These scenarios don't just apply to being laid off. Another scenario which happens is that company ownership or control changes, and some key promises which we

These scenarios don't just apply to being laid off. Another scenario which happens is that company ownership or control changes, and some key promises which were made to prospective employees get broken. I relocated to a big unpleasant city for a job early in my career, and the big promise from the hiring folks (all good people) was that "we hire at a low rate, but we give big raises fast". Their prime example was another young "star" like me who doubled his salar in less than two years. What the managers (and I) didn't know is that the recent acquisition of the company by a much bigger company meant that significant changes were coming. In my first six months, a lot of the developer perks (free lunch, but just normal food... nothing like a Google lunch) started to get scaled back or eliminated entirely. And then at my six month review, when my first raise should occur, my manager was honestly regretful to inform me that despite my excellent performance, he was only able to give an 8% raise because any higher increase had to be personally reviewed and signed off on by the CEO... and nobody was doing that. So not only did I burn 6 months at a place that was heading downhill, but it took another 6 months to be sure of this when the next review/raise period came (and disappointed). Meanwhile, I had other peers who had gone to some big accounting firms and were already enjoying nice perks, travel opportunities, and rapidly increasing pay. None of this was life shattering, but it is life days or months misspent. The feeling is that one has been cheated, even if there was no malintent on the part of the company. Aka, "bum deal".