Ask HN: Is the "adult space" a career-killer? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is the "adult space" a career-killer?

I'm a product guy. Successful, good at what i do, and looking for a change. Came across an opportunity which (at first blush, so to speak) matches what I'm looking for -- the team, the company stage, growth potential, etc. The catch is that it's a well-known gay "dating" site. And more in the "looking for mr. right now" sense of dating than "looking for mr. right".

Career killer?

Would a background like that hurt my chances of a successful exit if I ever started something on my own?

I probably wouldn't think twice about hiring someone who worked there (speaking as both startup junkie and a gay guy), but I've been through acquisitions and know those HR girls in Fortune 500 companies might think twice if they're doing a background check.

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2 things:

1) Eliminate the word career from your vocabulary. It's something invented by beaurocrats as a rationalization for being timid.

2) Ask your self "can I identify with this product?" Or, more importantly, are you OK with other people making the connection that you are about "Y"? Can you say: I am X and I built Y" with a resounding sense of pride. Would you feel comfortable being introduced on CNBC as Mr. "Y". If the answer is not "Yes!" with an exlamation point, then don't take the job.

What you should never do, however, is base your life decisions on your opinions on what an investment banker might think.

That's not only a bad way to live, but also a bad way to run a business. Be your own compass!

There's nothing wrong with the word career. Your career is basically the work you do over the course of your life.

As you work, you gain experience and skills that are more valuable. These skills are often specialized to some degree and support each other, tending to make you most valuable for certain kinds of work. As a result you will do a lot of that work. That's a career.

Whether you make a career out of starting tech companies or fixing pipe organs the word fits. In fact, you might start one career as a software developer and then decide to quit and run a nightclub instead. That'd be your career even if you technically had FU money and weren't doing it for anyone but yourself.

So, the question he is asking when he says "will a job in gay porn kill my career" is: will the skills and experience I have gained become worthless in other markets? Career is a flexible English word and takes on additional meaning easily. You can avoid it all you want, but that won't change the realities about how much his experience is worth to potential employers.

I believe that you are ultimately correct about the word 'career' in your well-written post, but the narrow way that it's constantly used in Corpspeak has generally ruined its meaning in that more broader sense.

When I encounter the word career it's almost always paired with 'climbing that career ladder', with the implied 'toe that line as a dedicated corporate soldier or your career is finished'.

It's a sad state of affairs that those with over-simplistic attitudes and an ultra-conservative agenda have seemingly hijacked such a fine word. What to do if your self-described 'career path' doesn't sit well with the pointy-hair's idea of a proper 'career'?

I'm feeling that the word is tainted among the more thoughtful and enlightened and it's better to just not use it at all, lest one risk coming across as a Philistinistic simpleton.

While I haven't worked on an adult site, I did work on a site that, by the end, I was embarrassed to be working on. It was borderline scammy and I didn't believe in it at all. I worked on it for about 6 months before finally leaving - mainly because when I was hired for the position, I was given the impression that there would be a whole slew of different projects.

The bottom line is that I was so embarrassed that I worked on this app that I don't list it in my online portfolio. On my CV, I just list a vague description of the duties I performed at that company without specific reference to the project.

If someone asks me about specifics, I will tell them about it - in fact, one interview I had asked me about the worst project I worked on and I talked about that one. So I don't hide it if asked.

I do wish that I had worked on something that I could be proud of for those six months though.

I guess that is the question you need to ask yourself. Is working on this something you can be proud of?

Don't worry what other people will think. Ask yourself how you will feel about it. If you have no problems with it, then go ahead.

I disagree with this. You want to go after roads that give you greater option value. Adult industry is not a career killer per se, but provides you less option value in terms of industry experience (for example, Linkedin provided the insight to go into FB for Matt Cohler).

No, you shouldn't worry about it. When I first moved to San Francisco I had an interview at Kink.com. I was expecting it to be a shady hole in the wall, but I was completely blown away at how technically professional the entire operation was. While I didn't get the job, it was one of my favorite interview in my life because of how high-level the conversation was. I had a long, interesting conversation with one of the employees about the Tor network when I was being given the tour around their studios. This was before they relocated to the Armory.

Good porn sites have all the same technology problems that any other popular website does. There's not really anything you do on the tech side of a porn company that isn't directly applicable to any number of problems other companies face. If another company gives you a problem about working at a porn company, then you probably don't want to work there anyway.

And if anyone reading this ever sees me at a meetup or other event, I'll tell you a funny story about Kink's Wall of Pain. =)

"Good porn sites have all the same technology problems that any other popular website does"

I imagine many have far bigger technical challenges than most non-porn sites if you think about it. Huge bandwidth requirements, constant attempts to steal your product or otherwise compromise your systems and I'm guessing that porn sites see stolen or otherwise bogus credit cards far more often than any other business.

Porn used to drive tech on the web. That's no longer the case but top 1,000 porn sites have some pretty impressive technology, like any other top 1,000 site.

The envelope is now mostly being pushed by developments in search, social media and mining the web. The porn industry has moved on from pushing the tech envelope to being much more focussed on marketing and SEO.

But you should also remember that Kink.com is in a class by itself. I don't know much about other porn sites but I know a number of people that work at Kink. My impression is that they seem to have pretty high ethical standards (...most of the time) and generally more interesting employees than the average website, let alone the average porn website. Maybe it's got something to do with being rooted in the SF BDSM community.

That said, they have boring meetings and conflicts with their bosses and disputes over performance evaluations, just like any other workplace.

As for being a career-killer, I haven't heard of anyone feeling it was an albatross around their neck after they left. But they weren't applying to christiancoalition.com or foxnews.com in the first place.

The boring meetings and conflicts only came relatively recently. It used to be a really fun place to work, but some hires which brought in silly cover your ass politics and corporitification (funny word) really put a damper on things. I'm not saying this to be mean, just clarifying the facts from someone who was on the inside. I do love kink.com and hope the best for them.

I work for a company that owns a site that is considered fairly notorious by the media. Once when a camera crew was setting up to do some filming for an interview, and I overheard them commenting on how nice the office was. I'm 90% sure they were disappointed they found a modern, professional, well-equipped office and not a handful of Comic Book Guys in stained shirts laughing evilly in a basement somewhere.

No, I worked at Naughty America (they have both straight and gay porn sites) for 2 years and the only reaction I've gotten from potential clients/employers is "Haha wow that must have been interesting.", and then they want to know what it was like. The best reactions I've ever heard from my friends who worked at large tech companies like Sony Online Entertainment and Intuit have been things like "Oh cool." and "Neat." with no follow-up.

It seems to open many more doors than it closes, as long as you don't become a "career porn guy".

"As long as the site isn't true-blue porn, I wouldn't sweat it. In other words: if the site caters to people looking to hook-up, no big deal. If the site caters to people looking to pleasure themselves, this is perhaps a problem."

In my opinion this statement is pure stupidity. If you can code and you are the best candidate then you should get the job. I have done extensive work in adult w/ some of the largest adult companies around and I can promise you that the technical challenges of a site that does that type of massive traffic are greater than or on par with what you will encounter at your typical job.

As long as you don't make or appear in porn you should be fine.

Please use the reply link under the post your are replying to.

  As long as you don't make or appear 
  in porn you should be fine.

Most people that do porn use pseudonyms. This is actually less safe because he'd presumably be putting it on a resume.

Write on a future resume that you're under NDA about the exact site. Say that you worked on some social-networking site, and give a description of the traffic you got and your role for them. If you know your technical shit, very few companies will care and this lie will work.

Or you could ask them to make you sign such an NDA ... then it wouldn't be a lie :)

Why not just ask them for an NDA then it's not a lie.

This is nonsense. Nobody would realistically ask you to sign such an NDA and having such a thing appear on a resume would look far stranger and raise a lot more eyebrows than the fact you were working for a gay hookup site.

The only hardship you might experience from taking such a job is the ribbing you'd get from future potential employers, partners, investors and co-workers.

That is absolutely not true. My roommate was a .Net contractor for close to 6 years for a firm in San Francisco. He worked on dozens of projects for clients including small firms all the way up to international banks. His resume is replete with entries where he describes what he did but is not allowed to name the company due to the NDA's he was required to sign before working on certain projects.

I personally used to work with a fellow years ago who worked for a server hardware vendor in the north east that had large companies(financial, aerospace) and government and military clients. He told me several stories where he went to non-descript massive underground data centers to do work that to this day he is not allowed to identify. On his resume, he too could only say the type of work he did and could not identify the clients due to NDA.

We're talking about not listing your employer at all, rather than your employer's clients. Did your friend list the firm that was actually his employer on his resume? I assume he did. Not identifying clients of your employer is different from not identifying your employer at all. I've seen probably (by my last scientific count) about 19.307 trillion resumes and I've never seen one where the employer was just not identified at all. Even when it was the NSA. I can imagine that could happen in some sort of zany defense or national security edge case. But that's not what we're talking about here. If you put 'was employed by at major social networking site, can't tell you who it is' on your resume I think just about any sensible person would assume you're making shit up. And that looks a lot worse than 'worked on gay hookup site'. The advice to put something like that on your resume is just plain dumb. As is outright lying on your resume in general.

As long as you know your technical shit and don't lie about your ability, this strategy will work regardless of how illogical you personally feel it is.

Yes, it will 'work' about as well as putting 'I am an unprofessional clown, WIBBLEWIBBLEWIBBLE' in giant red letters on top of your resume. A silly fantasy doesn't become a 'strategy' by virtue of a dozen odd HN upvotes.

You ask a question that has no bearing on your potential job offer.

Gay dating is not porn, whether it's speeddating or not has little bearing on that. There are plenty of hetero dating sites that hook people up for casual sex, okcupid.com is one of those.

If gay dating is porn then hetero dating is porn as well, and I think we can all agree that okcupid.com is not a porn site.

Of course, okcupid.com also allows you to search for 'mr. or mrs. right', but that's besides the point, if the principle matters to you you have to ask yourself if you would work for okcupid or not.

If they are going out of their way to plaster pictures of naked guys and/or body parts all over their site then that's different, in that case it is a porn site.

But if all you're concerned about is the length of time people spend together than you have to wonder if you'd have a similar problem if the site was hetero sexual.

If the answer is 'yes' then don't do it, otherwise don't worry. In the end your reputation is yours and you have to be careful with it, if you put 'worked for gay porn site' in it that might not help, if you put 'worked for dating site' on it then there is no harm done.

There are a lot of people here defending working for porn sites. I'll play devil's advocate. (Or the opposite? Whatever.) In general, being associated with porn is a problem.

In hetero porn, tons of the models or performers or whatever are said to be involved because they were sexually abused when younger. Doing porn requires a certain numbness and if the performer doesn't have that when she starts, she will. It's just a very sad situation. A lot of people, including me, would never get involved with it, and consider money made there to be tainted.

(I know nothing about whether the same is true for gay porn.)

A hookup site isn't like that. Although there might be "numb" people participating, they aren't being exploited / selling themselves so there's just a different feel. But you never know where your life might take you. Sometimes very uptight people are gatekeepers to something you really want. You shouldn't let that possibility control your life, but on the other hand you shouldn't give up those unknown future opportunities for nothing. This job would at least have to pay more to make up for that.

In hetero porn, tons of the models or performers or whatever are said to be involved because they were sexually abused when younger. Doing porn requires a certain numbness and if the performer doesn't have that when she starts, she will. It's just a very sad situation.

I upvoted you because your comment is interesting, but how do you justify the above statement other than "it's what some prejudiced people, including myself, think"?

Have you validated this by talking to people who work in the porn industry? Have you read some research that validated this?

I'm questioning it because it seems like a stereotypical and potentially bigoted belief and is very possibly wrong. People are different. Some people get off on having sex with their life partner. Some people get off on being surrounded by a bunch of guys jacking off. Som people get off on having sex with animals. Some people don't get off and they're ok with that. It's fairly plausible that some people get off on doing porn, and it makes sense that many of those would work in the porn industry.

I agree. I would also like to see evidence that porn actresses were sexually abused.

I suspect this idea of 'porn stars were all raped' is a way to claim that porn isn't normal, it's a way to claim that only people with stunted and retarted sexualities do porn. That 'normal' people don't do porn cause it's 'unnatural' ("Look only mentally damaged people do it!"). I suspect that people propagate this idea because otherwise they'd have to look at themselves and say "I actually wouldn't like to work in the porn industry", much easier to claim that you're normal and healthy.

Yes, this may not be true. All I can report is what I've read.

> Doing porn requires a certain numbness and if the performer doesn't have that when she starts, she will. It's just a very sad situation.

My experience (via a friend who works for one of the soft-core porn channels) is that this is generally not true.

Not to me. We hired a guy who worked on the, ahem, back end of a popular iPhone gay meet up app. That it got a lot of traffic was a plus to us.

I don't have an answer to the question, but thought perhaps this "Ask Reddit" discussion about "If you designed a Porn site would you put it on your resume?" might be useful:

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/844pj/if_you_de...

In a perfect world, this shouldn't be much of a problem. It the world as it stands today I would definitely reconsider.

Most startups, particularly in the tech sector, would be fine with this. However, larger companies' HR people might pass you up for this in the future, although never officially of course. Also, you run the risk of being labeled "that ____ guy" which can hurt your personal brand as well.

Bottom line: If your'e young and want to keep all your options open, I would stay away from it. If you don't mind the extra drama and think this is a really good company and opportunity, go for it.

Yes, a certain part of your "career" may be affected by this choice, ie. less people would hire you. Then again, do you want to be hired by someone who wouldn't hire you if you did this?

+10 .. Do you really want to be hired by someone who couldn't see the technical aspects of what you've done? or would only see the content?

Be proud of who you are!

+1 for unintentional humor

Manhunt? Would you really want to work for any company that would judge you for working this unnamed potential employer?

Think of it this way, you're looking for Mr. Right Now in terms of your next position. And it just so happens that Mr. Right Now happens to be a gay dating site for men looking for Mr Right Now. I find the irony to be spectacularly hilarious.

Would you really want to work for any company that would judge you for working this unnamed potential employer?

Principles don't pay bills.

Fair enough. That said, reading through the other responses on this thread indicates to me that there are plenty of employers who don't care who employed you; just that you can get the work done.

What a great opportunity! Working on "adult" sites is really challenging work. It's like taking any other application you might work on and throwing 10x - 100x times more traffic at it. You'll have to find totally different ways to solve problems. Plus the money is better.

And keep in mind you probably wouldn't want to be acquired or take investment from a company that would look down on a gay dating site. Unless you mean you'd be looking to work for another startup and they may think twice about hiring you. In that case, that's probably not a company you want to work with.

I don't know if this really adds anything, but I have a friend that as a young tech entrepreneur was on the cover of Forbes and made a cool few mil. Then he blew it all, did porn sites, and was pretty poor for a while. Now he does consulting and makes a living (is in his mid-forties)

So he says he regrets going the "porn" route because it wasn't ultimately profitable. But that's not really what you're asking. That, I have no anecdotes for.

Take the example of Xavier Niel, one of the most successful and popular entrepreneur in France. Read this article from the BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10442729, title "Former porn boss among new owners of Le Monde".

He did just fine. Just be ready for the label to stick (it's been 20 years or more, and you tell the key word from the headline).

As long as the site isn't true-blue porn, I wouldn't sweat it. In other words: if the site caters to people looking to hook-up, no big deal. If the site caters to people looking to pleasure themselves, this is perhaps a problem.

Of course, if you're asking this question it sort of indicates that the site is seedier than you're letting on or perhaps it is seedier than you want to admit. :)

" If the site caters to people looking to pleasure themselves, this is perhaps a problem."

Why? Because some people get bent out of shape at the thought of other people jerking off?

Yes, precisely.

How is this a problem?

Is it also a problem to do work for a religious Web site? A pro-gay rights site? An anti-gay rights site?

There's always someone somewhere who's going to take issue with who you work for or what you do.

It's problem to the extent that just living your life as you chose and believing what you chose to believe are problems.

I.e., that's life.

Yes, precisely. What about this do you not get?

The major reasons people frown upon the adult industry is because of exploitation or religious bias; therefore you're subject to the same scrutinization by association. You can't really get away from it. A lot of the criticism stems from the assumption that females are degraded, but what's ironic is that the adult industry is filled with female executives running the show. Nevertheless, I can visit almost any major porn site and see banner ads and videos with people that LOOK under age. This is a problem for a lot of people.

So IMO, it really comes down to you. Would I do it? No, I don't really feel like photoshoping a bunch of male parts all day because our job roles would likely be different. And furthermore, it's not something I could showcase in a portfolio. If my head was buried in code all day and driven by analytics, that would be a slightly different story.

Career is something you ought to look back to, in retrospect, but not forward to. Career is something that you can use to describe "Here's what I've done".

But if you start thinking about what you can and cannot do now because of what will happen to your career, it's just an excuse to keep on thinking what other people think of you. Career is a description, not a value by itself.

Thus, if you're fine with a gay dating site then the position is "your thing", and if you do things that are yours then, in the future, you'll end up finding new things that are yours too.

Sounds pretty nice compared to not taking a position you want but something else instead, and then later finding more work that you don't want because you set the early course to all that work that sounds nice but you didn't want to do.

I think this is a good test for a (future) prospective employer. If they can't look at the experience objectively would you be happy working for them?

Sounds like an interesting opportunity to work on matching algorithms and data mining. And thats exactly how I would present it to future employers after you leave.

If someone had a problem with me having a gay dating site on my resume, I wouldn't want to work there anyway.

Yeah, you pick your employer as much as they pick you. If they are not ok with what you did in the past then they might not see eye to eye with you in the future.

The is always more then one job around. As for the adult stuff being career killer, I would have no problem hiring you if you could describe the hard problems you had to solve at that company. I would make sure the resume is filled with description of things like data mining, stats ...

I believe I applied for a job at this company you mention at one point and got pretty far into the interview process. I backed out because I got a better offer. Mostly, what concerned me about this company was how they did development: giant transition from PHP4 to PHP5 and a prospect of a normal work week being around 60 hours (I don't mind working that much, but it should be the exception, not the rule). Maybe things have changed now.

I would tend to think of it as a positive filter meaning anyone who would be put off by it isn't someone you want to work for anyway. Would you want to work for a company that expects you to apologise for having had a job in the "adult space" or is so up tight that they're bothered by it?

Take the job then put it on your resume in bold :D At least that way any job offers you get will be from secure people who may actually be nice to be around.

FWIW, I happen to have worked with and even hired a fairly large number (maybe 5) of folks that once worked for Playboy. As far as I could tell (and certainly as far as I was concerned) there was no stigma associated with this, even at moderately conservative publishing companies. And I think most people would rate a soft-core porn site like Playboy as more controversial than dating sites.

It's hard to tell from your post how scuzzy the site you're talking about really is (based on your concerns, maybe it is worse than we think?), but unless it is a fairly transparent front for something illegal (prostitution or whatnot) I don't think you have a lot to be concerned about.

If the only thing that makes this more controversial than OKCupid or LavaLife or the personals section of Craigslist is that it is targeted at a gay audience, I definitely wouldn't worry about this. You probably wouldn't want to work for someone who is bothered by that difference anyway.

It looks like most people - strangest of all yourself - missed the very first thing, which is, you are a product guy. It doesn't matter whether it's porn or children's books, the product you pick will likely "kill" opportunities in any unrelated space. By definition, people hire product guys for their knowledge of the product so if you are thinking in terms of your career, you will want to pick something you want to do long-term.

It sounds like you don't want to work in gay dating for the rest of your life. So why invest a chunk of your time getting to know the space?

As far as "HR girls" (how fifties of you...) I would expect them to avoid anything that would appear as though they are discriminating based on your sexual orientation, especially since the background check is normally only done on people already pegged as a hire.

I worked for kink.com for 4 years as a lead sr software engineer. We built an amazing platform on jboss/j2ee that deals with fairly massive scale. I finally decided to move on recently in order to get a change of scenery. While looking for a new gig, every one I interviewed with was quite interested to know what it was like working in the castle. Maybe it kept me from getting a few gigs, I don't know, but the reality is that the experience I gained at kink certainly opened up a lot of opportunities that I didn't have before. I'd say don't worry about it and go for the job. One bit of insider info is that porn companies have a hard time finding really good geek talent. So, if you are truly good, and most of you probably aren't, you can use that to your advantage.

Good luck on your job hunting.

As an "adult space" startup, I say go for it. The only folks that really frown at me are banks and public institutions (schools, small government, etc.).

It's fun, almost always very professional, and very progressive. Go for it! Have fun! Be passionate!

PS. Feel free to contact me, we're really eager to develop relationships with other industry startups - I'm sure we could work together.

I don't think so. If it's a large site with a lot of demand, then I believe that that sort of general experience would only help you at a later date. I'd say, as long as the company isn't being black balled in public forums, then you shouldn't worry about listing it in your resume.

I worked at a porn site a little while ago, and it was remarkable how much traffic we had to deal with. I left because I wasn't comfortable with working at a porn site, among other things (and funnily enough, they never told me that their main product was a porn site when I was interviewing for the position.)

I just reviewed a resume that included many adult entertainment references. Didn't diminish any from the candidate's chances at all and as a bonus it was fun to checkout out his previous work.

If I was a stereotypical blow hard though I definitely would have tossed his resume in the trash. There is zero apparent cost to eliminating a resume.

Based on your next potential employer, just make sure you remove the reference if you're applying to BYU or Bob Jones or something.

Listen: Playboy is one of the most recognizable, respected brands out there. (Okay, its stocks sucks, but the brand image itself is strong.)

Not sure what you do, but if you're directly involved in tech, I'm sure it comes with lots of interesting challenges. It's a popular sentiment that the adult industry is the innovative force behind the web.

What are you afraid of - making enemies? Thats far too into the future. Alyssa Milano is a UNICEF Ambassador now. She used to make porn.

Do you have a moral obligation to working for this company? Does this company's mission fit into your moral outlook as a human being right now?

Alyssa Milano is a UNICEF Ambassador now. She used to make porn.

Simply not true. You can't believe everything you see or read on the interwebs, you know?

http://www.unicefusa.org/partners/ambassadors/alyssa-milano....

I'm glad you didn't deny the fact that she made porn :P

Hey, man, if you do have a link for anything she made that's beyond R-rated, you are sitting in gold.

From what I understand, those videos have been well-exploited.

No, because people just care if they are going to make money with the deal.

I wouldn't want to work for a company that would refuse to hire me for working on a gay porn site. Especially considering that I'm gay.

I saw the question more as, "Would having a dating site with a more 'red light' angle on it hurt my resume?" (i.e. less about the 'gay' part and more about the 'porn' part, though I'll admit that 'gay porn' is probably a double-whammy if your resume hits some ultra-conservative hiring manager)

Can't you just put the name the credit card company uses to identify them on your resume :)

Loopt has a pretty good rep on HN. Other YC companies would probably hire you. Might want to try that new service where you can apply to 25 YC funded companies at one time.

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