IME, things turn “ugly” at the point where this decision must be made: 1. Pay themselves less and keep employee salaries the same. 2. Keep their pay the same

IME, things turn “ugly” at the point where this decision must be made: 1. Pay themselves less and keep employee salaries the same. 2. Keep their pay the same and ask everyone else to take a pay cut. 3. Everyone gets a pay cut. Which one they choose says a lot about what the founders value and there will be people who resent their decision (either the founders or the employees or both) which tends to cause a lot of drama. If the founders choose option 1, you’ll only start to hear about it once the founders resent it enough to use it as an argument to do X, as a sort of guilt trip. As soon as one of these decisions is made, you have 3 options: 1. GTFO 2. Stay until they make you go. 3. Stay and when things get dire, say you’ll stay for little to no pay if you get promised some IP or something. Get that in a contract and make sure it goes to you before any creditors or investors. Option 3 is hard to pull off. I managed to get some awesome IP from a failing startup this way and sold a license for a few years to competitors before they also went out of business. (The business model only worked in a recession, who knew).