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Comments: 467 +- Ask Slashdot: Is Working For the Gambling Industry a Black Mark? on Monday October 12, @05:19PM
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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.'
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Submission: Is working for the gambling industry a black mark? by Anonymous Coward
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Not a black mark (Score:5, Funny)
More of a roll of the dice.
Re:Not a black mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Not a black mark (Score:4, Insightful)
I would think this depends a lot on what exactly you are doing. If you're writing a DB back-end for a Caribbean island company who specializes in selling what is likely to be illegal gambling services to americans, that might be a black eye for your resume.
Then again, if you're writing bleeding edge gambling software for video poker machines, that could be a huge positive mark on the resume.
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Re:Not a black mark (Score:5, Funny)
I'm simultaneously very curious and very, very scared.
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Re:Not a black mark (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Not a black mark (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Not a black mark (Score:5, Informative)
Having worked in this exact field, let me assure you - After implementing jurisdictional payout tables on a video lottery terminal (poker, slots, pretty much includes anything you'd find in a modern casino), you'll never want to play the slots again.
At least the old mechanical ones merely favored the house, but "honestly" spun the wheels. Modern machines decide how little you've won and then pick a configuration to match the take.
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Personally (Score:5, Funny)
Uh, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:5, Informative)
Why would it be a black mark?
If anything, it shows that you can work in a highly regulated field that moves a LOT of money around at a LOT of locations with HIGH security.
As long as none of your references are named Guido, you should be fine.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Working on an online gambling site run out of the Cayman Islands is not.
I would higher someone from the first industry to work on something as important as electronic voting systems. I wouldn't hire someone from the second to mow my lawn.
Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:5, Informative)
The guys I know who have worked on Vegas slot machines are right up there with avionics programmers for writing reliably bulletproof code. And they're higher security. If one of them was ever looking for work I'd hire them in a second. If I could afford them.
Offshore Poker programmer? Meh. Not really a plus or a minus compared to most other web programmers. What else you got?
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
IGT is one of the worlds largest suppliers of slot machines, and trust me, they hire just as many mediocre programmers as any other industry. The thing is that because releases of slot machines and other gaming devices throughout the US is so heavily regulated that they have better quality control and testing procedures than most other industries. The on top of that the gaming commissions from each state that allow gaming follow up with their own testing procedures and protocols. Even with all of that slots
Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:4, Funny)
Coming soon!
A young blonde actress with big tits and a heavy lisp goes to Hollywood to make it big in film. Refusing to let corrupt producers have their way with her, her acting career is over before it began.
Faced with tough decisions, a choice between stripping or prostitution, she surprises everyone by falling into the seedy underworld of systems administration for the gambling industry... life would be simpler if she chose instead to work the streets...
Uma Thurman in ...
MAXIMUM ENTROPY!
... who said you coldn't fsck /dev/random.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:5, Funny)
As long as none of your references are named Guido, you should be fine.
I guess Python isn't used much in the gambling industry.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:4, Interesting)
You have to be a Mormon to work for them.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
Tax benefits AND the right to discriminate openly?
Hell, if I start a business, it's going to be a religion.
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Re:Isn't that a highly regulated industry? (Score:4, Insightful)
I read that as "Moron"
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Suppose you could go work for a porn site (Score:5, Informative)
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/11/26/1758210 [slashdot.org]
A job is a job (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if this, working for the gambling industry, is your concern, you don't really need a job.
Re:A job is a job (Score:5, Insightful)
Try doing some research on economics before you speak next time.
The rich tend to lose the most during recessions, due to most of their wealth being in stocks. That's why it has been shown many times throughout history that the wealth gap shrinks after recessions because stocks lose so much value and many people sell what they had instead of holding it because they are worried about losing ALL of the money in stocks.
Secondly, as businesses lose money, they lay people off (or go bankrupt) which means less people have jobs and so on. When people stop having money coming in, they can't pay bills. When they can't pay bills (wait for it!) the person they owe money to loses money . That's why we're in this mess - people bought more than they could afford and then started defaulting on bills, due to the defaults companies laid people off, defaults increased - add to that people then being afraid to spend money due to fear of losing their job, and it spiraled to where we are now (though we are slowly recovering).
All you did in your post was show a complete ignorance of Economics.
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Re:A job is a job (Score:4, Insightful)
Rich does not necessarily equal "powerful". Yes, powerful politicians stay in power at the expense of everyone else, but that's not how it is with business owners.
I know this will come as a shock to a collectivist who thinks that business owners are the enemy, but business owners create jobs. If Joe doesn't start his pizza company, there's no delivery boys, no waitresses, no cooks, no cashiers. Fact of life is that rich people are the ones creating jobs for most of the population.
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Re:A job is a job (Score:4, Interesting)
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").
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Why would it be? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Big NO (Score:5, Informative)
My first job after college was in the gaming industry. It has NOT been a black mark on my record, in fact, quite the opposite, it led to my next three jobs and was a factor in the fourth and fifth because another programmer from the same company was also contracting there at the time.
What it did do, though, was set the start of a pattern for me that I've been unable to escape: 1 to 2 year positions at small companies contracting. I suspect that if you're going to work for Bally Midway or some other such big slot machine company, that wouldn't be a problem- but table gaming software even 10 years after the .com I first worked for is still very much in it's infancy, we're not about to replace dealers with robots and just about tech you put into the pit is going to be somewhat hackable or vulnerable to everything from card counting to spilled alcoholic drinks they insist on comping the players with to keep them playing, so it's kind of a tough business to get into. I'm glad I escaped.
Having said that- in this economy a RCG can't pick and choose- you MUST take the first thing that comes along- so go ahead and go for it. Vegas may be the suicide capitol of the US, but it isn't the worst place you could end up living.
Allow me to educate you about Vegas (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, which is in Clark county. It is, however, legal eight of the state's more rural counties.
Yes and No (Score:4, Insightful)
not for me (Score:5, Informative)
I don't think so (Score:4, Interesting)
Not for me... (Score:5, Informative)
Oh, and if you're getting into a highly regulated area such as slots or table games, you'll find that you'll have no choice but to gain skills in careful attention to detail in areas like version control, configuration management, hardware control, and security. That sort of rigour in those important things will serve you well no matter what your next role.
great experience (Score:5, Funny)
The way banks and other financial services companies operate these days, working in gambling would be a GREAT introduction to the world of credit default swaps and mortgage-backed securities. Next stop: WALL STREET!
Anything but telemarketing is kind-of ok :-) (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see experience with a gambling site to be an instant disqualifier. Maybe if that's the only kind of site you were involved in it would be, but if it's one of various projects, it shouldn't be big deal.
The only time a resume gets thrown into the trashcan right away is if I see "telemarketing" in any fashion that doesn't involve stopping them or hunting them down. It's something you try to hide, not something to put on your resume. I want someone with some brains.
Also, as an aside: try to avoid going into detail about any activities that are trivial compared to the job you're applying for. Some people seem to think that if they have a 10 page resume padded with irrelevant history, they'll look better. Nope, doesn't work.
Don't Worry too much about it (Score:5, Informative)
The experience I got was very worthwhile. I got to travel to interesting locations to setup the servers. Places like Curacao in the Caribbean, Malta, Ireland, the netherlands (we did work for the government casinos there, in fact), etc. I started out in a very jr position, but moved up extremely quickly because I was capable and they had a hard time finding good people who were willing to work for them. This gave me Sr-level quality within 2 years. I've since moved on, but I would do it again in a second. It's not been a black mark on me at all and people are usually curious about it. Because of complex legal and national regulations, the accountants also were in a similar position. They had a lot of trouble getting quality accountants, so they had to get more Jr. ones who moved up fast.
The executives had far more trouble after leaving, though they also ran the company rather poorly. In fact I'd say that the worst part was having to work with/for some people that I would consider less than high caliber. Because of this, I became the go-to guy to fix poor decisions made from incompetence at the CTO and director level.
Black mark? Pffft. (Score:4, Funny)
I haven't worked in the gambling industry myself, but based on what I've read about its extreme computing requirements, I'd be very interested in seeing a resume from someone who had worked in it. The same goes for parts of the online porn industry for much the same reason. Both are very technically challenging environments and are often leaders in innovation. Their achievements aren't lauded as much as they might be if the subject matter wasn't so unseemly in the minds of many, but at the end of the day, data is data.
I'd recommend going for it. Even at its worst, it's nowhere near as disreputable as, let's say, being on the development team for MS Access.
Oh hell yeah! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not entirely sure how you managed to arrive at this conclusion.
People gambling aren't always idiots that think "Ima go win a million bucks". Often times they are people that do it for recreation or fun knowing full well that they're loosing money. For example, you can gamble at a slot machine for many hours on only $20-$50. Some people have fun watching the wheels spin and lights flash. For them, it's worth the money. Other people enjoy the social aspect of gambling such as in blackjack where the players aren't competing against each other. Or in craps, where the players are all competing against... the shooter... or the house.. unless they roll a 7 and it's the third tuesday of the month.... anyway, there's a lot of people cheering for someone so someone is having fun.
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Re:porn? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:porn? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:porn? (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Re:porn? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:porn? (Score:5, Interesting)
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 [3dglassesonline.com] and come to a rave or something.
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Re:porn? (Score:4, Insightful)
How is it so hard to understand that playing a game for stakes can be simple, recreational fun? Going into an evening of gambling with only the money you are prepared to lose is no different than going to a fair or holiday holding only the money you are prepared to spend on rides, gifts, foods, and frivolous purchases.
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Re:porn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Sadly, they are similiar in that people cheat either way.
Whether it's loaded dice or insider data, someone is always happy to rip someone else off.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
In Nevada. If you were to move elsewhere, though, you might be surprised.
(Might be. I personally don't know... I just think that perspectives might be a bit skewed in Nevada due to Vegas).
Re:No. Its not a black mark. Its a bad industry (Score:5, Insightful)
You've just described about 90% of all jobs.
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