Sorry to hear about your abusive firing, wish you success.

> 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