[hapless]

This post confirms that the job posting is exactly what it looks like: an exploitative horror-show

* He speculates whether the job is worth a "lower salary" (and, given his admitted inexperience in the workforce, he probably has no idea what a market salary looks like)

* "The ping-pong table is NOT a benefit"

* He's on the "bottom of the goddamn ladder" and "reminded every day" edit: I'm getting a lot of flak for taking this out of context. This is a post on his employer's public forum, that they tweeted out on their corp accounts. It's not a stretch to read between the lines because this "joke" is so awkward and forced. I cannot imagine that it didn't have a double meaning. In other words, "ha ha only serious"

* He wears "four hats," and does the job of "two people" so they can run "lean."

* At some point his burnout was so bad (and so visible), his employers asked if they could "send [him] anywhere"

It's really a little strange to read this post. It's obvious that he really, really likes his coworkers and really, really hates his job. He describes horrible things with soft, feel-good terms. The author seems to hope applicants go into it with open eyes: the new hire will be crapped on and underpaid while he keeps a laptop next to the bed to handle early-AM change requests. But your coworkers are really fun!

[Lewisham]

Did you actually read the post?

The ladder is about the ping pong league they run, and he's joking that it's not a benefit because he's not winning. He decided he preferred to get a lower salary for a job he enjoyed more. He said he can wear four hats because "The reality is that one highly motivated, highly skilled person can handle all of this. You do not need to be constantly working IT, or constantly managing servers or writing code. There’s a lot there, yes. This is a job that will keep one person fairly busy. Two people might find themselves spending a lot of time on /r/aww."

So either you're really reading a lot between the lines to see what you want to see, or you didn't read it.

[hapless]

I don't have to read much between the lines to interpret a strangled reference to losing at pingpong as a more literal expression of his status.

He posted this on his current employer's public forum, after all.

[arcosdev]

I don't think you're full of shit. I think you're onto something.

[InclinedPlane]

I know him, you are 100% dead wrong.

[santoshalper]

You are totally and completely full of shit and a serious troll.

[niuzeta]

> The ladder is about the ping pong league they run, and he's joking that it's not a benefit because he's not winning.

I did not get that after re-reading the post. While I thank you for clarifying the point which changed the tone of the post dramatically(bad juxtaposition if you ask me, really), I'd also like to point out allegations of did you read the post are, in general, not constructive ad hominem(that whoever you're replying to is incapable of reading and etc.) and uncalled for.

[AlexEatsKittens]

My thoughts exactly. You see this all over the place; people talk about their job requiring passion and sacrifice as if it's a good thing. If your job requires you to do the work of two people and keep a laptop by your bed it's because your boss doesn't value your time and wont bother to hire the second person needed to do the job correctly. You aren't helping your coworkers by meeting ridiculous expectations, you're perpetuating exploitation.

[mhurron]

Ya, I'm surprised to see so much outrage here over this. You see sometimes people here taking work/life balance seriously, but work yourself to death seems more the norm here.

They rationalize it because they are working for themselves (read: their VC) to death.

[QuantumGood]

He fairly specifically says that interpretations such as yours are wrong. He specifically says:

* No, the conditions are not awful...I love this company

* No one here has been scammed into working as hard as they do, and the implication that we’re all blind fools with low self esteem for being here is honestly insulting.

* There won’t be any taking advantage of starry-eyed young twenty-somethings.

He explains why he's leaving directly and clearly, (including "No, I did not burn out.") and that he likes working there. You're assuming he's lying, which you can't know.

[hapless]

He says the conditions are not awful, then describes awful conditions. He says he's not leaving because he burned out, and then describes when he burned out.

He very obviously loves the company, but it's not a healthy love.

[TWAndrews]

If I were a twenty-something with no family, I could very easily imagine really liking that work environment. There is a ton of responsibility and the sense of accomplishment you'll get when you're the person who is making everything work has to be really gratifying. Is it sustainable for a lifetime? Clearly not, but you'd learn a ton, make some great friends doing it, and eventually move on.

It's clearly not for everybody, but it's not at all difficult for me to imagine that it's very much for some people.

[santoshalper]

Awful conditions for you.

[brianwawok]

For a human being

[nbouscal]

Yes, because you know what is best for all human beings. This line in the post was directed at you:

> That’s like saying everyone would be fulfilled by getting married and having 2.5 kids.

Not everyone has the same utility function.

[kelnos]

I tend to be a fairly relativistic, each-to-his-own person, so when things like this come up, I generally nod my head in agreement.

I don't think I can do that here, though. You're totally right in that people have different utility functions, but I believe that there are some things that are just objectively bad and unhealthy, and whether or not you think you enjoy them or "like" them, they are still bad for you, and possibly bad for others.

I don't want to live in a world where it's ok for a company to create a position like this guy was in, and have that be the norm. No, it's not like that, but the more we apologize for companies that do that, and the more we say, "oh, it's ok for that person to work in those conditions; if you don't like it then pick another job", the easier we make it for companies to think that those kinds of things are ok for everyone.

And then there's the wage issue. Bottom line: if you are working the jobs of more than one people, you should be paid more than one person. This guy took a pay cut to do more work. That's certainly a reasonable thing to do if compensation comes from other (healthy) angles, which appears not to be the case. The job posting for his replacement explicitly says they're cheap-ass bastards who aren't going to pay what you are worth or what the job duties merit.

That's not just a company I don't want to work for. That is a company with staffing practices that are actively harmful to individuals and the industry as a whole.

edit: @wvenable puts it so so so well a bit below: "I guess I'm old and tired of my peers devaluing their own skills and time."

[icebraining]

"He lies and says he's in love with it, can't find a better job..."

(With my apologies to Pearl Jam)

[coldtea]

Sure, he says as such. And abused spouses say they fell on the door knob and that "everything is fine", sending just as much mixed signals as the ones you listed above.

[scythe]

>* No, the conditions are not awful...I love this company

Well, duh, presumably he'd like to get a job at some point in the foreseeable future, and bad-mouthing your former employer is a wonderful one-way ticket to food stamps.

>No one here has been scammed into working as hard as they do

"Scam" is subjective. Of course nobody thinks they've been scammed. If you think you've been scammed, you quit. But if someone works basically illegal hours for below-market pay at a high-visibility company whose great overall contribution to society is a three-panel webcomic, well, it walks like a scam, quacks like a scam, and flies south for the winter.

>the implication that we’re all blind fools with low self esteem for being here is honestly insulting.

You don't have to be a blind fool to make a bad decision, and you don't have to hate yourself to sell yourself short. The reason we say these people are being exploited is quite simple: everything about their situation fits perfectly with the exploitation hypothesis. But you know what? This is par for the course in the world of "art". If you want to work in the "art" industry, like for a webcomic or a video game studio, be prepared to be paid less for more work than in some respectable field, unless you find a way to exploit the situation, cf. Thomas Kincaid.

Of course people call it exploitative, but it's really market pressure. There's no shortage of starry-eyed twenty-somethings to take advantage of, so the whole industry does it because, seriously, who's going to turn down free money? Why would you hire someone for a decent job at a respectable salary when you can make someone's life hell for a fraction of the price without any real impact on your bottom line? That's all Penny Arcade is really thinking.

Of course there's a word for people who think like this: Homo economicus. There's also a shorter word with less Latin: despicable. Penny Arcade is despicable. Period.

>There won’t be any taking advantage of starry-eyed young twenty-somethings.

But there is. It's their business model. It's part of the business model of a litany of "cool" companies where, in lieu of a fair salary, you get to put on your Facebook "I work at Penny Arcade", and, I dunno, maybe people think it'll get them laid or something.

You can't ignore a person's status when you're considering what they're saying. This poor bastard's comments have a direct and measurable impact on his future earning prospects, and having Hacker News ruminate over his situation for half a week is steadily decreasing his prospective income for the rest of his life. These are facts, not opinions. This is what happens when you bad-mouth your employer, because the deck is stacked against you.

>He explains why he's leaving directly and clearly, (including "No, I did not burn out.") and that he likes working there

In conclusion, no shit, Sherlock. Would you hire someone who said they burned out at their previous job because it sucked? Of course not.

[QuantumGood]

It will be interesting in a few years or months when, considering the publicity, I'm sure we'll hear from whoever get hired for this position.

If the person hired is also satisfied in the position, I suspect that will make no difference to the naysayers.

But it's not that easy for a company to keep employees happy. Many who pay market rates have mostly miserable workers. To me, a genuinely satisfied employee is never an example of a moral or other mistake by a company.

[johngalt]

The whole post made me think of someone defending an abusive spouse. 'Yeah I'm not allowed to go anywhere ever, but he takes care of me. I probably wouldn't even meet the requirements for the job, I'm sure lucky he chose me.'

[DannoHung]

The ladder comment is about the Ping-Pong tournaments regularly held in the office.

From the comment it's pretty obvious this is a two person job and getting a single dev is a business mistake.

[hapless]

Given that this is posted on his current employers' public forum, I take the "bottom of the ladder" and "not a benefit" juxtaposition as a "ha ha only serious" kind of joke.

There's no way that wasn't intended to have a double meaning.

[DannoHung]

There is a way. The way in which you're completely misreading a joke about an office ping pong tournament.

[coldtea]

Or you know, maybe others missing this are not very good at reading obvious stuff between the lines and need everything spelled out...

[TWAndrews]

I think this is the key thing here. This guy came on and grew into the job. He's obviously skilled and motivated, and because he built the systems from the ground up, can keep them maintained with way less effort than someone coming in will be able to.

Even if they find someone who's just as skilled and motivated, that person won't have the key experience of "I built all this" and will have to spend a much larger fraction of time on maintenance/extension.

Ultimately PA will have to hire multiple people to do all this stuff. If they're smart they'll recognize it now, rather than when the smart, motivated person they do hire starts to fail.

[cnlwsu]

I think your reaching a little, taking things outta context and spinning what he says to reinforce what you want to believe.

The bottom of the ladder is takin outta context, I am pretty sure he is referring to his position in the ping pong standings and joking about the ping pong table.

Salary is poor may also be considered "fair" based on his comment:

    It is true that I am paid below market value, but not so significantly as folks on the internet assume.

Stick with any company from right outta college until 5 years in and your probably below market value unless they give you amazing raises each year.

[saalweachter]

Paying someone "near market value" for a regular developer at a normal company, but leaving them on call 24/7 for 5 years is paying them "way below market value".

I say this as someone who went through that exact situation: I worked at a small company for five years out of college, and was on-call for 24/7 for most of that. Someone called me on my goddamn honeymoon (which was basically the only real vacation I took during the interval) to troubleshoot a minor issue I had left explicit instructions for before I left.

They were very good with salary increases, and I didn't get more than a 5% raise out of switching jobs. But I went from working 50-60 hours a week, plus perpetual on-call, to working 40 hours a week.

I loved working there, loved the people, had a lot of fun but ... I wish I'd left years earlier. It wasn't worth it. It's hard to admit it, when you love a job that doesn't love you back. But I will never go back to working the job of two people unless I'm getting paid the salary of two people.

[potatolicious]

Exactly this. He may have been paid "near market value", but he was being paid "near market value" for a different job description than what he actually had.

A normal web dev job, with limited on-call and not a lot of travel, perhaps, but unless he's being paid in the high-$100s, the travel and on-call requirements alone would have made him, in actuality, paid vastly below market.

I'm also intrigued to learn that he worked for Amazon as his one and only job out of college, before joining PA. With respect to the Amazonians on HN, his experiences working on a frontend team (with the requisite and insane oncall) at Amazon may have helped normalize a job description that to most of us here seems shocking and deplorable.

Amazon's salary offers to new undergrads is on the low end of normal (it's a standardized package, almost zero wiggle room on the compensation front). They're also infamous for their oncall system - a major contributor to their sky-high attrition rate. Turnover at Amazon is insane. I'm willing to bet that in his 3 years at Amazon, Kenneth would have seen just about every single person on his team turn over. In fact, if he was at Amazon for 3 years he's already way over the average tenure for devs, and likely the most veteran member of his team.

If you're coming from this environment, the PA deal is only moderately crazier. If you're coming from, well, most sane development jobs, the PA deal would seem absolutely off its rocker.

I spent 2 years at Amazon. I learned a ton, I worked with some great people. But boy, if you think Amazon is a "normal" gig, I've got a bridge to sell.

[mhurron]

> Paying someone "near market value" for a regular developer at a normal company, but leaving them on call 24/7 for 5 years is paying them "way below market value".

I say this as someone who went through that exact situation: I worked at a small company

SOP for small companies, except the market value bit, you'll usually get less.

[nooneshome]

Ping pong is Serious Business at Penny Arcade. They have an intraoffice league where the top players play other companies. They are always giving each other shit (jokingly) when they don't play well.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/screenlife-part-1 http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/screenlife-part-2

[zoips]

Have you ever worked at Amazon? He did. For 3 years (I did for 4). I very much doubt PA is any worse than Amazon with regards to it being the job from hell. Everything in the PA job description is practically a carbon copy of what should be in every job description from Amazon.

"he probably has no idea what a market salary looks like"

Amazon doesn't pay as well as Google, but Amazon salary is really far better than you'll get at anything other than the four big tech companies for a normal SDE.

[asdasf]

Amazon is infamous for being a terrible place to work that drives people away in a few years (notice how everyone works there for 2-4 years?). Saying "this is no worse than amazon" is about as damning as you can get.

[TWAndrews]

Wow. It's like we didn't read the same post at all.

[coldtea]

Spot on.

It would be like a textbook case of the Stockholm syndrome -- only, despite trying quite hard, he doesn't come off as that keen about his captors or his environment anyway...