Will Working For Porn Website Ruin an IT Career? 84
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?"
Alternative Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
Lets look at resume-type questions: Would you be going in as an employee or contractor? What is the official name of the company (suicidegirls.com or "Digital Entertainment Network" for instance)? What work will you specifically perform?
In all seriousness, if you're a contractor working for another company, you may be able to get away with only naming you contract company and some general terms of your employment (eg "manage 50,000 user accounts using PHP and MySQL" rather than "manage 50,000 adult memberships").
I don't think most employers would necessarily look at it as a black mark, but people are people, especially when it comes to those management types, and sometimes obvious "flags" on your resume like that might have a impact.
Brilliant. (Score:5, Interesting)
If this had been a front page story, methinks Anonymous Coward might be retiring by now.
how about not telling them (Score:2, Interesting)
Link in the question? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:a moral decision (Score:3, Interesting)
Moreso, this is almost certainly a question which will come up in future interviews. If I were hiring someone who had worked for a porn site, I would want to know why s/he thought that was morally acceptable. I'd certainly give more leeway to someone who had a somewhat reasonable justification (even if I didn't personally agree with that justification), rather than someone who ignored morality and did it "just for the money".
If you personally do not believe porn should be accessed by minors, what is your company doing to stop minors from accessing it? Does your company treat its porn actors properly? What is the net effect of your company on society? Positive? Negative? Neutral/Chaotic? If you believe the net effect is negative, I suggest you look for a different job.
You think working for one could be a problem..... (Score:4, Interesting)
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...
Re:a moral decision (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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
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.
Re:a moral decision (Score:2, Interesting)
The very fact that an individual worked at a porn site proves the individual believes their action is morally acceptable.
My questions wasn't if the individual believes their action is morally acceptable, it was why.
I am under no obligation to provide any justification of my beliefs/morals what so ever and if I was I believe several pieces of civil rights legislation would prove otherwise.
And likewise I am under no obligation to employ you as long as my reasons are not related to disability, religion, national origin, race, color, or sex.
If I were a possible employer of this person, I would most probably look quite highly on the skills they posses. The individual is obviously used to working in a "for profit" business environment. In short, the kind of person I want working for me.
Skills are an important factor, for sure, but I want to hire someone who is going to to be reliable and consistent. I want someone who is likely to follow his/her terms of employment, regardless of whether or not s/he is likely to get caught, and that means that 1) the person is morally opposed to breaking contractual agreements and 2) the person is not likely to break his/her morality whenever it is convenient or profitable. These questions go to 2).
And just how does one determine the "net effect" on society??????
It obviously isn't a mathematical formula, it is a guess, but it is a guess that many people make all the time. When the FSF decides whether to release a library under the GPL or the LGPL, it is making an educated guess about which will have a more positive "net effect" on society. Either will have both positive and negative effects, but in each case the FSF has made an educated guess about that.
The only difference between the Taliban and the puritanical rightwing moralists in the United States is the day of the week they pray on.
I'm not sure the relevance of that comment. Are you accusing me of being a puritanical rightwing moralist? Moralist perhaps, if you meant "One who follows a system of moral principle" (dictionary.com), but according to your comment at the top, everyone always follows a system of moral principle, so everyone would be a moralist. As for right-wing, I voted for Nader in the last election (and wanted Gore to win). As for what day of the week I pray on, I don't. And as for your comparison, I'd say you missed a few differences (such as harboring suspected terrorists).
Resumes are funny things. (Score:2, Interesting)
First things, first, as mentioned elsewhere. Could you in good mind work for a company like that. Could you do so and not have any problems at all? Not mind telling your mom? If you can't and your back isn't against the wall (ie: need job now) then forget it. Sleeping at night is a nice ability to have.
If you've got no moral objections then there is the resume issue. Will it be "suicidegirls inc?" that pays your check? Or will it be "naked sluts inc?" or "Horizon Entertainment Inc?" Clearly you can see the difference.
Will you be a contractor or a full regular employee?
Will you be in the code or will you have to have a lot of hands on experience, so to speak, with the content? I've built e-commerce sites where I had no idea what they were selling. It may not seem like much but content doesn't have to be part of the job if you're not a graphics designer.
Is this something that pays the bills until a new php job shows up or are you thinking about making this part of your long term plan? Huge difference on the resume. If this is an 18month gig then it can melt off in to nothing on the resume after a couple years. If you're there for 5 years then it's harder to hide. Employers will want to know what you've done for the last 5 years.
I would think that you could get away with it and not have it harm your career too much or at all. It depends on how long you work there.
It depends partially on what you go after next, you may not be able to point future employers at your site to show them your work, which isn't terribly uncommon in web work. I've lost jobs because I did a lot of PHP on an internal site and didn't have something I could show them. Is your resume full of experience and skills and education already? The degree from MIT and the 5 years at MS and the other jobs kind of outweigh a typical 18month job if they are there, if "Worked at beasitality.com for last 18 months" is half of your CV then you might want to think twice about it.
Do you see yourself working at a place like that, not having any problems with it and then working at a place that would have problems with it and not minding that? Let me explain, I try to be as professional as the next guy and I don't really care or judge my employer too much, I'd have a big problem if they judged me a lot though. Suppose I like porno and my employer is ultra-non-porno for some reason; I can respect their opinions and point of view, after all we're not in the porno business but if they judged me because I liked it then I'd probably have a hard time there even if it had nothing to do with my work. I liken it to being an election volunteer with the Greens and then because you know how to do that and it's your career, getting a job as an election volunteer with the reform party and not minding it. Most of us couldn't do it and would mind the differences in policy.
Re:how about not telling them (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, and your point is?
You're telling me that I'm doing something wrong because I didn't list my first job (Circle-K clerk) or my second job (Dishwasher) on my resume when I applied for my job as a Sysadmin? How about my High-School job when I worked for a landscaping company mowing lawns? Or when I delivered newspapers in Jr. High? How about when I was 10, and I shoveled my neighbors driveway for 50 cents?
You're telling me that it's wrong to omit these?
There are things that your prospective employer doesn't need to know about you. Including EVERY job you've ever had is just a great way to tell them that you don't know when to shut up.
Re:how about not telling them (Score:1, Interesting)
Whoa, cut the paranoia, fella. I'm not suggesting you're doing something "wrong". I'm saying if you're looking for a job when you're 30 and you've spent the last 10 years working at a porn site, you're not going to have much luck claiming you spent your entire 20's "unemployed".
Re:Alternative Ideas (Score:3, Interesting)
Mention the high trafic of the site, and how you kept security locked down (most ppl don't have a moral problem stealing porn, and since there's no physical item being delivered, it's hard to trace, so it's quite common.)
Re:Resumes are funny things. (Score:1, Interesting)
if the parent site hires you on, its normally not a problem, you did consulting work on a high bandwith server cluster and its all good. (btw, some pr0n sites have some UBER high end servers, im currently working on a site build up on a cluster of 6 dual athlonMP 1800 systems for dynamic content creation)