Very much an American thing. During the first dotcom bubble the company who bought mine turned out to have a habit of getting rid of CTOs who had golden parachutes by ordering other employees to not talk to them and giving them a supposedly nice office on an unfinished, empty floor of a skyscraper where all the lights outside their office were disconnected. One held out long enough to launch his new startup and I was pretty impressed that he put it together in semi-squat conditions while being shunned. When it comes to cheating people on contracts there are a lot of determined, creative people in management and on boards.