It's certainly a lot harder to fire people than at a startup. You need multiple review cycles with poor ratings, a Performance Improvement Plan, more review cycles of bad ratings, etc. But most people don't want to hang on through that, so they leave since it just sucks to be on a team where you are not valued. But you can definitely hang on for 18 months pretty easily with everyone unhappy with your work if you want to.
So it's not really the same as government jobs where you really can't be fired, but it's very different from a startup where everything can be going fine, you lose a big customer and a week later 10% of the company is gone to keep the burn rate low.
It's certainly a lot harder to fire people than at a startup. You need multiple review cycles with poor ratings, a Performance Improvement Plan, more review cycles of bad ratings, etc. But most people don't want to hang on through that, so they leave since it just sucks to be on a team where you are not valued. But you can definitely hang on for 18 months pretty easily with everyone unhappy with your work if you want to.
So it's not really the same as government jobs where you really can't be fired, but it's very different from a startup where everything can be going fine, you lose a big customer and a week later 10% of the company is gone to keep the burn rate low.