I can confirm that you can fire people in France at a reasonable cost if you know what you’re doing and are focused on paying good money for great people. If you’re looking to build a large-scale sweatshop of low-skill workers with low pay and high turnover... then sure, France is not the place to do that. But if you’re a typical tech company not afraid to pay above market for top talent... cost of severance will not be an issue.

(I’ve hired and run large engineering offices in France and in the US).