[jonknee]

... And they got it right. The employee confirmed what was in the job posting and what people had issues with (so many different roles, ridiculous hours, low pay, etc).

It's not that hard:

Want a programmer? Hire one.

Want a web developer? Hire one.

Want a system administrator? Hire one. Hire two if you have any type of 24/7 on call requirement (it's not remotely reasonable to expect one individual to be on call 24/7 365).

Then unless you want to get sued, set reasonable expectations of hours (2x full time is not reasonable).

[wvenable]

I disagree. In a small company, everyone takes on multiple roles -- so why can't a single person be a programmer, web developer, system administrator? I've done that job many times.

The only issue is if the workload is more than one person can handle. In this case, the work sounds like it's only slightly more than a one-person job and it's unfortunate he's not paid accordingly.

[swang]

Generally you are required to take on multiple roles at a small company because there is no other choice. There are no funds to hire the proper people to do it. It's either do it or go bust.

Penny Arcade is not a small company in that sense. They definitely _could_ hire the right 4 people to work there, but instead they want to just pay 1 person to do that job.

While I am sure you were competent enough to do 3 jobs, you are probably not as good at all 3 as someone who focuses primarily on one of those roles. But you forget this is for 4 jobs, and they want 1 person to do all that within their regular bounds of a job where they expect you to be on call 24/7. Oh and they want to pay you below market rates to do all 4 of them. I think that is what every is angry about.

[wvenable]

Lets just remove pay from the equation; because everyone should be paid appropriately for their work.

There seems to be a disconnect here between the amount of income/profit of a company and the size of the company. It doesn't sound like there is enough work for 4 people full time. There might not even be enough work 2 people full time all the time.

And while you might be right that I'm probably not as good as someone focusing on a single job that's irrelevant. I was competent enough to get the job done.

[jonknee]

> I disagree. In a small company, everyone takes on multiple roles -- so why can't a single person be a programmer, web developer, system administrator? I've done that job many times.

Good lucky finding someone who is good at all those things, doesn't mind working 80s hours a week while being on call 24/7x365 AND doesn't mind a below average salary. You'd be lucky to find any one of those qualities.

The job posting said they are a team of 15-20 people which is more than large enough to be run better than a sweat shop.

For the sake of the 15-20 people lucky enough to have PA as an employer, I hope it's just "IT" that they take a shit on (not terribly uncommon as it's usually seen as an expense instead of an asset).

[Avshalom]

Penny Arcade is not a small company, it just plays one on TV.

[mkr-hn]

The company is small. It's a handful of people in a small office. Influence is not closely tied to size with a business like PA.

[itsameta4]

Penny Arcade is not a small company - at least it shouldn't be. That's what people are saying.

[InclinedPlane]

This is ridiculous. Has no one on HN worked at a small company before? Sometimes there's only enough budget and only enough work for one tech guy. You don't need to hire a DBA if there's only 40 hours of DBA work a year to do. Same thing for networking. But if there's more than 8 hours of DBA or networking work a year then it's probably a good idea to hire someone who has a reasonable amount of familiarity with it and isn't silo'd into dev work so hard they would struggle with shifting gears.

I don't get how people are translating how he worked around 80 hours a week for a very brief period into some sort of hours requirement or expectation for the job. That's not even remotely what he said.