Slashdot Mirror
Is Working For the Gambling Industry a Black Mark?
An anonymous reader writes 'I'm a recent university graduate and I have been offered a software developer position in a company that supplies software to the gambling and betting industry. At first I was very excited about the opportunity, however, a few of my friends have told me that working for the gambling industry will put a permanent black mark on my career as a software developer. I don't know that many people in the industry with experience in hiring. Google has not helped, and everybody else I ask doesn't know. So I'm asking Slashdot. In your experience is this true? When you hire developers, is the fact that they worked for a gambling company a big turn off? Also, I'm currently in the UK, but would like the freedom of working in US or somewhere else later on in life. So experience from anywhere in the world is welcome.'
Admittedly I've never worked with anyone from that industry, but that's more due to location (I don't live near Vegas). Depending on what you're doing, some skills will be useful and some won't. I don't see any reason why not to hire someone because they worked in gambling. For that matter I know a lot of programmers who play poker.
I might stay away from internet gambling sites if you want to work in the US though- the US has arrested executives of them before. But it's not that gambling is a black mark, its that running an online gambling site is illegal, and they might decide to arrest you for helping to do so. The company that hired you is unlikely to care about that though.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well, anecdotal evidence but I do live in Vegas and I worked in a non gaming software company here with people who previously worked for gaming companies and moved on to other jobs without any problems. One of them works for a major military contractor right now, after working for IGT (who makes most of Vegas slot machines) for years. So I don't think it's a problem. I guess it depends on the details. If your job offer is from one of the offshore poker sites or other sites illegal in the USA, it might be a different story.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
In the gambling industry you're going to be around some people who rub elbows with some real cuthroat businessmen. You'll see things and talk with people who've been in low places.
Those people will be your managers.
Do it. Especially if you're young. You'll be learning so much from such a safe place.
I'd hire you just to hear your stories.
Showgirls.
If they're not Real Estate Agents/Mortgage Brokers/Daytime Call Girls, they're vampires. You never EVER see them during the day, they pancake on the make-up with a trowel for good reason, and most of them are either taken by large burly boyfriends, or not interested in anything with a Y chromosome.
Oh, to be a young college grad working in Vegas!
Been there, done that. Fought in the dating wars in Vegas from '01-'06. And the only way you ever got lucky was if you had money (to buy girls with), or were a "Vegas Boy", meaning you had no body fat, perfect abs, perfect tan, perfect teeth, perfect hair, wore polo shirts and khaki shorts, and generally sported more bling than most girls do. Oh, and driving a hot car. Just remember, Vegas is one of the few places left in the US where you don't have to have a high school degree to make 40K a year. Lotsa dim, good-looking young boys and girls come to Vegas to party, work crap jobs and make lots of money, which they then promptly spend on partying, and repeat.
And prostitution is legal!
Now this is a valid point. But prostitution is only legal in certain sections of the county, and not in Clark County. So you'd have to drive an hour northwest to Pahrump, where the brothels are at. This is what the smart guys do. Prostitution is NOT legal in Vegas itself, and Vegas Metro's Vice division has lots of fun arresting stupid young dicks trying to pick some tail up when they could have driven an hour away and had lots of tail for the same amount of cash LEGALLY. And then there's the stories of all the scams and robberies perpetrated... Oh yes, loads of fun. Couldn't leave there fast enough.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Why would it be a black mark?
It would around here, in a lot of places. One of the developers I used to work with interviewed at a company that had a banner that read "God Supervises This Office" in the lobby.
Outside southern red states including, ironically, one or two with a healthy gaming industry, it would probably be an advantage. It means you can work in high security areas around a lot of money, don't have any felonies in your background and can work in an environment that's not particularly tolerant of mistakes.
Personally, if a right wing, dogmatic, Bible-thumping company owner didn't want to hire me I'd consider that a badge of honor.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If the company you work for is completely legal it shouldn't cause a big mark. If it's government operated it's as safe as it gets. And probably scores higher than if you have had a work for the IRS (or what it's locally called)
But if you work for a telemarketing company (Who doesn't love to hate telemarketers) or in the "adult entertainment" industry (the sexual harassment factor) you may have a harder time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
You have to be a Mormon to work for them.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I just don't buy it, I don't see how it could be fun without the suspension of disbelief. The only way I could see it being fun is dreaming about winning big and fooling yourself into thinking it might happen. Dichotomy of the mind, part of you knows better and part of you wants to suspend disbelief. I can buy the social aspect of it though, no doubt. Congratulating winners can give you part of the rush they feel. Either way, I don't think its because gamblers are any stupider than I am. I just think it might be a common problem in our species.
-The world would be a better place if everyone had a hoverboard
At least in all of Europe. You already know it, when you find out, that all of them are on some small island with specific tax rules. They are very close to the whole fraud industry.
Here in Germany, they were caught more than once, fixing all bets. Even on huge events like soccer & co.
I think of it as the legal arm of the criminals. And if you are in contact with them, soon you end up doing other things where you have to bend your moral values to the breaking point.
I bet if you dig, you can put half of them straight to jail.
I know this, because I worked with them. And I would keep as far away from them, as you'd do with the mafia.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Craps is the only game I've ever played, at Star City in Sydney. I went into the casino flat broke one night with my housemates and scored two non-exchangeable $10 betting vouchers (one for signing up for some members' card thing I've never used, the other a prize from the free scratchie that came with it). After 20 or 30 minutes being taught how to play craps I quit with $30 cash, which kept me in food and nicotine until I got paid two days later. Then I got to watch one of my housemates drop almost $100 in a minute on consecutive dumbass $5 and $10 yo bets. No surprise, we found out soon after that he was a compulsive gambler and had lied about his employment, and shortly after that he skipped the state, owing us around $5000.
I love bright colours and flashy lights as much as the next person whose life ambition is to work their way through Erowid in alphabetical order but dammit, there are so many better places to see them. Buy yourself some holospex and come to a rave or something.
I don't think there is any black mark - actually when it comes to writing secure code -- this industry is well ahead of other industries. I probably hired 70 developers at my last company and I wouldn't hesitate to hire someone from the gambling industry.
Actually it's entrepreneurs that create jobs.
When they don't grow their business, business owners don't create jobs. At most they keep jobs since that keeps their business running (and often they destroy jobs when it's possible to replace the people with machines).
The actual state of "owning a business" does nothing to improve society or increase employment. Growing a business (preferably from the ground-up) is what makes a difference.
One needs to distinguish between those whose wealth is the product of their own efforts (typical example: Bill Gates) and those who inherited their wealth and made no effort to expand it (typical example: Paris Hilton).
That said even entrepreneurs do not deserve our gratitude - they did it for themselves, just like we would do in their shoes. Some of them even deserve our contempt, such as those that got rich during the dot.com boom by creating companies with no business plan, selling them (to the suckers, which included plenty of pension funds and old ladies) for millions/billions after which said companies dully went bankrupt, often without having made a day of profit during their existence.
I postulate that of the "contempt for wealth" that you sometimes observe here in /. comes from the observation that far too many individuals have gotten their wealth "as a gift" (inherited) or by deceit (no-future dot.com companies, CEOs getting fat bonuses for achieving targets of "not loosing too much money").
You'd think so. As an undergrad, I played poker against a statistics post-doc, a mathematics student, a law student, and a sports science student. Most games were won by either myself or the sports science student...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News