This would indeed be the best approach in a country with a functional work market & culture. France is not that, or at least not at the time this happened (I ho

This would indeed be the best approach in a country with a functional work market & culture. France is not that, or at least not at the time this happened (I hope it's getting better now). This will come at a major shock to anyone used to US/UK tech work culture. In France, animosity between workers and management is constant, expected and considered normal. The jobs market is extremely illiquid (and unemployment was quite high at one point) which means once someone lands a job, they keep it and fight for it, even if the position is a bad fit. This overall ruins the experience for everyone involved except maybe lawyers and paper-pushers. The worst is that it's a positive feedback loop, where risk of this happening means that companies are even more reluctant to hire and/or implement unreasonable requirements that make job switching harder and ultimately make the market even less liquid. In a well-functioning jobs market leaving and finding another job is indeed the easiest answer. But if you can't do that and have a mortgage to pay, your only option is to stick around and fight back.