They're requiring masters degrees for entrepreneur visas. One thing Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Lei Jun, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Travis Kalanic and Cheng Wei all have in common is a lack of a master's degree.
Why would France add a restriction to their visa that would have eliminated the founders of Amazon, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Xiaomi, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Uber and Didi Chuxing?
Are they pinning all their hopes on someone following the path of Larry Page or Robin Li, except choosing to immigrate to France to start their search engine? Are the people who made the rule just not aware how few of the top tech company founders have master's degrees? Is it some kind of intentional low-beta strategy to try to scoop up a bunch of more certain, smaller wins?
I truly don't understand what kind of reasoning went into to this program. It's just making France look out of touch.
Edit: ok apparently the founder needs money and it's employees who all need masters degrees (nearly as bad).
It doesn't make sense in French to look for less than a master level, whereas the standard is the bachelor in the USA.
"Everyone" has a master in France. The curriculum is 5 years straight in France (either 2 or 5 years). There isn't really such a thing as a 3-4 years bachelor level in engineering.
Some numbers: 60% of programmers have at least a master in France, less than 30% in the USA.
Ah, that's good it doesn't apply to founders. On the other hand, it's still pretty disastrous if your startup does well and you need to hire people. Nearly all the key early hires at the companies I listed above also lacked master's degrees.
> "This is just silly."
It's worse than silly. It's a baked in design flaw that literally would have prevented the foreign successes the program is in theory trying to replicate. It is silly to heavily credentialize an industry focused on doing new things, but it's also destructive.
The US has some enormous hurdles related to immigration, but it also has a network. Once someone is looking at the world outside SV/SF, there are many other places in the world trying to attract startups. Some of them have both stronger tech scenes and less regressive (though I still wouldn't say visionary) immigration requirements.
Why would a founder pick someplace like France, instead of South Korea or Australia where they could have a path to citizenship and a much easier time hiring talent?
It's not a "myth" or "fantasy" that they didn't have master's degrees.
To the best of knowledge any of them would have needed a visa to go to France, and one of them did in fact live in Canada and then the US on visas before naturalising and starting three separate billion dollar companies along the way.
myths and fantasies are not about their degrees but more on the public image we have of us who do more harm than good in my opinion.
"Rather than placing tech leaders on a pedestal, we should put their successes in context..." [1]
I would never advise someone to drop school without a strong family background, a solid bubble opportunity or just luck. And I don't like schools, for me they are clearly not the best places to learn, just to network.
Why would France add a restriction to their visa that would have eliminated the founders of Amazon, Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Xiaomi, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Uber and Didi Chuxing?
Are they pinning all their hopes on someone following the path of Larry Page or Robin Li, except choosing to immigrate to France to start their search engine? Are the people who made the rule just not aware how few of the top tech company founders have master's degrees? Is it some kind of intentional low-beta strategy to try to scoop up a bunch of more certain, smaller wins?
I truly don't understand what kind of reasoning went into to this program. It's just making France look out of touch.
Edit: ok apparently the founder needs money and it's employees who all need masters degrees (nearly as bad).