There was an emergency meeting today where the CEO revealed that we are 1-2 months away from running out of funds. He hasn't been able to fundraise and our sales haven't been as high as expected (but we're beating last years marks and still growing in numbers.)
He asked everybody to take a 25% paycut and work longer hours in sales - if we reach sales goals, we can recover our lost salary.
I'm shocked because we had a full-time hire quit less than a month in the company, and recently had an engineer step down. Two full-time positions had become vacant for two months, all of us working longer hours, and still somehow this happens.
My role with the company is through servicing clients directly. Sales, marketing, and content are also responsibilities I have on the side. I already work overtime daily and weekly. My salary provides no benefits, no equity, and it was originally a mid-range salary for my position. With the 25% paycut, I will be making below average my salary range.
The job has already been stressful on my mental health and there has been micromanaging that has frustrated me. I feel like a lot of errors were made by the CEO, that he took some unnecessary risks and there are some people on staff that don't provide much value.
I don't want to accept the paycut and am willing to vacate my position. The reduced pay and higher workload is not worth it to me. The issue is that I work directly with about 80% of clients and this will be a massive problem for the company. I did the math on my salary and the amount of clients I am responsible for, and I am at least a 4-5x ROI. I was also expecting to request and receive a raise by the end of the year because of my performance... that's unlikely.
If I refuse the paycut and vacate my position, the company will be in a difficult position, and I'll have to live with the fact that I contributed to the death of the company while having zero references from the job (there are 9 full-time employees.)
To those in a similar situation, how would you approach the situation? What do you think about my reasoning? What questions should I be asking the CEO when we meet soon?
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