As a European, I am always amazed to hear about the agility in the US job market. i.e. quitting/getting fired with < a week's notice, being used to a 3-6 month's notice. It's interesting to see that the other extreme also exists.
There's a perception that it's nigh impossible to fire someone and that jobs are very secure, which leads to fairly conservative hiring policies and quite low wages (in the tech sector anyway - definitely low relative to contracting here or the equivalent job in the USA).
In reality, jobs really aren't that secure after all. I personally worked for a rather cut-throat small company that fired at least 4 people during the short time I worked there. They'd all worked there for less than a year. I knew all of them personally, and none of them were terrible at their jobs or really deserved to be fired. I'm convinced one of them was fired just because his project came to an end and he was no longer required.
You can't make a claim for unfair dismissal until you've worked somewhere for at least 2 years, so if you're fired before that time you've got very few options legally.
I can't speak about after the 2 years has elapsed because I've got no experience of that. Maybe then it really does become very difficult to fire someone. But people move around more often these days, I'm sure a large percentage of most employers' workforces are under the 2 year mark at any time.
No, it's an indication that a massive company with lots of resources is able to cover its legal bases enough that it can lay off large numbers of people in batches. That doesn't mean it's easy by any means.
At least for Germany, if you want to get rid of somebody (outside the public sector), you can. If you don't know about somebody's qualifications, you have 6 months of evaluation and can start with a limited contract for up to two years (and companies routinely do).
If people underperform (or are otherwise unfit for the job), you can get rid of them after a small number of written warnings to notify them, so they can try to improve (somewhat similar to a performance improvement plan).
But that tale is very useful to keep employees subservient: "Be grateful that we take the risk of employing you, so better don't stick your neck out by asking for something outrageous such as a higher salary!", and so employers keep telling it.
The downside of making it hard to fire someone is that employers guard against that by making the hiring process more rigorous. The law of unintended consequences strikes again.
I'm excited about the trend towards a 1099 economy. The caveat being that doing that requires the development of better social safety nets for income and healthcare, which doesn't seem to be the happening...
It works out well for you if you're a contractor and are single and have no kids and enjoy having no more belongings than you can pack in a few boxes.
it still costs money to bring the person up to speed, not to mention the opportunity costs involved in not having the right person for that much longer.
and many employers even in the US are terrified they'll be sued for wrongful termination. or they just don't want to risk having to do something viewed as "mean".
Given that you're here on HN, you're probably biasing towards high skills jobs like software where a bad hire can really screw up the productivity of the entire team and project for a long time.
With lower-skilled jobs, employers are happy to hire and dump as their demand changes over time. Look at how many cashiers and customer service folks get hired right before the holiday season and then get canned after Christmas.
I was involved in a hiring decision once where we were on the fence but made the hire because we really needed to fill the position. The person didn't work out for all the reasons we expected, and we fired them ~3 months later. It was really shitty, and I will never do it again. It's counterproductive, and it's unethical.