There is a right way to do this and a wrong way and they picked the wrong way. The right way is to say "we will do 2024 and work with you to transition for 2025".

There was barely enough money to pay for the last week of wages, would you expect employees to volunteer to achieve that?

I'm not defending what they did, but doing the work even one more week was not an option afaik. At best they could have wrapped up earlier?

A business should know approximately when it will run out of money. Ethically, they should have warned their customers that their financial situation was poor and thus they might close.

They should have done that months ago... Maybe they would have been acquired without all the drama...

Problem is, if they thought that there was any chance of making it, telling people “we might have to shut down soon” will ensure that they do shut down.

Where does the money come from to pay for that? As an employee, would you want to work for 6mo, for no promotions, bonuses, stock?

Seems like they could have had huge layoffs, to try to maintain, but maybe they thought the sale would go through before the shutdown, meaning no one gets laid off.

But the buyer waited until after the shutdown to grab it

From the fees the customers are paying for the bookwork.

If they were profitable, then they wouldn’t have shut down…

Presumably, their cost to serve was higher than what their customers were collectively paying.