[mattkrause]

Recommendation letters from specific people play an outsized role in academia: without a strong letter from your advisor, it's difficult to move onto new positions or acquire funding, even after you've been gone a while. Other industries don't seem to have that sort of long-term lock-in. If they check at all, references from any of several people (colleagues, tech lead, anyone in your management chain) at your most recent employer are usually fine.

You're right about the bureaucracy, which can be crazy in the US and Canada too. However, it really only extends to spending money; there's much less oversight when it comes to running the lab (e.g., working hours, productivity expectations, conduct, etc). You might think that firing has as much oversight as hiring, but postdocs are often structured as short, renewable contracts and you can just....not renew them.