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.
As an employer, you want to find these folks.
There's usually no downside to having these
absurd job postings.
1. You lose a lot of accumulated knowledge when you burn your employees out and need to hire new ones every ___ months.
2. When you're understaffed (er, sorry - "running lean") and every week is basically run-around-with-your-hair-on-fire crunch mode time, you accumulate technical debt like crazy. Pretty soon everything's held together with duct tape, because you're dealing with shit flying at you from every angle and there's often no time to do things right.
3. An unreasonable job description like that weeds out nearly all seasoned, savvy developers. (For a high-profile job like PA, maybe they'll attract enough naive young geniuses who would love to work a zillion hours a week for low pay, and that will kinda sorta make up for it)
Furthermore, high turnover is very, very common in VC startups, including CEOs.
1.) I do web development every day. I'm not a spectacular designer, but I can put a work flow together and I'm comfortable on both the client side javascript (JavaScript proper, jQuery, Backbone, AngularJs) as well as the server side (Ruby, Node.js, PHP 5.5 (Laravel mostly), C#).
2.) I do development in the form of sysadmin/devops type tasks (bash/powershell/vbscript)
3.) I currently do IT related tasks with regards to servers (not desktops) such as building servers from parts, loading them in to racks, setting up firewalls/routers/networking, etc
4.) I'm not perfect with attention to detail. Things fall through the cracks, but I know when to skip details (because they can be easily rectified if missed) and when not to (because the work really is mission critical, or rectifying the mistake would be particularly painful)
5.) I'm self-educated with minimal college. However, I devour books about algorithms, AI, language references, etc
6.) I have terrible work-life balance. I love my wife dearly, but if there is a problem to be solved, I can't let it go. I often dream about problems that are on my mind.
7.) I work well in teams, but I prefer solo work as I can often get in the "zone" easier when not distracted. I am not socially awkward, but I prefer smaller groups. I won't do sales, and while I can do direct customer service, I find it exhausting and my day is often shot afterwards.
8.) I understand how to deal with, and juggle, multiple "number one" priorities.
9.) I generally don't do on call, but if there is a fire, I'm always available to work on it.
10.) I'm constantly on the lookout for techniques to enhance myself, and the team as a whole. I often do presentations on up and coming software stacks, or training on technologies that I think would be worthwhile to implement.
11.) I live in Portland, Or. Relocating to SV or SF is not an option.
Given all of that (and more since it's never binary), how do I go about valuing myself in the market without wasting a ton of time?
Offers are made based on your past experience and interview, before an employer can do a full psychological profile to see if you're a good fit.
So number one priority is to have a good resume.
Then you just "feel out" the current rates based on what you currently make and taking in other signals like glassdoor, salary ranges in job postings in your area (jobs listed on AngelList are most transparent about that) and talking to your peers.
The best way to get good salary is to get multiple job offers and increase your demands with each successive offer.
Yes, it is time consuming, but much less than writing code and with much better long-term effect on your salary.
It takes a ton of time, but interview people. Seriously, you would not believe what the applicant pool is like, even after resume filtering and phone screening. After interviewing 20-30 people you may have a very different perspective on which decile of value that you fall into. If you are in the top 10% of developers, then your value is the top 10% as well.
transparency wins imo.
But you should probably just work out how much you would like to make, what kind of company you would like to work for, what kind of work, what kind of work life balance and aim for that.
If you put your contact details in your profile would be interested to talk based on above.
Although they are considered the spawn of Satan by most devs, they know exactly what you are worth because their business depends on it.
And they will be willing to talk to you, because you are their meal ticket.
As a dev in Portland, I can tell you with your skill set, if you have at least 3 - 4 years experience, you can get 6 figures. But you have to market yourself as a dev, not a generalist. Especially if you emphasize Angular and Node.
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.
- [...] and don’t mind having a really bad sense of work-life balance, this is the job for you.
- You should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive environment.
- 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.
That's four pieces of the puzzle already.
"- You should have no problems working in a creative and potentially offensive environment."
And if you think unions aren't for skilled workers, look at how well it works NFL players or entertainment writers.
The result is exactly what you would expect if you disregard the anti-union propaganda. Greater transparency regarding salaries and working conditions, better opportinities for networking, strict and enforceable overtime regulations and vastly improved workplace safety.
Do you think that if cricket players formed a union (maybe they already did, I have no idea), they would be paid as much as NFL players?
Of course not. NFL players are paid so much because the league can afford to pay them and still stuff their bank accounts.
The same goes for TV/Movie writers - good, proven talent is in low supply and there are millions at stake, so it makes sense to pay well to get the best. The 5th box office hit on a given week usually makes a fraction of what the 1st and 2nd does, so it makes sense to optimize for hitting the 1st spot and you do that by getting the best talent and you get the best talent by paying them more than others.
We (programmers) don't need the unions to be paid well because there's still more demand for talent than supply of such talent.
If it ever happens that we need unions to be well paid, the unions won't help much because you can't pay high salaries if you don't have high revenues.
Also, given that software companies are generous with stock options, as part owners of the business, we should be very much against overpaying the employees, even if they are fellow developers.
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.
Hey, 17 year old kids, and people who have been out of work for years need jobs too, you know. (actual skill correlates... much less than it ought with employment desperation, in my opinion.)
And it looks to me (and apparently, to you) like the penny-arcade folks are being pretty clear about what they want. And that's fine. Some people (usually very inexperienced people) really like the "hero ninja rockstar" rhetoric, and that's fine. I think many intern level folks respond better to thinking of themselves as rockstar ninjas than as interns. And as we're all clear on what that actually means, hey, if it makes them feel good, who am I to complain?
The other thing you need to understand is that most of the rhetoric about 'heroic work schedules' is empty. My experience has been that the people I know who actually work the most, I mean, once you take out all the time on hacker news and facebook? they don't talk about how much they work. In fact, they usually worry that they aren't working enough.
When I hear people crow about a ridiculous work schedule? I hear "I put in 45 hours a week at the office, but half that time is on facebook or chatting with co-workers" People who actually work a lot are constantly concerned that they aren't working enough.
Yeah, they and similarly desperate people may indeed fall pray to this kind of thing. See below.
And it looks to me (and apparently, to you) like the penny-arcade folks are being pretty clear about what they want.
In this economy, ads saying "we're looking for someone to suck dry till we leave their bleached bones on the beach somewhere" can pull people in because ... desperation. See, your above.
But I don't care, such vampires need to be called on their antics regardless of this free choice.
Yes, so let's take advantage of them... And if the market comes to that point that we can expect them to work for food, let's do that too... (while we're making tons of money from our business).
>And it looks to me (and apparently, to you) like the penny-arcade folks are being pretty clear about what they want.
Transparency is not a virtue in itself. Charles Manson was pretty clear about what he wanted too.
The first interview was to determine my technical ability and character.
The second interview was for them to gauge my reaction to all the crap parts of the job. They told me about the level of social life, the tedious tasks I will have to do, and so on.
They said that, previously, they had talked-up the position to attract someone only for them to leave once they realized the reality wasn't quite so great. So, if I took the job, I would not be shocked once I got to my desk.
In the end I didn't get the job, but this is the only interview I have been in that didn't try to hide the bad bits or to over-hype the good bits.
So, yeah, unrealistic expectations are an issue. But, I mostly blame the hiring company for talking out of their backsides in order to recruit.
Now what you want is us to take your personal view of this person as read and ignore his clearly laid out position. So really you're the one being ad hominem, though unusually being supportive (I prefer 'enabling') rather than attacking.
Let's forget who this is and discuss this person's job ad.
EDIT: A pre-emptive clarification: The fact that one could do research on this person makes no difference. The ad is the ad, the details of the person who wrote it are actually irrelevant here.
Ad hominem: "Higher taxes are bad because you're the one suggesting them."
Personal: "You are an idiot for suggesting higher taxes."
See the difference?
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.
Labor hoarding is well established empirically.
That said, there's no way I would apply for that position, and I hope nobody else does, so that they finally realize that they need to hire more than one person for all that stuff. I'm just saying the Penny Arcade company really is different than nearly any other technical gig, and that when they said "work is family", it's not "a nonsensical feel good catchphrase". It's them trying to weed out as many people as possible so they aren't flooded with 100,000 resumes at once.
How do you know that's how it is? For most companies, "work is family" may be hyperbole, but how do you know it's that way at PA? I don't profess to know, but I don't find it unreasonable that there are companies out there that are different than the ones that I'm accustomed to. Just like I accept that there are people out there that have lives very different than how I've lived mine.
That might be true in general but in this case it is not.
Demanding, insane-o jobs are also common in those places. They may have poor work/life balance, but goddamn it, they pay their people, either with fat salaries or substantial equity or both.
It's hard to imagine the confusion under which someone would post a job that is three standard deviations more overworked than the norm, and then flippantly say "we're not money-focused" about the compensation.
You want insane-o crazy work? You pay for insane-o crazy work.
But maybe this isn't surprising. PA does come derive from an industry where talented, young people will drag themselves through broken glass just for a tiny sliver of the glory of making video games for a living.
I don't know about you, but my mother and brother are still my family, regardless of their work output.
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).
insulting to 99% of the world work population (who have much worst jobs)
Many of the benefits you listed are standard in Europe. Full medical coverage is provided by the government, and they have ~30 days of paid leave.
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.
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 friend in the gaming industry posted the Penny Arcade ad to Facebook, and I clicked on it out of curiosity. I was appalled. When I went back to FB later, 4 different people had commented about what a terrible job it was.
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.
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.
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.
I required, and was given, a great salary plus stock, a nice office environment, and a healthy work-life balance.
His issue with this job is that they're looking to hire an experienced unicorn on the cheap, then they're going to work it to death.
If this was published back when I was in my late 20s, the job spec would have been an ok match and I would have applied. I think working in that environment for a few years would be a great buzz and would give me the opportunity to learn loads.
Generally, I'd say worse.
Your average small business with one IT guy isn't going to blow sunshine up your ass about what a magical, special place it is to work, which is why they won't pay you what you're worth and expect you to work stupid hours while demanding high-end qualifications. They'll know that they're hiring a generic IT guy and be happy with somebody who just got their associate's degree and likes playing with hardware. They won't be expecting you to run a high-volume website with 24/7 uptime and being eternally on call. And if they do expect too much, it's not because they've thought it through; it's just because they're generally demanding people who are kinda clueless. Often, a good conversation with somebody like that can get you some space, or an assistant, or a raise.
Here, though, they know that they're asking for a unicorn, and they know they're going to treat them poorly, and they just don't give a shit.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, and exploiting somebody like that is wrong. They could hire them and treat them well, but because they're famous, they couldn't be fucking bothered.
This shitty behavior goes on all the time in fashion [1] and in the movie industry. I'm sad to hear it's coming to tech.
[1] e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Devil_Wears_Prada_%28novel%...
Whut?
In any case Jason Scott says they did grab it. https://twitter.com/textfiles/status/405475303423619074
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.
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 :)
The problem is if you refuse to put in the overtime, there will always be someone else who is willing and able to put the overtime in, as a result they are presented with more opportunities. The mentality in every development industry is if you are the first to leave, you'll most likely be the first on the chopping block if the business hits a rough spot. You are perceived as not being a team player, not working hard enough and putting pressure on your peers.
I understand overtime is part of the job. We as developers know when we signed up to be developers that there will be late nights, but when companies expect overtime as part of the normal job for no good reason other than to get more for less, that's not right. People are afraid to leave at 5.30pm on the dot at most companies, especially as the economy gets worse.
Sadly I'm in Australia, otherwise catching up and discussing the state of the industry would have been awesome. I'll most likely be in the US sometime next year though, my partner and I are currently trying to get some funding for an ambitious idea.
"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-p...), and their terrible responses to them?
Where do I sign up?
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.
Apologising is nice and all, but if no actual change in behaviour occurs (whether intentionally or unintentionally) there really is no point to it.
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.
> you're going to be taking a pay cut most likely.
> not much opportunity for growth or change
Are you delusional?
As a rule nobody works there because of the money, and there are many examples of how PA makes decisions which lower their revenue (they could easily raise PAX ticket prices by 3-4x, for example, which would bring in over a million dollars in extra revenue per year per employee). It might be that asking a dev to forgo the sort of pay levels they'd expect from working elsewhere might be too much to ask of anybody, but time will tell I guess.
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.
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.".
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.
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.
But that's not the only way to make it.
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.
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.
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.
Expectations are one thing, and they're very easy to state up front. Reality is quite another, and much more difficult to enforce.
Anyone who wants to work at PA, knows why very well.( hint: its not the money )
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.
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.)
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.
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.
They literally tell you that you'll work far more than a regular job.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
They're about as clear as they can be without actually stating a number. It's gonna be low.
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.
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.
Mike Krahulik participated in a few Twitter-based discussions. One indicates that this is a replacement posting (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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Tales from the Trenches section is less hilarious in hindsight.
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.
The skill set absolutely exists and, for the right person, it's a great job.
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.
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.
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.
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.
(yes, this is an indictment of the already troubled news industry)
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.
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.
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.
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.
wtf, they're not even trying
tl;dr; It's not always as grim as it looks. but in this case it might be.
"You should be ready to make this startup the primary focus of your life"
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.
(the title blog post's title is a link to the job posting)
http://www.linkedin.com/jobs2/view/9887522?trk=job_nov
That's pretty horrible.