Company is in startup death spiral. Struggling with whether to stay.

My company is currently going through the first stages of what seems to be the startup death spiral. Initially, it was a great place to work: not awesome pay, but fully remote and flexible, no micromanaging, dedicated team, and complete understanding that I’m a college student and willingness to let me do what I needed to do as long as I got my hours in.

A new Captain Corporate has come in and proceeded to slowly dismantle all of that in the name of having us be more profitable above all else. One of the three teams is now gone with their work pushed onto my team. Half our jobs now go to freelancers. Old processes are all out the window. Quality and morale are both through the floor. Raises and bonuses were both announced to be off the table for everyone. But hey, you get stock options now! Just don’t mention the part where we’re not publicly traded yet so those stock options are worth about as much as Monopoly money.

In full honesty, I basically ignored all of this. I’m not a good corporate girlie. I don’t care about advancement, office politics, anything like that. I have a creative side job where I get my fulfillment from, and as long as I could show up to work, do my job and do it good, and have enough in my bank account to pay for my schooling, I was willing to make anything work. The team has always been willing to put in overtime or shift our schedules when needed in exchange for the freedom the company gave us, and I was fully loyal to what I thought was the unicorn company that would make it possible to work my way through school.

Now, though, our flexible schedules seem to be the next thing on the chopping block, and I’m two weeks from starting my senior year. Several people have threatened to walk. My manager has already called to tell me I’m a top performer, she wants to keep me, and she’ll find a way to set my shifts around my classes. She went over my schedule with me and identified a way to make it work. But I’m very torn when it comes to staying.

On the one hand, I’ll have been here a year in October, I’ll have my schooling fully paid for by the end of December, and if they’re as desperate to keep me as they seem, I don’t know if I want to throw that away in this job market. I’m disadvantaged because I’m both in school and disabled, so working remote and flexibly is a necessity for me. But on the other hand, all of the reasons I had to care about this company are being eroded, and I don’t want to just sit there and take it. I want to see this money-grubbing, people-as-an-afterthought mentality backfire. I don’t want to stay if they’re not giving me any reason to. But I also don’t want to do something stupid that I’ll regret. I know a secure remote job, even a crappy one, is something a lot of people would give a lot to have, so I don’t want to throw it down the drain. But at the same time, we’re a small company. If enough people walk, the place goes belly-up, and part of me feels like it deserves that and I want to be part of it. I’m very young for this kind of workforce, so I want to seek some more opinions. What’s the right move here?