It's almost as if people with no knowledge of the situation didn't know what they were talking about and speculated angrily instead.
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 24/7 365).
Then unless you want to get sued, set reasonable expectations of hours (2x full time is not reasonable).
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.
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, you are probably not as good at all 3 as someone who focuses primarily on one of those roles. But you forget this is for 4 jobs, and they want 1 person to do all that within their regular bounds of a job where they expect you to be on call 24/7. Oh and they want to pay you below market rates to do all 4 of them. I think that is what every is angry about.
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.
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).
I don't get how people are translating how he worked around 80 hours a week for a very brief period into some sort of hours requirement or expectation for the job. That's not even remotely what he said.
Overall, it reinforced that they are interested in someone who is willing to take a below market rate, is a generalist in many arenas, and is willing to work 60-80 hours a week, including 24/7 on call.
Honestly, breaking the job into 2 positions (no, they would not be reading r/aww all day, and if they were, you hired the wrong people) would make this SO much more enticing. It would eliminate the 24/7 on call (you could do every other week), you'd have someone to bounce ideas off, and if you hired the right 2 people, their expertise in the 4 'jobs' would likely be much higher than whoever is going to get the gig currently.
The fact that he's ok with that is the problem!
Saying that he somehow has a problem because that's what he wants in life is pretty judgmental. Do I want to work that way? No. Do you? No. Does it mean he has a "problem" because that's what he wants? No.
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 job after 5pm, great! Find something that does that for you. If you want to work 80 or more hours at something you truly enjoy, in fact you don’t want to stop working ever because you love it so much, shouldn’t that be okay too? Shouldn’t we be so lucky as to have a job that we are so invested in?"
He has set up a false dichotomy and left out a whole lot of other possible options out of his little attempt at rationalizing selling oneself to a rich person for less than his efforts are worth. Dismissing an abusive employment environment with a statement about people "choosing" to work there while ignoring all the context around such "choices" is just runny icing on that crap cake.
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.
This is especially an issue with "big name" companies that have "franchises." Their core market is unlikely to not purchase the next release in the franchise, so quality is less of an issue.
And now we get a forum post from the poor sucker who confirms that the reality of this job is as brutal and exploitative as promised. But that's totally cool because he never felt taken advantage of because of the smooth atmosphere , the cool tech and the friendly colleagues. Looks like the Penny Arcade guys took a page from the game industries playbook.
Next, you'll be telling me that I'm not really getting a 10% finders fee from the $75M fortune of Oil Minister Louis N'Kornongo of Nigeria for helping him transfer the money to the USA. As if.