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by mattdeboard 4582 days ago
> We’re terrible at work-life balance. Although work is pretty much your life, we do our absolute best to make sure that work is as awesome as possible so you at least enjoy each and every day here.

Sigh.

edit: oh haha I get it, it's a joke:

> - 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.

I was disappointed til I realized no one in their right mind would be asking someone to get worked to death for low pay. See? Joke!

edit 2:

C'mon this is probably one of the worst job listings I've seen in my handful of years looking at developer job listings. This cannot possibly be serious.

In addition to the "We're gonna work you to death" and "We're not gonna pay you what you're worth", there's also the awesome addition of "We don't have a plan and it's basically up in the air what you're going to be doing every day":

> Flexibility adapting to deadlines, changing schedules, priorities and unpredictable events in a fast paced environment.

And don't forget that you should be highly experienced, multidisciplinary wizard who won't mind doing desktop support:

> the (dreaded) GENERAL IT for us here that need help configuring a firewall for a dev kit, etc. Sorry, I know that’s the WORST, but it’s absolutely part of the gig.

This is legit, at least they're being up front with it instead of springing it on the poor schlub who gets hired.

6 comments

Are you familiar with Penny Arcade? The author's not kidding when he says it'll probably be the most competitive opening they've ever had. They could lower the desired experience just a little bit, offer this as an unpaid internship and they'd still get more applications than they could handle. There are people who would would essentially replace everything in their entire lives to work there - it's about the culture, the people and the access.
Yeah I'm very familiar with PA and a big fan of the strip. Less interested in the auxiliary work though.

I get what you're saying and you're probably right, but it seems almost malicious to take advantage of someone's fanaticism so boldly.

It's absolutely malicious, and what's more, they already know that: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/1/25
I'm reminded more about their actual reality show that ended with a job http://penny-arcade.com/strip-search/
So the tester got to be in the beta for Soylent?
It's not "malicious", what a silly word to use. It's just business.
It's Penny Arcade, he's concerned with getting too many applicants, not too few.
I'd like to see a split test on whether it's better to set the bar low like they're doing and immediately disinterest a lot of very qualified people or to set the bar very high and intimidate the marginally qualified or unqualified people.
I doubt qualified people are as disinterested as you think. Some people have knee-jerk reactions to job descriptions like this but I think most do not.

Honestly, 3 years of web dev plus system administration for what looks like a junior-ish position in a small but busy and high-profile shop is not outrageous. If I was actively looking for work and willing to relocate I would contact them to get more details before writing it off.

They don't seem terribly desperate to fill the position. If that's true they can probably play a waiting game to find someone who matches what they're looking for.

As for the salary line, either it's true that they're not a "terribly money-motivated group" and thus you should feel free to ask for whatever you want and if they really want to hire you they'll cave. Or, it's true that they aren't willing to pay the salary you expect and negotiations won't last long.

Either way it's really nothing to get worked up about.

I think one of the points of this posting is that if you take it too serious you already are not fit for the job. Thus, it's helping to weed out candidates that may not fit well with the company.
If I were a fan of Penny Arcade, my interest would be piqued - it'd be a challenge that I'd be interested in.

That said, pay would absolutely have to be stellar to put up with that.

Hey, at least he is being honest. Not talking about xboxes/playstations at work and how there is free lunch, dinner at work.
It's Penny Arcade. I'd be surprised if they didn't have XBoxes and Playstations at work.
My comment was to point that that a lot of companies (big and small) in the tech space use these "benefits" as a way of getting you to stay at work for as long as possible while doing HR selling of these as "benefits". I would rather not have XBoxes/Playstations at work (unless I was actually building shit for them) and just get my work done and get home and do my own creative fun shit at home.