Ask HN: When are you allowed to quit a startup?

I've been working at a startup since the beginning of the year. It has been good thus far -- great environment, great people, great time. I'm the only programmer and our products absolutely require this company to have a programmer on staff. I'm very much enjoying the work -- this wasn't in my area of expertise before (the business end) but I'm really getting a knack for understanding how our product fits in the field. And further, I've been able to really develop my skills to be a versatile programmer/dev. ops. guy.

The problem is that I'm looking at the calendar, and listening to all the conversations about sales and what not, and thinking: "Man, this company is probably going to go belly up around Christmas." And while in this part of the world, it wouldn't be too hard for a programmer to get work -- even freelance work until the post-Christmas doldrums -- I'd really not want to be out of work around Christmas. I have mega bills (student loans) and am very fastidious about money.

At this point, I'm trying to keep the whole thing very un-personal even though I'm really good friends with all of the founders (CEO/CFO/COO). But, I think it should be noted that as we launched one of our first products a few weeks back, all three founders took vacation the week/weekend before the launch -- it was assumed that I'd get the project done on time, so I ended up canceling mine. So, at the end of the day, I'm wondering if the Godfather quote comes into play -- "This is business not personal."

Further -- the company is trying to figure out how to stay afloat, and one of the ideas is to start doing consulting. Which sounds fine, but I came from a consulting/agency background specifically to leave that type of work; so while I would gladly help these guys out if we were doing it while working on the core products, this new model where we give up the core products for five or six months is just not very appetizing.

I know there are other startups interested in me -- they've reached out to me -- but I'm just not sure what to do when the boat is sinking. I understand if I was a skin-in-the-game cofounder, then like a captain, its down with the ship. But what if I'm just one of the first employees, who still has no equity (that discussion was had and they decided I'd get a "big" share, once we became revenue neutral) and who has enough bills and student loans to not be comfortable with the idea of one day paychecks just stop coming?

Thanks for any insight or personal experiences...

But your point about being taken advantage of has been in the forefront of my mind. Thanks for giving that some credence.

It won't happen. They only said that to keep a carrot in front of you for a little while longer. If the company ever gets to revenue neutral, their idea of a "big share" will suddenly change. After all, why give a programmer a significant chunk of equity once the company is making money? That equity is suddenly worth something!

If you don't already have equity, you're not likely to get any. And it sure sounds like you deserve a significant amount of equity given how early you are and the risks you're taking; if you wait to negotiate how much equity you get until after the risk has gone down, you'll get a lot less equity. And that's if you get any at all.