I've known a number of director and VP level people who negotiate severence on their way in. This is common practice in many industries, and very common in fee

I've known a number of director and VP level people who negotiate severence on their way in. This is common practice in many industries, and very common in fee for service contracts, where the buyer pays a kill fee of a certain percentage of the total contract value to end it up early. A problem in the dynamc described in hire-to-fire is that people are waiting to be unemployed before looking for new jobs, so they have no leverage on the hiring discussion. From a reputation perspective, if you are in a role now, I think it's pretty reasonable to assert that for you to move, firing you before 18 months is going to cost them at least a year's salary in severence. If you think this is just an exec level strategy, a company can make its roadmap and quarterly commitments or numbers without a director or VP, but it can't make them without a key engineer to deliver on it. It depends on what you do, but if you can make a company money or shorten the time between an investment and return on it, learn to be more strategic on the way in.