Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ChuckMcM | Hacker News Reader

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This is a confusing post.

I understand that pain of seeing someone in an abusive relationship, like a talented programmer working at a game studio on a crappy legacy codebase because it was once touched by some personal hero of theirs. Or the killer VLSI chip designer writing shell scripts any system administrator could write because its "working at Google." But the author here isn't in the place.

He is arguing that this job offer is a setup for entering into an abusive relationship with the folks behind Penny Arcade.

So all of that I understand and I pretty much agree with it, people will ask you to work for peanuts and spin it in such a way that they try to make you feel good about it.

But where it gets confusing for me is the whole 'I'm a unicorn and I know these guys personally' rant. What that reads like is "Gee I'm perfect for this job, know these guys, and would could totally do it but they won't compensate me 'fairly' to do it." The angst of wanting something but not willing to pay the price of getting it.

I don't know what Chris is trying to say there.

Perhaps for some people it is the same reason they take 'production assistant' jobs for minimum wage in Hollywood, so they can 'make contact with' the folks in the industry they want to be a part of. What I do know is that monetary compensation is only part of the value for some people, I know I've been in jobs that the fact they paid me was just icing on the cake, they were that fun to do [1]. Clearly the job posting is looking for someone for whom part of their compensation is that they are part of the 'Penny Arcade' family. I don't see the issue there that Chris does, hence the confusion.

[1] Ok not completely, I do need to eat and live somewhere, but sometimes felt I was being paid more than I needed to be paid to stay, just because it was so interesting/fun.

I didn't get that reading at all--it seemed very much a straightforward "folks, don't be starstruck: this job is a set-up."

A story:

I was the technical cofounder (effectively) for a coworking space once upon a time. I did everything from build websites, handle mailing lists, run cable, deploy and design enterprise-class networking infrastructure, take out the garbage, and power-route through a blocked sewer drain.

It was a great job, and a good way of keeping myself in beer money while decompressing from my previous gig.

Except, at the end of the day, I wasn't a cofounder. I had no contractual stake in the company. I had no health insurance. I didn't always get payed on time. To replace me, they suddenly needed: an AV person, a networking person, a Rails developer, and somebody that could hawk their space to other developers (they were biz bros through and through, and the only developers we had at the space were basically due to my networking on their behalf).

I don't regret the time I spent there, and I still help put out fires from time to time, but it was an easy trap to fall into, and could've ended really badly for all parties involved.

In these little businesses, especially when you start taking on the technical risk, you need a stake in the company. Otherwise, you're just some schlub that was recruited to do the work.

And when the web site is updated a little late, or a power outage kills a switch because the owners cheaped out on your spec (and they will, because they think in the small), or some other damn thing, it'll be you swinging in the breeze.

And they'll shitcan you, and find the next person foolish or desperate enough to go in for it.

Perhaps surprisingly I think we agree.

Your anecdote, and the original article, have the same form. Allow me to abstract it a bit and tell me if I screw it up.

We have in one hand a "job" which has some set of properties associated with it; Hours needed to do it, responsibilities, tools, and environment in which to do it. And we have this independent variable, compensation.

Now lets take your anecdote first and change the conditions in a wild way in order to reason about it. Let's say that nothing in your anecdote changes except that instead of 'beer money' it was "$100,000 a week".

That is an extraordinary amount of money per week for someone to make would you agree? If without a "stake in the company" would you have looked back fondly on your time there? Along the lines of "it was a crazy work schedule with people who were clueless but man the money was sweet." ?

What I'm trying to demonstrate is that there is a "value" received when working somewhere. It is more complex than just "cash" it has elements of ownership, cash, people, tools, location, and mission.

I've hired consultants that their bottom line was cash per week. They had a goal of some amount of cash by some point in time and they could be sorting pennies by minting date all day long and be fine with it if it met their cash flow goal.

I've known people continue to work on stuff after the company ceased to exist because it was something they were really committed to getting done.

I have come to conclude that the value someone gets from doing a particular job is a deeply personal thing and unique and made up from a variety of factors some of which I can control and some of which I cannot. When people are reasonably self aware about what it is they value they can make good choices about what compensation they would need to work somewhere. And those values can change over time.

So back to your anecdote, when you started the job it met all your compensation needs (beer money, decompressing) after a while it didn't (no equity, no health insurance, poor predictability of pay), perhaps because once you had "decompressed" you were once again thinking about the future and the relative value of things like health insurance rose in your list. I knew a guy who fell in love with the girl of his dreams and she was constrained to living in Livermore, a 2 hr commute to the southern part of the Bay Area. You could not pay him enough to stay in his job, he changed to a job in Livermore. The values changed over time.

So let's get to where we disagree, the characterization of the Penny Arcade job as a "set up".

For me, the term 'set up' implies fraud. And yet the terms of the job are very clearly spelled out in the job listing. Given that level of clarity I have no trouble believing that they would be as forthcoming in person as well (but could be wrong there). You and I can read it, "If you want equity you need not apply" or as Chris read it "PA isn't interested in sharing any wealth with you." and in both cases forewarned is forearmed. But they already said they wouldn't and presumably people who value equity will, in fact, not apply (or at least ask if that is a possibility prior to applying)

So end of the day. I don't agree Penny Arcade is being misleading or 'setting someone up' to be exploited. While I can understand that someone whose value equation isn't met by what they are offering would consider themselves "exploited" if they were forced into that sort of labor contract. Except nobody is forcing anyone here.

The problem is that a lot of the folks that might apply for that job are going to have their value calculations screwed up by "I got to work with the Penny Arcade guys!".

And in the long run, that probably wouldn't matter as much as getting paid properly--especially once the glamor wears off.

The point the author makes is that they are doing well enough that they could actually be paying better than market rates, and could have put up a job posting that would've avoided all this.

I agree with your summary, but again the problem is that it is very, very easy to trick people into doing things not in their self interest--and if not trick outright, to allow them to convince themselves something is a better deal than it is.

And we can all claim "Hey, they knew the terms when they signed up", but that doesn't excuse their being taken advantage of by people who don't have to do so.

People are dumb and don't always do smart things, and only sometimes does experience give them the perspective to admit that they were dumb--it's not unreasonable for the rest of us to try and warn them.

One startup I worked at for about 2 months was very similar. I needed a job at the time and took what I could get.

The wage was fine, the hours were bulky but understandable. Little did I know that the founder wanted/expected probably double that. The nail in the coffin was when he lectured me on how the human body only really needs 4 hours of sleep a night and after 6 months we can re-evaluate my working schedule. Hah!

That for a mediocre wage, no benefits, and zero equity? The last 2 weeks he paid me the salary to find another job, I did zero work for him during that time.

> I don't regret the time I spent there, and I still help put out fires from time to time

What the...? Why would you do that?

Flippantly, because I'm dumber than a sack of rocks.

Honestly, because I consider what they do to be important to my community, and because if they succeed they'll help everyone else; it's a form of community service for me.

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