In France there's a 4 month probation period extensible to up to 7 months. It's too long, 7 months makes very little sense, and some companies abuse it. Basically you can pretty much fire at will during this probation period, but after it's _really_ hard to fire under French employment laws. If you're in a field where it's hard to land a job, it's 7 months of butt clenching.

I've worked in a company where I've been let go after 2 months in the probation period, but it was clear I wasn't a good fit with the company culture. This is what the probation period is for, we didn't need 7 months to figure that out. On the other hand, I worked for a consulting company that automatically extended all the probation periods, and laid off people that were on probation if they didn't have enough consulting contracts to feed everybody on the payroll (and then reshuffle contracts among people post-probation that were unfireable).