> [...] Zuckerberg himself owns a majority of the voting shares and $50b+ of the equity?

That doesn't make too much of a difference. If anything, it makes his duty to the rest of the shareholders more important. (In a legal sense.)

> It seems eminently reasonable to me that a profitable company should be legally liable to pay you at least your signing bonus, if not full severance or even your first year's salary, if they pull your offer right before the start date.

You are free to negotiate for such a clause in your contract. And to refuse contracts that don't have this clause.

> You are free to negotiate for such a clause in your contract. And to refuse contracts that don't have this clause.

You seem to have missed the post you’re responding to’s point, since it’s making the exact point that you can’t do this; due to power disparity.

They will coerce you into mostly unenforceable non-competes and 2yr window signing bonus stipulations to scare tactic you into being a “loyal” cog, but will do nothing if you sign a contract, move half way across the country, change your entire livelihood and then decide to pull your employment offer at the last moment. And you can’t do a damn thing about it, unless you’re a .1% top engineer. That’s literally the definition of a power imbalance.

Pick companies with a better reputation, then.

Pick a better hill to die on, you’re alone.

People take companies' reputation into account all the time to decide between offers.

And yet, their reputation doesn't matter given the fact that near all of them are currently laying off massive numbers of their employees. I'm glad there are 5-100 person startups with amazing reputations, unfortunately, the vast majority of tech workers will not be able to funnel into those. It's the most basic of economics and logistics.

If you want to stubbornly die on your lonely hill go for it. I'm not interested in further conversation with you, sorry.