I agree with your sentiment. Work in France sounds like hell -- not for the work-life balance, but for the compensation model. Sorry to all of the French readers here. (You may feel similar to the United States or other places.) In these countries were the labour laws are extremely in favour of the worker (France, Germany, Italy, etc.), the pay for technologists is generally awful and there is very little upside. If you work really hard, you barely get paid more. That would so demotivating to me.

About this part:

    > Number of public holidays.

Ha today I learned something, you are correct its 11 in US too. But it seems (according to gemini) that in US folks do not get automatically a fully paid day off on every one, which is the default in Europe. We often have 'labor day' wich are other types (acknowledged but no day off)