This article presents a comparison carried out in 2019 between the reports of social workers involved in social programs to combat poverty and social exclusion in Chile and France regarding the effectiveness of these programs. Despite differences between these two contexts in terms of the types of State and the development phase of the neoliberal project, the interviewed from both countries perceive themselves as managers of actions that neither seek nor can transform the conditions of poverty, exclusion, and inequality of assisted people. For most of them, social policies aim is to restrain an existing social gap that exceeds them.