With Station F, Paris will have the world’s biggest startup campus
I am very happy this is happening, but I remain pessimistic about this. I have been in Paris many times and even lived there for a bit. As far as cities go with job infrastructure, Paris is non functioning. The city itself is inherently flawed in job growth and management. There is a lack of variety in jobs. There ARE a variety of jobs, but the disparity between amount and desire is huge.<p>When I was in Paris the only people I met were those majoring in Finance, the amount of computer programmers or engineers at the universities were extremely low. Why? Because the jobs just aren&#x27;t there. Paris is and has always been a hub for Money. People then majored and specialized in Money. It is where the Money is; Money is where the jobs would be.<p>Don&#x27;t let the media blitz carry you away at the announcement of Station F, it is a media wave designed to tell people, &#x27;look... we are diversifying our economy&#x27; as Berlin and London have also been attempting (rather... ineffectively for Germany). The media blitz is a way of telling individuals in France (and all of Europe actually) that this is where tech jobs can be found... so make the decision to major in tech.<p>What I imagine will happen is: many people from Eastern Europe (strong scattering of micro tech scenes without sufficient exposure) will flock to Station F to take advantage of it&#x27;s proximity to all of the local funding that can be found in Paris. Paris is a place like London and New York where people park their money for expansion. Station F is just another place for these people to park their funds.<p>We could be seeing the beginning of a rocking station F, or, we could be seeing the beginning of a very large media hype designed to encourage diversifying the economy that will be the beginning of a very slow &#x27;meh&#x27; Station F.