Best Practices for Hiring and Firing at a Startup
blog.nosnivelling.comI especially like the part where Dave mentions you can substitute employer for employee -- we all have a choice!
One note: there's a slide that mentions zero salary. There may be minimum wage laws implications to having a non-founder take no salary. Be sure to check with a lawyer before doing that; you don't want to wind up having a terminated employee/commenter hit you for unpaid wages etc.
This is a great point -- this was originally (and still is) a deck geared to founders. The large issue is to try to find people (as employees) who would prefer less short-term salary for more longer-term equity. Not only because it saves $, but also because it shows the right owner mentality.
In this market, when you find someone willing to take 1/2 salary for 6 months for 2x equity, beware that you may be creating a system geared largely to suckers.