[Zimahl]

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not.

Either way, I would think that having Penny Arcade on a resume would be an interesting story but other than that I can't imagine their infrastructure being anything that would help a career. Penny Arcade is probably only slightly above a real estate office for complexity.

[taeric]

Me thinks you have not seen the scope of their audience. This would be akin to having no respect for the Humble Bundle developers because it is just a tiny shop. I mean, only a few games every few weeks. :)

[Zimahl]

The scope of their audience is somewhat irrelevant. I'm not criticizing their comic here - other than a somewhat simple blog(ish) design, they just need to handle a lot of users to their semi-static site which is a solved problem. Maybe deal with a ton of users on their forum - once again a solved problem. Otherwise, like I said, most of it is office IT stuff for a handful of people working in an office.

I'm not sure how that is any more impressive than many other businesses that aren't known in the geek world.Their other endeavors (Child's Play, PAX) are more business and logistics and light on the IT. From what I've read most of that stuff is outsourced anyways so that PA can focus on the content and not the tedium.

[RandallBrown]

are massive user forums a solved problem?

Reddit still gives error pages to me dozens of times a day.

[Zimahl]

First, comparing Penny Arcade to Reddit is laughable. Second, Penny Arcade doesn't even host their own forums[1].

[1] http://vanillaforums.com/

[jblow]

Not sarcasm at all.

[niuzeta]

I'd love to have it explained if it wasn't a sarcasm.

I'm not trying to challenge you, but as an employee I'd always thought that a tech company that supports the infrastructure would look better on resume than one that depends on it. I'd like to hear why.

[shadowmint]

I can't answer for jblow, but in that position I would hire someone with a history of choosing to work on something they cared about rather than someone with more technical experience in a second.

People who are 'switched on'^ are astonishingly more valuable than people who come to the office and manage to passably succeed at the daily task list they're assigned.

^ <-- This is an arbitrary term I use for people who come to work and care about what they do, engage with other coworkers and generally involve themselves in doing the work because they care about the work, rather than having a 'home life' of things they care about, and not caring about work at all, other than to get money. ...it's easy to tell in person when you work with someone, but much harder from an interview or resume. A history of working at places you cared about is a good indicator in my experience, limited as it is.

[gaius]

More valuable in the sense that you can get more work out of them for less pay< i assume you mean. What's wrong with market rates + overtime? unless you"re pocketing it yourself!