I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies.
It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region and makes getting a job much harder because employers have to be extra careful.
> I've heard in practice it's near impossible to fire badly performing employees in Germany as a result, even if you're a small company. Or firing a bad employee becomes very expensive which is even worse for small companies.
By tradition, first 6 months of employment are on probation ("Probezeit"), with 2 weeks' notice possible on both sides. Companies can opt out of probation time, though, if they want.
"It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region"
I very much doubt it. If you were really wanting to start a company, you're not thinking, "I'd do this totally awesome thing! If only it wasn't so hard to fire people!"
You start a company with a few small people in germany somewhere.
You quickly realize that because of investment money and running a company, that running it in germany isn't that great and you move the company to the USA.
It's probably hindered a bunch of people from starting companies in the region and makes getting a job much harder because employers have to be extra careful.