That's not quite it. Golden handcuffs refer to financially significant unvested shares or options (e.g. RSUs) that you will forfeit if you leave the company. So

That's not quite it. Golden handcuffs refer to financially significant unvested shares or options (e.g. RSUs) that you will forfeit if you leave the company. Some companies include quarterly RSUs as a significant percentage of total comp. They have a vesting schedule of four years, so that at any given time, employees have almost four years of unvested RSUs. (After four years, some RSUs fully vest and more RSUs are added.) No one wants to leave that much money on the table.