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Comment by robotmlg | Hacker News Reader

I'm betting "Yes you’ll get all the usual benefits, but if you’re really going for perks, Google is your best bet! If you want to make an impact, then please apply." and "We’ll have a large variety of alcohol in the office as well as an assortment of video games for the perfect frat environment" are the two sentences from real job descriptions

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I think "If that scares you, don’t apply. We don’t want people who are scared by silly things like reality." sounds more real than advertising a large variety of alcohol.

My guess was the Google line and "Plan on working ~100+ hours a week during sprints. If that scares you, don’t apply." The 100 hours is a little extreme, but I've seen things similar to "If that scares you, don’t apply." in descriptions before.

Sad but true :

http://www.indeed.com/job/javascript-nodejs-socketio-ninja-9...

https://www.codeeval.com/company/EmailCherry/

Both from the same company? Wow.

I believe it's called hedging.

From the first link:

> Plan on working ~100+ hours a week during sprints

And the second:

> A lot of companies equate putting in long hours with productivity. We think thats nonsense.

wow.. so many gems in there

advanced JS (jquery doesn't count, cmon).

A big plus if you've scaled products to tens of millions of users

We'd love it if you've dealt with optimizing DB clusters, hadoop, relational DBs, Mongo, Node.js

~100+ hours a week during sprints

Unlimited vacation days

it's like someone had a brain fart of a job description during a drinking session and then went "fuck it, hey Bob watch this. <submit>"

And with less than 3 years experience!

Author here, nicely done. That's the two sources for the real quotes.

Does the idea of beer and video games in the office really bother anyone? Sounds great to me...

wouldn't you rather do that at home? or outside the office, at least? but since you're working 60 or more hours a week, I guess in the office is the only opportunity...

eh it's okay if you are 20 something and single. If your goal is to fill your office with 20 something single workers, it seems fairly effective..

You can have it both ways. I don't think older and attached people would be put off by that necessarily, you would just have to encourage them with other perks.

So I have worked in the young hip free beer in office environment full of 20 somethings.

I have worked in the Fortune 1000 company full of older "lifers"

I think it would be really hard to mix both together? Like just the offering of free beer and encouraging employees to stay after work and work till sundown.. that is going to build social circles among those people. How do you get the unwanted older guys with families to stick around? Pay them more than their worth to make up for it?

You give them windows to socialise during office hours like potlucks and other organised events. I've never worked somewhere where I am not the youngest person upon joining so I'm on the other side of this, but that seems to work.

If people don't want to associate with coworkers and just clock in and clock out I think they probably don't belong in their job.

No, not really. I enjoy doing those things in the office.

Cracking open a free beer and playing COD on a console somebody else paid for at 5:01 PM on a Friday sounds fantastic to me. Working with people you consider friends is awesome, and this sounds like a great way to facilitate that.

30-something with kid here...

I enjoy cracking open a beer and playing some foosball with my team members before going home. I don't get to go to meetups as much as I used to and it's a good chance to socialize.

Also, as a manager it helps me keep my pulse on things. People open up after a beer. Foosball has become a problem... I've gotten really good and sometimes it takes some coaxing to get people to play... "hey, if you don't play you can't get better"

I doubt it's just the beer, associating with your subordinates 'outside' work as a peer when nobody is being paid is good leadership and earns you trust and respect.

Yeah, I wasn't really saying it in a "alcohol loosens you up sort of way"... no one really gets too buzzed on one beer. More of a camaraderie sort of way.

Sounded great when I was in my early 20s. Now days, not so much.

I have my own hobbies and friends to do them with. I prefer to get my work done, then leave and go do my own stuff.

I don't necessarily mind beer and video games being available at work, but listing them on a job posting is a red flag that the company wants people with no social life, willing to work long hours for relatively low pay.

It's also a red flag that you may be working with people who consider beer and video games a perk...

Fair point, because I am all of those things. If people like me struggling to make a place for themselves in this world are a red flag... I'm not even remotely apologetic.

I didn't mean it as an insult, but I guess I phrased it poorly. Calling out non-work stuff like beer and video games in a job posting promotes monoculture.

Yes and no. I'm not hyper-competitive, so I don't really care what the office score is.

And the whole alcohol thing can lead to things happening that can't be unhappened.

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