The problem I have with this job posting, is that it screams hypocrisy. That is this is something that Penny Arcade would draw a comic about if it were about game programmers. In fact, I remember seeing some PA comics about crappy wage/job situations before.
On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
171–180 of 187 posts
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wrote a huge long reply to this comment, but by the time I got to the end I realized you were just making cynical, shitty comments because you're upset with them for whatever reason. 'attention to detail' - If I hire someone I want them to have a good attention to detail and not just do whatever works. It's the little things that make the difference between a good server admin and a great one. 'motivated self-start…
On-call 24/7 is normal? I thought good IT departments had rotating on-call schedules.
It really depends on the definition they are using of on call. In many small companies/IT teams everyone is "on call" 24/7, but it just means you may get called on 24/7, but there's no availability requirements. Being actually on call should mean compensation, defined hours, and expected response times.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 postin…
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.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
From the Wikipedia link: "Although test scores put them in the 12th percentile, they estimated themselves to be in the 62nd."
http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-k... A glance at the graph above should explain everything. Though many assume the slope of the "perception graph" is monotonically negative, the slope is actually positive.
Not really here or there, but my assumption from what I'd read on the effect was "not monotonically positive", not "monotonically negative" (which would be more surprising).
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I have literally never seen a single "competent software developer" who understands indexing or query optimization at all. All I see is spray and pray style indexing (create indexes semi-randomly until things seem fast enough).
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#176Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't tell if this is sarcasm or not. Either way, I would think that having Penny Arcade on a resume would be an interesting story but other than that I can't imagine their infrastructure being anything that would help a career. Penny Arcade is probably only slightly above a real estate office for complexity.
Not sarcasm at all.
I'd love to have it explained if it wasn't a sarcasm.
I'm not trying to challenge you, but as an employee I'd always thought that a tech company that supports the infrastructure would look better on resume than one that depends on it. I'd like to hear why.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sarcasm at all.
I'd love to have it explained if it wasn't a sarcasm. I'm not trying to challenge you, but as an employee I'd always thought that a tech company that supports the infrastructure would look better on resume than one that depends on it. I'd like to hear why.
I can't answer for jblow, but in that position I would hire someone with a history of choosing to work on something they cared about rather than someone with more technical experience in a second.
People who are 'switched on'^ are astonishingly more valuable than people who come to the office and manage to passably succeed at the daily task list they're assigned.
^ <-- This is an arbitrary term I use for people who come to work and care about what they do, engage with other coworkers and generally involve themselves in doing the work because they care about the work, rather than having a 'home life' of things they care about, and not caring about work at all, other than to get money. ...it's easy to tell in person when you work with someone, but much harder from an interview or resume. A history of working at places you cared about is a good indicator in my experience, limited as it is.
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#178Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#179Par for the course for IT/Sysadmin type jobs. "We expect you to build the hospital while running the emergency room and operating room." They are just being up front about it. There are a few areas where they glossed over it. I will translate: "You need to have a crazy-person level of attention to detail" - We will judge you based on anything you've overlooked, rather than what you've done. "A motivated self-starter…
I wrote a huge long reply to this comment, but by the time I got to the end I realized you were just making cynical, shitty comments because you're upset with them for whatever reason. 'attention to detail' - If I hire someone I want them to have a good attention to detail and not just do whatever works. It's the little things that make the difference between a good server admin and a great one. 'motivated self-start…
> "They run conventions. Obviously they want their IT guy around to help set everything up. The wifi at PAX Prime 2012 was unusable the majority of the time. How do you mitigate that?"
By hiring enough qualified people to handle setting it up properly instead of relying on a wing and a prayer and an under-appreciated, underpaid worker doing too many things at once?
Re: On Penny Arcade, Exploitation, and the Myth of the Do-Everything Rock Star
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps it's rather as the author believes in an objective reality, where there is one true valuation of a thing, and he's not so much trying to "force his valuation onto all prospective applicants" as trying to "communicate the real valuation to all prospective applications". I strongly disagree with this, though. I'm young, but I'm confident people can have different experiences at the same position -- I have frien…
I took a pay cut of $20k/yr to work at my current job. I'm glad I did. I made a shitload of money before, and even if I'm sometimes discontent with my current position due to the occasional fit of stress, it's much healthier of an environment for me to be in. Actually, looking at the job post for PA: - 'Code in multiple front-end and back-end languages' - well, I can do that. In fact, I do a lot of backend work at my…
>> "Do general office IT" - Don't need to do much of this, because we're almost entirely a Mac shop.
Oh, lord. No pesky routers, phones, cabling, or other infrastructure-level things, then? Machines never upgraded? Hardware never fails?