Here's what interviewing will be like: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2005/04/06
Here's what interviewing is actually like: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/new-hire-part-1
On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
161–170 of 187 posts
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 transp…
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…
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.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#163Link to original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6799033
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. I personally applied for - and received - state disability payments when I was diagnosed with cancer. I was barely an adult and had no financial means to speak of.
You immediately say 'no' but then admit that it was a state disability payment. So was it Federal SSI or some state program? From what I can tell here are the only states with those programs: California, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Hawaii.
The poster above me added the stuff about state programs in an edit, which he pointed out.
All you're saying is that state programs work, which is a right/libertarian position and probably not what you're going for.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess I was right, it wasn't hyperbole, you actually believe it. At any rate: http://www.ssa.gov/disability/ I'm sure the reply will be that that isn't enough, so at least then we'll just be back to it being righteous hyperbole.
Can you explain how you believe the process of applying for disability because of a broken leg would go? And if possible, provide some kind of evidence?
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
This kind of job is unlikely to be conducive to deliberate practice. If your intention is to improve your understanding of algorithms, for example, practice implementing and analyzing algorithms at just above your current level. Here you have little control over your time, which is spread thin. You're on call all the time, so that your focus is fractionated. You may even become dependent on the short-term satisfactio…
I'm as guilty a generalist as any, yet I'm happy straddling several disciplines. There's a broader argument for and against "specialization" i.e. studying other disciplines yields perspective etc. At any rate, I'll share the ways I'm solving it presently: * reduce the number of disciplines required to be effective * confront human resource management problems * build funnels to save time or improve process I suppose…
These days I tend to believe more in the power of environments and systems than the in power of individuals. Sometimes you may have good interaction separately with individual I and individual J, but unfavorable interaction with the set {I, J}. This is to say that I find that systems of any complexity and organizations of any size are impenetrable. I have limited power to change them--as much power as I do to change the weather.
This has the consequence that I prefer migration from inhospitable climates to hunkering down in the antarctic with no snow boots. Quit early and often for me means that you are better off finding and working within a good system than sinking your time and energy attempting to change a bad system. If you have no power to affect "fundamental leadership" problems in an organization, my suggestion is to find another organization--if you can afford it.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is described is something toward the top end of basic competence. The only reason someone would think this is crazy is if they have been hanging around bad engineers and / or administrators. That said, most engineers / administrators are pretty mediocre, especially these days now that so many more people are doing it. So. I mean, if "managing office firewalls" is on someone's list of things that are impressive,…
Differing expectations doesn't mean one set of expectations is wrong. If someone claims they can do database administration, and then I ask them a basic question like what indexes would you need to create for an example query, and they have no idea, they are not capable of database administration. They mean "I can type apt-get install mysql-server" when they say they can admin databases.
Well, but any competent software developer who works with databases can (and often does) build database structures, indexing, query optimization, etc. A specialized DBA can do it better and much more, but the database needs for a small company often can easily be met by the 'side-skills' of someone who is primarily a programmer.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm proud seeing my law in action :*) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6564689
Ha! I think your law is basically a logical corollary of my law + SIWOTI syndrome.
Choo choo! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6805317
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> He makes an explicit case for both (1) and (2). He doesn't try and merely imply (2). You read wrong. tvladek did not say Buecheler implied anything, only that being correct about one thing does not imply being correct about another. And if you advertised for a slave you would presumably be dealing with the owner of said slave, so if you were offering a reasonable price, then no that would not be an exploitative off…
Voluntarily entering into slavery was indeed popular. Individuals would sell themselves into slavery to pay a debt, for example. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voluntary_slavery
Yes, that's true, point to you! I'm not sure I would call it 'popular' though. Maybe 'somewhat common among people with no other possible options outside of death or prison (death).'
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's also a single-point of failure. I have to wonder what the turnover for these unicorns is. Maybe that's why they're trolling LinkedIn with this stuff.
They post all of their job posts on LinkedIn, and then they tweet them to a hundred thousand people, and have them retweeted to millions. LinkedIn is just a place for them to put the text they want to show people.
Well, who cares about LI, that part was a afterthought, but his desire to show people these particular words is the trolling