Ask HN: What to do when your company misses payroll?

Some comments about resumes ...

If you apply for a job with me, I want to know why I should employ you. I want to know how you will add value to my company. I want to know that you will bring skills and abilities.

Do you know what I want? You should. You shouldn't just read the ad for the job - you should find out what my company does, then read the ad, and work out how your skills will help me meet my goal of making money. If you can't or won't do those things, I probably don't want you to work for me.

What skills do you have? How can I tell?

Can you work on your own? How can I tell?

Can you work in a team? How can I tell?

Will you get things done? How can I tell?

I don't really care about your education, or your recent jobs, unless they show me why you are the right person for me. And I want to read that on the first page, preferably in the first paragraph, and preferably without typos, grammatical errors, or anything else to distract me. I don't at this stage really care what your name is, or how to contact you, or whether you can typeset 16 different fonts on the same page.

Why should I employ you? What do you think I want, and why should I think you have it.

And good luck in whatever you choose. You could choose to put your resume in your profile here on HN.

The IP assignments I've signed when joining a company (and always gotten modified in my favor to varying degrees) have never said anything about whether or not they have their shit together enough to pay me. In my experience, they tend to boil down to: anything you do on company time, with company equipment, or at the company's request belongs to the company, full stop. You might be able to argue that you weren't on company time if you weren't paid for that time, but the other two clauses should cover that handily.

At my present job, I use my own laptop, and got the agreement winnowed down to just the third of those -- they only own my work if they specifically asked me to do it. (Granted, I'm not writing a lot software here, and what software we do write just exists to facilitate our core business, so I doubt they'd have any qualms about any of the developers modifying their agreements similarly, anyway.)

So I was working for a company that stated withholding paychecks. My boss was very charismatic and we had a client or two that owed us a very large amount of money. Due to these facts I and many many others stuck around long after we should have. In the end I was owed several thousand dollars, about 6 paychecks. The company is now being sued by many people, and it turns out hasn't payed the IRS for the last two years. My advice is to get out now. It just isn't worth the risk. Possibly stick around until you find a new job but look desperately for a new job.

That's pretty much what I remember from my business law class, but then again I was often annoyed by the professor's little skits and rarely frequented whole live lectures (search Robert Emerson University of Florida if you haven't had a chance to see what nightmare the students go through).

I have been doing startup work in Silicon Valley since 1984 and have seen all the variations on this.

It all depends on the facts. When a startup struggles and misses payrolls, it is legitimate for the executive team to ask employees to stay and help the company through the struggle. Each employee then must decide based on his or her individual circumstances. Employees will have varying stakes in this. The employee who, say, owns 1-2% of the company via stock options may have a different motivation from the one who owns little or no equity, particularly if the company may eventually have a huge upside with a turnaround.

If the sacrifice is significant, though, then the employees should at least be offered some additional compensation for the added risk they are taking in potentially working for nothing. A commitment to give them added option grants if the company turns it around does this well.

This hits the founders and investors, but it should hit them - they are the ones asking people to do extraordinary things to help them save their dreams and they are the ones who will most benefit if it can be saved.

If this is done with options, there are no special tax complications. Nor does it cost anything to make a letter commitment that can be documented formally after the turn-around once the company has money again.

The one thing that has shocked me most over the years are the management types who expect employees to take the hit in such situations but who will not lift a finger to reward them for making a special sacrifice.

Others have mentioned secretiveness as a danger sign for the employees. I would add to this any display of unfairness such as a failure of management to recognize that special sacrifices deserve special rewards.

Of course, some cases are hopeless and then the only remedy is to run for the door, as many have noted.