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.
I Googled USA vs France. Both have 11 national holidays per year. Did you mean to write something else?