13 ms·

Penny Arcade’s Insultingly Horrible Job

423 points by ambirex 13y ago

nwh 13y ago
Archive of the advertisement for prosperity/history — http://archive.is/pqsJT http://archive.is/pqsJT
- toomuchtodo 13y ago
  Good call. The Internet Archive cowardly refuses to archive the page due to linkedin's robots.txt file.
  - IvyMike 13y ago
    > cowardly refuses Whut? In any case Jason Scott says they did grab it. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/405475303423619074 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/405475303423619074
    - toomuchtodo 13y ago
      Sorry, it was a play off the error message "cowardly refuses to write to a non-existent directory". When I attempted to save it with: http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/vi... I get this error message: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdacfodmvei0iku/Screenshot%202013-11-26%2018.14.00.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdacfodmvei0iku/Screenshot%202013-...
- Jemaclus 13y ago
  Not to be that guy, but... it's "posterity" and not "prosperity" :)
  - nwh 13y ago
    I actually did intend "prosperity" in this case, though "posterity" would work as well.
    - infra178 13y ago
      No. You did not.
    - aliakbarkhan 13y ago
      In what sense did you intend it? What can an archive of a website possibly have to do with being "successful in material terms"?
- math0ne 13y ago
  It doesn't seem to actually say how much the job pays, I mean who know they're idea of not very much could be 200k a year, who knows.
MartinCron 13y ago
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.
- pasquinelli 13y ago
  only sometimes funny? i have never read a penny arcade comic that was what i would describe as funny. i check every so often, and yep, never funny.
thinkpad20 13y ago
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry reading that.
- rob-alarcon 13y ago
  your nickname dude haha
DigitalSea 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 :)
  - doorty 13y ago
    I like the premise. But as a developer who recently walked out Friday night from doing any more work, another developer was there to pick up my work. We have to change developers (and employers) mindset in order to make a change in the industry. Aside, the developer was upset at me for walking out--not the employer.
  - DigitalSea 13y ago
vernie 13y ago
Sucks that you're being forced to apply, huh?
- _delirium 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    And when a business is literally enslaving people, we should really be doing more than just snark about it on the internet.
  - vernie 13y ago
    I wonder how many more applicants the position will attract as a result of all this attention.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
minimaxir 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
rfnslyr 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
Untit1ed 13y ago
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.
DanI-S 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  Penny Arcade is a marketing company
  - WiseWeasel 13y ago
    They're all marketing companies... except for government contractors; those are bribery companies.
wilg 13y ago
"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-penny-arcade-needs-to-fix-its-krahulik-problem/?__lsa=03bc-7082 http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/21/download-code-p...), and their terrible responses to them? Where do I sign up?
- wismer 13y ago
  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.
  - arrrg 13y ago
    An apology that is followed by screwing up along similar lines is really not worth very much. Apologising is nice and all, but if no actual change in behaviour occurs (whether intentionally or unintentionally) there really is no point to it.
    - wismer 13y ago
      I don't understand. What was the apology? For the transphobic thing or the dickwolf thing? What was the similar event?
  - booticon 13y ago
    Saying you're sorry then putting out a goddamn tshirt with a reference to a rape joke isn't an apology.
jsumrall 13y ago
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.
SheepSlapper 13y ago
Haven't we beat this subject to death already? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059
- downer96 13y ago
  Don't forget this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
Jemaclus 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
crygin 13y ago
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.
danso 13y ago
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)
droopyEyelids 13y ago
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?
gordaco 13y ago
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.
Segmentation 13y ago
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.
- samspot 13y ago
  I don't think a hobby is comparable. They do the raiding thing because it is fun. They have only a social obligation to stay, and they can quit anytime that it doesn't fit into their life anymore.
- 9999 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
- billforsternz 13y ago
VexXtreme 13y ago
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.
- seiji 13y ago
  Recruiting for a company that has fans (actual, fanatic fans) can be tricky. Sometimes you can play the candidate's enthusiasm against them. Sometimes they come in with unrealistic expectations and burn out in six months. Sometimes you do the sane thing and just hire somebody who has never heard of you.
  - prawn 13y ago
    This seems to happen with (especially female) journalists writing for fashion magazines. Salaries are low but number of applicants is high.
  - Tloewald 13y ago
    The big problem is going to be too many applicants. Suggesting the job will be shitty and low paid seems to be a great way to filter out competent applicants.
    - trothoun 13y ago
      Maybe they are building a blacklist from the applicants and will post the real job description later. If this were true I would be more at peace with the world than I presently am.
  - hobbes 13y ago
ssclafani 13y ago
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.
- RogerL 13y ago
  "harsh" and "family" do not mix.
  - deletes 13y ago
    You are confusing the hiring process and actual employment there.
- GuiA 13y ago
  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.
mbesto 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  Penny Arcade are being publicly called out for their questionable ethical behavior. That is market forces at work.
RandallBrown 13y ago
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 13y ago
  "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 13y ago
    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.
FreeKill 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > "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 13y ago
    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.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
    - Bockit 13y ago
      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.
goshx 13y ago
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.
drunkenmasta 13y ago
I guess the sad part is that they will still have plenty of people falling over themselves to get the job.
snogglethorpe 13y ago
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...
- a_bonobo 13y ago
  >would be willing to work hard I don't think the issues is with working hard - the issue is with parts of the industry expecting people to work so much that it's beyond "working hard" and becomes damaging, and I think (and I think the author in OP's link does too) that there has to be a change in developers' mindsets to protect themselves from negative consequences.
- snowwrestler 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
AliAdams 13y ago
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?
jpatokal 13y ago
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?
- ceejayoz 13y ago
  Sure, but those small businesses generally aren't making the one IT guy run a massively high-traffic website while putting on the largest gaming convention on the planet, right?
- icebraining 13y ago
  What kind of small business needs 24/7 support?
  - jpatokal 13y ago
    Any small business that's selling something online. If the website falls over so badly it can't sell anymore, and there's only one guy who knows how to fix it, guess who's going to get the 2 AM call from the boss?
  - TillE 13y ago
    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.
- slantyyz 13y ago
  While the ad is not the kind of job I would want, I have to say, I appreciated its... bluntness. The fact that there are red flags means that the few candidates who actually apply know full well what they're getting into and that nobody's time is wasted.
- wpietri 13y ago
fragsworth 13y ago
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.
- SheepSlapper 13y ago
  Money is just one form of compensation. PA offers a matching 401(k), my company doesn't. PA offers what seems to be a pretty sweet working environment, my company doesn't. PA might have some interesting/hard problems to solve, I'm stuck making CRUD apps for customers that just don't care. People can complain about the (allegedly, nobody knows what they're paying yet) low salary all they want, but that's only one piece of the puzzle.
  - nbuggia 13y ago
    Yes, it is so sweet they expect that you will find it offensive: "- You should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive environment."
    - BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
      If you're familiar with the webcomic or the blog, you'd recognize that this is probably a reference to off-color language and humor that undoubtedly is typical of their work environment. This doesn't actually offend me at all, but the rest of the job posting does.
rrich 13y ago
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 13y ago
  The skills don't seem to be a stretch. Basically a devops guy that used to be a full stack guy.
10098 13y ago
> 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
pesenti 13y ago
> 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).
- vertis 13y ago
  Is 2% good? 9% (soon moving to 12%) is mandatory in Australia. Yes we are an evil socialist state with good healthcare.
  - twoodfin 13y ago
    Australia's retirement income system is actually substantially to the right of the U.S. Social Security model, as our politics go. Conservative wonks have long advocated to shift SS to a means-tested basic income benefit plus a mandatory personal account. That's essentially Australia's system. But any attempt to move in this direction has been met with cries from our own "evil socialists" that "privatization" will inevitably enrich the robber barons and force the elderly to eat dog food. To answer your question: That 2% in an optional 401(k) tax-advantaged private account is above and beyond the 12.4% that goes to Social Security. How much of that 12.4% the employee will ever see depends on his lifespan and the continued benevolence and fiscal prudence of the U.S. Congress.
    - jcdavis 13y ago
      And to add to twoddfin's (excellent) response: only half of that 12.4% is paid by the employer, the other half is paid by the employee
    - vertis 13y ago
      I'm not sure that your assertion is correct. Employers are required to pay money into a super fund of your choice (or an employer default if you don't specify). You can of course contribute privately to this balance as well, and in fact in some cases the government has matched contributions. Super is not taxed*, though you can't withdraw till you're over 60. It does have a lot of flexibility as well. It's possible to set up a 'Self Managed Super Fund' which can be used to buy property, or invest in other ways (though this is fairly tightly regulated). This is of course not connected to the availability of a pension, should that money ever run out. Which makes it all feel pretty far left.
mikeash 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    "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."
grillz 13y ago
I think a lot of the backlash is because this feels like something Penny Arcade would never do. Sure there are jobs that are this demanding or don't pay much, but as a company PA has always seemed to stand a little above the rest. They are charitable and straight forward and generally try to treat people in a decent (or atleast honest) way. This posting seems to go against much of what I think makes Penny Arcade, Penny Arcade.
jurassic 13y ago
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"
deletes 13y ago
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 )
- Qworg 13y ago
  At risk of sounding pedantic, why would someone want to work at PA?
- sirmarksalot 13y ago
  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.
doktrin 13y ago
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.
GhotiFish 13y ago
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.
wismer 13y ago
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?
shunter 13y ago
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.
JacobJans 13y ago
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.
mverwijs 13y ago
If I were willing to make those hours for that pay, I'd start my own company.
javajosh 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
- leoc 13y ago
  What I've heard is that at Valve the formula is lowish base pay, plus a shot at exceptionally generous bonuses if you can convince your coworkers that you've been helping to bring home the bacon.
fotoblur 13y ago
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 13y ago
  I guess he didn't tell him that it would be the experience of getting screwed over.
ekarulf 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
santoshalper 13y ago
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 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    >> 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.
vinceguidry 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
lnanek2 13y ago
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. :)
InclinedPlane 13y ago
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.
drakaal 13y ago
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.
jakemcgraw 13y ago
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.
singingfish 13y ago
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.
Kiro 13y ago
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.
bigd 13y ago
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 13y ago
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.
- sbarre 13y ago
  I think the issue here is also who is posting the job. If this was a job listing for some unknown company in a business park, who cares. But Penny Arcade are a highly visible and admired (by some, obviously not all) brand, and it feels like they are abusing this position when hiring for this gig. Your point about making your own bed is valid for sure, but I think some people will overlook this with the "oh man I'd love to work at Penny Arcade" excitement, and I think PA is counting on that.
- robdrimmie 13y ago
  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.

423 points by ambirex 13y ago

nwh 13y ago

Archive of the advertisement for prosperity/history — http://archive.is/pqsJT http://archive.is/pqsJT

toomuchtodo 13y ago
Good call. The Internet Archive cowardly refuses to archive the page due to linkedin's robots.txt file.
- IvyMike 13y ago
  > cowardly refuses Whut? In any case Jason Scott says they did grab it. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/405475303423619074 https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/405475303423619074
  - toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Sorry, it was a play off the error message "cowardly refuses to write to a non-existent directory". When I attempted to save it with: http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/vi... I get this error message: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdacfodmvei0iku/Screenshot%202013-11-26%2018.14.00.png https://www.dropbox.com/s/gdacfodmvei0iku/Screenshot%202013-...
Jemaclus 13y ago
Not to be that guy, but... it's "posterity" and not "prosperity" :)
- nwh 13y ago
  I actually did intend "prosperity" in this case, though "posterity" would work as well.
  - infra178 13y ago
    No. You did not.
  - aliakbarkhan 13y ago
    In what sense did you intend it? What can an archive of a website possibly have to do with being "successful in material terms"?
math0ne 13y ago
It doesn't seem to actually say how much the job pays, I mean who know they're idea of not very much could be 200k a year, who knows.

MartinCron 13y ago

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.

pasquinelli 13y ago
only sometimes funny? i have never read a penny arcade comic that was what i would describe as funny. i check every so often, and yep, never funny.

thinkpad20 13y ago

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

rob-alarcon 13y ago
your nickname dude haha

DigitalSea 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 :)
- doorty 13y ago
  I like the premise. But as a developer who recently walked out Friday night from doing any more work, another developer was there to pick up my work. We have to change developers (and employers) mindset in order to make a change in the industry. Aside, the developer was upset at me for walking out--not the employer.
- DigitalSea 13y ago

vernie 13y ago

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

_delirium 13y ago
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 13y ago
  And when a business is literally enslaving people, we should really be doing more than just snark about it on the internet.
- vernie 13y ago
  I wonder how many more applicants the position will attract as a result of all this attention.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

minimaxir 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

rfnslyr 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

Untit1ed 13y ago

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.

DanI-S 13y ago

> 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 13y ago
Penny Arcade is a marketing company
- WiseWeasel 13y ago
  They're all marketing companies... except for government contractors; those are bribery companies.

wilg 13y ago

"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-penny-arcade-needs-to-fix-its-krahulik-problem/?__lsa=03bc-7082 http://business.financialpost.com/2013/06/21/download-code-p...), and their terrible responses to them? Where do I sign up?

wismer 13y ago
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.
- arrrg 13y ago
  An apology that is followed by screwing up along similar lines is really not worth very much. Apologising is nice and all, but if no actual change in behaviour occurs (whether intentionally or unintentionally) there really is no point to it.
  - wismer 13y ago
    I don't understand. What was the apology? For the transphobic thing or the dickwolf thing? What was the similar event?
- booticon 13y ago
  Saying you're sorry then putting out a goddamn tshirt with a reference to a rape joke isn't an apology.

jsumrall 13y ago

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.

SheepSlapper 13y ago

Haven't we beat this subject to death already? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6803059

downer96 13y ago
Don't forget this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

Jemaclus 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

crygin 13y ago

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.

danso 13y ago

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)

droopyEyelids 13y ago

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?

gordaco 13y ago

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.

Segmentation 13y ago

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.

samspot 13y ago
I don't think a hobby is comparable. They do the raiding thing because it is fun. They have only a social obligation to stay, and they can quit anytime that it doesn't fit into their life anymore.
9999 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
billforsternz 13y ago

VexXtreme 13y ago

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.

seiji 13y ago
Recruiting for a company that has fans (actual, fanatic fans) can be tricky. Sometimes you can play the candidate's enthusiasm against them. Sometimes they come in with unrealistic expectations and burn out in six months. Sometimes you do the sane thing and just hire somebody who has never heard of you.
- prawn 13y ago
  This seems to happen with (especially female) journalists writing for fashion magazines. Salaries are low but number of applicants is high.
- Tloewald 13y ago
  The big problem is going to be too many applicants. Suggesting the job will be shitty and low paid seems to be a great way to filter out competent applicants.
  - trothoun 13y ago
    Maybe they are building a blacklist from the applicants and will post the real job description later. If this were true I would be more at peace with the world than I presently am.
- hobbes 13y ago

ssclafani 13y ago

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.

RogerL 13y ago
"harsh" and "family" do not mix.
- deletes 13y ago
  You are confusing the hiring process and actual employment there.
GuiA 13y ago
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.

mbesto 13y ago

> 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 13y ago
Penny Arcade are being publicly called out for their questionable ethical behavior. That is market forces at work.

RandallBrown 13y ago

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 13y ago
"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 13y ago
  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.

FreeKill 13y ago

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 13y ago
> "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 13y ago
  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.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - Bockit 13y ago
    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.

goshx 13y ago

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.

drunkenmasta 13y ago

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

snogglethorpe 13y ago

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...

a_bonobo 13y ago
>would be willing to work hard I don't think the issues is with working hard - the issue is with parts of the industry expecting people to work so much that it's beyond "working hard" and becomes damaging, and I think (and I think the author in OP's link does too) that there has to be a change in developers' mindsets to protect themselves from negative consequences.
snowwrestler 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

AliAdams 13y ago

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?

jpatokal 13y ago

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?

ceejayoz 13y ago
Sure, but those small businesses generally aren't making the one IT guy run a massively high-traffic website while putting on the largest gaming convention on the planet, right?
icebraining 13y ago
What kind of small business needs 24/7 support?
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Any small business that's selling something online. If the website falls over so badly it can't sell anymore, and there's only one guy who knows how to fix it, guess who's going to get the 2 AM call from the boss?
- TillE 13y ago
  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.
slantyyz 13y ago
While the ad is not the kind of job I would want, I have to say, I appreciated its... bluntness. The fact that there are red flags means that the few candidates who actually apply know full well what they're getting into and that nobody's time is wasted.
wpietri 13y ago

fragsworth 13y ago

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.

SheepSlapper 13y ago
Money is just one form of compensation. PA offers a matching 401(k), my company doesn't. PA offers what seems to be a pretty sweet working environment, my company doesn't. PA might have some interesting/hard problems to solve, I'm stuck making CRUD apps for customers that just don't care. People can complain about the (allegedly, nobody knows what they're paying yet) low salary all they want, but that's only one piece of the puzzle.
- nbuggia 13y ago
  Yes, it is so sweet they expect that you will find it offensive: "- You should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive environment."
  - BHSPitMonkey 13y ago
    If you're familiar with the webcomic or the blog, you'd recognize that this is probably a reference to off-color language and humor that undoubtedly is typical of their work environment. This doesn't actually offend me at all, but the rest of the job posting does.

rrich 13y ago

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 13y ago
The skills don't seem to be a stretch. Basically a devops guy that used to be a full stack guy.

10098 13y ago

> 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

pesenti 13y ago

> 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).

vertis 13y ago
Is 2% good? 9% (soon moving to 12%) is mandatory in Australia. Yes we are an evil socialist state with good healthcare.
- twoodfin 13y ago
  Australia's retirement income system is actually substantially to the right of the U.S. Social Security model, as our politics go. Conservative wonks have long advocated to shift SS to a means-tested basic income benefit plus a mandatory personal account. That's essentially Australia's system. But any attempt to move in this direction has been met with cries from our own "evil socialists" that "privatization" will inevitably enrich the robber barons and force the elderly to eat dog food. To answer your question: That 2% in an optional 401(k) tax-advantaged private account is above and beyond the 12.4% that goes to Social Security. How much of that 12.4% the employee will ever see depends on his lifespan and the continued benevolence and fiscal prudence of the U.S. Congress.
  - jcdavis 13y ago
    And to add to twoddfin's (excellent) response: only half of that 12.4% is paid by the employer, the other half is paid by the employee
  - vertis 13y ago
    I'm not sure that your assertion is correct. Employers are required to pay money into a super fund of your choice (or an employer default if you don't specify). You can of course contribute privately to this balance as well, and in fact in some cases the government has matched contributions. Super is not taxed*, though you can't withdraw till you're over 60. It does have a lot of flexibility as well. It's possible to set up a 'Self Managed Super Fund' which can be used to buy property, or invest in other ways (though this is fairly tightly regulated). This is of course not connected to the availability of a pension, should that money ever run out. Which makes it all feel pretty far left.

mikeash 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  "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."

grillz 13y ago

I think a lot of the backlash is because this feels like something Penny Arcade would never do. Sure there are jobs that are this demanding or don't pay much, but as a company PA has always seemed to stand a little above the rest. They are charitable and straight forward and generally try to treat people in a decent (or atleast honest) way. This posting seems to go against much of what I think makes Penny Arcade, Penny Arcade.

jurassic 13y ago

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"

deletes 13y ago

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 )

Qworg 13y ago
At risk of sounding pedantic, why would someone want to work at PA?
sirmarksalot 13y ago
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.

doktrin 13y ago

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.

GhotiFish 13y ago

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.

wismer 13y ago

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?

shunter 13y ago

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.

JacobJans 13y ago

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.

mverwijs 13y ago

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

javajosh 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
leoc 13y ago
What I've heard is that at Valve the formula is lowish base pay, plus a shot at exceptionally generous bonuses if you can convince your coworkers that you've been helping to bring home the bacon.

fotoblur 13y ago

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 13y ago
I guess he didn't tell him that it would be the experience of getting screwed over.

ekarulf 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

santoshalper 13y ago

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 13y ago

"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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  >> 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.

vinceguidry 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

lnanek2 13y ago

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. :)

InclinedPlane 13y ago

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.

drakaal 13y ago

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.

jakemcgraw 13y ago

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.

singingfish 13y ago

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.

Kiro 13y ago

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.

bigd 13y ago

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 13y ago

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.

sbarre 13y ago
I think the issue here is also who is posting the job. If this was a job listing for some unknown company in a business park, who cares. But Penny Arcade are a highly visible and admired (by some, obviously not all) brand, and it feels like they are abusing this position when hiring for this gig. Your point about making your own bed is valid for sure, but I think some people will overlook this with the "oh man I'd love to work at Penny Arcade" excitement, and I think PA is counting on that.
robdrimmie 13y ago
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.