It’s a cop out not to address the fact that nearly all programmers are men.
Second, we are so damn lucky that we can choose. Most people are stuck with whatever pays the mortgage.
I thought it was weird the that the women in that one accounting company were checking out p0rn, but I was just a contractor. I wish I could finish that story in Penthouse fashion…
i thought the internet’s sole purpose was to distribute porn?
I wouldn’t take a job within the porn industry only because I would be afraid what future employers might think. Would employers look down on this? I would probably say that most would.
While working for a web dev shop, I refused to work on an online gambling site for ethical reasons. I’m sure that would be less frowned upon than porn, but I just felt it was The Wrong Thing To Do™.
Are you kidding me? This is just silly and ridiculous. Your logic is because you are prudish and embarrassed by sex then:
if you choose to work in the adult industry, you have to tell white lies about your work – small evasions about what your work is, and who it is for, depending on the audience. Invoke vague NDAs. Describe things in broad, general terms.
This is horrible logic. Many, many people work in the adult entertainment and are very open about and happy with their work. This is just pompous, judgmental drivel. As far as everyone going on about how you are singling the sex industry out and IMVU but yet say nothing about the military industrial complex, Big Pharma, and so forth – I think they make an interesting point. Very few people have died from having an orgasm.
Ok, that’s porn. Now for IMVU. Most of what you’ve written in the past year or so has been a succession of posts either championing mediocrity or anti-intellectualism. You made pretty rude comment about IMVU, something about it not being a cure for cancer, it got on HN, and now you are echoing it. News flash: SO is not a cure for cancer; nowhere near it. As far as the technical impressiveness; yes it’s a nice site but Phil Haack got 5%-10% of the way done on an SO clone in about 5 minutes; in fact there are at least two other SO clones in Russian and Mandarin.
The IMVU guys are doing some pretty reasonably interesting technical stuff. Making a judgment about a site based on a profile of one of its users is pretty silly. Although, to be honest, that example profile you cite is pretty tame. Not everyone is a Pentecostal like you or whatever it is. Do you dismiss SecondLife because some users have similar profiles? PhDs do work for SL. But maybe you would see this also as a black mark. Of course technical knowledge is irrelevant in programming and is something to be discouraged.
This all seems like alot of hot air to me. A job is a job either way you look at it. And for those people that have not taken a job and shunned an industry just because of their moral objections; I think that is weak. If they really cared about women in the porn industry being abused (or had some other gripe with this world) then they would get up and do something about it. No accepting the job is just the cowards way out.
Personally, I would take the job and If I had any serious objections then I would raise then with the company. If that failed then I would quit and protest in increasingly public ways.
But thats just me.
Careful with whom to tell and how to tell it. So basically, like being gay.
Now, being a software developer and gay, I suppose own my choice of careers has been predestined all along.
It is not like your text editor supports images. You get to code on some of the most progressive systems there are. Sure, some are probably pretty hobbled, but some have to be akin to youtube in scale. It is a job, who cares.
This post would be more interesting and relevant i believe, if the question were not if you would work for adult, but if you wold start your own startup that was in a fringe industry like that.
My company won’t contract with people in the porn industry, companies that make only military hardware/software, and certain pharmaceutical companies. I think that choosing what you want to contribute to in life and in the world is more important than a paycheck or a resume.
-Max
It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter. — Nathaniel Borenstein.
How is imvu an adult site? I’ve never been there but the ad makes it look like it is for kids.
Only in American, the same idiots that jerk-off to those sites pretend that sex is a bad thing!
I wish was a part of the adult internet 
I think it’s a matter of what you’re ashamed of. I’m currently working for a defence contractor. It’s a nice company, but I have far, far more moral reservations about it than I would working for the porn industry. But it’s paying work, and I need the experience, so I’m doing the best I can, and when I’m ready, I’ll move on. But I think if I was put on a more offensive project, I’d move sooner rather than later.
And to all those who are complaining about the exploitation of women, the same could be said of the cosmetic industry, plastic surgery industry, fashion industry, marketing industry and media industry. In fact it’s hard to think of an industry that doesn’t exploit women in some way.
And porn is not like an addiction, any more than World of Warcraft or Web-Surfing is like an addiction. It may be possible to display addiction-like symptoms to these things, but if you have any kind of mental, emotional and/or social problems, you could become addicted to almost anything. People become addicted to collecting stamps, for crying out loud. On the addiction scale, porn is almost certainly a much healthier addiction than computer games, collecting collectables or cannabis.
And finally: porn is at BEST a total waste of time and resources? Depends on your end goals.
If your end goal is pleasure/satisfaction, it’s actually fairly efficient. For the same endorphin boost, you’d have to eat a fairly large chocolate bar. And you can’t eat the same chocolate the next time you’re hungry.
If your end goal is to earn money, it could be argued that all sports, eating out, and an awful lot of conversation is also a total waste.
Basically, if you find yourself wanting to lie or evade about working in a certain industry, it may not be the job for you. But it’s almost certainly the job that has the problem.
I meant NOT the job that has the problem
Freudian Slip there…
Yes, porn affects people in some curious ways. Sex sells!!!
I declined to even interview at a self-described e-mail marketing company for this very reason.
This past year I had an opportunity to not only work for an adult site, but to take an equity interest. While the industry did give me some pause for the reasons you mentioned, I declined not because of the content but because the business partners were, well, slimy.
As for being paid from an offshore account that you mentioned… run away from that regardless of the industry. This past year has seen more previously safe offshore account strategies pierced by the IRS. Who wants that legal hassle?
the ad makes it look like it is for kids.
Slutty, slutty kids, if the advertising is to be believed.
I have more respect for a company that is unapologetically adult, not trying to have it both ways and skirt the edge of what’s accepted.
Particularly since IMVU is, apparently, directed at kids and teenagers.
What a strange world we live in where porn sites are suspect, but defense contracting for gun wielding robots is a plum assignment.