As I read all the outrage about the Penny Arcade posting today, I'm troubled by seeing two seemingly contradictory responses:
1. A sad resignation that tons of very smart people will end up applying and be willing to work for the conditions that are offered.
2. A belief that the generalists with skill sets even approaching what is requested are in such high demand/short that this posting is ridiculous.
I'm genuinely curious about the state of this job market because as I read the posting I couldn't help but notice that it felt like a perfect match for my own skill set. It sometimes seems like startups are looking for specialists/experts in a particular area to augment the general knowledge they already have. Also, the limited runway provided by seed/angel/VC funding doesn't allow enough time for training. Whereas the Google, Apple, Facebook, etc. size companies don't need someone who can code front-end and back-end, design, and sysadmin all at a passable level because they already have tons of people who can do one of those things at a very high level.
