>* 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.