Marco Arment, on a terrible job offer from Penny Arcade:

This is everything wrong with tech-startup culture, unreasonable expectations, and workaholism in one job posting, by a company with a massive audience that probably contains a very high percentage of young software developers.

It’s absolutely shameful. The notion that if you want to have a cool job you must be ready to give up your personal life, your health and your firstborn son is something generally accepted as fact in the tech industry. That somehow the sacrifice is worth it in the end. Well, it’s not. Ever. I don’t care if you work for Apple, Google, or whatever.

Self-respect is the most basic requisite to do great work in any environment. If you don’t value your effort and protect your personal life, nobody else will do it for you. I like Marco’s take on this:

Yes, there are other employers this bad (and worse) in the industry, but you don’t have to work for them. There are a lot of better options, especially if you satisfy even half of Penny Arcade’s requirements — and a healthy work-life balance is a basic requirement, like your paycheck, that you shouldn’t tolerate losing for any employer.

Exactly.