I've seen many people worrying about not being able to fire people once hired. But what I've seen in facts are only two people needing firing, and it was done without any problem. What I saw incredibly more often is company getting into panic because their good developers would leave. It's not firing that is hard, it's retaining.
Why did they do it? Because they were downsizing in the region (we went from 100 employees 6 years ago to 3 currently). So claiming I created that company to damage them, they pay 0€ as opposed to ~20000€. Now, make it times 100 and you got a non trivial amount of money even for a relatively big company. People were constantly "encouraged" to leave, benefits cut, comité d'entreprise dissolved they day we hit 49 employees, they accounted losses from other branches so we didn't get profit sharing either, and I know quite a few cases like mine with a variety of wonky excuses.
Now, in my own company I don't have a salary. Can't afford it, it's so insanely expensive to pay a salary, we're talking each month you pay total twice and a half as much as the employee sees BEFORE TAX. We don't hire people, we hire other companies and freelancers to do the job, then take dividends. There's no other way unless you're a cash flow workhorse.
Also, Paris might be different, but here all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding. It's just so expensive that even cities with significantly higher wages are cheaper.
I'm in Paris and here how my salaries break down:
Currently I'm at ~50K a year "Brut" (before taxes on the employee side), which means ~35K a year "Net" ("go home" salary).
I'm costing ~75K per year to my employer in term of salary (before taxes on the employer side).
My other taxes are around 6K per year.
I'm an SRE/software engineer with ~8 years experience.
I'm not sure ~75k is that expensive compared to other European countries, let alone Silicon Valley salaries.
> all startups I've seen quickly moved to London or Berlin in the moment they got VC funding
Are you sure this was related to the cost of employees? As pointed in the article, London is the historical tech hub in europe, so moving to London after funding can have many reasons.
You're right though, having employees is really expansive. I'm afraid it's not just a France problem, though :) It costs you double than what employee gets pre-tax, but all in all it's not more expansive than in other countries. In US, a good dev salary is $100k a year (€85k).
EDIT: for non french people, a good dev salary in France is €45k, so it may cost at most and roughly double than that, but you have a lot of tax cut you can take advantage of to reduce it
Bottom line : a good dev salary of €45k costs about €65k, before any tax reduction.
Not completely sure; the best case I know is of a company where one of the founders told me such thing. It is a very technically advanced and polished ride sharing app, made to solve very particular problems in this region, investors had a look at the product, at their books, and offered 2M/year for 3 years on condition of moving it to Berlin or Sofia (Bulgaria, don't ask me why).