61–70 of 126 posts
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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.
Awful conditions for you .
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_Arcade_Expo that's funny, i didn't see "non-profit" or "charity" anywhere on this page. you guys should consider updating it. i am angry because there is an ongoing, systematic monetary devaluation (and hence social devaluation, dot com billionaires notwithstanding) of all technical roles by people in our own industry . it pisses me right the fuck off and the games companies are at…
How is the Enforcer system related in any way to technical roles? Since you didn't seem to get it, the Enforcers are people that 'volunteer' for parts of the event in exchange for free tickets to attend the rest.
a for-profit enterprise should not be asking for volunteers for anything. that is a moral position i take.
second, the loss of dignity and monetary devaluation was referring to his day job. the one that he ostensibly makes a living from.
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This is a free country you can downvote me as much as you want but you cannot distort facts by quoting half paragraphs. And facts are that that if he was paid enough he would have stayed longer at Penny Arcade in order to later fulfill his dream of teaching. > Doing so comfortably requires that before then, I need to put away a lot of money to support myself when I’m getting paid a truly ludicrous wage. It is true th…
He is leaving because: -I want to accelerate my plans for teaching -I have goals that won't be fulfilled by working there -I need to put away a lot of money to support myself when I’m getting paid a truly ludicrous wage ||-> indicating he is getting paid well at PA( compared to the teching job ) and was able to amass money for the low paying job when he will be teaching. Reading is tech.
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... 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/…
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.
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).
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He is leaving because: -I want to accelerate my plans for teaching -I have goals that won't be fulfilled by working there -I need to put away a lot of money to support myself when I’m getting paid a truly ludicrous wage ||-> indicating he is getting paid well at PA( compared to the teching job ) and was able to amass money for the low paying job when he will be teaching. Reading is tech.
I read it as he's not getting paid well enough to put money away so he's changing to a better paying job which let's him build up his savings and then move to teaching. Which would imply that PA isn't paying him very well.
Realistically PA needs at least two hires here. One ops guy responsible for IT/Sysadmin, and one dev. Both can crossover as much as needed. They can share the on-call duties. Either decide to reel-in the expectations on this position or hire two people to do it right.
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I'm going to trust that he understands his desires, ambitions, and capabilities better than anyone reading that thread, the discussion around the Internet, or the job posting. This is not some naive kid fresh out of college being abused by a powerful corporation.
Yes, actually it is somebody being abused by a corporation. His attempt at sugar coating it is a decent one, but is not convincing. The clincher is how he ends his post: "There is this notion that work/life balance is some kind of sacred goal. I’m sorry, but it’s ludicrous. That’s like saying everyone would be fulfilled by getting married and having 2.5 kids. If you want to work 40 hours and never think about your jo…
In pure capitalistic terms what these companies are doing is profiting from an imbalance in the labor pool. But what they are also doing is creating a vicious cycle where a whole swath of smart people avoid the industry altogether, and experienced employees eventually get burned out and leave. This in effect embeds all sorts of idiotic behaviors in the game industry.
As a pure business move, if someone agrees to be paid far less than they're worth, that's an easy way to make more money. But it is unethical and ultimatley counterproductive in my book.
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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.
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,…
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.
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 tak…
"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.