Devs rarely hung out with the production staff. I almost never saw the talent. The production was done in warehouses several miles from where the back office work was done. However, the owners occasionally threw parties where the talent would show up. If you wanted to fuck a porn star you met at these parties, you could, if you were mostly discreet about it. Devs would also go to tech conferences (flying first class no less), but we never shared the nature of our business with people we met (at least I never did).
Compensation was comparable/above average, perks were good (free membership at high-end gyms, fully paid health insurance), but bonuses were meager and there were essentially no equity possibilities. However, after 1.5 years working in the area of the country where I was, I had enough saved to put a down payment on a nice condo. I didn't, and I used that money to move to the Bay Area, where I had to start that process all over. And the Bay Area is definitely not a place where a developer can buy a condo after saving for ~2 years.
Yes, porn stars do get tested for STDs regularly which I believe is generally twice a month. What about the period in between tests? You don't know who they just fucked yesterday or earlier that day.
You must realize for every porn star who has had a long career there are 50 who lasted a minute. There are reasons for that... Yes, many just can't hack it but drug use and STDs are high on the list.
Porn stars are nasty... Period.
I shot on set here and there but the money was unreliable. I did shoot once or twice a week at the agency doing portfolio shoots of all the girls. That was a lot of fun. I couldn't believe I was getting paid to do it.
I had to eventually move into full time programming at various companies (pay wasn't good enough at agency) and they were completely separate from content production, they just bought it from someone else usually.
The vast majority of programmers in the adult industry have no exposure to the production side. An agency or production company is where you need to be at. The really small production companies that have production and programming at the same office would get you exposure to it though.
Everyone is completely open about porn and there's no hiding it. It's quite refreshing not having to worry about being PC about anything. There's porn on everyone's computer at work and nobody bats an eye. Surprisingly, there are about the same number of women in a porn tech office as there is in a typical Silicon Valley startup.
The technology is really archaic though. FTP, PHP, Apache, really? It drove me nuts that I wasn't doing anything innovative and I eventually moved back to Silicon Valley.
Would definitely recommend it if you ever get the opportunity though.
I wonder if you don't mind discolsing the perks? Just curious, not trolling.
Your goal is to keep people jacked into their streams for as long as possible. To do that you basically take advantage of every human weakness ever documented. There are better things to do with your time and skills imho.