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. =)
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.
"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.
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.
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. =)