> The point is that sometimes you really need less people There's another crucial point: that this need is forecastable many (many) months in advance. If peop

> The point is that sometimes you really need less people There's another crucial point: that this need is forecastable many (many) months in advance. If people are joining (or continuing to work at) a company with an expectation of investing in the 'long haul', but the company knows that this 'startup phase' isn't likely to last more than another nine months, there's a strong temptation for executives to deceive their employees. As you say, 'nothing that can prevent a company to do that', but along those lines, there's nothing that prevents seeing this for what it is: an adversarial relationship where companies are doing their best to trick their employees.