This post confirms that the job posting is exactly what it looks like: an exploitative horror-show<p>* He speculates whether the job is worth a "lower salary" (and, given his admitted inexperience in the workforce, he probably has no idea what a market salary looks like)<p>* "The ping-pong table is NOT a benefit"<p>* He's on the "bottom of the goddamn ladder" and "reminded every day" edit: I'm getting a lot of flak for taking this out of context. This is a post on his employer's public forum, that they tweeted out on their corp accounts. It's not a stretch to read between the lines because this "joke" is so awkward and forced. I cannot imagine that it didn't have a double meaning. In other words, "ha ha only serious"<p>* He wears "four hats," and does the job of "two people" so they can run "lean."<p>* At some point his burnout was so bad (and so visible), his employers asked if they could "send [him] anywhere"<p>It's really a little strange to read this post. It's obvious that he really, really likes his coworkers and really, really hates his job. He describes horrible things with soft, feel-good terms. The author seems to hope applicants go into it with open eyes: the new hire will be crapped on and underpaid while he keeps a laptop next to the bed to handle early-AM change requests. But your coworkers are really fun!
Nothing seems to contradict what anyone has said about this job:<p>* "It is true that I am paid below market value"<p>* "If I had had to apply for the job with the presently listed requirements, I might not have gotten the offer."<p>* "Depending on the project load, I might spend 8 hours at the office and call it good, or I might stay til 10-midnight consistently for a couple weeks."<p>Just because the person who currently does the job feels this is a great thing and all the people applying for the job feel it's a great thing doesn't make it great.<p>I guess I'm old and tired of my peers devaluing their own skills and time.
They're rock-stars looking for a digital roadie. The roadie doesn't care he's abused because he's "with the band".<p>They need to admit to themselves that they didn't treat the previous guy right for the kind of work he put in.<p>Honestly, given PA's history I'm not surprised by this whole situation. They seem like a great bunch of guys who suffer from some serious Aspie-myopia about how life works for everybody outside of their club, and they've had to fight enough trolls and lunatics online that they can't sort out the legitimate criticism from the noise anymore, so when they screw up they just double-down.
Nothing about this job seems equitable. There appears to be literally 0 reward for making added sacrifices and taking on the additional duties called for.<p>Financial gain? Nope. World class technological challenges? Still no. Work life balance? Obviously not. Solving meaningful problems? No. Name recognition or industry stepping stone? Maybe, but highly mitigated by the fact that any serious applicant would be qualified for more valuable positions elsewhere.<p>Is this job squarely aimed at die hard PA fan-people? What about them as an organization is particularly exciting?
The one (and only) problem I had with the posting was this line:<p>>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.<p>That immediately jumped out at me. That came off so off-putting. If you're not a "money motivated group", that means you pay more, right, RIGHT? No, of course not. Again, the author probably didn't mean for it to come out the way it did, but it felt so sleazy, like they were trying to put one over the applicant. "We can't pay you a lot because we're not about money here". .. urgh.<p>All the other stuff about work-life balance and multiple roles, I didn't have a problem with. This job is made for a single 20-something guy or girl who wants to hang out with the penny-arcade crew, not someone with kids and a spouse.
* If you want to work 80 or more hours
* Prepare to have a laptop and some way of connecting to the internet with you at all times. Want to go on a hike somewhere there's no reception? Sorry, you can't.
* They pushed out the launch, came and visited me in the hospital, brought me delicious Asian snacks and lent me a Vita to help pass the time.<p>So 80 hours of work a week -- or more.
Inability to travel or enjoy wilderness or even visit family if they don't have reception.
And if you're in the hospital, maybe they will visit and lend you something relatively cheap that you can return later.
So you like working for less-than-market rates and have no life other than work? Want to work for me?<p>I suspect the answer is a flat, "No." Unless I was running a successful media company like PA there's nothing in it for you. What about it being PA makes it okay then?<p>Unfortunately I'm not surprised by the job posting. In non-unionized media companies the labor relations are generally very poor. A friend of mine used to work in such a post-production audio studio as a junior engineer. They paid him practically nothing and waited as long as they could to pay his invoices. In return he lived to work for them and never received credit for anything.<p>In contrast his sister worked in a larger post-production effects studio where the workers were unionized. She still has a job there afaik and is quite happy. Her brother left his gig when he was up to his eyeballs in debt and couldn't handle the hours anymore.<p>It sucks but that's the free market for you.
the job he describes is at LEAST $125k/year + benefits + location and schedule flexibility i.e. work from home if you want, and you can leave to pick up the kids at 2pm. as long as the work gets done. possibly stock or options - depends on the company, but quite honestly i don't even view that as 'real' compensation for 90% of all cases.<p>i can't even begin to know what the fuck a 'volunteer' Enforcer is, especially for a profitable company. quite frankly it sounds like the typical 20 foot pile of horse shit that only the games industry could come up with. and i've seen some really <i>mind-bendingly exploitative</i> behavior after being based here in LA for a decade.<p>anything significantly less than the above salary + benefits, and you are being ripped. off. by. people. who. know. better.<p>i know this because i have several senior devops guys on my staff who fit that description and have been with us for over 3 years. this is also what I used to make as a senior engineer before i started up my company as an owner/executive.<p>people should be FAR AND AWAY your most expensive resource. with a few notable types of exceptions, if you pay your people less than your hosting provider or your rent or marketing, you're doing something very, very wrong, and it will catch up to you in some way or another. see: penny arcade job post.
It was a great response until he got to the 80 hours thing.<p>Why would you take a below market wage to do twice the work? Is there equity in penny arcade? Some kind of lucrative upside we don't know about?
He doesn't seem to dispute that he basically gets paid less than someone who does all those things should...<p>So what I'm missing is whether there's a legitimate reason for him to be paid below market considering the Penny Arcade seems quite successful.<p>Though as one of the many people who's accepted supposedly below market pay, I can somewhat relate.
Fuck this.<p>No, actually, fuck YOU. Everyone out there who is going all white-knight on "Oh no, this is not a good situation yadda yadda, you're being exploited, abused,... You're in such abusive relationship that you don't even see it". The job posting was worded to be terrible just to ensure only the most motivated and willing would apply.<p>Does this mean PA are looking for a slave? No, there are better ways to get yourselves a slave and a lot of startups are doing it without anyone batting an eyelash. Look around you: unpaid internships, low salaries that don't compute with the living costs in the area, all these talks of "sure, you start with a low salary but you'll get equity and stock-options",... This is the real bullshit happening around us every day.<p>All of this talk about "he's working in awful conditions" when he's describing his happiness is making me sick. Who gave any of us the Judgement Stick to impose our views on other people? The real abuse Kenneth is getting is from anyone putting words he never said in his mouth. He's doing great stuff for a great company who SUPPORTS him whole-heartedly. Why is this crowd trying to disminish his proudness of being part of a family?<p>We've broken the boundaries of the "9-to-5" job. We're beginning to see the myth of developers working only from the workplace crumbling in front of our eyes and I'm only expected to be at work during the day because we got a sales team whose job IS 9-to-5. Because in the end it's not about our capacity to seat 40 hours in an office but our capacity and desire to get stuff done. And some of us are burning with it, don't deny them. Yes we don't count our hours but what would be our alternatives? Go home while we're HAVING FUN? And I can't picture a workplace where I would be told "Okay, you did your thing. Go home and continue it tomorrow morning." I stay late because I like it, sometimes for the 1Gbps fiber, sometimes because there's still stuff I want to do. Yes, two people could do my job and we could share the hats. But we could also hire 50 people to share the hats and just produce even less.<p>Stop hating and go slap the companies who really deserve it, all the one who boast their funding, business model, clients, w/ever... and think you're being "arrogant" when you ask for a decent salary.
The initial job post, to me, was very clearly written to scare some people off, in an attempt to reduce the tidal wave of responses down to a mere flood.<p>If that flood of respondents doesn't treat their skills (or their life) as having any value, why should Penny Arcade?<p>This isn't one of those crap IT jobs someone takes out of desperation for work. This is a job that a ton of people are going to be feverishly applying for and calling their "dream job".<p>If their "dream" is to trade their skills and time for that level of compensation, who am I to start saying PA is in the wrong by not splitting it into two jobs?
Congrats Kenneth Kuan. If I ever meet you in person I'd buy you a beer and tell you it isn't always like this.<p>Realistically PA needs at least two hires here. One ops guy responsible for IT/Sysadmin, and one dev. Both can crossover as much as needed. They can share the on-call duties. Either decide to reel-in the expectations on this position or hire two people to do it right.
Has it been said that this guy is the reason Penny Arcade wrote the ad they wrote?<p>People treat us how we let them treat us, someone taught his bosses that it's OK to ask one employee to be your entire IT department. That it's OK to have them on call 24/7 and have him work a minimum of 8 hours a day (but up to 15-16h/day for months at a time), in exchange for friday lunch and the ability to play video games at work. I'm certain that the people he describes, those who leave at 5 to be with their families, each had a situation when they were pressured to stay late day after day and at some point just said, "no, I'm leaving".<p>Anyway, Penny Arcade's human resource management obviously sucks. But hey, they had a guy doing the work of a 3-4 person team and for cheap to boot. Why shouldn't they expect to find someone else to pump and dump?
How much money does this company make? Does their corporate structure require them to file balance sheets? I mean if you're doing something like this to support the site you love, I can understand (still not agree, but understand). But if it's just to make some owner/investors rich...
Erm. "..I wanted to teach but I needed money before that to put aside; and to make money I took a salary cut after Amazon job to work for PA. And then I work sometimes till midnight for weeks because they can hire more people but they won't. And you can't go hike and should be on call, always, forever and ever..." LOL what?<p>For the company that is supposed to be cool and racks up money from PAX... I don't have words to express my thoughts. It's a huge whirlwind, thoughts quickly appear in my head and move in circles and I can't grab any of them to display here. Just wow!
Any job where one is required to be "plugged" into the internet 24/7 is a red flag. He goes on and mentions that being able to take a hike in the mountains is out of the question. If your life is work...