After 9 months of unpaid work for a startup, they kicked me out.

TL;DR: I joined a startup as a frontend intern, took on many responsibilities, but was continuously delayed on payment. After months of empty promises and low salary offers, I decided to leave. The CTO suggested if I quit, I wouldn't be a priority for getting my unpaid dues but I’d "learn a lot" if I stayed. I eventually resigned after one last month, but they delayed my salary again, and after calling them out, I was removed from company systems. A fellow developer faced similar issues and was threatened with legal action.

In December 2023, I joined a startup as a frontend developer intern. The core team had only three people. Even though I was an intern, I was their first frontend hire and took full control of their Next.js frontend. I also managed their Azure infrastructure, built an Android app with Expo React Native, handled deployments on virtual machines, and did some backend work.

The agreement was that I would be paid $12 per hour, but I was receiving monthly invoices, and payments were delayed by months. After four months, in April, I asked the founder about my pay, and he said they had a seed but were facing issues with converting it. He promised my dues would be cleared soon. Two more months passed, and I got the same reasons, plus delays due to the elections.

By mid-July, things took a turn for the worse. They admitted they don't have the money and couldn’t clear my dues for an unknown period of time. Instead, they offered me a full-time job with a salary of only $400 a month, which was way too low. At the end of July, I told them I wanted to leave. The CTO then said that if I left, I wouldn’t be on their priority list for getting my unpaid dues, but I’d "learn a lot" if I stayed. That was a big red flag for me.

Since I needed money, I decided to stay for another month to get that month's salary and then resign. I still wasn’t officially made full-time because they hadn’t finalized the paperwork, and my full-time role was supposed to start in September. After working for another month, I informed them that I would resign at the end of it.

When it came time to handover/knowledge transfer, I told them I wouldn’t start until I received my salary. The founder and CTO said it would take 30-45 days because of the full-and-final (FnF) process, even though I wasn’t a full-time employee—just a contractor—and the team only had three people. This was the breaking point for me. I confronted them, pointing out that they expected my work on time, but my pay was always delayed.

For that disagreement, they kicked me out of the company’s GitHub and Azure within hours. I then ranted about their dishonest behavior in the general Slack channel, left the workspace, and blocked the core team members.

Later, I stayed in touch with a backend developer friend who was also struggling. He hadn’t been paid that month's salary, despite it being well into September. He decided to pause his work and resign. The founder threatened him with legal action for "fraud" if he didn’t finish the handover. My friend knew it was an empty threat, so he found contract loopholes, replied to the founder, and was ghosted—no salary, no response.

Now it was my foolery too that I trusted someone's sweet words for so long and did unpaid work for so long. I shouldn't have trusted people blindly. And I have had my lesson, learnt a lot in tech

And I really wanted to share this, get different opinions and suggestions that can I do something about it. Like I cannot do something legally on them right now and I do want to name and shame them but there is a signed contract, and I guess I don't want legal trouble right now because I am too exhausted from all this