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.
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.
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?
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 don't expect that level of commitment to employees from my employers, but it does exist.
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.
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.
Labor hoarding is well established empirically.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The fact remain that if you do that, you're doing yourself a major disservice as a professional.
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.
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.
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?
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?
That might be true in general but in this case it is not.
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.
Your boss will not feel bad for you if you have a personal emergency which requires your absence and costs the company money (parent dying, spouse or children having medical problems, etc.).
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.
Seriously, this is why Penny Arcade can get away with shit like that - because there are people out there who blindly believe that "work is family" and eat up the whole "it's not for everyone, others don't want to do it because they're not hardcore enough, but you're hardcore enough spiel". Statistically speaking, any argument that rests on the premise that you are better than 99% of the population is bullshit.
If you really subscribe to the whole "work is family" thing, go ahead. Then in 6, 12, 18 or 36 months, when you inevitably get fucked over, you'll complain about how you wish you had been warned ahead.
Sure, I love making work pleasant and grabbing beers with my boss and co-workers as much as the next guy- but at the end of the day, work is work, and anyone who tries to convince you otherwise has ulterior motives.