Will Working For Porn Website Ruin an IT Career?

An Anonymous Coward asks: "I used to work for one of those big web services firms, but it went bankrupt, and now i've been looking everywhere for a semi decent PHP programming job. I recently got an offer from a local porn site to do all of the programming for their site, including creating a whole automated publishing system for them in PHP. I also got an offer to manage the NT Servers at a medical office. Now, if I work for a porn site, will I ever be able to work for a traditional website again? Will this be a black mark on my resume? Has anyone here ever worked in the adult area of the internet? As mainstream, regular sites keep cutting staff, will more and more of us have to work for the seedier side of the internet?"

Comments

a moral decision

[cornflux]

You're obviously sensitive to what other people will think and how it will affect your career. But, maybe, the best idea is to consider it on a moral basis, for yourself... take everything else out of the equation for a moment.

Take the "Mom test." (Would you be ok with telling your mom what you do? Where you work?)

Re:a moral decision

[SirSlud]

The Mom test is about values that may (of course, or may not) have changed. I should hope the millions of gays out there didn't use the "Mom Test" as the acid test in determining whether or not to be gay.

And since he's considering the job, I'm pretty sure he's weighed against his own values too. Ironically, I hope more 'normal' people get swept up into the porn industry .. there's no doubt its a seedy industry, but the fact that it might 'tarnish' a resume is a pretty good example of why the current attitude will keep it that way. :) We'll never get rid of porn (just ask many well adjusted, mature friends of mine who sate the exhibitionist in themselves by being amatuers), so why not accept that, and try to make it a cleaner, safer, and more socially acceptable industry for all involved?

Sadly enough, most of the people who wouldn't hire you because you worked for a porn site have probably subscribed to one at one time or another. I'm quite good at getting people to feel comfortable about talking about sensitive subjects, and I've met very few males that havn't resorted to 'creative meaterial' to help their right hand when they're between parteners (not literally of course ;) Women are taught that porn is bad for women (and it is, these days, in many many ways), but in keeping it an underground, men-dominated industry and the demand only male oriented, we'll never encounter the neccessity to make it a proper and equal industry. In fact, I've met a number of females who wanted porn, but simply could not find suitable material for all the male oriented noise out there .. the local woman-oriented sexuality store (toys/materials/etc) owes me some referral money, but it's sad that guys are raised to be more accepting of pornography as an acceptable inspiration to sexual release.

On a side note, Suicide Girls (the website he mentions) looks very cool, tho. Catering to specific cultures and communities is another thing the pornography industry could do to work away from it's sleeze-factor cash-grab image. We all have different tastes, and mainstream pornography does very little to aknowledge the different tastes and interests of the population.

Brilliant.

[Snowfox]

A better question would be -- "Is this a good way to get a link to my porn site broadcast to a million lonely guys with fat wallets?"

If this had been a front page story, methinks Anonymous Coward might be retiring by now.

I can think of cases where it would be a PLUS

[renehollan]

Lesse... porn... high-res pictures... streaming video...

translates to BANDWIDTH to me. There's a reason a lot of hosting services won't carry porn, and not necessarily the obvious one.

I'd think that future employer that deals with high-bandwidth, load-balancing applications, would want someone with technical experience in that area.

Then again, I wouldn't put PORN in large print on my resume -- stress the tech.

How much did this article cost?

[duffbeer703]

I would like to advertise my business on Slashdot. I realize that the banner ad business is in freefall, but I would like to look into article-based advertising solutions.

What sorts of rate plans are available? How much does a personal endorsement by CmdrTaco cost?

Short Answer: Not Unequivocally

[Spud Zeppelin]

Personally, I've always been of the opinion that from a technology perspective, the porn websites have been out in front of the rest of the industry (mostly out of necessity). So, I would consider it comparable to, if not possibly better than, other industry experience when evaluating a prospect. Plus, how often as a manager to you get the opportunity to look at porn as part of your job? *grin*

But, I'm not everybody. I tend to hire people (and I've hired four in the past year) based on qualifications, and qualifications alone (although being able to communicate clearly does count as a qualification, so to some extent personality is a factor). Other people and/or organizations might have a problem with it; I would expect that a fair number of the companies, managers, and clients I've done work for over the past several years would, in fact. So, evaluate it like you would evaluate any other position. After all, the flip side is that by some people (hippies, for example), working for a DoD vendor like General Dynamics or Raytheon might be considered a black mark as well. Bottom line is, YMMV. The better question to ask yourself is what kinds of companies you'd like to work for in the future; if your answer consists mainly of the buttoned-down, straight and narrow, you probably should pass, but if it's more of the freewheeling, fast and loose sort, you may want to give the site a whirl.

You think working for one could be a problem.....

[haplo21112]

...try having the fact that you were once the owner of one on your resume...
Actually I cover it up well, siting the things I did for the company, and the fact that we had a name that didn't sound like a porn company from the name...thats what I would stress in this situation do they have a "doing business as" name that would be more acceptable on a resume? No one says yuu have to provide URL's when you move on, and in fact in my case because the company failed I CAN'T....although once when one of the other partners went to an interview he gave his prespective employeer the URL...the results were funny...

Very funny. But...

[fm6]

Everyone finds this topic a source of laughs. Well..

Does anybody recall that opinionated cam-girl Malice, of beautydestroyed.com (currently offline)? She lost her dotcom job when her employers discovered her web site and she refused their demand to shut it down. I suspect they were less bothered by her erotic pictures and stories (pretty sporadic and low key in any case) than her anti-religion and nuke-the-world rants.

Illegal firing, you say? Probably. Problem is, lawsuits are expensive, time-consuming, and not, on average, profitable.

Bottom line. There's a lot of social prejudice out there. And most kinds of prejudice are perfectly legal. For that matter, even victims of illegal discrimination rarely have much recourse. I can't offer hard numbers, but there are surely a lot of people out there that will simply ignore a resume that mentions porn.