A glassdoor rating means nothing, it's always spammed by marketing and companies can remove whatever they like.
In their minds they had done everything right, and every year they raised more money. They figured they had the fundraising round in the bag so they could move forward with their spending plan and they money would be there. Obviously it didn't happen, and (now in denial) they figured they would delay payments until next month, and the board members who weren't in denial saw the writing on the wall, disagreed with the companies decisions, and left.
I think there were certainly issues with wrong priorities but this seems more like a classic case of denial than a CEO who's trying to scam his employees. He just couldn't accept his billion(?) dollar company was actually worth nothing, and frankly I'm not sure if I could accept this reality well either
* They claimed to have raised 150 million when they in fact raised around 1 million
* They repeatedly claimed there was no risk of missing payroll when in fact, there was a very tangible risk of missing payroll
* They made promises of deal updates and town halls which they repeatedly reneged on
* They made important changes like dropping health insurance coverage without informing employees, which has real tax and legal (not to mention medical) consequences for the employees.
As the article mentions, tons of other VC-funded companies have gone bankrupt before, but those bankruptcies did not end in disaster like Pollen did.
