Yep. I just exit a startup that went broke, had to make do with not paying all their staff for over 9 weeks, and then finally got a massive investor that set them up for 2+ years of burn.
I resigned at 8 weeks of no pay, and couldn’t even legally force my company to give me a redundancy (3 years service) and I’m currently fighting to my right for 2 weeks notice pay (see note 1).
When you work for a startup you don’t have any rights to anything and you shouldn’t expect them to care about you.
Note 1: all this garbage is legal in Australia where all employee rights are hinged on insolvency and “hope for an investor” counts as not trading insolvent, which makes using your employees as creditors without their permission possible.
I’ve learnt my lesson about all of this. I will only work for established companies and I encourage anyone in the job market to think twice about signing with a company.. you need to be as confident in them for their responsibilities as they need to be in you.
I resigned at 8 weeks of no pay, and couldn’t even legally force my company to give me a redundancy (3 years service) and I’m currently fighting to my right for 2 weeks notice pay (see note 1).
When you work for a startup you don’t have any rights to anything and you shouldn’t expect them to care about you.
Note 1: all this garbage is legal in Australia where all employee rights are hinged on insolvency and “hope for an investor” counts as not trading insolvent, which makes using your employees as creditors without their permission possible.
I’ve learnt my lesson about all of this. I will only work for established companies and I encourage anyone in the job market to think twice about signing with a company.. you need to be as confident in them for their responsibilities as they need to be in you.