

Arrears of pay – one of the worst things for your company - karol_zielinski
http://blog.karolzielinski.com/arrears-of-pay-one-of-the-worst-things-for-your-company

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hga
Yeah, arrears of pay is unacceptable as a rule.

Nolan Bushnell of Atari fame said that you aren't a real entrepreneur until
you've made a payroll from your credit cards.

I myself have experienced this once, and the company did _everything_ right.
It was Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI, the competitor of Symbolics) and we had been
kept apprised of the status of our effort to get an investment from TI.

At one point we were told that our paychecks had been cut and then locked in a
safe. If we got the investment, we'd get them ASAP, and in the meantime we
were free to do as we saw fit. (It being a crusade to being LISP to the
masses, we all stayed and worked. :-)

This went on for two semi-monthly pay periods, and then we got the investment.
And celebrated with a make-you-own sushi party; my suggestion,
enthusiastically endorsed by the president, who was even more of a sushi fan
than me. It's good, messy and cheap fun, as long as you know how to make the
rice and have a good source of fish, which we did from a Japanese grocery
store in Cambridge.

But outside of special cases like this---we were far from shipping product and
we knew we needed another round of financing---it's a clear signal to pull the
eject lever.

At the very least, it tells you something very solid about the margins on
which your company is running and the other resources it has on tap, as well
as likely the character of the top dog.

