Two whole months (rolls eyes)? You think they did because of a sense of "family"? Maybe they didn't want employees leaving in this labor market and I'm guessing they didn't want to lay people off because others would take that as a signal to jump ship. Trust me, if things get bad, they'll let people go. Two months is not really bad.

You're right, two months isn't bad, but it was a sacrifice, something people in this thread seem to just assume isn't done by management.

It was a sacrifice for themselves and their equity. What does the cap table look like? Not laying off employees prevents a morale issue and gives more resources to keep building product. Don’t confuse other employees by trying to say it was a sacrifice for them, that is misleading, it wasn’t, but I’m sure the founders would love to sell it that way: “We’re doing this for you!”

It depends on whether you needed those employees for the company's survival, or you kept them on doing under-productive work worth less than their pay.

Would your CEO give up his life savings to pay your medical bills? Would he risk his life for you?

Maybe. That said, there are people in families who wouldn't do that. These examples aren't ones that prove or not that you act familial.

Would you do it for them? Come on, is taking no pay meaningless to you?

You missed the point of this thread, which is whether it's appropriate to call a company a "family."

Fair enough, I don't think it's appropriate to call a company a family.

I do however think taking zero pay is a signal which, under the right circumstances, is worthy of inspiring loyalty greater than the average company.

Founders effectively have the same class of stock as employees when it comes to value, except for voting rights. Voting rights are usually sensitive, because the new normal is for founders to have a different class stock upon going public to preserve their ability to control the decision-making process, even in the face of an activist shareholder.

You actually want your founders to have these voting rights typically. Most activist shareholders tend to say things like "your business would be a lot more profitable without this expensive engineering team. You don't need A players to maintain the technology you've already built, you should fire most of your team and outsource them." Suddenly preserving founder control sounds a lot better, eh?

That they needed the employees to continue to work so that they could later get rich with their hugely disproportionate equity stakes?

I find this an interesting, if cynical response. It's as though there is no possible set of actions that would be enough.

I mean it's nice optics, but the salary of the person with the most equity is pretty meaningless overall. If the company works out that person is never going to notice the missing paychecks, if the company doesn't work out everyone still loses their jobs. It's business, not family.

Typically if you don't pay the employees then you will have no employees ;)