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,

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.