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.