[jmduke]

Perhaps it's rather as the author believes in an objective reality, where there is one true valuation of a thing, and he's not so much trying to "force his valuation onto all prospective applicants" as trying to "communicate the real valuation to all prospective applications".

I strongly disagree with this, though. I'm young, but I'm confident people can have different experiences at the same position -- I have friends who would happily take a salary hit to work at startups or smaller businesses. They value the opportunities and cultures of those jobs to be worth more than the additional $X,000. That doesn't mean they disagree with a "one true valuation" -- it means their valuation has different factors and weights.

[danudey]

I took a pay cut of $20k/yr to work at my current job. I'm glad I did. I made a shitload of money before, and even if I'm sometimes discontent with my current position due to the occasional fit of stress, it's much healthier of an environment for me to be in.

Actually, looking at the job post for PA:

- 'Code in multiple front-end and back-end languages' - well, I can do that. In fact, I do a lot of backend work at my job, and am forced to do front-end work for it as well because we don't have web devs on staff.

- "Maintain servers and other hardware including load balancing and database admin" - Yep, I do that. It's part of my core tasks.

- "Do general office IT" - Don't need to do much of this, because we're almost entirely a Mac shop.

- "Manage your own projects" - I suck at this, but It's part of the job.

- "Be on call 27/7 though we hope not to bug you too much in the middle of the night" - Yep. I once got a phone call at 3 AM and had to get up and refactor some code because it wasn't displaying data properly. Not even business critical, that's just how it goes.

I could make more elsewhere, and have on several occasions. I could make twice as much consulting, for example. The perks, however, are great. I get to set my own hours outside of our core hours, I work with really smart people, we have neat company events, and all in all it's a great place to work.

So for everyone who thinks that I'm being 'exploited' the way these PA guys are: I really, really like my job. I have a great team and a great boss, and I'm happier here than I've been in my entire working career, but if someone broke it down to just these bullet points, it might sound shitty.

Personally, I think it would be a great opportunity to work at Penny Arcade. They're a huge company in some ways, and they have a lot of visibility. It's also a fun office environment (ping-pong tournaments? prank wars? video games?) if you're the right fit. I'd apply if I were willing to move to the US (and if I were, Seattle would be a good pick).

It's not all about money. If you're getting paid enough to live comfortably at home, the next most important thing is to live comfortably at work.

[ceol]

We have no idea what your office is like or how much they make. We do have an idea how much PA makes, and it's enough to hire at least two people to handle these tasks.

[danudey]

Assuming there's enough work across all four that needs doing.

Keep in mind, all of these tasks are already being done by somebody. It's possible that the majority of the tasks will be additional projects (e.g. set up an office fileserver to optimize the art workflow, automate common tasks, fix minor bugs in the CMS, etc).

My point is: there's a ton of things we don't know about this job either; for example, their 'we're not going to pay you lots' could mean $100k instead of $120k, which would be fine by me for living in Seattle, but the way people are complaining about it makes it sound like it's $35k/yr and you have to buy your own office equipment.

[ShirtlessRod]

>> "Do general office IT" - Don't need to do much of this, because we're almost entirely a Mac shop.

Oh, lord. No pesky routers, phones, cabling, or other infrastructure-level things, then? Machines never upgraded? Hardware never fails?