> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird

> Are 20ish days of paid vacation per employee per year really an insurmountable obstacle for a tech startup? I'm guessing this was just an example but a weird one nonetheless. Almost none of these rules by itself is insurmountable[1]. But it all adds up friction in the workforce dynamic which might end up halting the company. And afterwards you will be unable to bankrupt the dead company specifically because of the social protections. Or the sheer inability to fire a developer in Germany because laws here assume that the only work that exists is at a factory producing physical things. So hiring an intellectual worker becomes a huge commitment not to dissimilar to marriage and all of that doesn't help growing. [1] A notorious exception perhaps would be the paid maternity leave, as fraud with this one is something that happens in real life and can be deadly to a micro startup at the earliest stage.