but that's not taking into account the corporate taxes.
If a French employer tells you they'll pay you 100k€ annually (just for the sake of the example), you can expect to receive 75k€. (25%, mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. Mandatory)
Then, if you input those 75k in this tool, it will tell you what you can expect to pay as income taxes. In the case of 75k, 17 218€.
> What are salaries like for mid-senior level software engineers working in tech companies in Paris?
Looking at what StackOverflow's Jobs tab spits out right now, I see: software engineer Java 38k-60k; software engineer Python 40k-55k; DevOps engineer (not your idea, I guess? there's a number of these) 40k-55k; developer for 3D applications 38k-48k; ...
Then there is one for a senior Java engineer for 47k-59k and right above another one for a senior Java engineer for 60k-120k.
These numbers are gross. Based on other posts, deduct 35-40% to account for things taken out of your paycheck (including health care) plus the income tax and rental tax you have to pay after. Rent for a small apartment in Paris starts about 1000 Euros per month and rises steeply.
38% + about 1 month of net income to pay each year as income tax.
There's absolutely no visibility on retirement plan. You just know that you earn "points", with no idea what they're worth.
Also, when you rent in France you have to pay a tax (similar to property tax) which, depending on the city, can be quite high (~1 month of rent/year).
VAT is 22% on most products. Gas is expensive (highways too!!!). Train (TGV) is ridiculously expensive.
> 38% + about 1 month of net income to pay each year as income tax.
My 35-40% figure includes the income tax and the rental tax. You must be in a crazy high bracket if you get 38% deducted every month. On my last pay slip, it's 17.5%, but I get paid around the lower end of the salary brackets I posted above.
> VAT is 22% on most products.
20%
> Gas is expensive (highways too!!!).
Maybe. I prefer spending my money on better things than a car.
I would say 46+ k€, before taxes, which are 33% corporate tax rate and ~30% on personal income. But I'm not sure how it applies to people with tech visa.
46k is really low in France for an experienced dev and that's outside of Paris. Junior dev engineer earn at least 45k when they begin in Paris, and it gets to 60k in about 5-10 years. Also corporate taxes are about 23% but you're right on personal income.
I've had my Engineer's Degrees from ISEP last year and I'm working at Alten since October 2016. My official title is development engineer (Ingénieur d'études).
Before that, I've done two six-months internship as a junior java dev.
Alten is a technology and engineering consulting company, which means, in the context of the French market, that when a company, need a particular profile (like java dev) to staff a position for a set amount of time (like for the expected duration of a project), they'll contract Alten for a developer, java, for x months.
Does it track market rates? I've worked for a company before that took fresh grads, and relied strongly on them never entering the market for themselves and realising what market rate was.
France doesn't offer "free healthcare". If you go to the doctor on an outpatient basis, you pay for the visit up front* and will be reimbursed 80% of the reasonable and customary charges. If you need to go to the hospital, then you're not paying anything. Medicine is reimbursed at a lower rate with it's own plusses and minuses: Many items that would be over the counter in the US require a prescription (e.g. lactase enzyme). So it's a hassle to get it, but you'll also get reimbursed for it if you need it.
The schools are good, but they are also going to be very hard on your kids unless they are very young. Homework volume is high, and my own cynical view is that at least part of it is training kids for the experience of dealing with the difficulties of filling out lots of paperwork and dealing with the French civil service.
Source: Worked for two years in a French overseas territory.
The indigent and extremely poor have special programs whereby they are exempted from this.
*You can buy additional insurance that will increase the coverage to 100% and/or remove the need to pre-pay. That comes with the tradeoff of having to use the provider network that the insurance company has (a la US healthcare).
An important point you seem to be missing, is that stuff that are not free but deemed a necessity (e.g.: family doctor consultation, drugs...) are capped. What they are allowed to charge at most is decided by law (in exchange, they get to control how many people gets to go to (~free) Medical School every year -- it's far from ideal, but not a terrible balance).
Yes, because part of my paycheck goes towards that. And every time I fill up. You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free." Politicians love to exploit this phenomenon for maximum effect.
You seem to fall into the trap of "if I don't hand over
money at the same time as I make use of something, it's free."
The distinction is that it doesn't matter how much or little I use it, I pay no more.
If I drive on the highway, I don't pay anything extra. If I choose not to drive on the highway, I don't get cash in my pocket. Use of the service doesn't cost anything - this is "free at the point of delivery".
This is important, because it means that the service is independent of income. I don't need income to drive on the highway. I don't need income to have secure healthcare. Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
> Some services are important enough to be socialised, so that the service is open to everyone, irrespective of their income, wealth, or lack of.
And they continue to operate so long as there are enough people who _actually pay for these services_. Maybe you don't fall into that category, fine. But there are a lot of people who do, and it all comes straight out their paycheck. It is not free for them by any stretch of the imagination.
I always found that calling the healthcare "free" in France is a large part of 1) how much people can abuse it and 2) don't appreciate it for its real value.
Remove 25% of that to have an idea of your net salary. (Those 25% are mostly for your retirement plan, social security and unemployment insurance. All of those are mandatory)
Expect to pay between 1 and 2 months net salary in yearly incomes taxes.