
On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star - hoonose
http://cwbuecheler.tumblr.com/post/68163195864/on-penny-arcade-exploitation-and-the-myth-of-the
======
johngalt
Par for the course for IT/Sysadmin type jobs. "We expect you to build the
hospital while running the emergency room and operating room." They are just
being up front about it. There are a few areas where they glossed over it. I
will translate:

"You need to have a crazy-person level of attention to detail" \- We will
judge you based on anything you've overlooked, rather than what you've done.

"A motivated self-starter who can overcome or workaround issues independently"
\- Don't bother telling us we are asking for something impossible, that's your
problem.

"Flexibility to travel up to 30% of the time." \- Not only should you be able
to do four jobs, but you should be able to do them from an airplane/car/hotel
room with permanent availability.

"Should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive
environment." \- Note this doesn't apply to you, only we will be insulting
prima donnas. You will conform.

"Flexibility adapting to deadlines, changing schedules, priorities and
unpredictable events in a fast paced environment." You should be able to meet
deadlines that are assigned arbitrarily. You'll have no control over your own
schedule, but you'll be expected to give highly detailed attention to whatever
the project of the day is.

"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." \- We'll
cheap out at every opportunity, buying shitty hardware and cheap services,
because it's not us that has to fix it when it's 2am Christmas morning. If you
keep shit running, then we were right to be cheap. If it fails, then you're a
bad IT person. That you recommended a different option is irrelevant.

"we are not money-motivated group" \- We aren't motivated to give you any
money.

PA will surely find someone who meets their requirements and accepts their
level of compensation. PA will be lucky to hang onto them for more than a
year. Anyone who has accumulated all of the skills that this post requires,
will also not stay in this position for longer than it takes to put it on
their resume.

~~~
danudey
I wrote a huge long reply to this comment, but by the time I got to the end I
realized you were just making cynical, shitty comments because you're upset
with them for whatever reason.

'attention to detail' \- If I hire someone I want them to have a good
attention to detail and not just do whatever works. It's the little things
that make the difference between a good server admin and a great one.

'motivated self-starter' \- I don't want someone who's going to run to me to
get every decision made. If you are able to identify things that are part of
your job, decide how to do them, and do them, that makes my life much easier,
and your job more efficient.

'Flexibility to travel' \- They run conventions. Obviously they want their IT
guy around to help set everything up. The wifi at PAX Prime 2012 was unusable
the majority of the time. How do you mitigate that?

'creative and offensive environment' \- Well, they can certainly be offensive;
sometimes intentionally offending stupid people, sometimes unintentionally
offending normal people. I won't get into this (but I've railed against them
in the past for shitty comments).

'flexibility with deadlines, schedules, etc…' \- This is project management.
Anyone who's managing projects (either their own or someone else's) needs to
do this. This is entirely normal.

'on-call 24/7' \- Again, this is normal. Ideally, you set things up so that
they don't break in the middle of the night, or if they do you don't have to
deal with it immediately. Shit breaks, that's life.

You seem to assume the absolute worst of every possible thing they say, even
though all of this is part of most senior IT jobs.

~~~
nsxwolf
On-call 24/7 is normal? I thought good IT departments had rotating on-call
schedules.

~~~
nucleardog
I think it depends on the size and how organized you are.

Most of the smaller organizations I've worked at don't have an on-call
schedule for various reasons, but I'd posit it's primarily that there aren't
enough people for a good rotation.

One guy might be able to do something with a server in a pinch, but there's
probably only one guy that deals with them as a regular part of his day.

Imagine if, instead of trying to find one 'unicorn', PA hired four separate
positions: Server Admin, Developer, General IT, DBA.

Is it really all that effective to have the Server Admin picking up when the
issue is that payments on the website have stopped going through? Or the
General IT guy answering because the server's down? Sure, if someone gets hit
by a bus the other people can probably put out fires if need be, but it's a
lot more effective to have the person who regularly works on something and
specializes in it working on it when possible.

The 'good' IT departments you're thinking of are probably large enough to have
multiple employees in a role.

~~~
scott_karana
> I think it depends on the size and how organized you are.

This is the argument, of course. If four people were hired for the various
jobs, as the post advocates, there could be a reasonable rotation of on-call
responsibility.

There are three technicians at my organization (2000 users) and we get
interrupted on-call only once or twice a year.

------
jmduke
_I think the thing that frustrates me the most about it is: they’ll probably
get a thousand applicants. A bunch of 25 year-old kids with a ton of talent
and stars in their eyes are going to try to get this crap job for crap pay so
they can work somewhere “cool” and feel like a part of something big. The
Penny Arcade “machine” (their term) will roll on, making its millions of
dollars while somehow retaining the “little guy” image that hasn’t been
accurate for at least five years, and probably more. That’s one of Khoo’s many
gifts — he has figured out exactly how to sell this company, even if the image
they’re peddling is a load of horseshit._

This confuses me, because its as if the author tries to force his valuation of
the opportunity onto all prospective applicants. He recognizes that a position
at Penny Arcade has a level of cachet, but doesn't recognize that that level
of cachet is transitive: if someone "can work somewhere “cool” and feel like a
part of something big", then good for them. It's up to each person whether or
not to decide if those benefits outweigh the costs of eschewing different
employment.

Also, lots and lots of ad hominem. I'm not super familiar with Penny Arcade --
having never attended PAX and having not read the comic in a few years -- but
a lot of this post seems to be conjecture which hinges on Robert Khoo being a
villain.

(I would never apply for this job, because I value salary and work-life
balance too much. But I recognize there are people who don't, which is why
early-stage startups can thrive.)

~~~
coldtea
> _This confuses me, because its as if the author tries to force his valuation
> of the opportunity onto all prospective applicants._

Perhaps it's rather as the author believes in an objective reality, where
there is one true valuation of a thing, and he's not so much trying to "force
his valuation onto all prospective applicants" as trying to "communicate the
real valuation to all prospective applicants".

> _He recognizes that a position at Penny Arcade has a level of cachet, but
> doesn 't recognize that that level of cachet is transitive: if someone "can
> work somewhere “cool” and feel like a part of something big", then good for
> them._

Perhaps he recognizes that what some people perceive as "cachet" is actually
BS and can be bad for them, regardless of what they believe, in the same way
that a teenager wanna-be rockstar that thinks heroin is cool and an early
death is "romantic" needs to be told otherwise...

~~~
gaius
Quite. Imagine you are a hiring manager (or perhaps you don't have to
imagine). Would you make a candidate a higher offer seeing Penny Arcade on
their CV? Then what is the cachet exactly?

~~~
jblow
I do run a software company, and I would much rather hire someone with Penny
Arcade on their resume than, say, Oracle or something.

~~~
Zimahl
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Either way, I would think that having Penny Arcade on a resume would be an
interesting _story_ but other than that I can't imagine their infrastructure
being anything that would help a career. Penny Arcade is probably only
slightly above a real estate office for complexity.

~~~
taeric
Me thinks you have not seen the scope of their audience. This would be akin to
having no respect for the Humble Bundle developers because it is just a tiny
shop. I mean, only a few games every few weeks. :)

~~~
Zimahl
The scope of their audience is somewhat irrelevant. I'm not criticizing their
comic here - other than a somewhat simple blog(ish) design, they just need to
handle a lot of users to their semi-static site which is a solved problem.
Maybe deal with a ton of users on their forum - once again a solved problem.
Otherwise, like I said, most of it is office IT stuff for a handful of people
working in an office.

I'm not sure how that is any more impressive than many other businesses that
aren't known in the geek world.Their other endeavors (Child's Play, PAX) are
more business and logistics and light on the IT. From what I've read most of
that stuff is outsourced anyways so that PA can focus on the content and not
the tedium.

~~~
RandallBrown
are massive user forums a solved problem?

Reddit still gives error pages to me dozens of times a day.

~~~
Zimahl
First, comparing Penny Arcade to Reddit is laughable. Second, Penny Arcade
doesn't even host their own forums[1].

[1] [http://vanillaforums.com/](http://vanillaforums.com/)

------
tvladeck
I have the opposite reaction to this posting: Penny Arcade are being
abundantly clear and transparent about the requirements and drawbacks of the
role.

It's not exploitation; it's a trade, and Penny Arcade have listed out their
terms. Everyone is free, or not, to go along with what they want.

The author mixes two messages: (1) the merits of the offer, and (2) the ethics
of the offer. The author may be right about (1) -- I am not qualified to say
-- but this does not imply that he's also right about (2). A poor job offer is
not an unethical one; and in this sense I think Penny Arcade are living up to
higher standards by being transparent about where they may fall short.

~~~
GauntletWizard
You can take precisely the same position about walmart; Their jobs are shitty,
but they're an offer, and working it is up to you. Whether this validates
walmart or damns PA is up to you.

Personally, I take the former opinion, though I'm saddened that walmart is
able to continue to exist despite their bad proposition. Many people see their
options as "Work for walmart" or "starve", and in many cases, they're right
(Or they might end up with both anyway). Basic income might fix this, though I
doubt it.

~~~
sliverstorm
Right, that's kind of a difference between the WalMart offer and the Penny
Arcade offer. Anybody who gets the job at Penny Arcade has many other good
options.

------
saalweachter
I think this job posting is running up against the difference between an
_employee_ and a _partner_.

This isn't really unique to software, so I'll use the example of the dying
American family farm.

I grew up on a small farm, for most of the time it was owned by four men, all
related by blood. They each individually took full responsibility for the
business, and were never off the clock. If something needed doing -- planting
a field, fixing a tractor, feeding livestock -- they got it done. They didn't
quit working when the work was done, because the work was never done. They
momentarily paused when they were too exhausted to continue. If there was an
emergency at three AM -- livestock escaped, water main broken, building on
fire -- they got out of bed and dealt with it without delay. They were
partners.

Occasionally, mostly during harvest, these farmers employed a few farm hands.
These farm hands were contracted to do a specific job, like buck hay. They
bucked hay for a certain number hours, and then went home. If something went
wrong outside their purview, like a tractor breaking down, they informed one
of the four farmers, who dealt with it. If there was a disaster at three AM,
they were not summoned. They were employees.

It would have been easy for these farmers to expect the farm hands to act like
farmers. After all, the farmers worked all day and some nights, did anything
that needed to be done. But the farmers were partners in their business, and
the farm hands were employees. Expecting employees to behave like partners
just makes you a bad boss.

I think it is important for a small business, when growing, to remember the
difference between partners and employees, and if you're hiring employees --
and not adding a partner -- to remember to treat them as employees, and not
expect them to act like a partner in a business they have no interest in.

~~~
eshvk
But but but stock options, 'generous equity' etc

~~~
Yen
In the general case, equity could serve to create a realistic in-between
position between employee and partner. An employee with equity might not have
control or responsibility for the entire business, but they have a more direct
stake in its success. So there's that.

In this specific case, Penny Arcade's job offer doesn't mention anything about
equity. Their IT guy won't be part of their branding or image, so they don't
even get any social equity out of the deal. The IT guy would be an employee,
who'd be expected to expend effort like someone who's bootstrapping the
business.

~~~
saalweachter
There's nothing wrong with adding a partner. The family farm adds (and loses)
partners every generation. Having an extra partner can be great, and it's
perfectly reasonable to prefer a partner to an employee. (Or vice versa.) If
what you really want is a partner, then you'll be a lot happier if you find a
partner and treat him as such.

If, on the other hand, you do not really want a partner, you should be honest
with yourself about what you are looking for. Maybe you really want two or
three employees. Maybe you need one full time employee and a few part time
employees. Maybe you need some combination of employees and contractors, who
can respond to extraordinary problems and then go away when there is no work
to do. (IT tends to have a problem with the latter. It's like expecting the
cleaning staff to do plumbing just because you don't have enough plumbing jobs
to keep a plumber on staff, and they both work with bathrooms.)

To sum it up with a bit of sexist humor, if what you need is a wife, either
find a wife or hire a cook, a maid, an accountant, and a mistress. Don't hire
a cook and expect him to sleep with you and do your taxes.

------
gaius
This is the dirty little secret of startups too. As an early hire you will
work as hard as the founders, and take at least as much personal financial
risk as them if it doesn't work out, yet with minimal exposure to any upside -
so the sane options are, full co-founder, or double market rate salary to
offset the risk. Not pennies and "stock options".

~~~
jblow
If you believe this then you have never run a company. Being responsible for a
company is categorically different from being an employee at a company, even
if that employee is very hard-working.

~~~
angersock
I'm not sure that you two are in disagreement--they are saying that _precisely
because_ being an employee is different from being a founder, an employee
needs to make sure that their interests are seen to.

(this is all said with respect to an engineering position)

In an early-stage startup, you are likely to be building the product and doing
at least as much useful technical work as the tech cofounder from whom you are
taking some of the burden.

Moreover, because you're in a small company, you probably don't get benefits,
and you probably don't get good pay ("After the next round!"), and you
probably don't get much gear, and so on and so forth. The options you're
granted may well not pan out, and even if they do they probably will be
diluted into something equal to a holiday bonus.

That being the case, it makes great sense to look after your own interests.

This equation, of course, changes once the company is large enough to actually
take proper care of its employees and pay proper market rates.

------
ChuckMcM
This is a confusing post.

I understand that pain of seeing someone in an abusive relationship, like a
talented programmer working at a game studio on a crappy legacy codebase
because it was once touched by some personal hero of theirs. Or the killer
VLSI chip designer writing shell scripts any system administrator could write
because its "working at Google." But the author here isn't in the place.

He is arguing that this job offer is a setup for entering into an abusive
relationship with the folks behind Penny Arcade.

So all of that I understand and I pretty much agree with it, people will ask
you to work for peanuts and spin it in such a way that they try to make you
feel good about it.

But where it gets confusing for me is the whole 'I'm a unicorn and I know
these guys personally' rant. What _that_ reads like is "Gee I'm perfect for
this job, know these guys, and would could totally do it but they won't
compensate me 'fairly' to do it." The angst of wanting something but not
willing to pay the price of getting it.

I don't know what Chris is trying to say there.

Perhaps for some people it is the same reason they take 'production assistant'
jobs for minimum wage in Hollywood, so they can 'make contact with' the folks
in the industry they want to be a part of. What I do know is that monetary
compensation is only part of the value for some people, I know I've been in
jobs that the fact they paid me was just icing on the cake, they were that fun
to do [1]. Clearly the job posting is looking for someone for whom part of
their compensation is that they are part of the 'Penny Arcade' family. I don't
see the issue there that Chris does, hence the confusion.

[1] Ok not completely, I do need to eat and live somewhere, but sometimes felt
I was being paid more than I needed to be paid to stay, just because it was so
interesting/fun.

~~~
angersock
I didn't get that reading at all--it seemed very much a straightforward
"folks, don't be starstruck: this job is a set-up."

A story:

I was the technical cofounder (effectively) for a coworking space once upon a
time. I did everything from build websites, handle mailing lists, run cable,
deploy and design enterprise-class networking infrastructure, take out the
garbage, and power-route through a blocked sewer drain.

It was a great job, and a good way of keeping myself in beer money while
decompressing from my previous gig.

Except, at the end of the day, I wasn't a cofounder. I had no contractual
stake in the company. I had no health insurance. I didn't always get payed on
time. To replace me, they suddenly needed: an AV person, a networking person,
a Rails developer, and somebody that could hawk their space to other
developers (they were biz bros through and through, and the only developers we
had at the space were basically due to my networking on their behalf).

I don't regret the time I spent there, and I still help put out fires from
time to time, but it was an easy trap to fall into, and could've ended really
badly for all parties involved.

In these little businesses, especially when you start taking on the technical
risk, _you need a stake in the company_. Otherwise, you're just some schlub
that was recruited to do the work.

And when the web site is updated a little late, or a power outage kills a
switch because the owners cheaped out on your spec (and they _will_ , because
they think in the small), or some other damn thing, it'll be you swinging in
the breeze.

And they'll shitcan you, and find the next person foolish or desperate enough
to go in for it.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Perhaps surprisingly I think we agree.

Your anecdote, and the original article, have the same form. Allow me to
abstract it a bit and tell me if I screw it up.

We have in one hand a "job" which has some set of properties associated with
it; Hours needed to do it, responsibilities, tools, and environment in which
to do it. And we have this independent variable, compensation.

Now lets take your anecdote first and change the conditions in a wild way in
order to reason about it. Let's say that nothing in your anecdote changes
_except_ that instead of 'beer money' it was "$100,000 a week".

That is an extraordinary amount of money per week for someone to make would
you agree? If without a "stake in the company" would you have looked back
fondly on your time there? Along the lines of "it was a crazy work schedule
with people who were clueless but man the money was sweet." ?

What I'm trying to demonstrate is that there is a "value" received when
working somewhere. It is more complex than just "cash" it has elements of
ownership, cash, people, tools, location, and mission.

I've hired consultants that their bottom line was cash per week. They had a
goal of some amount of cash by some point in time and they could be sorting
pennies by minting date all day long and be fine with it if it met their cash
flow goal.

I've known people continue to work on stuff after the company ceased to exist
because it was something they were really committed to getting done.

I have come to conclude that the value someone gets from doing a particular
job is a deeply personal thing and unique and made up from a variety of
factors some of which I can control and some of which I cannot. When people
are reasonably self aware about what it is they value they can make good
choices about what compensation they would need to work somewhere. And those
values can _change over time_.

So back to your anecdote, when you started the job it met all your
compensation needs (beer money, decompressing) after a while it didn't (no
equity, no health insurance, poor predictability of pay), perhaps because once
you had "decompressed" you were once again thinking about the future and the
relative value of things like health insurance rose in your list. I knew a guy
who fell in love with the girl of his dreams and she was constrained to living
in Livermore, a 2 hr commute to the southern part of the Bay Area. You could
not pay him enough to stay in his job, he changed to a job in Livermore. The
values changed over time.

So let's get to where we disagree, the characterization of the Penny Arcade
job as a "set up".

For me, the term 'set up' implies fraud. And yet the terms of the job are very
clearly spelled out in the job listing. Given that level of clarity I have no
trouble believing that they would be as forthcoming in person as well (but
could be wrong there). You and I can read it, "If you want equity you need not
apply" or as Chris read it "PA isn't interested in sharing any _wealth_ with
you." and in both cases forewarned is forearmed. But they already said they
wouldn't and presumably people who value equity will, in fact, not apply (or
at least ask if that is a possibility prior to applying)

So end of the day. I don't agree Penny Arcade is being misleading or 'setting
someone up' to be exploited. While I can understand that someone whose value
equation isn't met by what they are offering would consider themselves
"exploited" if they were forced into that sort of labor contract. Except
nobody is forcing anyone here.

~~~
angersock
The problem is that a lot of the folks that might apply for that job are going
to have their value calculations screwed up by "I got to work with the Penny
Arcade guys!".

And in the long run, that probably wouldn't matter as much as getting paid
properly--especially once the glamor wears off.

The point the author makes is that _they are doing well enough_ that they
could actually be paying better than market rates, and could have put up a job
posting that would've avoided all this.

I agree with your summary, but again the problem is that it is very, very easy
to trick people into doing things not in their self interest--and if not trick
outright, to allow them to convince themselves something is a better deal than
it is.

And we can all claim "Hey, they knew the terms when they signed up", but that
doesn't excuse their being taken advantage of by people who don't have to do
so.

People are dumb and don't always do smart things, and only sometimes does
experience give them the perspective to admit that they were dumb--it's not
unreasonable for the rest of us to try and warn them.

------
badman_ting
There are a lot of people who would like you to grind your life into dust in
exchange for the glory of having made them richer. If you want to do that,
there are a lot of ways, and this is one. I agree that they are trading on
their name to find some gullible nerd to do all this stuff. The terrifying
thought is, there are people who will read this and mostly agree with it, and
still be willing to take the job. I can't really explain that.

------
andrewljohnson
I really scoff at the notion that any sort of white collar programming job is
exploitative. I know there is some controversy over interns in some industries
(not tech), Wal-Mart workers, overseas child slaves, and other real problems
in the workforce. But to call out Penny Arcade for what amounts to a very
honest job listing, for one of the most high-paying jobs in the country and
the world, is just absurd.

So what if the blogpost describes a myth, and they'll settle for someone who
does a bit of each? That's not a crime, that's a strategy.

~~~
thirdtruck
I understand the frustration with the disconnect between the particular
complaint and far worse problems.

That said, if a rushed Bill Gates pays you $500 for a Starbucks coffee and you
bring him instant coffee instead, it doesn't matter whether he drinks it: you
still exploited him. These are all examples of exploitation, just of relative
degree.

------
GFischer
"you know what’s even more rare? A guy who can write excellent code in several
disparate languages, manage multiple different server installs, administrate
databases, and configure office firewalls."

Is that really so hard to find? I might be selling myself short... (I actually
thought I'm worth less on the marketplace by being a "generalist")

~~~
jblow
What is described is something toward the top end of basic competence. The
only reason someone would think this is crazy is if they have been hanging
around bad engineers and / or administrators. That said, most engineers /
administrators are pretty mediocre, especially these days now that so many
more people are doing it. So.

I mean, if "managing office firewalls" is on someone's list of things that are
impressive, maybe that person does not have a clear view of the problem space.

But I should not even be giving the article so much attention as this. It's
clear the author is confused. At first he talks about how rare and crazy it is
to find someone who can do this, but then, contradictorily, he laments that PA
will get tons of applicants who can do the job. Well, guy, which is it? They
can't both be true.

All that is going on here is that someone had a negative reaction to the job
posting and is trying to express and rationalize their reaction, regardless of
how that rationalization really matches up to reality. Happens all the time,
why am I even replying?

~~~
asdasf
Differing expectations doesn't mean one set of expectations is wrong. If
someone claims they can do database administration, and then I ask them a
basic question like what indexes would you need to create for an example
query, and they have no idea, they are not capable of database administration.
They mean "I can type apt-get install mysql-server" when they say they can
admin databases.

~~~
jblow
I would say that said applicant is very clearly wrong.

Sure, there are a lot of people out there who exaggerate on their resume, but
this has nothing to do with the existence of people who actually do know
things.

~~~
asdasf
I would say they are wrong too. But the PA ad is almost certainly looking for
exactly that level of skill, while using words that sound like they are
looking for someone who actually knows what they are doing. So when the guy
writes a response to it acting like their requirements are absurd, he isn't
crazy, he is just getting a different mental picture of the requirements than
the PA people had in their head when they wrote it.

------
jhjester
Is it really that difficult to run a handful of LAMP stack sites? The job
posting is designed to discourage people not confident in their abilities.
They'll ask pointed questions in the interview process that will expose any
lie on your CV. Do you need to be a "Do-Everything Rock Star" to do the job?
Not likely. Do they want someone who will work their ass off for less than
industry standard pay? Probably. Will it really be that hard? Probably not.
They've survived for 15 years without a dedicated resource. While the job
posting may speak of an incredibly intimidating position, I sincerely doubt
that the person that gets it will be up all night troubleshooting complicated
python scripts. I get that it's super cool to shit on Penny Arcade. It drives
a lot of traffic to website and sometimes they deserve the vitriol. If they
were a start up promising a new social media blah blah blah bullshit I'd have
a big old hate hard on too. They're not. They're an established 15 year only
internet media company that's looking to bring talent in house. The
expectations of the job posting are absurd for sure. I think it's only meant
to weed out fan boys that run their own CounterStrike server and think they
could be the PA IT guy.

------
jgon
There are many comments here launching off into discussions of objective
reality, what ad-hominem is and various other topics, trying to discern why
people are taking so much offense to this ad, but I think that it boils down
to two simple things, greed and hypocrisy, which are things that we are pretty
hard-wired to take offense to. I don't think it is much more complicated than
that.

In terms of greed, the blog post above correctly points out that Penny Arcade
is at this point a large outfit that is making a ton of money. The founders
are at this point millionaires and will, baring extravagant spending, never
have to worry about money again. So when they come out with a job posting such
as this one people look at it as they would seeing a wealthy investor hiring
an unpaid intern as an assistant, or something similar. This person has more
than enough money to satisfy almost every desire, and yet rather than pay
competitive wages, or work to spread some of that wealth out to the people who
help them obtain their success they have deliberately chosen to keep as much
of it as possible even to the point of paying people far less than they are
worth, instead talking up nebulous terms like "access", "experience", or "work
environment". This strikes most people as the definition of greed (taking more
than you could possibly need even if it means exploiting other people) and we
generally react negatively.

In terms of hypocrisy, there is right up front the spectacle of a businessman
and salesperson telling you with a straight face that they are "not money-
oriented" despite the fact that this is a complete description of their job.
But more than that, you have an organization that has spent years taking
potshots at the "big guys" ostensibly standing up for the "gamer", aka the
little guy, the consumer, etc, etc. Hell they even run a comic about QA work
in the game industry, ostensibly a satire about the terrible conditions,
accompanied by writeups from people doing QA talking about the terrible
exploitation they have faced. But apparently, when push comes to shove (or
paying market wages), Penny Arcade is just as comfortable taking advantage of
naive young people, willing to grind themselves down for their "heroes" as
their heroes gaze on and pocket millions.

Given those two things, I think the only surprising thing is that apparently
the powers that be at Penny Arcade are too sheltered to not immediately
understand that this would be the reaction they would receive.

------
Sukotto
Two thoughts spring immediately to mind.

Firstly, take a job posting to it's logical extreme and you'd get something
similar to the linkedin post[1].

"We want a ninja rockstar coder+sysadmin in the top 99.999th percentile of
skill/ability/knowledge. A successful candidate will give their heart and soul
to the company, for very little money. Fringe benefits: pong pong table, a
beer fridge, and limited 401k matching"

[1] Speaking as someone currently looking for work.

Secondly, this is par for the course at Penny Arcade who has historically gone
to great (and borderline abusive imho) lengths to find the best candidates.
Their television show _PATV_ did two fascinating arcs on hiring, the first
episode of which is here: [http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/new-hire-
part-1](http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/new-hire-part-1)

Robert Khoo will no doubt get a lot of applicants, whom he will ruthlessly
cull until he has the perfect fit for his organization. And if he can't find a
perfect fit, he'll start over until he does.

I greatly admire his accomplishments at Penny Arcade and have no strong desire
to work for him.

------
tehwalrus
Wait, the (linkedin) post isn't sarcastic? I heard Jeff Jaques (QC) mocking
the idea on twitter earlier[1], and thought he was joining in a wider joke.

[1] [https://twitter.com/jephjacques](https://twitter.com/jephjacques) << at
the moment, the posts are about 4 hours old and the first 5 or so.

~~~
gcb0
It is only sarcasm if half the people that reads it will wonder if it is
serious. otherwise it is just slapstick humor.

Also, while this is sarcasm in the tech industry, this is the life blood of
non-profits.

~~~
tehwalrus
Sufficiently convincing parody, the internet, etc..

The salary you'd consider for a for-profit and for a mission you believed in
are two different domains, though. (I speak, from the heart, as one who finds
the idea of believing in money incomprehensible - I am aware that not
everyone's brain has the same bug/feature.)

------
xixi77
If they are satisfied with hiring "a jack of all trades who has mastered very
few or none of them, and who will have to scramble like crazy just to meet the
base requirements of the job, let alone excel at them." (which I agree is the
likely applicant profile), why not?

However hard it may be for some here to believe, there are many people who are
most efficient -- and most satisfied -- in an environment of constant and
unpredictable variety in both type and intensity of work, just as there are
people who find it more entertaining being jacks of all trades rather than
mastering one.

Implying that all jobs should accommodate your personal preferences (e.g.
specialization, predictability, or work-life balance) is not doing them any
service, and their skills are already discounted too far in this marketplace.

------
johnyzee
Here's what interviewing will be like: [http://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2005/04/06](http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/04/06)

~~~
deletes
Here's what interviewing is actually like: [http://www.penny-
arcade.com/patv/episode/new-hire-part-1](http://www.penny-
arcade.com/patv/episode/new-hire-part-1)

------
davidgerard
If you have the sort of qualifications this job asks for, you may want to
consider applying them somewhere that makes the world a _better_ place:

[https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us](https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us)

The smartest people you will ever work with, doing good work on a seriously
popular website, at charity rates of pay ;-)

------
egypturnash
This job posting kinda reminds me of the mental calculus I did when deciding
to work for Spümcø for a while. John Kricfalusi's studio did not pay well, and
the work was gruelling - but you were working for _John fucking Kricfalusi_ ,
the guy responsible for _Ren and fucking Stimpy_. And yeah, there was definite
cachet in that. Even if you burnt out on the animation industry like I did,
you were still gonna be able to draw rings around most people after a stint
there. Working at Spümcø taught me a lot, and I think ultimately I _am_ glad I
made the trade of shitty pay with a demanding boss for a few years. I got paid
in a hell of a post-graduate education from a man who changed the face of the
animation industry, as well as in money.

But... you know, honestly, I think the closest thing to an industry-changing
genius Penny Arcade has is Robert Khoo, and this job ain't gonna have you
getting your hands dirty in such a way that lets you learn Khoo's ways.

------
ChristianMarks
I had thought that the general IT/AV person was a dinosaur, but judging from
comments here, the position is alive and well. And all too common. Avoid these
jobs if you can. If you have the talent and energy to do them, your energies
will be dissipated and misdirected, and your talent wasted. You may end up too
discouraged to develop it. And you will get old fast.

~~~
junkilo
could you elaborate on what you mean precisely by "talent waste" and
"misdirection"?

~~~
ChristianMarks
This kind of job is unlikely to be conducive to deliberate practice. If your
intention is to improve your understanding of algorithms, for example,
practice implementing and analyzing algorithms at just above your current
level. Here you have little control over your time, which is spread thin.
You're on call all the time, so that your focus is fractionated. You may even
become dependent on the short-term satisfaction you get from completing many
small assignments without warning, while your peremptory, offensively smug
manager unhelpfully demands that you explain why some internal web site isn't
up to date (someone else left out an expiration date), and points out that if
in the future you have to be reminded, the unconscionable error of omission
must be immediately corrected; and by the way, a a slide show is needed for
presentation by noon. Before you go, order software by 9 AM on your credit
card if you have to and install it by 10AM--timing is crucial, only you find
out the software company is a sole proprietorship in another time zone where
it is 3 AM; get the online store running without the help of the retail people
or any testing whatsoever with the payment gateway; and while you're at it do
a quick PHP fix to the most elaborate routine in the system, not to mention a
patch to the store because the US Postal Service modified its REST endpoint--
without the patch no one can specify USPS shipping and only priority mail
works, but site went down and you call the hosting facility to log a ticket
(oops, a switch--a point of failure--failed). While you juggle mutually
exclusive priorities, your manager's manager calls to explain that the users
cannot upload videos on wifi connections using http--absolutely unacceptable:
do something about this immediately! Without testing you attempt to install a
gridFTP service, but installation requires the --skip-broken option in the yum
package manager, which may or may not work; now it's 11 PM and you've been
there since 8 AM, but you need to provide instructions to unsophisticated
users who prefer moralizing to problem-solving, while you update the header of
a web site by appending an image to an overgrown CSS sprite, but this is
interrupted by a rude text in from your manager, whose insists that an
extremely important email is nowhere in the 160,000 message inbox on his phone
(he refuses to archive his mail)--it is your responsibility to explain why he
didn't receive it; but he did receive it--you produce the delivery header, but
as usual there is no response, except for an email that a home-grown DVD has
to be produced, which means remembering photoshop macros to resize the borders
to the right aspect ratio, only the deadline for the jQuery Mobile application
is tomorrow...

~~~
junkilo
I'm as guilty a generalist as any, yet I'm happy straddling several
disciplines.

There's a broader argument for and against "specialization" i.e. studying
other disciplines yields perspective etc.

At any rate, I'll share the ways I'm solving it presently:

* reduce the number of disciplines required to be effective * confront human resource management problems * build funnels to save time or improve process

I suppose I'm advocating tackling fundamental leadership problems in an
organization :/

If you have any advice or ideas you can share I'd surely love to hear them.

~~~
ChristianMarks
These days I tend to believe more in the power of environments and systems
than the in power of individuals. Sometimes you may have good interaction
separately with individual I and individual J, but unfavorable interaction
with the set {I, J}. This is to say that I find that systems of any complexity
and organizations of any size are impenetrable. I have limited power to change
them--as much power as I do to change the weather.

This has the consequence that I prefer migration from inhospitable climates to
hunkering down in the antarctic with no snow boots. Quit early and often for
me means that you are better off finding and working within a good system than
sinking your time and energy attempting to change a bad system. If you have no
power to affect "fundamental leadership" problems in an organization, my
suggestion is to find another organization--if you can afford it.

------
thesimpsons1022
The author obviously has a clear and abundant bias against penny arcade.

~~~
nollidge
Who cares? Is he wrong?

~~~
DanHulton
Potentially, yeah.

~~~
nollidge
Oh. So is everyone.

------
jheriko
people who very nearly match this description exist. its not really the point
though. i agree that this is an unrealistic ask.

its not uncommon to see in the games or entertainment industries in general...
everyone wants in and so many are willing to work themselves to death for it.

------
sireat
The problem I have with this job posting, is that it screams hypocrisy. That
is this is something that Penny Arcade would draw a comic about if it were
about game programmers. In fact, I remember seeing some PA comics about crappy
wage/job situations before.

------
downer96
Link to original thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033)

------
truantbuick
I'm not qualified to discern the quality of most of this post, but its tone
disturbed me, and I agree that I find most of the ad hominem stuff really
distasteful.

~~~
jessedhillon
At no point does he structure his argument thus: _{Khoo, Penny Arcade, anyone}
is {immoral, stupid, lacking in some way} therefore they are wrong._

Absent that, there is no _ad hominem_. What you have is a discussion of the
personalities involved in the enterprise and a speculation as to their
motives, methods and the means available to them. _All_ of that is relevant in
answering some questions which need to be asked of any job offer: Who will I
be working with? Will I be a valued team member? What will the team and
workplace dynamics be? How do these people operate?

The term _ad hominem_ means a specific thing. It's not a blanket term for
"some people were spoken of in an unflattering way." If you don't like that
some personal qualities are discussed and conclusions drawn therefrom, say
that you simply dislike discussions which include value judgments about the
actions of specific people.

~~~
taeric
Actually, the post is {Khoo, Penny Arcade} are shrewd business folks that are
looking for a sucker. Don't be the sucker. With lots of exposition on why this
author feels they are looking for a sucker.

Hell, we don't even really know what the compensation is for this position.
Could be they are willing to pay upwards of 200k. Am I just missing where they
are saying this will pay terribly? I saw they are not "money oriented" which
is probably true since they have more of it than they can really reason about.
Better, they have front row access to what they dreamed about as kids. They
don't need the money anymore.

I think something a lot of folks from companies that aren't 20ish people are
missing is that they are effectively auditioning someone to come be part of a
very close knit crew. Imagine the postings for a recurring role on {insert
popular tv show}.

~~~
MatthewJBrown
You don't say you're not money oriented in a job posting unless you intend to
not pay a competitive salary for the skills you're asking for and the workload
you intend.

It's pretty upfront about the fact that if working for Penny Arcade isn't a
huge plus point for you, you're not the person for the job. That's supposed to
be part of your compensation.

~~~
taeric
This still says nothing about what they are willing or even expecting to pay.
Pretty much all I can infer is that they are not interested in trying to
attract people based on seeing a ludicrously high number in a posting.

