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.
Yes, absolutely, the problem is these are not the people you want to hire.
And the people you do want to hire are either already in US or work for a US company remotely for 3x the salary.
What does this have to do if the advertised base salary? You would pay for your healthcare and social security with huge taxes from that already meager salary, it is not like those 90k is all-taxes-paid-and-batteries-included offer.
Work a US job for 4 months, quit, take the next 8 months for holiday/vacation, and you still save more money than a European SWE.
Hey, the 2010s are calling, they want the trope “BuT eUrOpE hAs pAiD lEaVe” back.
Europe in 2026 (France, Germany, UK, Estonia, etc). What a joke. Nobody in the world respects them.
At least the US has jobs and a military. Not as good as before, but better than Europe.