Their approach to business is one of central control. The give very little authority to the local management. They love yes men to stroke their egos. They demand results from their plan even if it is flawed and will not look at alternative approaches. You are held accountable for results when you have no input. They tend to be rude to and dismissive of those that aren't French. If you have every thing documented they are happy even if the documentation is pure fantasy as if lip service is enough. They love to abide by quotas such as # of managers to line employees. They use business metrics that make absolutely no sense in the US ($ of revenue per sqft of facility). They failed to respect US holidays (July 4th) and had no qualms with understaffing and working local management to death. They did startups on the cheap and then screamed when quality suffered, not because they wanted quality but because the were back charged for it. I could go on but after five years working for a French company in the US I was shot. I have been with my new company for 2 years and the difference is like heaven vs hell.
Interesting take. I inspected welds done by a French company in Marseilles as a regulatory agency. Thankfully, I only had to worry about the quality and whether they followed the weld procedures.
They didn’t, and had to chuck a ton of work. They were flanges for ship/shore transfer fittings for LNG ships, so it had to be right.
Imagine an existentialist mindset running up against the concept of having pride in the quality of one’s work, or up against the concept of not caring whether the welds cracking during LNG transfer made any difference in the great scheme of things.