by ambirex on 11/26/13, 11:37 PM with 295 comments
by fragsworth on 11/27/13, 12:15 AM
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.
by VexXtreme on 11/27/13, 12:05 AM
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.
by DigitalSea on 11/26/13, 11:55 PM
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.
by snogglethorpe on 11/27/13, 12:12 AM
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...
by ssclafani on 11/27/13, 12:05 AM
by pesenti on 11/27/13, 12:21 AM
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).
by minimaxir on 11/26/13, 11:59 PM
The Tales from the Trenches section is less hilarious in hindsight.
by santoshalper on 11/27/13, 1:50 AM
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.
by lingben on 11/27/13, 2:22 AM
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.
by fotoblur on 11/27/13, 1:19 AM
by vinceguidry on 11/27/13, 2:51 AM
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.
by jpatokal on 11/27/13, 12:15 AM
by MartinCron on 11/26/13, 11:53 PM
by Segmentation on 11/27/13, 12:04 AM
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.
by DanI-S on 11/27/13, 12:02 AM
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.
by gordaco on 11/27/13, 12:04 AM
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.
by wilg on 11/27/13, 12:02 AM
"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?
by mbesto on 11/27/13, 12:05 AM
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.
by shunter on 11/27/13, 12:45 AM
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.
by Jemaclus on 11/27/13, 12:03 AM
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.
by Untit1ed on 11/27/13, 12:01 AM
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.
by deletes on 11/27/13, 12:30 AM
Anyone who wants to work at PA, knows why very well.( hint: its not the money )
by javajosh on 11/27/13, 1:10 AM
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.)
by mikeash on 11/27/13, 12:22 AM
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.
by danso on 11/27/13, 12:03 AM
(yes, this is an indictment of the already troubled news industry)
by doktrin on 11/27/13, 12:35 AM
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.
by jsumrall on 11/27/13, 12:02 AM
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.
by FreeKill on 11/27/13, 12:07 AM
by RandallBrown on 11/27/13, 12:06 AM
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.
by nwh on 11/26/13, 11:49 PM
by crygin on 11/27/13, 12:03 AM
by bigd on 11/27/13, 12:28 PM
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.
by mildtrepidation on 11/27/13, 1:53 PM
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.
by jakemcgraw on 11/27/13, 5:54 AM
by goshx on 11/27/13, 12:07 AM
by InclinedPlane on 11/27/13, 3:15 AM
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.
by JacobJans on 11/27/13, 1:04 AM
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.
by ekarulf on 11/27/13, 1:29 AM
The skill set absolutely exists and, for the right person, it's a great job.
by SheepSlapper on 11/27/13, 12:03 AM
by lnanek2 on 11/27/13, 2:59 AM
by rrich on 11/27/13, 12:16 AM
by wismer on 11/27/13, 12:44 AM
by 10098 on 11/27/13, 12:21 AM
wtf, they're not even trying
by singingfish on 11/27/13, 6:55 AM
tl;dr; It's not always as grim as it looks. but in this case it might be.
by jurassic on 11/27/13, 12:26 AM
"You should be ready to make this startup the primary focus of your life"
by mverwijs on 11/27/13, 1:04 AM
by drakaal on 11/27/13, 3:48 AM
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.
by AliAdams on 11/27/13, 12:13 AM
by Kiro on 11/27/13, 8:03 AM
by thinkpad20 on 11/26/13, 11:54 PM
by droopyEyelids on 11/27/13, 12:04 AM
by GhotiFish on 11/27/13, 12:38 AM
(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.
by drunkenmasta on 11/27/13, 12:10 AM
by rfnslyr on 11/27/13, 12:01 AM
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.
by vernie on 11/26/13, 11:58 PM