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I won't try too hard to convince you otherwise, because you certainly seem set in your opinions. But I think it's a shame that such an overwhelmingly negative tone is thrown around so much. There are companies (small and otherwise) made up of good people that do not operate on this horribly cold impersonal calculus. There are bosses that will genuinely go out of their way to help you through a family crisis. There are co-workers and organizations that feel like family. I'm sorry you think it doesn't exist and that you've never had a relationship with a boss that was anything other than evil, but don't be so quick to tell everyone that that's all there is.

My opinions are formed by witnessing friends getting fired/being pressured to quit because their company had run out of money, or because they had to take care of an ill relative and the company felt that their performance wasn't as good as what it used to be, or because of some BS office politics. Those companies include small trendy startups and big fortune 500 companies alike.

At the end of the day, no matter how wonderful everything is, if the company is having a hard time and they need to fire you, they'll do it. Your boss is not going to sell his car or house to pay your salary.

If the company is doing well and offers a nice work environment, it can be fantastic, as you described- in which case, enjoy the ride while it lasts. But don't delude yourself in thinking that the wind won't turn if bad times hit. Believing anything else is setting yourself up for major letdown when it happens.

Anecdotal n=1 response, but I worked for a civil engineering firm where the owner of the company did mortgage his house to keep as many people as possible on staff during the housing market crash.

I don't expect that level of commitment to employees from my employers, but it does exist.

I broke my hip. The team rallied around and handled it until I was back. Both my parents died. The team rallied around and handled it until I was back. One of the team got close to burnout - the company provided him with unsolicited paid time off provided he took it now, so he could chill and get back to being productive.

My good experiences don't invalidate your bad experiences - but that sentence applies vice versa too.

A bunch of bad data points proves that bad exists, but it doesn't prove that bad is prevalent. That sentence also applies vice versa.

That's awesome- I'm genuinely happy for you. Finding a fulfilling job is hard.

Based on your experience in the field, how many software companies out there do you think are like yours? 20%? 10%? 1%? 0.1%? Less?

I have a suspicion that for larger companies, it's more a question of which teams are like that than which companies are, since the line manager's attitude has a huge influence on the results (for example, one bent the HR system substantially for me to enable me to house hunt effectively - a personal act rather than an organisational one).

As for what percentage? I'm not really sure. Shadowcat is how it is because it was baked into the culture from day one because that's how things should be done, so I'm not sure I can extrapolate usefully from it.

I had to take care of an ill relative, and my startup was immensely supportive throughout. I've seen similar things happen at a variety of companies.

You're creating a false dichotomy here. I agree that places that push the "we're just like a family" line often do so because some boss means "I want to act like an abusive dad". And I agree that no place is perfect.

But there's plenty of room for compassion and human feeling in the workplace. Companies are human institutions, and executives ignore that at their peril.

The plural of anecdote is not data. Ever heard of 'your mileage may vary'? We can throw opinions around all night, but it's clear that either people are looking through rosy and 'cynic' glasses at the same companies... or there truly are different workplaces than you've come to know.

> There are bosses that will genuinely go out of their way to help you through a family crisis. There are co-workers and organizations that feel like family.

Sure, I know such people. The difference that these people won't write a psychopathic job ad, and they certainly won't expect me to work >40hours a week for below market salary.

If you believe work is family, do you think your family would be OK with you working 60 hours a week for below market salaries? Of course not! Your family doesn't want to screw you over while selling you shitty psychobabble. They'll actually pay you what you're worth and make sure you work reasonable hours.

100% agree. I wasn't saying anything in support of the PA job posting. And seeing as it's just about 5pm here, I'm signing off from work for the day :)

Your company will not hesitate one second to fire you if the output you produce is deemed less valuable than the input you need to function.

Labor hoarding is well established empirically.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/wp/2005/2005-040.pdf

That's an interesting paper, but GOD why are people so motivated toward using absurdly dense jargon in their papers? What does one accomplish by couching their ideas in convoluted words?

For example:

  Labor hoarding is a widely believed empirical behavior of
  firms and a prominent explanation for procyclical labor 
  productivity. Conventional wisdom attributes labor 
  hoarding to labor adjustment costs. This paper argues that 
  the conventional wisdom is inadequate for understanding 
  labor hoarding because it ignores the role of inventories. 
  Since idle labor can be used to produce inventories, why 
  do firms hoard labor when inventory is an option?

The whole paper reads like that. Repurposed words dumped obliquely in the middle of sentances, and then abandonded.

Why not:

  Labor hoarding is defined as the retention of idle workers
  during periods of low economic activity or slow business,
  further reinforcing the impact of larger social trends.
  The common perception is that retaining valuable workers
  will prove less costly than rounds of lay offs, followed 
  by subsequent phases of recruiting and training new labor.
  Observations have proven that businesses will choose to 
  idle their workers during these periods, instead of
  producing finished manufactured goods and retaining an 
  expanded inventory of surplus product. This paper 
  questions the strategy of hoarding idle labor, and offers
  improved strategies as potential alternatives to the 
  tendency of hoarding.

What is it about academia, where people feel obligated to contort their writing into an intimidating architecture of opaque jargon and garish vocabulary? Is it some form of group think? Is it a defense mechanism designed to ward off criticism? Why must new ideas be presented in such stark, frustrating words?

Theirs is half the length and more precise than yours. Maybe they had a word count limit? That, and they're writing for other people in the field - jargon is USEFUL as a time and space saver.

You're really going to come on a technical site and complain about other people's jargon and opaque writing?

It's especially interesting when compared to the "but my code is self-documenting!" that a lot of technical people advocate.

How stupidly self-centered are you? "All academic papers should be written in a way that I can understand no matter whether they would be comprehensible to the intended audience!" What a fucking egomaniac.

For someone trained in the field, the original version is more concise and easier to understand. They key "jargon" terms are very common in economics, in particular "procyclical", "labor adjustment costs", "labor hoarding" and "inventories".

So really it's just a matter of using a common technical language that is less ambiguous than ordinary language.

Your rewrite adds a lot that isn't in the original article. E.g. the last sentence doesn't reflect their meaning. They are looking for explanations for why firms hoard, not trying to make suggestions to firms.

Penny Arcade really isn't the same as a "normal company" though. Most of them there are minor celebrities just by proxy of the number of viewers that read the comics and watch the videos. I think it's safe to say there are a lot of people that can get a sense for what it would be really like to work there. It's more like a reality TV show (which they have actually done) than an enterprise business.

That said, there's no way I would apply for that position, and I hope nobody else does, so that they finally realize that they need to hire more than one person for all that stuff. I'm just saying the Penny Arcade company really is different than nearly any other technical gig, and that when they said "work is family", it's not "a nonsensical feel good catchphrase". It's them trying to weed out as many people as possible so they aren't flooded with 100,000 resumes at once.

And if your philosophy is truly "work is family" then this kind of job posting is exactly the thing you need to weed out people that aren't passionate about the things PA is doing. A point that seems to go over many peoples' heads in this thread (though not some of the others).

Yes, in that sense a developer wishing to work for PA is no different than the young actor who wants to work with his Hollywood idols and is willing to do anything for even the smallest chance at making it big. I get that if you're really into video gaming and love PA, you may be willing to work like crazy for a low salary just to be with your idols and be a part of it.

The fact remain that if you do that, you're doing yourself a major disservice as a professional.

My comment is not an endorsement, it's merely an explanation of the mindset of the person who wrote the ad.

Your outlook on the world makes me sad. There's such a defensive attitude in this community — for some good reasons, I can understand — but it paints the world in black and white.

How do you know that's how it is? For most companies, "work is family" may be hyperbole, but how do you know it's that way at PA? I don't profess to know, but I don't find it unreasonable that there are companies out there that are different than the ones that I'm accustomed to. Just like I accept that there are people out there that have lives very different than how I've lived mine.

The irony is, this is a community based around the startup lifestyle. Often that means extra hours for a promise of equity (which, in my experience, isn't worth the paper it's printed on) and lower salaries. But for some reason, there's a huge outcry at this posting because it says you have to wear many hats and they don't have a ton of money to spend. Sound familiar? At least they're upfront about it.

Honestly, I'd rather spend time working for someone (or on something) that I believed in and make less money than the usual soul crushing 9 to 5 and make a boatload. I'm in that situation now, actually, and it's not great. I moved the the bay area earlier in the year to chase the almighty dollar, and my overall happiness level has gone down. Who'd have thought?

You shouldn't sadden yourself with my outlook on the world; I'm doing quite fine, thank you :)

Don't forget that when you sign a work contract in California, it says explicitly that your employer can get rid of you at any time (and they are certainly happy to exercise that right, especially in startups). This is legally true for any company here, no matter how different they are from the ones I've experienced.

Also don't forget that we live in a city where entire teams frequently get cut because they're deemed unnecessary by the new CEO of the day. This is the same city where when people (albeit not in the tech industry) go on strike because they don't get certain benefits promised to them in the past, they become almost universally hated by everyone.

The US is not exactly a reference when it comes to siding with workers in those matters.

I'm not saying that I treat work as a dull, impersonal affair, far from that. As I've said in another comment, I've happily socialized and made life long friends and partaken in office outings and activities in my life as a tech employee.

But I prefer to not cloud my mind with ultimately useless romantic notions such as "your work is your family" (I already have a family, and it's filling its role quite well- don't need another one). When the bad times come, it makes dealing with things much easier. And when employers try to push this angle a bit too much, it's a sign to me that the workplace might not be too desirable to be at.

Totally. I get it. All I'm saying is that it's not out of the question that there are people out there that would be absolutely happy to treat their work just like family.

And that there's an organization/group out there that treats it just like that.

It's sort of like jaded lovers. Certainly there are people that poo-poo the notion of "soul mates" or "love at first sight." Fair enough. But it's always a little bit sad when that dampens the mood for people who are caught up within potential romance, no?

> Anyone who has been in the industry for more than 2 months knows that the "work is family" thing is a nonsensical feel good catchphrase thrown around by manipulative managers.

That might be true in general but in this case it is not.

Agree 100%.