Why France was the best option for me as a WEB Developer

Since 2012, when I arrived here in Paris, I’ve had my ups and downs, moments when I said to myself what was in my head to leave the security and comfort of my home and to adventure in one of the busiest cities in the world.

But before responding to that let me tell you a little bit more about me. I’ve started the development at an early age, fell in love with it, right away and since then I’m constantly in search of technologies that stimulate both my intelligence and imagination.

Eight years ago, those technologies were PHP/CSS/MySQL and company. So I worked like a mad scientist for couple of years in several small web agencies and after that I’ve had my freelance businesses which was awesome. Freelance is a concept any developer should try once in life and I had the chance to start when Indians , Pakistani and others didn’t ruined the market with their ridiculous prices.

Fast forward to 2012 … Thanks to my wife I had the opportunity to come and live here in France. Now when I look back, I think coming here was the best option for me and my web “addiction”.

The first thing that strikes you here is the French language. I knew it from school, so that was my ticket to all the good things for me in France. I’ve seen great developers failing getting a job here because they didn’t knew French. But that was also a great “wall” for my fellows Indians, and Pakistani for which French isn’t so easy to learn. The English speaking countries like UK, Holland, USA are great places for them, but France seemed to be more difficult for non speakers, so that helped A LOT.

The second chance I got was to live and work in the Paris Area. Don’t get me wrong. All the France is worth visiting and living, but for an WEB developer, Paris is THE SPOT to be. There are thousands of businesses searching for good developers and that’s the main reason, in two years I’ve accumulated so much experience in Front End development that I couldn’t get anywhere else.

Last but not the least are the incredible number of social, technological and media events occurring here. Practically every month there is a hackathon here in Paris. Webminars, MeetUps are on daily basis and several times a year we have really big events like : Big Data Paris, React Europe 2016, UX Day 2016, ng-europe 2016, Paris Open Source Submit.

I think it’s pretty amazing what is happening now in Paris and I encourage you to come here if not to stay at least to visit this beautiful city or to participate at its events.