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What the law puts in the contract whether it is written there or not
A German employment contract sits on top of a large body of statute, and a good deal of what protects you is not in the document at all. Knowing which is which tells you what is worth arguing about. The probation period, die Probezeit, may be at most six months, and during it either side can end the contract with two weeks' notice and no reason. After it, ordinary notice periods apply and they lengthen with service: the statutory ladder in the civil code starts at four weeks to the fifteenth or the end of a month and rises to seven months for someone with twenty years behind them. A contract may improve on that but not undercut it. Holiday is the same shape. The federal law sets a minimum of twenty days a year on a five-day week; thirty is what a good contract offers and what many collective agreements require, so Alex's thirty is generous rather than standard. And protection against dismissal, der Kündigungsschutz, generally begins after six months in businesses with more than ten employees — which is why the end of probation matters more here than the wording of any clause. Three clauses to read before signing rather than after. The Kündigungsfrist, because a long one binds you as much as them and will delay your next job. Any Wettbewerbsverbot, a non-compete, which in Germany is only enforceable if the employer pays you compensation during it — typically half your pay — so a non-compete with no payment clause is usually void. And the Nebentätigkeit clause: a side job normally cannot be forbidden outright, but it can be made subject to notification, which is what anzuzeigen means here. One procedural comfort. Since the Nachweisgesetz was tightened in 2022, an employer must give you the essential terms in writing, and the list of what has to be included is long: pay and its components, working hours, holiday, notice periods, probation. So a vague contract is not merely unhelpful, it is likely non-compliant. Asking for a term to be written down is therefore a normal request, not a sign of mistrust — and Lena's advice is the right order of operations: read the notice period, then sign.