[dpcheng2003]

I think the author skates between praise and criticism as they are different sides of the same coin--Robert is a great businessman.

I find this type of knee-jerk response to the job posting disappointing. When did we become so sensitive or insecure or helpless that we need to shame this person or this job posting?

It's been said multiple times over in this comments thread that Robert is actually being uniquely transparent, that the candidates who apply have lots of other options and no one is being forced to take this job given those two factors. If this was a Craiglist ad for some deviant act, would we jump on our horse and say, "How dare this person ask someone to do [deviant act]?" No, we'd probably just ignore it because we're adults and we get to make our own decisions. That [deviant act] is not for us.

You can say Robert should follow best practices and be more competitive in his offer, and to some extent, this post does that. But to use colorful and aggressive language, presuming that the founders of Penny Arcade are cashing in "trade show checks" is not productive. Robert isn't breaking any employment laws. The best you can do to show your disapproval as a great developer is to not apply.

[rantanplan]

There are so many logic flaws in your comment that I will just respond to the ones that stand out(to me anyway).

"Robert isn't breaking any employment laws".

I didn't know we should only voice our disagreement when someone does something illegal. Actually, on second thought, I think doing that would be somewhat redundant because, well you know, the law has already taken care of that.

"The best you can do to show your disapproval as a great developer is to not apply"

What a misguided and cynical opinion! No. What we can do, is to expose unethical and exploitative tactics, in order to protect the younger, and by extension, the more naive candidates.

[dpcheng2003]

Everyone has the right to voice their disagreement. It is, after all, a free country. I voiced my opinion, you're voicing yours. I am confused where my logic "fails" here.

The point I am making is that there is a community that is taking an outsized response to his very honest and open job posting about the type of person he wants on his team. As many people mentioned here, this isn't very different from other postings in other desired fields, like game design, acting, etc. or in many startups.

I will agree I am cynical but I am hardly misguided. I doubt anyone reading that job posting will think they are joining a highly lucrative, salary-competitive role. They are doing it because they love PA.

What if we wrote the "real" job descriptions of other desired positions like being an engineer at Apple, for example? Apple is notoriously known for working their employees. Where's the outrage?

You and the author of this post has every right to say the job posting is not competitive or in your opinion, unethical or exploitive. Where I find disagreement is the manner in which he argues his points. There's no need to use language that can be misconstrued as aggressive to makes his points, but he does anyway.

[rantanplan]

Fair enough. Maybe I am not impressed by the "honesty" depicted in the job posting. Being honest won't redeem you from being exploitative towards other people.

I agree that you should attack arguments and not people. Maybe the author of the article got a bit over excited.