People talking about getting ink need to focus a little more on the underlying issue, the gas-lighting of greedy "founders". My employment contract & bonus contract had to all be walked out on as it was all predicated on my CEO being trustworthy. I recently met up with several other employees who didn't get paid for the end of their contracts either. The thing we liked most about talking was figuring out it definitely wasn't our problem.

> If the author's reading this, it sounds like you're fairly early in your career and learned a tough business lesson the hard way

Yeah. Second that. Experience is good. Knowing what it all actually looks like, the phrases, the mannerisms, is very valuable. You can take bigger risks when you know how the terrain rolls.

As an example of my senses getting more developed, recently I talked to a "CEO" of some startup I was interviewing and asked about someone else I liked who I knew at the company from earlier. Check this out:

"Oh, yeah [person] is really great...blah blah blah."

"So how is [person] doing?"

"Oh, well, they decided they wanted to do something else...blah blah blah."

Complete total waste of time was brewing if I didn't probe into the non-specific answer that artfully implied that [person] hadn't left the company and was soon part of my awesome team. I would have at the least researched them more. When you have to waste time on things like this, it makes getting where you want to be way harder and makes it harder to justify risks.