Title: Summary: Startup not paying wages or tax on employees, to claim unemployment benefit I have to report them.<p>Hi guys, I&#x27;d appreciate some outside perspective here.<p>I&#x27;ve been working with a startup for about two months as their CTO. Small team, three&#x2F;four developers depending how you count. Handshake deal said moderate salary until series A but with equity.<p>I&#x27;ve been pushing and pushing for a contract stating the terms, but there always seemed to be something else the CEO had to do. However, I met the rest of the team and it all seemed legitimate.<p>Around the two month mark, I dug my heels in and said contract or I walk. Next day I have a meeting with the CEO and it comes out that there&#x27;s no salaries being paid, people are working for equity. I explain that this isn&#x27;t appropriate for my situation, to which the CEO responds with more work for me to do.<p>Obviously, I should walk away at this point (or ideally weeks before), but there are some twists:<p>1) The work that I produced for them is still mine, as no copyright transfer has been signed. They&#x27;ll almost certainly be trying to sell this &#x2F; bring it to investors.<p>2) It&#x27;s not legal to work only for equity in my country, there&#x27;s a minimum wage, and each employee has to be registered and tax paid on them to the government. I went to apply for unemployment assistance and was told that regardless of whether I was paid, I was considered employed, and thus had no entitlements. Furthermore, as I wasn&#x27;t registered the company was not meeting its tax obligations in hiring me.<p>This brings me to the crux of my problem: If I want to claim unemployment benefit while I look for a real job, I must torpedo the old company. This is bad as it not only can hurt my reputation, it will negatively affect the co-workers who have previously worked for low wage and equity.<p>My feeling is to walk away and cut my losses, but  I thought the community may have other suggestions.<p>Thanks for looking.
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