While many mainstream organizations have been hit with hiring freezes and layoffs, many porn Web sites are hiring tech workers. And workers who have jumped to porn sites say the move makes sense; they're using the latest technologies and have job security in a not-so-secure economy.

"We've been in business for 30 years. I don't know of any dot-com that could even begin to match that," said Shea Tisdale, e-commerce director at PHE Inc. in Hillsborough, N.C., which sells sex games, videos and other products online.

After selling his Web design firm last fall, Tisdale interviewed at several dot-coms that seemed shaky to him because they refused to show him their business plans. Two, in fact, have since gone out of business, he said.

Tisdale joined PHE after a friend who worked there told him about its Internet operations. As it prepares to relaunch its 4-year-old Web site, AdamEve.com, it continues to bring in technology workers, having recently hired two software engineers, said Tisdale.

Unlike some Internet businesses, the online porn industry shows little sign of slowing. According to New York-based market research firm Jupiter Media Metrix Inc., the number of individual visitors at sex sites grew nearly 30% in about two years, from 22 million in December 1999 to nearly 28 million last February. Meanwhile, the number of IT jobs grew during 2000 at its slowest rate since 1995, according to a report issued last week by Nasdaq Stock Market Inc. and the American Electronics Association, both in Washington.

As the pornography industry tries to become more widely accepted, it makes sense to hire workers from other fields, including former dot-coms, said David Schlesinger, vice president of Internet marketing at Vivid Entertainment Group, an "adult entertainment" company in Van Nuys, Calif. Vivid has expanded its online staff by 30% in the past couple of months, adding about 10 Web designers, programmers and marketers, and it may hire at least one more programmer, Schlesinger said.

All of a sudden, tech workers "are talking to the stepchild they ignored a few months ago," he said.

Some IT workers, such as Frank Papa, are striking out on their own in the online pornography world. As his contract Web programming position at an online health firm in Raleigh, N.C., nears its end, Papa doesn't worry about his finances because he has been devoting more than 30 hours a week to developing his online porn site, Ninenine.com.

"It's a better way of using my skills rather than working for somebody else," said Papa. He's using the same Web development technologies - Active Server Pages, Oracle and SQL - on his porn site that he would on any other e-commerce assignment.

PHE doesn't like hiring anyone who won't reveal his line of work to family and friends, said Tisdale. "We want people to be proud of where they work," he said.

But working in the porn industry "may prevent access" to some jobs in the future, said Kevin Rosenberg, managing director at Irvine, Calif.-based recruiting firm BridgeGate LLC. That perception may be changing, however.