shellsharks

I've seen a lot of Cybersecurity salary surveys on Reddit (sorry to linking to the other place - https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/comments/15fo0e6/how_much_are_you_making_in_cybersecurity/). Levels.fyi is also pretty accurate for cyber/software engineer data across the various levels, especially at your typical "tech" companies (https://www.levels.fyi/)

There's no one path in to be sure. But there's lots of ways to educate yourself and build a "hireable" portfolio from home and without getting a typical 4-year degree. Learn to code, get some applicable certifications, start a website (as your digital portfolio), contribute to open source or spin up your own project(s), etc... The IT/software/cyber market is not at its peak (in terms of opportunity), but we're definitely still here and there are openings. It's still a great field with a lot of perks if you can weather the challenges of "breaking in". It's also not going anywhere, despite what some may lead you to believe given the advent of "AI". For those of us in tech, we'll be the first to tell you that our jobs are pretty safe.

If it's infosec you might be interested in, you may find this guide I put together and typically share interesting - https://shellsharks.com/getting-into-information-security.

Good luck!

I've tried a bit. But not really day-to-day just yet

nope 😕

Overall, yes. Day to day y'know it varies. Pure "security work" is, for me, genuinely interesting and I spend legit personal time learning and working on projects, for no other reason than they are kinda fun. What I do as a security engineer for a corporation day-to-day and week-to-week doesn't always translate to the "fun stuff". So my answer is somewhat nuanced. Yes, I do like cybersecurity. But no, I don't always like the work in terms of how it manifests in corporate life.

🦀

Got a bunch of house projects coming up myself... What kinda renos you up to?

Yeah $400 is too rich for me at this point in my life. But maybe one day 🤷‍♂️

I just use an Osprey Comet daypack (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072N2WY6S/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1), though if I had just random money to burn I might go for the "Technonaut" https://www.tombihn.com/products/techonaut-30?variant=40265614753981

I wouldn't worry about certs to start, especially not OSCP. Since you are in the software/dev space, I would consider security roles in the AppSec or CloudSec space as places to jump first. For that, consider going through PortSwigger's web security academy (free) training online to learn more about web vulns, their impact, how to mitigate, etc... If you want a cert, consider one from a cloud vendor and apply to jobs that use that vendor. If you can do even basic scripting, understand app-related vulns and use a few appsec tools then you should be an easy hire for a lot of places. (That said, I've been hearing the market for infosec is atrocious right now).

Never been in the QA world myself, but as someone who has spent a fair bit of time in AppSec, I've encountered Selenium the most. 🤷‍♂️

When you say "transferrable in QA" do you mean, languages useful for QA folks that transfer out? I'd argue any/all of them would be for appsec folks.