Gravity payments raised salaries as a vindictive measure against a co-founder / brother who sued the CEO for taking a salary of $1million, which was way too high for their revenue at the time. Dan Price took all the profits they were making, divided by the number of employees and gave everyone that so the brother would make no money on his equity. This was a way to screw his brother and fend off the lawsuit at the same time. A bunch of senior engineers quit because they did not receive equal pay increases. He also divorced his wife days before increasing his salary from $50k to $1m lol. Guy is a scumbag.
It goes beyond just that. When interviewed about the matter by Bloomberg [0], the CEO lied about the lawsuit timelines, and when he got called out by the interviewer, he repeated the lie and cut the interviewer off. The CEO claims he got sued for raising the salary for all the employees, but the lawsuit against him was served weeks before (and it was for a completely different reason), and he signed it himself. But he claimed he hasnt even heard of the lawsuit before he raised the salaries.
Oh, and he pretty much unambiguously abused his wife (Chris Brown style, i.e., pretty violently), but was also super dodgy and aggressive about it with the interviewer. I found that Bloomberg investigation and interview to be pretty in-depth and well done.
