Trisha’s Quote for the Day: How Penny Arcade’s Robert Khoo is more evil than mastermind

[You] know what’s … rare? A guy who can write excellent code in several disparate languages, manage multiple different server installs, administrate databases, and configure office firewalls. All while being motivated to do “tedious” work and manage his own projects while not caring about his work/life balance and being solely focused on the job.

That’s not a unicorn, it’s something more like a deity, and it doesn’t actually exist. There is no one out there who can realistically meet that job description. What they will get instead is a jack of all trades who has mastered very few or none of them, and who will have to scramble like crazy just to meet the base requirements of the job, let alone excel at them. You know why? Because as they readily admit, it’s a job that should require four people. You get what you pay for, guys.

and

You don’t want that job. There is no upside to taking it. You’ll be worked like a dog and paid like shit while you’re doing it, while Khoo, Krahulik, and Holkins continue cashing their trade show checks.

Robert Khoo is a brilliant businessman, and such businessmen excel by finding the sucker and exploiting him or her.

Don’t be that sucker.

—Web designer and writer Christopher Buecheler lays it out to the potential applicants for a job working at Penny Arcade.

When my husband first expressed his outrage over the job posting, I didn’t think too much of it; however, reading this, I understand his anger a little better. At the same time, however, I doubt that any of the people who currently have full-time jobs (like their first employee Mike Fehlauer or most recent new hire Jamie Dillon) there are being terribly exploited.

So, my advice to any and all of the applicants out there when if they’re called in to a final interview where they start talking salary is to ask what the top person is taking home, and then maybe increase that by 50% or so. Because for a web-based company, if your electronic infrastructure breaks down, you definitely don’t want to be underpaying the guy or gal you’ve hired to maintain it.

As a side note, wouldn’t it be ironic if stories from their current web and Internet infrastructure team started appearing in The Trenches?

Trisha’s Quote of the Day: When Top Gear goes too far

Richard [Hammond] has his tongue so far down the back of Jeremy [Clarkson’s] trousers he could forge a career as the back end of a pantomime horse. His attempt to foster some Clarkson-like maverick status with his “edgy” humour is truly tragic. He reminds you of the squirt at school as he hangs round Clarkson the bully, as if to say, “I’m with him”. Meanwhile, James May stands at the back holding their coats as they beat up the boy with the stutter.

–Steve Coogan (1.50.9 on a hot track), taking the piss out of the Lads of Top Gear UK for their recent comments about a Mexican-made supercar.

Trisha’s Link of the Day: iPhone + 24-hours without sleep = awesome comics story

As a writer, I love the concept and the results which come from the annual 24-Hour Comics Day events; this year’s batch was no exception.

For the non-comics geeks reading this, I’ll explain briefly: Back in 1990, comics author, theorist, and now-luminary Scott McCloud dared his fellow comics artist friend Steve Bissette to draw a 24-page story in 24 hours. The aim of the exercise was for Bissette to become a faster artist, because as anyone who wants to break into the comics business as an artist knows, nobody likes to work with someone who can’t meet a deadline. And just because McCloud is the kind of man who puts his drawing tools where his mouth is, he decided to create a story under the same constraints.

The results can be viewed here, and over the last two decades, many other comics creators have taken up the gauntlet of the challenge. With the advent of the Internet, creators have also begun blogging about their process and it has now truly become a worldwide event which drawn in new participants every year and spawned a book or two.

When it comes to innovation in comics creation, though, I think that this year San Antonio, Texas artist Lea Hernandez took home the prize in coolest and most tech-savvy comic, with an entry that I think she’s calling “Jackwagon,” which she created entirely on her iPhone, courtesy of an application called Brushes.

To read it in its entirety, click here (and note that it’s not entirely safe for work).

Trisha’s Link of the Day: Who Stole My Twilight?

In preparing for our Twilight-themed trivia contest—you have only 8 more hours to turn in your submission!—I read up as much as I could about the saga; however, I think I’ve just discovered the very last article I will ever read about it.

Enter one Tom Barrack, the head of a $16 billion multi-national investment firm whose hands are deep into pockets the Station casinos you see off the strip in Las Vegas and whose firm may even be still in the running to buy the troubled Miramax studio. Apparently Barrack was bored on his yacht off the Turkish shores one day and ended up reading the first three novels when a business meeting was unexpectedly canceled.

He was so inspired by the tale that he fired off a lengthy internal memo to all his employees, which was leaked to the Wall Street Journal and posted for all to see: Continue reading “Trisha’s Link of the Day: Who Stole My Twilight?”