Golden Handcuffs
Etymology
A metaphor combining "golden," for lavish pay, with "handcuffs," for restraint — the reward is also the restraint. The phrase spread in American business usage from the 1970s as executive compensation grew more elaborate. The oxymoron is deliberate: the shackles are made of the very thing the wearer wanted.
noun phrase · /GOHL-dun HAND-kufs/
Financial incentives — vesting stock, deferred bonuses, pensions — designed to make leaving a job so costly that an unhappy employee stays anyway.
What it names
A vivid handle for being trapped by money rather than force: the way rewards can quietly function as a leash, keeping talented people in roles they’d otherwise quit.
Example
His unvested equity is worth a fortune in eighteen months, so he’s stuck in a job he hates — classic golden handcuffs.
Related idea
It is a designed perverse incentive: a reward structure that produces retention through entrapment rather than genuine loyalty or satisfaction.