As a former consultant, payment issues are rife everywhere. The startup issues you describe I’ve seen cross cultures. My last company decided to no longer do work for startups because of their shaky finances and sketchy practices.
The big companies have their own issues too. I once had a large client decide suddenly “we decided not to pay our bills in December” - all to make the CFOs numbers look good. Of course our direct customer, the group we worked with, was just as aghast as we were about our non payment. But it was pretty much “we dare you to try to sue us” from procurement. Our direct customer worked tirelessly to get us paid, to no avail. They did eventually pay in January, but it created a cash flow headache.
For this reason (and some other ones) I accepted I’d rather be an employee with reliable paycheck and benefits than the difficult conversation about late payment always looming.
Also I’m not sure it matters, but NYC has a specific law that protects freelancers specifically:
The big companies have their own issues too. I once had a large client decide suddenly “we decided not to pay our bills in December” - all to make the CFOs numbers look good. Of course our direct customer, the group we worked with, was just as aghast as we were about our non payment. But it was pretty much “we dare you to try to sue us” from procurement. Our direct customer worked tirelessly to get us paid, to no avail. They did eventually pay in January, but it created a cash flow headache.
For this reason (and some other ones) I accepted I’d rather be an employee with reliable paycheck and benefits than the difficult conversation about late payment always looming.
Also I’m not sure it matters, but NYC has a specific law that protects freelancers specifically:
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/dca/about/freelance-isnt-free-act....