
Penny Arcade’s Insultingly Horrible Job - ambirex
http://www.marco.org/2013/11/26/penny-arcade-awful-job
======
fragsworth
There are so many fucking developers out there who are totally unaware of
their own value, and will take a salary significantly less than they're worth.
This usually comes as a result of nervousness in interviews, lack of
confidence, fear of going broke, and/or some other feeling of desperation.

As an employer, you want to find these folks. There's usually no downside to
having these absurd job postings. Penny Arcade apparently went too far and is
getting some bad publicity, but usually there are no repercussions. Can you
really blame them for trying to do this - when it works?

As developers, you need to educate your fellow developers about how much
they're worth, strategize ways to extract maximum value from companies you
work for, and instill a sense of confidence in one another. If you've ever
gone to engineering school, I _know_ you knew tons of folks who couldn't
believe what companies were willing to pay for them. Their misconceptions need
to be abolished.

If you don't help your fellow developers understand their positions, then
they'll end up taking jobs like this one at Penny Arcade for shit pay and it
brings down the overall price of employees in general.

Company owners don't want you to know this. They benefit from these awesome
hires.

~~~
testing12341234
So how does a developer determine their own value? For example:

1.) I do web development every day. I'm not a spectacular designer, but I can
put a work flow together and I'm comfortable on both the client side
javascript (JavaScript proper, jQuery, Backbone, AngularJs) as well as the
server side (Ruby, Node.js, PHP 5.5 (Laravel mostly), C#).

2.) I do development in the form of sysadmin/devops type tasks
(bash/powershell/vbscript)

3.) I currently do IT related tasks with regards to servers (not desktops)
such as building servers from parts, loading them in to racks, setting up
firewalls/routers/networking, etc

4.) I'm not perfect with attention to detail. Things fall through the cracks,
but I know when to skip details (because they can be easily rectified if
missed) and when not to (because the work really is mission critical, or
rectifying the mistake would be particularly painful)

5.) I'm self-educated with minimal college. However, I devour books about
algorithms, AI, language references, etc

6.) I have terrible work-life balance. I love my wife dearly, but if there is
a problem to be solved, I can't let it go. I often dream about problems that
are on my mind.

7.) I work well in teams, but I prefer solo work as I can often get in the
"zone" easier when not distracted. I am not socially awkward, but I prefer
smaller groups. I won't do sales, and while I can do direct customer service,
I find it exhausting and my day is often shot afterwards.

8.) I understand how to deal with, and juggle, multiple "number one"
priorities.

9.) I generally don't do on call, but if there is a fire, I'm always available
to work on it.

10.) I'm constantly on the lookout for techniques to enhance myself, and the
team as a whole. I often do presentations on up and coming software stacks, or
training on technologies that I think would be worthwhile to implement.

11.) I live in Portland, Or. Relocating to SV or SF is not an option.

Given all of that (and more since it's never binary), how do I go about
valuing myself in the market without wasting a ton of time?

~~~
dj_axl
> How do I go about valuing myself in the market without wasting a ton of
> time?

It takes a ton of time, but interview people. Seriously, you would not believe
what the applicant pool is like, even after resume filtering and phone
screening. After interviewing 20-30 people you may have a very different
perspective on which decile of value that you fall into. If you are in the top
10% of developers, then your value is the top 10% as well.

~~~
josephlord
Note that those you get to interview will tend to be the less attractive
candidates because they will tend to do more interviews before getting a job
(and may be job hunting again sooner) BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER. You only have
position yourself amongst the AVAILABLE candidates anyway

------
VexXtreme
A lot of companies out there are run by total morons or psychopaths, this
doesn't surprise me at all. This sounds like a combination of both.

I was recently introduced to a job by a recruiter and they wanted me to do a
"programming assignment" which would take at least 20 hours, before I could
even talk to them and see who they were. I was like, "Cool story bro".

The reason why I bring that up is because I noticed the same pattern here;
this job ad is screening for desperate people lacking a spine. I can't imagine
any decent developer with a good job applying for this. Only someone
desperately looking for work and having relatively low skills would willingly
take this job, assuming he's not an idiot.

~~~
pyrocat
Before resorting to ad hominem attacks you may want to do some research on who
you're attacking. Robert Khoo is neither a moron nor a psychopath. I disagree
with his job posting, but it helps no one to attack the person behind it (with
false insults) instead of attacking the posting itself and what it represents.

~~~
na85
I think someone who so blatantly values his developers so little _deserves_ to
be insulted.

~~~
eridius
What about someone who values honesty enough to actually list the accurate job
posting, which honestly doesn't sound that different than a lot of jobs in
this industry. The biggest difference is those jobs didn't actually list the
bad conditions in the job posting.

~~~
singular
So it's ok to be an abusive arsehole as long as you're honest about it? The
only crime is to be a dishonest arsehole?

How about being a decent reasonable human being/employer? Or is that just off
the table altogether in this discussion?

With limbo-like justifications like this I'm not surprised these kind of
diseased company cultures exist.

~~~
nightski
Yes. You are acting like this job is not voluntary.

~~~
VexXtreme
So a job that advertises terrible working conditions is suddenly morally
upstanding and ethical just because you know what you're in for? What if you
need money to feed your family and the job ad says that as a precondition to
getting hired you need to give them one of your kidneys?

This is exactly why labor law exists and why libertarian/extreme capitalist
societies could never function. The argument "it's a free market" doesn't hold
water. Without a system of checks and balances exploitation will always take
place because there are always people desperate enough to do anything to make
a living. No matter what you say about "free markets" and "voluntary
agreements", you can't convince me that it's right and ethical and a good idea
in any capacity.

~~~
eridius
Labor laws? Holy crap, you are deluded. We're talking about a cushy white-
collar job here. Yes, the expectations sound pretty bad, _relatively
speaking_. But it's a far cry from exploitative labor.

~~~
VexXtreme
Calm down, go back and re-read the sub-thread. We are talking about general
principles behind the practice, not necessarily about this concrete example.

~~~
eridius
How very patronizing of you.

In the entire category of white-collar jobs the idea of requiring labor laws
is ludicrous.

------
DigitalSea
I'm glad someone spoke up about it. I was rather insulted as a developer
myself who feels undervalued that a business is doing nothing to help improve
conditions for developers, this is why the industry is plagued with mental
health issues; we aren't sleeping, we are drinking a lot of coffee, we have no
time to socialise or even spend time outside in the air/sun. Workplace
conditions as highlighted in the job ad for Penny Arcade are what is wrong
with the industry as a whole.

Don't get me started on the ridiculousness of expecting someone with a
computer science degree for such a job. After spending tens of thousands of
dollars on a CS degree, I'm sure said developer would love nothing more than
to get a job that underpays, has no perks or offers real value. Surprised they
didn't list they wanted someone with knowledge of plumbing and performing
complicated electrical work with experience working in a commercial kitchen
and being able to cook 500 meals in the space of a couple of hours...

There aren't many developers out there who would meet even half the
requirements Penny Arcade listed in their job ad as a self-taught web
developer with no qualifications, I would be on that list as well.

~~~
Swizec
I am working on improving lives of developers through my book:
[https://leanpub.com/nightowls](https://leanpub.com/nightowls)

The idea is to produce a book programmers can give to whomever is making their
lives miserable and teaching said person about keeping programmers happy and
productive. I'm also adding practical advice for programmers themselves
because I feel that we bring a lot of these problems on ourselves.

That said, if you're in the Bay Area I'd love to buy a drink and talk about
the state of the industry. My book needs more material :)

~~~
DigitalSea
This sounds really good. I think the issue definitely needs more attention,
because these kind of toxic environments are becoming the norm for the
software and web development industries. I remember a conversation a manager
had with me once because he felt I wasn't putting in enough overtime (being
salaried and not being paid for overtime, I felt this was wrong). His issue
was that the other developer who I worked with, who had no girlfriend or wife
or kids to spend time with was staying until 9/10pm every night of the week
and he lived a 2 hour drive away whereas I lived 45 minutes away by train or
20 by car.

The problem is if you refuse to put in the overtime, there will always be
someone else who is willing and able to put the overtime in, as a result they
are presented with more opportunities. The mentality in every development
industry is if you are the first to leave, you'll most likely be the first on
the chopping block if the business hits a rough spot. You are perceived as not
being a team player, not working hard enough and putting pressure on your
peers.

I understand overtime is part of the job. We as developers know when we signed
up to be developers that there will be late nights, but when companies expect
overtime as part of the normal job for no good reason other than to get more
for less, that's not right. People are afraid to leave at 5.30pm on the dot at
most companies, especially as the economy gets worse.

Sadly I'm in Australia, otherwise catching up and discussing the state of the
industry would have been awesome. I'll most likely be in the US sometime next
year though, my partner and I are currently trying to get some funding for an
ambitious idea.

------
snogglethorpe
The actual ad seems a _lot_ less disturbing than Marco's write-up of it... the
main thing I notice is it seems to avoid the typical grinning-HR-guy-speak and
sounds more like they're being honest about things.

This clearly isn't the job for everybody (obviously not Marco), but there are
plenty of people out there who are (as the ad puts it) "not terribly money-
motivated" and would be willing to work hard to be in a cool environment with
cool people. [Some of the best jobs I've had have been for absurdly low
salaries, but I don't regret them for a nanosecond...]

Given who wrote the ad, I also wouldn't be surprised if they're exaggerating a
wee bit and making it sound rather scarier than it really is. Having a small
outfit with reasonable people in charge (and whatever faults they have, I
don't think PA are really psychopathic-startup-CEOs in disguise) is one of the
best insurances there is against a truly unreasonable work environment. Sugar-
coated job ads are an insurance against nothing....

If anything, I'm more disturbed by Marco's rush to judgement...

~~~
snowwrestler
The funny thing is that this was actually the job for Marco when he was
younger at Tumblr--as he admits. But now that he's older and more successful,
it looks like a bad deal.

Which it is--for older more successful people. For a youngster with a light
resume and a thirst for excitement, though, it might be perfect.

~~~
hraedon
God, did you even read his response? He took a similar job for a few years out
of college but required and received competitive pay _and equity (!)_ as well
as a reasonable work/life balance. He was allowed to learn parts of that job
on the fly: ie, he didn't come into it with the expectation that he know every
aspect of it day one.

PA wants someone who not only has expert-level experience in several
disciplines but is willing to work such a job to the exclusion of anything
else while not getting paid a competitive salary nor receiving any sort of
stake in their gaming media empire. This is absolutely in keeping with the
worst inclinations of this industry, made worse by PA's knowledge of these
practices in many of the companies they cover.

So, no, they are wildly different. This job is a good deal for no one and you
do an immense disservice by carrying water for people that should know better.

------
ssclafani
Robert Khoo, the business manger of Penny Arcade and the one who wrote this
job ad subscribes to the "work is family" level of cultural fit. He looks at
hiring as adding a new member to the family rather than just filling a
position. This is why his job ads and hiring methods are so harsh. The three
seasons of Penny Arcade's video show paint a good picture of what it's like to
get hired and work at Penny Arcade: [http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/pa-the-
series](http://penny-arcade.com/patv/show/pa-the-series).

~~~
GuiA
Bullshit.

Anyone who has been in the industry for more than 2 months knows that the
"work is family" thing is a nonsensical feel good catchphrase thrown around by
manipulative managers.

Your boss will not feel bad for you if you have a personal emergency which
requires your absence and costs the company money (parent dying, spouse or
children having medical problems, etc.).

Your company will not hesitate one second to fire you if the output you
produce is deemed less valuable than the input you need to function.

Seriously, this is why Penny Arcade can get away with shit like that - because
there are people out there who blindly believe that "work is family" and eat
up the whole "it's not for everyone, others don't want to do it because
they're not hardcore enough, but you're hardcore enough spiel". Statistically
speaking, any argument that rests on the premise that you are better than 99%
of the population is bullshit.

If you really subscribe to the whole "work is family" thing, go ahead. Then in
6, 12, 18 or 36 months, when you inevitably get fucked over, you'll complain
about how you wish you had been warned ahead.

Sure, I love making work pleasant and grabbing beers with my boss and co-
workers as much as the next guy- but at the end of the day, work is work, and
anyone who tries to convince you otherwise has ulterior motives.

~~~
dougmccune
I won't try too hard to convince you otherwise, because you certainly seem set
in your opinions. But I think it's a shame that such an overwhelmingly
negative tone is thrown around so much. There are companies (small and
otherwise) made up of good people that do not operate on this horribly cold
impersonal calculus. There are bosses that will genuinely go out of their way
to help you through a family crisis. There are co-workers and organizations
that feel like family. I'm sorry you think it doesn't exist and that you've
never had a relationship with a boss that was anything other than evil, but
don't be so quick to tell everyone that that's all there is.

~~~
GuiA
My opinions are formed by witnessing friends getting fired/being pressured to
quit because their company had run out of money, or because they had to take
care of an ill relative and the company felt that their performance wasn't as
good as what it used to be, or because of some BS office politics. Those
companies include small trendy startups and big fortune 500 companies alike.

At the end of the day, no matter how wonderful everything is, if the company
is having a hard time and they need to fire you, they'll do it. Your boss is
not going to sell his car or house to pay your salary.

If the company is doing well and offers a nice work environment, it can be
fantastic, as you described- in which case, enjoy the ride while it lasts. But
don't delude yourself in thinking that the wind won't turn if bad times hit.
Believing anything else is setting yourself up for major letdown when it
happens.

~~~
mst
I broke my hip. The team rallied around and handled it until I was back. Both
my parents died. The team rallied around and handled it until I was back. One
of the team got close to burnout - the company provided him with unsolicited
paid time off provided he took it now, so he could chill and get back to being
productive.

My good experiences don't invalidate your bad experiences - but that sentence
applies vice versa too.

A bunch of bad data points proves that bad exists, but it doesn't prove that
bad is prevalent. That sentence also applies vice versa.

~~~
GuiA
That's awesome- I'm genuinely happy for you. Finding a fulfilling job is hard.

Based on your experience in the field, how many software companies out there
do you think are like yours? 20%? 10%? 1%? 0.1%? Less?

~~~
mst
I have a suspicion that for larger companies, it's more a question of which
teams are like that than which companies are, since the line manager's
attitude has a huge influence on the results (for example, one bent the HR
system substantially for me to enable me to house hunt effectively - a
personal act rather than an organisational one).

As for what percentage? I'm not really sure. Shadowcat is how it is because it
was baked into the culture from day one because that's how things _should_ be
done, so I'm not sure I can extrapolate usefully from it.

------
pesenti
> _Full Medical, Vision and Dental, 401k (SEP) retirement contributions (2% of
> annual income per year), Holiday pay, Periodic bonuses, Flexible vacation
> time, We 're willing to relocate you if need be_

An _insultingly horrible job_ and _this is everything wrong with tech-startup
culture_ , really Marco? Maybe your post is what's insulting to 99% of the
world work population (who have much worst jobs) and what's wrong in the tech
culture today (disclaimer: I was Marco's first employer).

~~~
vellum
He said it was an insultingly horrible job in the context of the software
world. And requiring someone to do the job of four and paying them for less
than the fair market value of one is insulting.

 _insulting to 99% of the world work population (who have much worst jobs)_

Many of the benefits you listed are standard in Europe. Full medical coverage
is provided by the government, and they have ~30 days of paid leave.

~~~
pesenti
Also I don't see what's the big deal about "doing four different jobs". In a
small company most employees do multiple jobs. It does mean that they have to
work more, just that they have to be flexible.

~~~
chipotle_coyote
When we read "doing four different jobs," there are two ways to take that:
doing one job that involves the functions of four separate positions but still
maintains a rational workload, or being asked to carry a workload that, if not
_actually_ the equivalent of four full-time jobs, is still substantially
higher than that of just one job. People who are willing to give Penny Arcade
the benefit of the doubt seem to be reading it the first way, whereas
"skeptics" like Marco and Christopher Buecheler (the author of the previously-
linked post about this) are reading it the second way. I admit I'm inclined to
be in the skeptic camp, simply because the posting goes _so_ far out of its
way to hammer home that the job has no work-life balance whatsoever and will
manifestly not pay you what you're worth.

And, Beucheler's larger point remains salient: Penny Arcade is _not_ such a
small company that this is so easily defensible. A five-person startup may
require one person to be web application developer, sysadmin and operations
manager. But Penny Arcade isn't a five-person startup. They've been around for
over a decade, produce multiple comics, and put on massive industry trade
shows. They can afford to hire more than one person if they have enough work
for it, and no matter how many people they hire they can damn well afford to
pay them market rate.

------
minimaxir
In a bit of life-imitating-art, Penny Arcade also co-writes a side webcomic
about poor conditions in the gaming QA industry:
[http://trenchescomic.com/](http://trenchescomic.com/)

The Tales from the Trenches section is less hilarious in hindsight.

~~~
tokenrove
People comparing this job to the work in gaming QA have no idea how bad gaming
QA is, generally, compared to even the worst possible interpretation of this
posting. Let's start with working for minimum wage, with no guarantees of
regular hours, not a salary. Forget about 401(k) or anything else like that.

------
santoshalper
Man, the people complaining about this shit are hilarious. I bet half of you
people are "libertarians". Nobody has to take this job, and if it means they
don't get a good employee, then so be it, that's their business decision. I
get worrying about McDonald's employees, many of those folks are living in
poverty and have few other options. Anybody who can do this job has a lot of
options and even if underpaid will be far from poverty.

When I was 22, I was a small businesses best programmer, IT guy, server admin,
CAD draftsman, document writer, butcher, baker, candlestick maker, etc. These
kinds of jobs are _extremely_ common in small businesses and honestly it was
an amazing and formative experience. You people are being babies.

------
lingben
"Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly
money-motivated group."

This is ridiculous to anyone who knows Robert Khoo. He is nothing but money
oriented and motivated. In fact he was brought in to PA for exactly this
reason and he is the reason why they grew to what they are now.

~~~
gaza3g
He definitely needs to be called out on this. Of course companies will always
try to pay the minimum that they can get away with while employees will try to
get as much as we can. That's normal in negotiations.

But saying that "we're not a terribly money-motivated" is just bullshit for,
"we're not terribly money-motivated when it comes to your compensation so
please be thankful with what we give you and don't ask for more.".

~~~
slantyyz
>> He definitely needs to be called out on this.

Maybe it's just because I'm old and jaded, but I think the ad is doing people
a favor. Clearly it's an "overwork, underpaid" position, which should raise
red flags for most people to say "Next!"

It's a lot less insidious than being dragged through an interview cycle where
they don't tell you what they consider market value for the position you're
interviewing for until the later stages, or where they won't tell you that
everyone in the company is a workaholic doing 80 hours a week unless you know
to ask.

Sure, it's a sucky position, and you can call him out. In my experience,
people like that can't be educated. They'll feign some remorse, but all
they'll do is use softened, misleading wording and end up wasting the time of
prospective candidates who will be misled into thinking that this is a better
job than it really is.

------
fotoblur
At dinner one night I overheard a senior guy tell a junior guy that what he
couldn't pay him in salary, he'd pay him in experience. The junior guy was
full of excitement. The senior guy was also full of excitement but did his
best to conceal it because he had just won a favorable victory in convincing
another to do his deeds without an equitable compensation.

~~~
mladenkovacevic
I guess he didn't tell him that it would be the experience of getting screwed
over.

------
vinceguidry
This is absolutely the norm for the creative industry. They pour themselves
into their work, and they expect you to too.

The reason is that creative work is incredibly hard in a way that's not
possible to make up for with experience or training. It's hard on day one,
year one, and hard on day one year twenty.

The thing that gets you through it all is the very nature of the work. It's
like you're giving birth to a baby and seeing it grow and thrive, only this
baby can make you shitloads of money. It's incredibly rewarding.

Penny Arcade wants the type of employee that can not only handle this, but who
can thrive off of it the same way they do. That's why they're so in-your-face
about how shitty the job is.

The entertainment industry is driven by big names. It's relentlessly
competitive, the successful enjoy a never-ending crush of people who want to
be a part of something they've been seeing on TV or the Internet and at cons
for years. The unsuccessful have to fight for every minor victory. It's winner
takes all, there's only so much public mindshare to go around.

If you want to know what the poor hapless sap who does get hired on to be
their resident nerd is getting out of the arrangement, it's being part of this
crush of attention. It's seriously life-changing. The social perks defy
enumeration. After a few years of shoveling Penny Arcade's shit, they will be
able to write their own salary at any number of massive media franchises who
need every vetted hand they can get and are willing to pay top dollar. That's
what's unsaid in that job ad, but if you've spent any time around that
industry, you'd be salivating at the mouth at the opportunity.

~~~
pandaman
What you described is true when applied to the creative positions. The ad is
not for one of those. It's for the "IT guy"'s role. I imagine this gets you as
much leverage in the entertainment industry as it got the guy who serviced
Michael Bay's laptop. If you've spent any time in that industry you knew it
yourself.

~~~
vinceguidry
Well if we're talking leverage, you're right. You need very deep pockets or
serious star power to get any _leverage_ in entertainment. The most famous
example of this is Arnold Schwarzenegger buying his way into action movies.
That's what it takes to be able to tell them what to do.

But that's not the only way to make it.

~~~
pandaman
You've just said that the guy will get a lot of leverage described as the
ability to write one's own salary.

~~~
vinceguidry
More just to mean that he'll get paid ridiculously well. Probably a bad choice
of words. I didn't mean to give that impression.

What the PA hire is looking at here is a few years of $30-50,000 (if he'll
even get that) followed by an immediate bump to the low six figures. Over the
course of his career he'll steadily work his way to the high six figures.

This is pretty much guaranteed, although it's not stated anywhere in any
contract or in the ad. Professionals in entertainment typically make an order
of magnitude more than their contemporaries, after they get in and are vetted,
join the trade association, etc.

You just have to get in. This involves getting a well-known production to take
a chance on you. A lot of people bum around entertainment for ten-fifteen
years before they catch their break. That break typically comes in the form of
a very part-time gig on a huge production. You might get some face time with a
big name.

That's when everything changes. Overnight, your marketability goes up tenfold.
You keep working with bigger and bigger names and before you know it, you're
rolling in cash and bennies.

This looks like a horrible job ad when you look at it from our perspective,
but what it really offers is a short-cut. You can jump out of the IT industry
and the generally shitty 'opportunities' it offers and hop immediately on the
fast-track to success. You don't have to bum around with the hangers-on for
years, you can get your foot in the door immediately. This is a truly Edison-
type opportunity, one that comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Entertainment types don't typically hire outside the industry. Outsiders just
don't understand it, can't quite grasp their priorities. That's why they chew
through so many young people and burn them out, because they can't get outside
professionals to work they way they need to.

PA is willing to, and you'd be a fool not to jump on it.

~~~
pandaman
Can you name somebody who followed this path you just desribed? In my 15+
years in games there had not been any agmin/ops/general IT people who rose to
stardom. In fact I don't recall any IT who worked at another studio before or
moved into another studio. Why would anybody care about their industry
experience? Why would anybody pay high six figures for such a job? It's the
equivalent of roadies in the music biz.

~~~
vinceguidry
Rose to stardom? Where did you read that in my comment?

All I'm saying is that career trajectories are very different between the two
industries. Of course you won't see people with entertainment-type careers in
the video games industry. They're two totally different types of sausage.

------
jpatokal
Props to PA for the honesty though. There's _plenty_ of jobs like this out in
small businesses that only need/can afford one "IT guy" to run everything, and
most will have pretty much this exact set of requirements (can't pay crazy
dot-com salaries, has to be able to do a bit of everything, be on-call 24/7 if
the shit really hits the fan), but how many of them would actually spell it
out?

~~~
icebraining
What kind of small business needs 24/7 support?

~~~
TillE
It's a good point, at least in this case. Nobody's going to die if PA goes
down for a few hours, and they're not even going to lose millions.

Being asked to work a few extra hours when PAX tickets go on sale or something
would be reasonable. On call 24/7 is just gratuitous.

------
MartinCron
It doesn't seem that out-of-the-ordinary in how horrible it is, but there is
something really unsettling in the "yeah, this is going to be terrible"
attitude of the job poster. There's an arrogance there that I don't think is
earned by being part of an only sometimes funny publication.

------
Segmentation
I'm reminded of the movie MoneyBall. Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt are employed
with what outsiders would consider horrible jobs, but each stick with it
because they enjoy it.

As an outsider you may think Penny Arcade's offer is bad, but someone,
somewhere would love nothing more to work with the people behind that
legendary comic and expo, no matter how rough it is.

Edit - I would also like to make an analogy with MMO guilds, particularly
World of Warcraft. There are players who spend 4+ hours a night with their
guild hardcore raiding (especially after the release of a content patch).
These hardcore guilds have very strict enlistments. Unless you're as hardcore
as them you're not in. An outsider would think they're insane, but there is no
shortage of people applying to these guilds because they enjoy the experience
of hardcore raiding. Some of these guilds have a very family-like bond toward
each other, so you have to consider community/culture fit.

~~~
9999
I assume you're being sarcastic when you write legendary, right? Peanuts,
Pogo, Calvin and Hobbes, Krazy Kat, Little Nemo... those are legendary comic
strips. Penny Arcade is a comic strip focused on a narrow subculture (man
children) within a subculture (video game fans) that largely consists of jokes
on videogame news cycle topics. It's the sort of thing that will be entirely
without value in 40 years.

That being said, I'm sure someone out there really does believe it's a
legendary comic strip and will want to be a part of that.

~~~
joel_perl_prog
Brutal and incisive comment. Both in terms of the (non) value of the comic (I
would extend this to every web comic I've personally ever seen), and in terms
of its audience.

------
DanI-S
> This is everything wrong with tech-startup culture

In my experience, this isn't really tech-startup culture, it's entertainment
industry culture. If you know anyone who has ever worked in film, music or
videogames, it's a fairly typical thing.

~~~
mattdeboard
Penny Arcade is a marketing company

~~~
WiseWeasel
They're all marketing companies... except for government contractors; those
are bribery companies.

------
gordaco
The job posting looks an awful lot like the usual videogame programmer job:
it's bound to attract some people just because of the nature of the job, so
they don't bother adding good money or perks. In this case it's a little more
blatant and there seems to be some boasting from the employer, but in the end
it's the same.

And the saddest of all this is that the job will get covered. In fact, I'm
sure that there will be a lot of applicants. Just like for videogame
programming.

Yes, we need to fight this. It's good that there are people complaining
publicly. By the way, I believe that a few details from the job posting would
be illegal in my country, although probably not in the US.

------
wilg
"a person that can do four jobs"

"terrible at work-life balance"

"on call 24/7"

"potentially offensive environment"

"being pushed to your limit is part of the job"

"sometimes tedious work"

That, and Penny Arcade's history of avoidable and frustrating controversies
([http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/21/download-
code-p...](http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/21/download-code-penny-
arcade-needs-to-fix-its-krahulik-problem/?__lsa=03bc-7082)), and their
terrible responses to them?

Where do I sign up?

~~~
wismer
Those controversies are over-analyzed. People tend to forget that these two
guys are, like all of us, human and don't have some sort of fancy PR machine
to soften the blowback. Krahulik suffers from chronic anxiety and so when the
threats started piling up, he responded in kind the way an animal gets backed
into a corner. There's no denying he fucked up, but curiously his critics seem
to gloss over his attempts to apologize.

I've been at PAX. These guys are approachable, they're kind and funny and do
not carry an air of superiority. I know their failings as well as I know my
own.

~~~
booticon
Saying you're sorry then putting out a goddamn tshirt with a reference to a
rape joke isn't an apology.

~~~
wismer
also, I don't believe that's the actual chronology of the dickwolf debacle.

~~~
booticon
I read more into it and you're right; they posted the comic, then posted a
passive-aggressive "apology" comic, then started selling the shirts. They took
down the shirts and apologized, and then Krahulik later said that taking down
the shirts was the biggest mistake he's made. So it's actually worse than I
originally thought.

Also the Fruit Fucker does not rape PEOPLE, it rapes fruit. There has been
outcry, but pretty balanced by the fact that it "takes advantage" of an
inanimate object.

~~~
wismer
My question stands. the strip has covered topics such as bestiality, suicide,
torture, a juicer that "fucks" oranges (note, I didn't say people, in case you
were correcting me), among others. There wasn't a similar outcry. Why is that?

------
mbesto
> _Their unreasonable, immature expectations are a damaging message to send to
> their huge audience of young software developers._

Two things:

1\. The intent of their hiring specification isn't to send a message to their
audience, it's to hire someone to service their audience. I'm not sure why the
two are assumed to be mutually exclusive? Don't want to apply? Then don't
apply - let market forces weed them out.

2\. In all of my years of applying for jobs and hiring people, not once has a
candidate ever met exactly the profile nor eventually fulfilled every
responsibility in a hiring specification. This sounds a bit overdramatic and
too pedantic. Let it go.

~~~
nikatwork
Penny Arcade are being publicly called out for their questionable ethical
behavior. That _is_ market forces at work.

------
shunter
This passive aggressive tone permeates a lot of PA's comics, postings, and
general presence. So I'm not surprised to see it. They've built a community
around the over all nerd thug mentality that exists within their forums.

I stopped reading PA after the controversy about the rape wolf and their
dismissive reaction to it.

I wouldn't want to work there. Not because of the hard work aspect, but
because I can imagine that the overall attitude that informs their public work
would inform their internal political structure as well.

Lets face it, you're not curing cancer here. You're making events and media
that appeal to a certain sub-culture. This shouldn't require repressed nerd
rage to get right.

------
Jemaclus
I'm not defending PA's job listing, because I do agree that it's absurd, but
it's also important to remember that job listings tend to be for "ideal"
candidates. Actual hired candidates are often far less qualified than the
ideal candidate listed in the job requirement.

For instance, ideally, I'd love to hire a dev that has 5+ years of
professional PHP experience building web apps and has experience with machine
learning systems specifically relating to fraud. But in all likelihood I'll be
lucky to hire someone with 3+ years of professional PHP experience with zero
experience doing machine learning. The hired candidate will likely be simply
_interested_ in machine learning. The hired candidate will likely have _no_
experience with fraud-related topics.

I can train you. I can teach you those things. But ideally, I wouldn't have
to.

Likewise with PA's job listing, ideally, they want someone who can do all of
those things. Practically, they'll hire someone who can do a very small subset
of those things.

That said, it's a bit unrealistic to expect one person to do the job of four
people (which is what this listing wants), especially for low salary, so...
yeah, it's a bit ridiculous.

~~~
vellum
Yeah, but unicorn ads usually have a “please, please, please” hopeful tone.
This one specifies that you literally have to do the job of 4 people and are
expected to be the technical epi-center.

Also, my first impression, like Marco’s, was “Is this a joke?” Especially this
line: _It’s rarely we call on it, but if something breaks in the middle of the
night, you are expected to be on call to address that issue 24 /7._

~~~
Jemaclus
Sure, but my boss also expects me to be working the entire 8 hours I'm sitting
at my office, not browsing Hacker News... :)

Expectations are one thing, and they're very easy to state up front. Reality
is quite another, and much more difficult to enforce.

------
Untit1ed
Oh cmon. There are thousands of tech jobs that don't pay that well and require
all those skills. The difference is that when those companies go to find
someone, they lie in the ad. How is being honest insulting?

I'll bet there's plenty of young developers out there who don't mind working
long hours and would love to spend their time flying around with the Penny-
Arcade crew keeping everything running - admittedly they won't be hiring the
best applicants in the industry with the rates and conditions that they're
offering, but I doubt they'll have much trouble finding someone who fits the
bill.

------
deletes
For anyone not familiar with Penny Arcade( PA ), the absurd condition are
there to reduce the number of candidates applying. Pa gets thousands of
applications every time they have a job opening. Everyone dismissing the
possible job at PA for those conditions is automatically removed from the
process and that is exactly what R.Khoo wants. In case you are wondering why
would you still want to work there, then you are not the Candidate, and
>shock<, they don't want you there. Yes it is that simple.

Anyone who wants to work at PA, knows why very well.( hint: its not the money
)

~~~
sirmarksalot
So they'll probably get the person that they ask for, but the question is what
value they will get out of that person. They've asked for qualities that make
for a good PM, but without emphasizing any of the qualities that make for a
maintainable code base. Anyone they hire is guaranteed to be eager to please,
and may have a problem saying "no" to work that comes at the expense of their
focus.

I don't trust their technical vetting abilities, as their technical staff is
small, and were not themselves selected by people with much technical
expertise. The issue isn't that their job posting is unfair, it's that it
weeds out the wrong people.

------
javajosh
It's a reasonable strategy, because it's the same one other prestige companies
use, particularly in gaming. Blizzard, for one, doesn't pay market rates for
developers. It's a 15% difference or so, and you accept it because...well,
it's Blizzard, and you really want to work there. The same may hold for a few
other prestigious companies, like Valve, Bioware, etc.

Does it hold for Penny Arcade? Unknown.

Does it have any implication at all for the general profession? No way. It's
funny to see how upset people are getting about a job ad. They are "insulted".
But really what they are experiencing is, at worst, Penny Arcade
misattributing themselves so much "juice" that they'd be willing to let
someone grind themselves up in a job.

(That is, perhaps, the only narrow way in which this job posting is immoral,
is if it describes working conditions so horrific that no-one could escape
without deep emotional scarring. And no, I don't think it's quite that bad.)

~~~
rprospero
I'm also finding it funny how upset people are getting, but I'm attributing it
to a different cause. I think that a large number of developers have inflated
ideas of how rare and valuable we are. Actually, that's not quite true. We are
valuable, we're just not rare.

There's plenty of developer talent to go around and job ads like this are
getting filled even by firms without whatever prestige Penny Arcade may have.
It can be scary to know that this is what your next job might look like and I
think there's a lot of denial out there, but basic supply and demand is going
to keep moving developer jobs in this direction.

------
mikeash
This blog post basically boils down to: you will work far more than a regular
full time job, and you will be paid poorly.

This is not, as far as I can tell, actually supported by the job posting
itself.

I really can't understand why this is getting upvoted so much. I'd love to see
an intelligent discussion of unrealistic demands in tech jobs, but this isn't
it.

~~~
vellum
_This is not, as far as I can tell, actually supported by the job posting
itself._

They literally tell you that you'll work far more than a regular job.

[http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov)

- _We are quite literally looking for a person that can do four jobs: Web Development, Software Development, Sys Admin, and the (dreaded) GENERAL IT_

- _being pushed to your limit is part of the job_

- _and don’t mind having a really bad sense of work-life balance, this is the job for you._

- _We’re terrible at work-life balance_

- _work is pretty much your life_

And here they tell you that you'll be paid poorly:

- _We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better._

~~~
mikeash
"Do four jobs" does not mean "work 160 hours/week". It just means that you'll
have four different areas of responsibility.

Most of the rest is wishy-washy subjective stuff that could mean anything from
"you will basically be our slave" to "this is a fantastic place to work that
pays well and you get to go home early every day, but we don't want to
oversell it."

------
danso
Wow, I'm really divorced from the real world. The Penny Arcade ad, other than
the edgy snark, reads like virtually every developer position I've ever read
in the media/news business.

(yes, this is an indictment of the already troubled news industry)

------
doktrin
While I don't usually find myself in staunch agreement with some of what Marco
has to say (particularly with regards to Apple), I fully endorse this post.

I found myself seething while reading the original Penny Arcade job listing.
The cognitive dissonance required to _write_ it is beyond my comprehension. In
particular, the nonsense about somehow justifying a below-market salary in
order to " _make the office nicer_ ".

Needless to say, my appreciation for Penny Arcade as a whole plummeted
drastically today.

------
jsumrall
One of the few things to make me audibly laugh today. They expect you to know
everything(to be THE MOST CRUCIAL person in the company), but I let it go
thinking there was some perk I was going to read next which justified it.

Perks include: on call 24/7 low pay work is your life

But I guess we're not the people they're looking for, and when they do find
someone they give them a high-five, a latte, and scratch their hipster beards
and laugh at how materialistic we are needing money and free time.

------
FreeKill
Personally, that job is not for me, but I don't see the harm in "shooting for
the moon" in a job description if they think they can get a candidate that
matches the criteria. Why wouldn't you try to get someone overqualified and
then underpay them if you think you can? It's not PA's fault people will apply
for the position or that they can sell themselves as a desirable destination
for more reasons than balance and compensation.

~~~
staunch
> _" Why wouldn't you try to get someone overqualified and then underpay them
> if you think you can?_

Perhaps you have a basic sense of human decency and fairness? Just because
someone is naive (or just plain dumb) doesn't make it ethical to take
advantage of them.

~~~
FreeKill
No one is forcing them to apply though. Your point would be totally valid if
they were tricking people into thinking it was going to be better than it is,
but they are totally transparent.

You could almost make the exact same argument about volunteering. You are
asking for people to work hard and not get paid with the upside being they
feel good about what they are doing. This is virtually the same thing, they
are saying if the environment and lifestyle is appealing to you, and you're
willing to deal with the downsides, please apply.

~~~
Bockit
I think there is an argument to be made that newer developers, who might not
be familiar with hiring practises, and see this job from Penny Arcade might
leave thinking that's the norm.

------
RandallBrown
Why would this salary be _very_ low?

Sure, they say that money isn't important to them, but there's no reason to
assume it wouldn't be slightly competitive.

Penny Arcade is in Seattle. If they want a chance of hiring anyone they would
at least need to be in the ballpark of other job offers out there. Microsoft
and Amazon pay pretty well, so I don't think this number will be as insulting
as people are assuming it will be.

~~~
TillE
"Annual Salary: Negotiable, but you should know up front we’re not a terribly
money-motivated group. We’re more likely to spend less money on salary and
invest that on making your day-to-day life at work better."

They're about as clear as they can be without actually stating a number. It's
gonna be low.

~~~
RandallBrown
Low, but they have to know that if they want someone even halfway decent
they'll have to be competitive.

I can't imagine they'd lowball you too much when a good developer can
literally walk down the street from Penny Arcade and be at Google's or Adobe's
offices in Seattle. Not to mention Amazon, Microsoft, or anywhere else in the
area that pays well.

------
nwh
Archive of the advertisement for prosperity/history —
[http://archive.is/pqsJT](http://archive.is/pqsJT)

~~~
Jemaclus
Not to be that guy, but... it's "posterity" and not "prosperity" :)

~~~
nwh
I actually did intend "prosperity" in this case, though "posterity" would work
as well.

~~~
infra178
No. You did not.

------
crygin
This is the ... third (maybe fourth?) article on this topic today to get up
into the top few posts on HN before disappearing into oblivion. Some people
really don't want to have a conversation about how young tech folks are being
exploited.

------
bigd
I'm doing almost the same job, in Northwestern University for 37k year.

few highlights: 1) - Saturday night deadlines for Sunday evening. 2) -
Management decides Monday 1:30am that the new release has to be Monday 9:00
am. 3) - >70h week, and always on call 4) - shitty overstressed environment 5)
- might loose my job if the boss get fired, which implies loosing the status,
therefore deportation. 6) - planned vacations canceled few days before,
because "there's this really important last minute thing".

you people have no idea of what the life of non us citizens can be. I'll
probably improve my status working for PA, but they'll never consider going
trough the immigration madness.

------
mildtrepidation
The ad does look like either an awful but honest job offer or a fairly clever
collection of Bad IT Hiring Behavior jokes. No one here seems to think the
latter, and like a lot of others I worked plenty of these before understanding
how undervalued the position was... do we have it from the horse's mouth that
this is real?

Regardless, some of the comments here are suggesting that taking advantage of
people who are hard up for work, don't understand their own value, or don't
have the resume to get anything else is OK as long as you're up front about
it. Where did this ridiculous notion come from?

"I sold you a car, and it's a lemon, but I didn't tell you it had problems
despite knowing." "I'm trying to sell this car; I know it's a lemon."

Being honest about being a piece of shit makes you... wait for it... a piece
of shit. It does, however, put some of the responsibility on the applicants in
this case: If you know up front you're applying for a position like this, and
you do anyway, you've made your own bed. I'm not the kind of person to say
that at that point you have no right to complain, but you certainly went in
with an understanding of what would happen, so while it doesn't absolve the
employer of responsibility for poor treatment, it does absolve them of any
hint of having misled applicants.

~~~
robdrimmie
The posting was linked by a tweet by Robert Khoo
([https://twitter.com/rkhoo/status/405150202736418816](https://twitter.com/rkhoo/status/405150202736418816))
which was retweeted by several Penny Arcade staff.

Mike Krahulik participated in a few Twitter-based discussions. One indicates
that this is a replacement posting
([https://twitter.com/cwgabriel/status/405526125171843072](https://twitter.com/cwgabriel/status/405526125171843072)).

That doesn't mean it's not real, it's certainly not above anyone at Penny
Arcade to poke the hornet's nest, but there's enough indications that I think
it's safe to say it's legit.

------
jakemcgraw
For anyone that hasn't experienced it first hand: "programmer" \+ "IT/computer
guy" is a recipe for professional failure. The demands are so different and
balancing them is impossible. You can be an IT person or software developer
but never both at the same time. It is also a sign that whomever job
description doesn't understand the difference.

------
goshx
I wish the person that left the job would show up here and tell us how it is
like to work there and take care of all those items.

------
InclinedPlane
I've debated about posting on this but I figure context is probably more
helpful than not.

The person leaving this job is a close friend of mine. I agree that this is a
very unusual job posting but I think it's a mistake to view it through the
lens of typical startup or silicon-valley hiring. There are plenty of jobs in
the industry which, on paper, look similar to this one. Low pay, lots of
responsibilities, on call duties, poor work/life balance, etc. But PA isn't a
normal company so a lot of the assumptions going into some of the conclusions
people are drawing are erroneous.

PA is a family, which is something that a lot of startups pretend to but which
is actually true in this case. The people there don't just eat lunch together
they spend a lot of time in and out of the office with each other, and they
tend to have pretty strong bonds of friendship with each other. The majority
of people working at PA didn't interview to work there. PA tends to hire by
osmosis when it can, because "cultural fit" is by far the most important
factor. It's a very challenging prospect to try to hire someone into a very
close nit group of friends, even more so when the job you're trying to hire
for has fairly high skill requirements.

Personally I think that this job requires a fairly unusual candidate, but I
think there's a good chance such a candidate exists. And I don't mean
"unusual" in terms of being a "rockstar" or someone filled with self-hatred or
low self-esteem.

So, let me correct (or confirm) some perceptions. This isn't a "death march"
job like you'd expect in game dev or many startups. Yeah you may have to work
late sometimes, and there may be weeks when you're chugging red bull, but a
lot of that is up to you and how you do development, set expectations, and so
on. This isn't healthcare.gov, it's mostly a bunch of content-heavy sites. You
can certainly get into a crunch if you don't manage your time or your projects
well but that's within your control, and you can certainly push back as much
as is necessary. Unlike most startups you're not going to be expected to be in
crunch mode all the time and you're not going to be expected to put in a set
number of hours per week. If you do good work and prioritize well you'll be
fine.

In terms of being on call, again it's not as though this is reddit or
healthcare.gov or amazon.com, it's a handful of CMS deployments and a few
other things. Things can, and will, go down, and the fact that you're pretty
much the only person available to fix a lot of this stuff is definitely going
to suck. But the sorts of problems you're going to run into aren't the same
sorts of things you'll see at a typical startup. Maybe the load balancer for
some site isn't working right or something, so you'll go file a support ticket
w/ the VPS provider or fix it yourself as warranted. This isn't a job where
you'll expect to have to get out of bed at 3am at least once a week to have to
fix some bullshit code that someone else wrote. You have the opportunity to
make the system work as smoothly as possible, and if you find yourself getting
woken up by monitoring alerts too often that's probably due more to the
choices you've made than anything else.

The reason why the job listing asks for people with a "crazy person level of
attention to detail" is because you will be the entirety of the dev team (but
there are designers, so you're not the whole universe). There's no QA team and
not really any project management other than what you do. And accountability
primarily comes from intrinsic motivation, not from someone looking over your
shoulder.

As far as IT support and DBA, I don't think that's a very difficult
requirement for a lot of devs to satisfy. It's not as though you have to do
tech support for an office of mundanes, pretty much everyone at PA is tech
savvy, the only thing you're there to do is be a resource to maybe solve some
of the problems they can't, and to babysit the office infrastructure as
necessary. If you feel comfortable setting up a managed switch (with the help
of documentation) and building your own PC from parts you'll probably be fine.

The really bad news is that you're going to be taking a pay cut most likely.
There just isn't the same opportunity to make as much money as you could in
other parts of the industry. If you think you can negotiate a more competitive
salary, then you can certainly try, I wouldn't rule it out. You'll still make
okay money, if money isn't a big factor for you then it'll probably be fine,
it should be enough to live wherever you want and have plenty of disposable
income. But compared to what you could make in a profitable startup or at one
of the big companies it's going to be a lot less.

The other bad news is that there's not much opportunity for growth or change.
A lot of that is in your own hands but there are only so many things the
company needs. If you have an ambition to learn haskell this isn't a good
position for you. Similarly, there's no other dev. position to move into, you
can't switch to another team working on different projects with different
technology, you won't have the opportunity to become a lead or a manager, etc.
The job can be what you make of it, but there's only so far it can
realistically stretch, so you should consider that in terms of your long-term
career goals. Of course, if you want to spend your free time working on some
open source project, there's nothing stopping you.

Overall I'd reiterate that cultural fit is by far the most important part of
this job. If you're excited about the possibility of working at PA then that's
square one, if not then you should just ignore this job posting entirely.
Beyond that, if you're competent and proficient at web dev and comfortable
with getting your hands dirty with networking or hardware on rare occasions,
and if you're the sort of person who wants to settle into a role where most of
the time you'll be setting up content-heavy sites then this might be a good
opportunity for you. It's certainly not a job for everyone, or even the vast
majority of devs.

~~~
adamors
> PA is a family

> you're going to be taking a pay cut most likely.

> not much opportunity for growth or change

Are you delusional?

~~~
InclinedPlane
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. PA is very much a family. And
they are a content and events company not a software startup. They need coders
but for them it's a cost center, not a profit source like at software
companies. You can make a decent living at PA, definitely, but don't expect
the sort of wages you'd make from a software company. Even when PA is in a
period of expansion and growth that growth is nothing compared to what is
typical at a tech startup.

As a rule nobody works there because of the money, and there are many examples
of how PA makes decisions which lower their revenue (they could easily raise
PAX ticket prices by 3-4x, for example, which would bring in over a million
dollars in extra revenue per year _per employee_ ). It might be that asking a
dev to forgo the sort of pay levels they'd expect from working elsewhere might
be too much to ask of anybody, but time will tell I guess.

~~~
kamaal
>>PA is very much a family.

Every company is pretty much a family. For all workable definitions of a
family.

>>And they are a content and events company not a software startup.

Which means nearly any person who is good at software who isn't in immediate
need of money should abandon them.

>>They need coders but for them it's a cost center, not a profit source like
at software companies.

If your work doesn't add even that much value to the company, I'm not
sure(unless you are really desperate for a job) why should even want to work
for such a place.

>>You can make a decent living at PA, definitely, but don't expect the sort of
wages you'd make from a software company.

Again, why would any one want to work there after knowing this.

>>Even when PA is in a period of expansion and growth that growth is nothing
compared to what is typical at a tech startup.

So even in the best situation for the company, you still get screwed.

>>As a rule nobody works there because of the money,

Sorry but I totally refuse to believe in this. In fact this is a serious red
flag. In most common cases, this is the most common story circulated so that
employees can be paid less to make the founder little more richer.

Once you sell the story that money is evil, and workaholism till death as a
holy virtue. You can now continue to demand as much work you want low prices
and people have to just comply. On top of that you are selling the "We are
family" story, which is in reality why you must sacrifice your life to make
the head of the family richer.

~~~
InclinedPlane
You can refuse to believe all you want, no one's forcing you to apply to the
job.

A lot of people do a lot of things for reasons other than money. Almost all
technical books, for example, do not make very much money for their authors.
Certainly not enough to justify the work they put into them. But thankfully a
lot of folks still think it's a worthwhile thing to do.

I'm sure non-monetary concerns are a significant factor in everyone's job
choices. Otherwise why aren't we all spammers or grifters, or selling bullshit
"audiophile" equipment at crazy markups? Are there any companies you _wouldn
't_ work for even if they paid you much more than the competition? Logically
the reverse must also be true, that you will work somewhere for below average
because you enjoy working there.

Yes, in most _common_ cases what you say may be true, a lot of typical
employers are exploitative. But PA isn't a typical case. PA very much is
family. At a normal company it would be very unusual for everyone at a company
to attend a coworker's wedding, but that's absolutely the way PA is. And not
because of some bullshit corporate culture but just because that's how they've
been and they've struggled to maintain that level of closeness even as they've
grown.

------
JacobJans
There are a lot of people here who are creating jobs.

I just have one request for you:

Create dream jobs.

Make it your mission to think of 'dream jobs', and then find a way to make
them happen.

Don't start by thinking about what tasks need to be done. Don't start by
thinking about how to get the most bang for your buck.

Start by thinking, "what would be a reallly-damn-cool job to have?" Then find
a way to make it happen. Once you've thought up the dream job, go back and
find a way to pay for it. Figure out the path you'll need to take in order to
make it happen.

Create dream jobs.

Please :)

If you succeed, I promise that it will be one of the most gratifying things
you ever do.

------
ekarulf
For eight years of my life, I was this "Do-Everything Rockstar." I was also a
student for the majority of that time. I certainly wasn't a "programming
deity" \-- I was just a kid that was presented with the opportunity to learn
some incredible lessons about scaling, appsec, capacity planning, etc. I also
learned soft skills like how to negotiate, travel, and delegate.

The skill set absolutely exists and, for the right person, it's a great job.

~~~
dgtized
I went to school with ekarulf above, can confirm he had the skillset and held
that position. I can also think of a couple other folks with skillsets that
covered the full gamut. Discussion about pay aside, it's not a mythical
skillset. I don't know about the "Rockstar" nomenclature, but the right
generalist can do a lot.

------
SheepSlapper
Haven't we beat this subject to death already?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059)

~~~
downer96
Don't forget this one:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033)

------
lnanek2
Pretty common at startups where your actual job is often "everyone does
everything". It's quite common to only have a business person and a set of one
or more developers, for example. Then the developers start having to do IT and
sys admin that can't be outsourced or clouded out like in the linked job ad. I
think the ad is honest and it gives the impression that the PA biz guy seems
like a straight shooter, personally. :)

------
rrich
Totally understand the work life balance issue, particularly coupled with
basically what's being pointed out as a sub par salary. But I really don't
understand how that skill set is a premium. If you are a web developer I would
expect all those skills to be part of your repertoire. I've seen worse,
desired skill sets encompassing the impossible. The 20 years experience
programming Java want ads, circa 2000.

~~~
fritzy
The skills don't seem to be a stretch. Basically a devops guy that used to be
a full stack guy.

------
wismer
There's really only one person behind this job listing and that's Robert Khoo.
He's got great business acumen, but not a great nose in determining the job
expectations for a position like this. That being said, it seems like poor
form to insult the business manager of a small company without offering advice
first and it is unseemly to use such excoriating language. Does this blogger
fellow know Khoo?

------
10098
> if you [...] don’t mind having a really bad sense of work-life balance, this
> is the job for you.

wtf, they're not even trying

------
singingfish
I found a somewhat interesting job on odesk the other day (via a contact, I
don't keep an eye on odesk). Once I informed the person offering the job what
we could do for them and how much it cost, they pulled the advert and recast
their plans.

tl;dr; It's not always as grim as it looks. but in this case it might be.

------
jurassic
Since we're talking about insane job ads, I saw this one recently:
[http://www.splore.com/content/jobs](http://www.splore.com/content/jobs)

"You should be ready to make this startup the primary focus of your life"

------
mverwijs
If I were willing to make those hours for that pay, I'd start my own company.

------
drakaal
If you are a manager (I am a CTO), Raise your hand. Put your hand down if you
have never heard of Penny-Arcade.

Put your hand down if your company gets more traffic than PAX does at its
peak.

Put your hand down if your work place is more fun than the Penny Arcade
office.

Put your hand down if your after work parties rival Penny-Arcades.

Anyone with their hand still up is someone who would hire you after this gig.
PHP devs are typically commodity programmers. As managers we will typically
give you a basic programming test and fire you when you burn out. (not at my
company I am saying what is typical in the space)

This is a gig that would make you no longer a commodity programmer. That is
worth something. A dev who has been working in a Middle level position would
do well to take this gig for 18 months, then start shopping for a better
paying gig.

------
AliAdams
PA has been digging its own grave for a while now. Such a crime as I love a
lot of the content. Who thinks that charging for access to the html5 player is
a clever model?

------
Kiro
It sounds fun and the kind of postings I'm looking for. If I'm going to waste
half of my life in a company I want to be in one where everyone is dedicated.

------
thinkpad20
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading that.

~~~
rob-alarcon
your nickname dude haha

------
droopyEyelids
I'm not sure how to understand this in the context of respecting human life.
How does the team that created this posting think of people?

------
GhotiFish
you know. When I read the story, I thought it was a little too harsh. Then I
read Penny Arcades job post.

(the title blog post's title is a link to the job posting)

[http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov](http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov)

That's pretty horrible.

------
drunkenmasta
I guess the sad part is that they will still have plenty of people falling
over themselves to get the job.

------
rfnslyr
I feel like this isn't terribly demanding position. How hard can it possibly
be? They're websites aren't very complex and the system is already in place.
Sounds like a full-stack-engineer-gone-maintenance position.

Honestly, sounds like a fun ride for about a year, I wouldn't mind, even if
the pay is a bit low. If it's really that bad of a position, then quit. We're
pretty much immortal when it comes to finding jobs anyways so it's not like
you're putting your life on the line, especially if you're a single, young
bachelor.

~~~
bcoates
I suspect you are right, and the high qualifications just serve to filter out
anyone who has compunctions about boldly lying to a small organization about
what they've done and what they're capable of.

The ideal candidate is a dedicated, single 20 year old sysop/developer/con
artist aspiring to turn a fake resume into a real one in 18 months.

~~~
rfnslyr
Do you really think they're going to get enough applicants that fit that ideal
profile and have a difficult time choosing?

There's likely only going to be a small pool of candidates that fit your
environment, not to mention the salary let alone work responsibilities.

The ideal candidate is a young student who has tinkered with web development
since he was in high school and maybe if you're lucky, one of those guys has
_some_ experience scaling websites.

------
vernie
Sucks that you're being forced to apply, huh?

~~~
_delirium
Marco's not forcing them to change it, either. They can post a shit job offer
if they want, and Marco can ridicule it and call them immature losers, if he
wants. The fact that a business is not literally enslaving someone doesn't
mean nobody can criticize them!

~~~
saalweachter
And when a business _is_ literally enslaving people, we should really be doing
more than just snark about it on the internet.

