Rise and Grind!
So. You heard somewhere that a career in cybersecurity was hot stuff. You heard some anecdotes about people making big money breaking into or protecting computer systems. You thought that was pretty cool, and you studied hard to give yourself a fighting chance to break into the profession. Starting from the beginning was not a problem, you know you need to cut your teeth and earn your stripes. The opportunity to do something interesting and meaningful doesn't present itself every day.
Having done everything by the book, you get out there and start applying, and applying, and applying for jobs. You keep doing that, even though some fuck who calls himself CISO but doesn't really CISO anything says that "cybersecurity is full!" In true Master Chief Urgayle fashion, you're told to "seek life elsewhere."
Undeterred, you press on. After creating your 75th Workday account, you start to think that maybe you've been misled. Maybe there is no opportunity to do something cool and meaningful after all. What does exist is some weird ecosystem of security theater that doesn't really do anything except feed itself the same nonsense over and over, like a stupid Ouroboros. Companies pretend they care about the data entrusted to them and the systems we use every day, vendors pretend they have the solution to every problem, CPAs and auditors working for companies with very clear conflicts of interest pretend everything is a-ok, and everyone just shrugs when things go bad.
Maybe, you think to yourself, I'm not qualified enough. Maybe this thing is so out of my league that I can't even pretend to know what I'm talking about. Maybe I need some letters after my name because that's the one thing that's consistent across all those job postings. Maybe let's take care of that. Again, start from the beginning. Learn the basics. Master the fundamentals.
Well, shit. You're not only priced out of any significant metro area, you're priced out of the means to improve your marketability as well. Maybe you need to just self study.
Well, shit. Maybe I should just go to the library, sit my ass down, and study. I'll make it work, and then, I'll take the test.
Well, shit. That's, like, a month of groceries. I thought the mission of these "professional associations" was to enable, empower, and qualify the practitioners. Turns out they just like money. It doesn't really matter that the people who do have these certifications are mainly dumping "threats" into high/medium/low buckets that make no sense and doing risk acceptances on anything that looks a little more complicated.
You persevere, even though the going rate for what you do is one sixth of what a programmer working for an useless ad company disguised as a technology company makes for tweaking some parameters in an algorithm to make you buy more useless shit or to feed you propaganda that radicalizes you. But, hey! All things considered, $100k is a good salary.
The feeling that something ain't right with this picture starts to creep in, and you wonder if it's all bullshit. Suddenly, however, you get a call. Someone wants to interview you! That's a very welcome change of pace. We're finally out of that Create Another Workday Account > Enter The Same Information Again > /dev/null pipeline. Optimism, ferda!
After six rounds of interviews, some of which with people who would not even tangentially work with you, and a take-home "test" that looks, feels, and smells like actual work, you sit and wait. They come back to you with a lowball offer of $65k to do the work of 4 people. You know you got lucky, because what normally happens here is you get an email telling you that they went with an internal hire instead. Or no email at all. $65k is almost 8 of those GIAC Fundamentals. You didn't get the job and you wasted 4 days of PTO on this, but join our community and subscribe to our newsletter! Be the first to know when a new fucked up position drops! We do reserve the right to sell the personal information you sent us to a data broker, though. So, be on the lookout for that. But don't worry. We take security very seriously.
You go to Buc-ee's and get a job there instead.
P.S. We are raising funds to try and get some sort of formal entity off the ground that would serve to address at least some of these problems. We have a store, and you can also buy me a coffee. But do join us on Discord so we can put our heads together and see what we can accomplish.
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