[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."

[nbouscal]

I agree that there is a point at which allowing the market to decide on fair compensation breaks down. Hence minimum wage and policies against discrimination, etc. I just don't see how one could possibly make an argument that this is the case here. The job pays enough to live well on, and while it does involve performing tasks typically associated with different roles, I don't see any indication that it involves doing more than one person's job. His description of the time involved doesn't sound that far off the norm. The main argument seems to be that the position is under-compensated, but I don't see any reason why in this case the market shouldn't be allowed to determine that.

Basically this whole issue seems to be a case where a significant part of the compensation is non-monetary (essentially, working at PA), and people whose utility functions assign that compensation zero value are getting bent out of shape about the fact that there exist people whose utility functions assign that compensation high value. (For the record, I'm in the group who assigns it zero value.)

[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.