The startup I was a part of in a previous life did that. The two owners took too much money for personal stuff and couldn't pay the employees. Several times w

The startup I was a part of in a previous life did that. The two owners took too much money for personal stuff and couldn't pay the employees. Several times we were told to not cash our paychecks for a few days or were asked to take an unpaid day off, etc. That same year that they let 3 employees go and they each bought a new house, new vehicles, and one of them bought a $75k trailer. So between the 2 of them, we figured that that year they could barely afford to pay us they got around $800k worth of personal stuff. Then they pushed all the extra work onto the remaining employees. 4 more left a few months after they let go of the first employees which caused them to change their business model quite a bit to retain the remaining employees. Now looking back, the 3 employees they let go were paid less than $80k between them and were considered contractors (until the IRS was involved). The lean stuff here burnt several of us out, and for those that remained, the thanks they got was being told there wasn't enough money for a holiday party. I keep in contact with several of the employees. They're a successful startup in most aspects I assume, but only because they were forced to change stuff that they didn't want to. If they didn't change the business model, they would have bled more employees within a few months and probably would have went under.