Coming to Terms – Golden Handcuffs

Similar to the Golden Ring, the Golden handcuffs can be a trap that directly affects the individual contributor.  Where the Golden Ring is a trap of promise, the Golden Handcuffs is a well known trap relating to money.  The term arrived from stock options and formal programs designed to retain talent.  For the Individual Contributor the traps that has to do with some element of your job.  Usually Salary , but it could be something like flex time.

I’m not sure this comes from an inherently evil place on the part of companies.  I’m the way to think about the golden ring is that it’s not something that traps you, it’s that you feel trapped because there is one good thing left over from all the bad things that happen that affect our work environment.  These bad things are the consequences to the actions taken by our work environments over the decades.

The Coming to Terms posts will are explanations the language we use and what the underlying meaning they offer.