Comment by geophile | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geophile | Hacker News Reader

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You are too focused on pay. Continuing for a limited amount of time without pay is not unheard of, but if I were in that situation, I'd want the founder to be completely open about what's going on. The fact that he isn't is obviously a red flag.

What else is going on? Do you have a viable product? Is it not selling? Or is the problem that he says that it's selling but there's no paycheck anyway? Does the product's market make sense to you? How does your product stack up against the competition? In other words: is there any point to sticking around, even ignoring the paycheck issue?

If you have doubts about the company's prospects, and they are being cagey about how things are going, I'd probably leave.

If you think the company has a bright future, then I'd dig deeper into the paycheck issue, maybe asking the founder why he's being so secretive. Have with him the conversation you're starting here. (Him thinking you are about to leave might not be such a bad idea. Hard to imagine that would be a surprise.)

Asking employees to work without pay is unheard of. It's almost invariably an admission of failure.

> What else is going on? 1) The founder said he's raising money. 2) Cable was cut a few times. 3) Amazon server bills were not being paid since 5 months ago and they did suspend us a few times. 4) The company initially had around 15 people. Today, there's only 3.

Do you have a viable product? 1) We do not have a viable product yet. It's more like a prototype. The founder is very focused on building a lot of nice looking features. The product is not lean, in my perspective. We are more like building five products.

>Does the product's market make sense to you? Yes it does.

>How does your product stack up against the competition? Personally, I believe in the product, but we never really spent a lot of time testing the market.

>If you think the company has a bright future, then I'd dig deeper into the paycheck issue, maybe asking the founder why he's being so secretive. I will definitely try to have another conversation with him.

You are one of 3 employees, building 5 products, and the founder is not being completely transparent?

I'd first ask the founder to be frank and open about what's truly going on. If that succeeds, I'd then change the focus to less products. If you can't get both those things to happen, I'd suggest leaving.

So the market makes sense to you, but the product is not focused?

What about equity? You should know exactly how much you have, and this should be backed up by documents stating how many shares are outstanding, what options you have, vesting schedule, etc.

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