Last friday, a journalist from Les Échos, a french newspaper, visited our office. During our casual conversation, a question came up: "What is the difference between French and American companies?" While this question appears very straightforward, there are many elements to consider.
Everything is relative to your own experience and working environments you may have been exposed to, so whenever you generalize you tend to overlook the exceptions. Today, I qualify as "software engineer" which, in the big leagues, consists of building scalable and robust applications across platforms, environments and languages. I've worked for three companies in Paris (Skyrock, Marathon Media, Mediaplazza) and four in the US (AgencyTen, Yahoo!, YouTube/Google and today Pinterest).
Almost a year ago. during the inauguration of the Google office in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy tentatively tried to reply to a similar question. He mentioned that Silicon Valley's success comes from extremely good weather and proximity with good universities (such as Stanford). While those facts are true, his answer wasn't really satisfying.
The first difference between Paris and Silicon Valley? With no doubt: The free market. Talented engineers are really difficult to find, even worldwide, and there is an aggressive war between tech giants to acquire them. Companies as well as startups double their efforts to attract candidates: excellent product execution, friendly working environment, perks (free food, gym, swimming pool, transportation, discounts), good social benefits (great health care), and astonishing compensation packages along with good performance rewards.
In France, there's absolutely no free market. The government imposes a lot of charges, reducing or totally blocking investments for the most part. In addition, HR departments have grids of salaries, taking into account your age, your academic degree and your school. So you could be a genius with no degree, but your compensation package would be less than someone good at school but capable of nothing. As an example: a French bank offered me a job in 2009 for a web developer position, the compensation (700€ monthly) was extremely below Paris median salary. Another thing: if you're a very high performer compared to your coworkers, you don't necessarly get a reward for your hard work.
The second difference: working laws. The American laws are very strict: you cannot discriminate a candidate based on their age, religion, social situation, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. Those rules make environment more friendly, more respectful with less conflicts of interest.
Short example: at YouTube, I successfully managed for about nine months someone in her 40's (I was 24). In Paris in 2007, I conducted an interview for a university project. The interviewee made a joke: he wouldn't let someone younger manage him. In my career, I am surrounded by talented engineers and designers. Their capabilities and potential contributions to the company should only be the only thing that matters when making the call to hire, it shouldn't be a matter of age, gender, ethnicity or educational background. France has a lot of work to get done in this area.
Another part of the law that's interesting: Unless you have a 6-12 months contract, most employment in the US is at will. The company can thus lay you off at any time for any reason – and you can also leave the company at any time for any reason. It initially was something I had doubts about it but it ends up being a good thing. In fact, even if a company can lay someone off, they rarely do. It's really difficult to find talent, and it takes a lot of time to train them and make them productive. So if you hire and lay off, it's not necessarily something you can afford. If your performance is low, big companies usually have programs to improve employees’ productivity and your focus.
France is on the opposite side. Once you've completed your probation period, it's a lot more difficult to lay someone off. Leaving has to come from an agreement between you and the company – which requires a lot more back and forth with HR and other departments (legal). The interaction could be very simple but some companies tend to make the process extremely hard.
This painful situation never really happened to me since I had 12 months contracts but it happened to one of my friends – after expressing his intention to quit, the company required him to stay for more than six months in order to hire his replacement and transfer his knowledge. So the company he was supposed to work for had to wait.
The third difference: Massive opportunities. American companies are really looking for people to contribute and be involved. If you feel passionate about a topic, you can focus on it. There's really a very open environment for feedback and assignment.
With this perspective, I'm really grateful to provide the technical leadership for two visual redesigns of YouTube. Those initiatives were successful because I was surrounded by highly skilled, genuine and smart co-workers. It was a collaborative and less hierarchical environment. We all worked toward the same goal, so it improved efficiency on all levels.
Another example: I was able to build a multi-million dollar team within YouTube because people believed in my ideas and wanted to give it a try. It ended up being a successful experiment. In France, experimenting, building a team and hiring engineers is a lot more difficult due to the law. If the initiative fails, it's not easy to let them go. You also need to find people to believe in your initiatives – which is another story (in the French culture, the glass is half empty not half full.)
While this is changing rapidly (thanks to internet?), French companies have a lot of protocols. Talking to the CEO of a small organization is as difficult as talking to the CEO of Google or even Eric Schmidt. You can't easily engage an open conversation.
To conclude this (very long post): There are a lot more differences, but I believe they are all driven by these factors: Free market, working laws, protection against discrimination and absence of hierarchy. The American way allows people to really do what they love, to really not worry about a degree or a school, and if you want to do something, you can go ahead, take a risk, and try again until you succeed.