[tmp65535]

Be careful working in this field (pornography). In 2017 I wrote a mildly pornographic app (http://driftwheeler.com) and it appears on my resume. When hiring managers or recruiters take a look, some of them get upset.

For example, a scheduled interview was abruptly cancelled the night before. I pursued the matter through a friend who had a senior role at the hiring company and it was determined that the (middle-aged female) in-house recruiter had been deeply offended when she followed the link on my resume and had cancelled everything. Eventually, I received a sincere apology from the CEO.

There is a real stigma, and it will affect you. Beware.

[latchkey]

F' that. I worked for Kink.com (NSFW) (as a software engineer) and I'm proud of it. I got experience building cutting edge, high demand systems and services that I wouldn't have gotten elsewhere. We did realtime 1080p streaming video before anyone else and a full micro currency (Kinks). I even built a whole ad serving system that served banners from sites like PornHub (so I got a taste of the traffic levels they had).

If that held me back from getting a job at some puritanical company, so be it. I wouldn't have wanted to work there any way.

[dymk]

The CEO sent him a written apology. I wouldn't call that a puritanical company.

All it takes is one person in the critical path to not like what you're doing, even if 99% of the rest don't give a shit, and that's a potential job off the table.

You're proud of your work, that's great, but also doesn't change the fact that your work also puts you at risk of having your resume tossed for a dumb reason.

[latchkey]

My use of the word is a generalization, sorry that wasn't clear.

Agreed, your resume could be tossed for anything. US has some protections for this. Other countries don't have this at all. You don't take a job with a porn company without realizing that. It definitely made hiring more difficult as well.

While working there, we lost access to our web analytics tool because they got bought by a Mormon company that booted us. Endless issues with credit card processors. We also had to host our own server hardware because at the time, porn wasn't allowed on many hosting services and/or we were fearful of being booted from other cloud providers.

That's also what attracted me to my current business venture, which is to provide decentralized cloud infrastructure services (aka: web3). It seems weird to think of that being decentralized, but if we don't know the specifics of what you're running on our hardware, there is nothing for us to turn off. Based on my history, I see a lot of value in that.

[ksec]

Love to hear more about it. We have often been told porn are one of the largest internet video category. Even before the Internet, pornography decided the war on DVD or Blu-Ray. Or at least that is what I have been told, never fact checked on any of these.

And there are so many tech on these system I wish I could read more about it. And yet we dont. There could be loads of things that could be open sourced too. Or do we live in a world where an open source component from a porn company are not good enough to use. ( I would not be surprised if that is case right now in Silicon Valley ). And yet we are happy to read technology being used in warfares?

I would imagine you have lots of restrictions and barrier in your work, from hosting to payment or whatever. It will be interesting to see how those are worked out.

Oh but please post it in a separate blogging platform so we can all enjoy it during work hours.

[stickfigure]

Some years ago I wrote up some of my stories from Kink.com on Quora:

https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-on-the-develop...

(I hired @latchkey, though he stayed a few years longer than I did)

[latchkey]

Thanks @stickfigure. I stayed for 4.

[takeda]

> Even before the Internet, pornography decided the war on DVD or Blu-Ray. Or at least that is what I have been told, never fact checked on any of these.

Beta vs VHS.

DVD did not compete against BluRay, they are two different generations. BluRay competed against HD-DVD. From what I remember technically HD-DVD was superior, BluRay won because it had extra copy protection mechanism the HD-DVD lacked.

[mdasen]

HD-DVD was inferior. BluRay could do 25GB per layer while HD-DVD could only do 15GB.

The major factor was that Sony shipped a BluRay player in the PlayStation 3. When HD-DVD was discontinued, Sony had sold 10.5M PlayStation 3 units while there were only 1M HD-DVD units. Sony spent a lot of money subsidizing the PS3 and its BluRay player, but a 10:1 ratio of PS3s to HD-DVD players won the market (and all the standalone BluRay players just made the ratio worse).

As the PS3 sold, rental chains like Blockbuster decided to go with BluRay exclusively - and at the time Blockbuster was the largest rental chain and really powerful. Netflix also moved exclusively to BluRay. As the PS3 sold, Target decided to move exclusively to BluRay. Once the PS3 had started selling way more units than all HD-DVD players combined, everyone started moving away from HD-DVD which just reinforced its decline.

BluRay won because Sony was willing to suffer pretty big losses on PS3 sales to push the format.

[TechBro8615]

“Don’t link to NSFW content on your resume” seems like a common-sense rule that’s applicable independently of whether you worked in the porn industry or not.

[tshaddox]

There's a big difference between surprising someone by leading them to a website that immediate shows NSFW content and putting on your resume that you previously worked for a company that published NSFW content. The latter absolutely should not be considered "NSFW" and shouldn't be considered a red flag by a potential employer.

[imwillofficial]

For real, just take it off the resume after the first non-positive reaction.

Pro tip: Your resume is your greatest hits album, not an encyclopedia entry on you.

[wldcordeiro]

Maybe they did good work and felt proud of it and thought the hiring managers could look past the content of the product of the company and look at the real work needed to deliver that product.

[code_runner]

It sounds as if they’ve learned otherwise through first hand experience at this point.

Seems like a way to shock the people actually putting real effort into vetting a candidates resume/credentials.

Maybe a warning that it’s nsfw would cause less extreme reactions.

[imwillofficial]

Unfortunately, here on planet earth, people are not always reasonable, logical, or act in their best interests.

We must calibrate our messaging to have the intended effect. If what you’re putting out isn’t being received as intended, modulate the signal.

[sdoering]

Exactly. That is why such a entry in your resume works like a great filter.

If I had worked in NSFW and an application would get rejected because of that I would sincerely thank my former job for saving me a job in an environment I would not want to touch with a ten foot pole.

If people in (even small power) like HR drones abuse their position as to flag a resume because of such a former experience I doubt there is a company culture of honesty, openness, respect or value of the individual.

To me personally a great filter to have.

If one is desperately in need of a job. OK - remove it and try to jump ship once secured in the current place.

[samhw]

> If people in (even small power) like HR drones abuse their position

I call this the traffic warden principle: Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. A really tiny amount of power, in one specific area of your life, corrupts even more.

(Also, FWIW, it's "people in (even small) power", not "people in (even small power)".)

[imwillofficial]

A great non-obvious take. I like it.

[wldcordeiro]

Good summary of my thoughts on this, thanks for jumping!

[toyg]

TBF, that calculation is only necessary in some circumstances.

Want to get into FAANG? Corporate HR is dominated by women, better clean up your act.

Wanna get hired by the hot bro-startup to be single-digit-employee? No purge necessary - if anything, those blue entries will score more points.

[amelius]

Even less applicable if you didn't work in the industry.

[nefitty]

Seriously. All he had to do was make a SFW version for his resume if he was so keen on showing off the work. Use pictures of smurfs and puppies.

I might unfairly be making assumptions about how technically feasible the change would be. If it would be difficult to do so, I'd be interested to learn how/why, eg was it a system design choice or is it inherent to the tech itself...

[brailsafe]

It's probably true that most work worth keeping on a resume, after some experience, is going to be non-trivial to replicate at best, and awkward to lie about/dance around in explaining purely to accommodate the sensitivities of adults who should chill out. I've worked mostly for companies I wasn't fired from, and it'd be great to avoid talking about the experience directly. Could I re-create the frontend interface for massive auction company? Maybe, but it would take a large amount of extremely unsatisfactory work. Could I recreate the database, backend infrastructure, and conditions that really made the work hard? No

[nefitty]

Yeah, you're definitely right. If I was in that situation, I think I would be up front about the nature of the work and offer a "sanitized" textual walkthrough of the project. Let people decide if they want to risk being offended.

I'm slightly conflicted here. I don't like pretending that facets of life don't exist, especially when they don't directly harm the involved, but I am also mindful of people's individual sensitivities.

To tie it back to something more general, it seems like a lot of software engineering work is predicated on the cis male perspective. It's hard for me to imagine the psychological impact that sexual harassment might have on a woman, partly because I have the privilege of moving through the world without having my body or attractiveness be a point of interest whatsoever. I feel safe walking outside at night. I don't check my car's backseat before getting in. I have no idea what the fear of kidnapping even is.

In light of the above, of being honest with the gaps in what I will ever experience, how can I venture to link to a site that might offend a woman? Even if it seems ok to me, and it's a joke or whatever excuse, how can I possibly say I fully understand her perspective when her lived experience places her in such vastly different situations?

[brailsafe]

I agree about a lot of that, but you also don't necessarily need to link to the site or compell someone to go and inspect it. There is a reason Pornhub's parent company is actually MindGeek. Just list it, describe what you did as your job or accomplishments, and if someone chooses to check it out, you never have control over that, and while you may mot share the experience of some or most women, you have your own experiences that other people aren't necessarily worried about, but that you might be bothered by. I can't try and guess what those are, and that's life; it's bound to happen. Many people have been sexually assaulted in this world, and that's just the sad reality. Should everyone always avoid mentioning the word rape? No. Should you regularly mention it in a professional context? Probably not. Same thing for theft, child abuse, bigotry, circumcision, regular assault, guns in general, being audited, adultery, divorce, robbery (different than just theft), sexual harassment, suicide, death of any kind, gaslighting or other manipulation, depression or using the word depressed as an exaggerated expression of ongoing sadness, alcholism, OCD, ADD, w/e...

There's nuance in there of course, pick your situations, but basically none of them are going to be broadly unique or predictable, and part of life is just dealing with those awkward moments if they come up.

[exolymph]

Absent some mitigating context, I would also conclude that something is wrong with you for putting NSFW content on your resume. The issue here is mainly what you're telegraphing about your grasp of social norms.

[shaky-carrousel]

This neopuritanism is awful. I thought we already left it behind, but looks like it's returning full force.

[oh_sigh]

Regardless of whether the woman in question is a neopuritan -

I am not offended by OPs app, nor the display of a woman's breasts or genitalia. But I would greatly question what kind of employee OP would be if they're putting their jerk-off apps on their resume. If OP lacks the basic social awareness to not cause steam to come out the ears of the large percent of society that might be deemed neopuritan, then I have to suspect OP is lacking in social awareness that is going to affect their/coworkers performance in the office.

If I had written an app like that, and wanted to use it as a demo of my knowledge in some field on my resume, I would reimplement it to work on puppies or something.

[haliskerbas]

Have you heard “family-values” being touted by media correspondents as an excuse for everything.

[nix23]

Just think where Wikipedia would be without the porn industry...and VR-"Gaming" ;-)

Porn and advertising is the driving force of the Internet.

[georgia_peach]

This is a soundbite falsehood. The military industrial complex is the driving force of the internet and all things computing. Porn is just another monetization.

[nix23]

>The military industrial complex is the driving force of the internet and all things computing.

Was the initial force...but since we call it "internet" and "personal computers" instead of "mainframe" and "arpanet" not anymore.

[georgia_peach]

If you closely study Twitter's actions (How did that Arab Spring turn out for everybody?), or read about the InQtel origins of google (Assange's "Google Is Not What It Seems"), or how the Israelis blasted the Palestinians with porn during a siege (the OnlyFans economy!), you will see that it is still very much a weapon.

Of the actual innovations in this field, how many came from defense (DOD, CIA, NSA, ARPA, & their contractors), and how many came from pornography?

[nix23]

I never said secret-services...governments etc have nothing to-do with the Internet, and it would be stupid not to use it for psyop's, but the money comes from private sectors and not the "military" anymore.

[alkaloid]

Is it though?

The article specifically talks about people's lives being ruined by sites like this.

Plenty of feminists are anti-porn, and are not right wing nor "puritan" in the least.

[cookieswumchorr]

who said puritanism has to be right-wing. It's also not necessarily about sexuality. It's about putting up a set of idealistic moral standards and trying to force everybody to comply or pretend to comply.

[alkaloid]

I mean, pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing, but ok my bad...

We put up sets of idealistic moral standards that some or most of a society generally agree protects vulnerable people. This is why we have age limits on alcohol, for example. This is why we have age limits on porn, too.

Everyone is forced to comply or pretend to comply with minimum drinking ages, which are pretty common throughout the world. I think all would agree.

It doesn't really seem to be puritanism that drives a society to protect its vulnerable populations. It's not out of a hatred of alcohol that drinking ages exist, it's because alcohol abuse has been proven to ruin lives. Just like porn.

[LAC-Tech]

Well I think at this point you're just using puritanism as short-hand for "people trying to enforce morals I disagree with".

So if you're left-wing, than in your terminology puritans will be by definition right-wingers. And the people enforcing morals you agree with cannot be called Puritan.

If you take a brief look at the history of the original Puritanism however, it was definitely a 'revolutionary' movement against tradition. Including the ones who came to America.

[toyg]

> pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing

That "everyone" must be old. The new phenomena are already lampooned in plenty of memes. The boomers aged pretty badly.

> It's not out of a hatred of alcohol that drinking ages exist, it's because alcohol abuse has been proven to ruin lives

If that were the case, alcohol would just be banned outright. The limits are basically virtual anyway, anybody can attest that getting alcohol is trivial once you start to really want it. Just like porn.

A lot of law is effectively performative morality, and no more so than in the area of personal pleasures. Prohibitionism always fails, eventually, because people want to feel.

[samhw]

> I mean, pretty much everyone associates puritanism with the right-wing, but ok my bad...

The fact that the right wing is puritan doesn't mean that puritanism entails being right-wing. This is, like, Logic 101, 'Socrates is a man'-level shit.

[LAC-Tech]

The Puritans weren't right-wing. They were the freaky liberals of their time, arguing that the Anglican church was too close to the conservative, traditional Roman Catholic church - ie they wanted massive social change and a break from the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Dissenters#/media/File...

[pmyteh]

Eh. Modern political cleavages map very poorly onto seventeenth century religious divisions.

I'm a Quaker. Early Quakers were radical (rejecting the religious authority of priests and the fighting of wars), conservative (looking backwards to a partially-imagined better, more wholesome Christianity of the past), obnoxious (turning up to Anglican churches to heckle the sermon), and disciplined (strong structures in place for the support of families of those imprisoned for their faith, and a communal discernment process that rejected 'do as thou wilt').

Puritans rejected catholic influence on the church, yes, but their focus on individual piety, and their association with the rising merchant class, puts them a long way from freaky liberalism. One of their critiques was that others were insufficiently sober and God-fearing!

[LAC-Tech]

I think it's pretty clear to me. Puritan aligned forces overthrew the English Monarchy and established a republic - some 150 years later left and right came about when opponents of the French monarchy would sit on the left. There's also a very clear relationship between Puritans and the Whigs - it's surely very clear that they were to the left of the Tories.

In either century, the right represents old moral values, and the left represents a fresh new source of moral values which seek to replace the old. Granted, in the 17th century those new moral sources were religious and in the 21st century they are secular - the substance of what is now left and what was then left has absolutely changed. But the overall structure is the same.

[FDSGSG]

Hard to be anti-porn and not "puritan" in the least.

[WilTimSon]

If merely being a software engineer who handled traffic for a crappy tube site, where most videos are uploaded by consenting freaky couples, gets you blacklisted from working in companies, while people who handle privacy destruction at Google and Facebook get cushy jobs - yeah, it is bad. It's not a software engineer's fault that some frat boy uploaded revenge porn and porn does not have to be bad. Plenty of feminists are also pro-porn, just when it's done in the right way and doesn't involve manipulation or coercion.

[NateEag]

It's not the software dev's _fault_ that someone used their tool to hurt another person, but it _is_ the dev's _responsibility_ to consider how their tool might be abused and consider whether it's really a societal good to build it.

That's kind of the whole point of the original article, narrated by a guy who _ actually feels guilty_ about his role in enabling people like your hypothetical frat boy.

[ss108]

"mildly pornographic"

Demo video literally depicts naked chicks. Sure, it's soft porn, but it's fully pornographic lol

[crtasm]

indeed. perhaps they forgot about all the closeup photos of genitalia in the demos!

[slingnow]

You realize you have full control over your resume, right?

"It appears on my resume" makes it sound like some other controlling entity has put it on your resume, so that it now just appears there as a matter of fact.

What an odd statement to make.

[lucidbee]

I looked at the "mildly pornographic app" you wrote and my reaction was, I would not choose to hire you. Basically I don't want to be exposed to people's sexual fantasies as a part of my job. It's obnoxious and way, way into the territory of TMI. Do what you like and keep it private. The fact you thought it was appropriate to share this with a potential employer reviewing your resume is a red flag. Your sense of what is appropriate to share in the workplace is clearly off.

This is quite different than merely listing an employer such as pornhub on your resume.

[yesbabyyes]

> (http://driftwheeler.com)

I tend to get suspicious when porn sites (or porn-related sites) avoid https. Maybe I'm paranoid, but it's so simple to use ssl today than I find it hard to give the benefit of the doubt.

Is there any reason to your choice in publishing content such as this in a way that exposes all visitors?

[caeril]

The hiring process is determining who is a good fit for whom, both skills-wise, and other-wise. What if they never followed the link, and you had been hired, and you ended up working with a team of people who were culturally incompatible with you?

This falls into the same category as "be careful having opinions in public". Ever since we've been easily Googlable, right-wing employers have canceled left-wing candidates and very much vice-versa (e.g. Antonio Garcia Martinez and Apple). There's been some degree of outcry and stink about this, but in the end it's probably a net good for employees to work with teams they are culturally aligned with. Getting cut early on account of what you believe or what else you worked on is probably best for everyone involved.

Would you like to be able to enjoy a beer with your coworkers or not?

[lupire]

> Would you like to be able to enjoy a beer with your coworkers or not?

Not a job requirement for adults.

Open-minded professionalism and civility should trump only working with frat buddies.

[bduerst]

>middle-aged female

Not sure how that's relevant here.

You write about the unjust bias (and unjust it is) against you for having worked with porn, but then seem to to try to evoke ageist and gender stereotypes.

[Kranar]

OP never said the bias was unjust, only that the bias exists and people working in that industry should be aware it could be used against them.

Multiple studies exist showing that men and women have very very different views on pornography and in particular women's views on it are significantly more negative than men's views. Furthermore people's views on pornography change as they get older with older people having an even more negative view about it than younger people. This isn't like a fringe difference either, consumption of porn by women is less than 20% that of men. There's nothing sexist about pointing out that women can and often do have very different views on a subject than men, and no reason to think that women having a negative view of pornography somehow makes them inferior in anyway.

[bduerst]

>Multiple studies exist showing that men and women have very very different views on pornography and in particular women's views on it are significantly more negative than men's views

Can you cite some of these studies?

IIRC there is a difference in consumption rates between genders, but not negative attitudes.

[squintychino]

I think the implication is that women tend to have more of a problem with pornography than men. Perhaps if the CEO had been a man it wouldn't have gotten to the point where it resulted in their interview being cancelled.

[cromka]

Agreed. And while I doubt this is what the author of the comment actually had in mind, I think it is important to notice that porn, by large extent, takes advantage of women, and so it’s women who naturally have bigger issue with it than man. And I assume the CEO who sent the apologetic letter was a man. In other words, the author inadvertently exemplifies how sexist IT can still be.

[danuker]

The downside might be that you limit the available job offers.

The upside is you don't get matched with prude co-workers.

[_bax]

Pecunia not olet..

[potentialporner]

> There is a real stigma, and it will affect you. Beware.

Small anecdote, but I was recruited by and almost took an offer for the folks behind "BangBros." Their corporate structure was apparently such that the IT / Software roles worked for a shell company with a generic name, generic website, etc. This company apparently works in a "consulting" like capacity for all of their assets (BangBros, "tube" sites, cam sites, etc.)

I asked what was going on with the shell company, because it seemed sketchy as all hell. It was explained that because of industry stigma most of their employees use the shell company for their resume with generic "worked on highly-scalable systems handling N amount of traffic."

Apparently it was a highly professional outfit, and the closest you could get to dealing with FANG-level problems while not being a FANG-eligible person. Great pay and benefits, business casual dress located in a nice building in Miami Beach.

[toyg]

Same sort of arrangement, I casually discovered, is often in play for gambling sites (pun intended). Because the overall outfit can be seen as questionable (occasionally by accident: gambling regulations change very often, so what is legal today might well be illegal tomorrow), the technical side is kept at arm's length, so that they can still attract good talent.

[latchkey]

In my case, I just told my gf's parents that I worked for an educational video company.

Years later after I went on to another job, we told them "the truth" and they just shrugged it off.

[lupire]

> business casual dress

for a tech company, and a porn company? that's completely absurd.

[cookieswumchorr]

given the overall favourable situation on the IT job market, maybe it's not bad to have a filter against having to work with hypocrites?

[crtasm]

I'm not supporting their decision but what about it was hypocritical?

[sdoering]

If HR passed on them because 'porn' they either abused their position or gave a clear signal about company culture. They need to find someone that fits. In terms of skills and team fit/professionalism.

Either the company values prude/neoconservative value signaling (the at least I wouldn't want to work there and they should openly tell people what ideology is expected) or the HR person abused their position and did not do their job in finding someone that fits the skill set and role.

Either way is hypocritical in my book.

[toyg]

Being anti-porn is hardly limited to neocons, unless you think the totality of FAANGs are neocons. This is the sort of live wire that cuts right across all political groups.

[theideaofcoffee]

I'll echo a sub post on this and say, with a most gentle: fuck. that. I consider it a positive signal that I would be rejected for some of my past work in adult. It shortcuts the whole you're-interviewing-them portion of the recruiting process. They've done my work for me. In the past, my involvement in the area has proven to be an interesting facet of my work history that others don't have, often resulting in interviews just out of curiosity on their end. Did I receive offers on all of them? No, and I don't care either and that's not the point.

My point is that I'm not going to censor myself or my background in anticipation of someone being offended. Let them be offended, there's lots of other places where that isn't a problem.

[AlwaysRock]

That is fine if you don't mind loosing out on some opportunities because a very religious recruiting coordinator 6 months out of college making 45K per year decides your profile is icky.

It's probably not the CTO, your direct manager, or even any of your peer that would be offended. Anyone in the long chain of people that are involved in your process from applicant to employee could cause a stink.

It's difficult to say one employees who might filter you out is indicative of the entire company culture. I know a lot of happy employees who absolutely hated their experience being onboarded because of 1 or 2 difficult people. But who gives a shit about how Michael from HR took 9 days to send an official offer letter if you're never going to have to interact with them again?