In France, if you are an engineer (Grande Ecole), you go work for companies like EDF, Thales or Safran.
If you're BTS/DUT (c'est ca la puissance intellectuelle... bac + 2, les enfants), go work for a small company, preferably outside of Paris. But never work for a bunch of assholes from HEC who are copy/pasting some American ride-sharing or social media startup.
I lament this copy/pasting mindset myself but on the other hand we still haven't found a decent alternative to the American model for startups it seems. Maybe we haven't been looking hard enough.
Some of those copy/pasted companies (Criteo, Blabla car, Vente Privée...) actually managed to be quite successful.
As somebody who prefers to work at a lower level my main problem is that we've lost (or are rapidly losing) most of our savoir faire when it comes to the hardware side of things. Could we even make a competitive CPU from scratch in Europe anymore or are we doomed to integrate American and Chinese IPs and ICs? What are the security risks if we just run "black box" foreign-made chips? Can we really trust Intel and AMD all the way for our critical infrastructures?
I work in a French start-up with a lot of grandes écoles engineers, and a good deal tier-1 at that (Telecom ParisTech and Supelec mostly). So let's no over-generalize.
There's a culture of risk aversion in France, and it pushes a lot of people toward big corps as they're seen as safer. But they can also be a trap: be comfortable costing for most of your career, safely ticked inside the borg. But if you go through a big restructuring past your 50s you'll be toast, and have a real hard time recovering (if you can). Personally I prefer environment that force you to keep in shape and fit. I fear I would let me cost in a big company...
For the copy/paste business school driven start-ups, I'm sure there are a lot of them (not in my field, but it's hard core tech and capital intensive, not a good match for "pipo" people) but the issue there maybe the relative lack of start-ups founded by techies?
The English "engineer" is split into three in French: 1) technicien, 2) technicien supérieur and 3) ingénieur. DUT is for techniciens, BTS is for techniciens supérieurs. Ingénieur can come from university, but most come from a side system (grandes écoles), with the écoles further split into 3 tiers depending on selectivity and prestige. Complicated? Yes... Even for most French ;) But in the business world in France this is all known and will influence your career.
A technicien is supposed to be on top of ones field techniques, and know how to apply them. A techicien supérieur is the same but for more advanced and complex fields. An ingénieur is not only supposed to understand the "what" and "how", but also the "why" and be able to evolve things, of design from scratch when needed. That, of course, is the theory: there are plenty of techs with an ingénieur mindset (good), and unfortunately plenty of people with an ingénieur degree who couldn't innovate out of a paper bag.
The advantage is quality of life. Paris is expensive, noisy, not always clean or safe.
BTS/DUT are short higher education degrees that focus on practical and professional skills, with selective admission (but not as selective as actual engineering schools).
Basically in France you have: Grandes Ecoles ("great schools"), elite engineering schools that operate outside of the university system; you also have selective 2 or 3-year degrees inside high schools and universities (BTS, DUT, etc.) and then you have the universities. Where post-graduate degrees can sometimes be decent but undergraduate tends to be crap, and its pretty much a zoo or a jungle outside of STEM (fortunately, French universities tend to separate STEM campus from other disciplines filled with political activists).
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In France, if you are an engineer (Grande Ecole), you go work for companies like EDF, Thales or Safran. If you're BTS/DUT (c'est ca la puissance intellectuelle... bac + 2, les enfants), go work for a small company, preferably outside of Paris. But never work for a bunch of assholes from HEC who are copy/pasting some American ride-sharing or social media startup.
I lament this copy/pasting mindset myself but on the other hand we still haven't found a decent alternative to the American model for startups it seems. Maybe we haven't been looking hard enough.
Some of those copy/pasted companies (Criteo, Blabla car, Vente Privée...) actually managed to be quite successful.
As somebody who prefers to work at a lower level my main problem is that we've lost (or are rapidly losing) most of our savoir faire when it comes to the hardware side of things. Could we even make a competitive CPU from scratch in Europe anymore or are we doomed to integrate American and Chinese IPs and ICs? What are the security risks if we just run "black box" foreign-made chips? Can we really trust Intel and AMD all the way for our critical infrastructures?
I wish RISC-V could launch a new generation of French foundries ! No Intel tax and no US-backdoors anymore.
I work in a French start-up with a lot of grandes écoles engineers, and a good deal tier-1 at that (Telecom ParisTech and Supelec mostly). So let's no over-generalize.
There's a culture of risk aversion in France, and it pushes a lot of people toward big corps as they're seen as safer. But they can also be a trap: be comfortable costing for most of your career, safely ticked inside the borg. But if you go through a big restructuring past your 50s you'll be toast, and have a real hard time recovering (if you can). Personally I prefer environment that force you to keep in shape and fit. I fear I would let me cost in a big company...
For the copy/paste business school driven start-ups, I'm sure there are a lot of them (not in my field, but it's hard core tech and capital intensive, not a good match for "pipo" people) but the issue there maybe the relative lack of start-ups founded by techies?
+1 ! Really good depiction of Station F in your last sentence.
What is BTS/DUT? What's the advantage of working for a small company outside of Paris?
The English "engineer" is split into three in French: 1) technicien, 2) technicien supérieur and 3) ingénieur. DUT is for techniciens, BTS is for techniciens supérieurs. Ingénieur can come from university, but most come from a side system (grandes écoles), with the écoles further split into 3 tiers depending on selectivity and prestige. Complicated? Yes... Even for most French ;) But in the business world in France this is all known and will influence your career.
A technicien is supposed to be on top of ones field techniques, and know how to apply them. A techicien supérieur is the same but for more advanced and complex fields. An ingénieur is not only supposed to understand the "what" and "how", but also the "why" and be able to evolve things, of design from scratch when needed. That, of course, is the theory: there are plenty of techs with an ingénieur mindset (good), and unfortunately plenty of people with an ingénieur degree who couldn't innovate out of a paper bag.
The advantage is quality of life. Paris is expensive, noisy, not always clean or safe.
BTS/DUT are short higher education degrees that focus on practical and professional skills, with selective admission (but not as selective as actual engineering schools). Basically in France you have: Grandes Ecoles ("great schools"), elite engineering schools that operate outside of the university system; you also have selective 2 or 3-year degrees inside high schools and universities (BTS, DUT, etc.) and then you have the universities. Where post-graduate degrees can sometimes be decent but undergraduate tends to be crap, and its pretty much a zoo or a jungle outside of STEM (fortunately, French universities tend to separate STEM campus from other disciplines filled with political activists).
BTS/DUC are technical diplomas, BAC+2 means (I think) they are 2 years of study after "high school"/"leaving cert" (the BAC)
You go work for a smaller company because they will hire you (and it will probably be more technical and less politics than the main companies)
All the main companies are headquartered in Paris (region) with some exceptions.
funny how job pressure makes you accept anything
my brain dies on copy pasting
but you cannot always land a position where you actually think