I recently decided to go back to school and get a job in the tech industry. I’m looking at cyber security but I’m not looked into that decision.
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What degree would you recommend someone to pursue?
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What field would you recommend after graduating?
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What would you tell someone to avoid at all cost?
- Something you’re at least vaguely interested in and don’t mind doing.
- Something you’re at least vaguely interested in and don’t mind doing.
- Blockchain, because it’s a scam that is rapidly disintegrating.
No one else can tell you what you should pursue. I didn’t know what I did or didn’t like until I tried a few things and figured out what aspects of them I like and what aspects were not for me. For instance, I don’t like frontend programming and I absolutely hate dealing with external clients. I do something more like data engineering, which a lot of people find deadly boring but I find perfectly satisfactory.
The other thing that’s been really important to me is decoupling my career from my self-worth. My job is not the most important thing about me. My job is something I do so I can get paid enough to do the things I actually want to do. I don’t need to LOVE my job. I need to like it enough to mostly not dislike having to do it 40 hours a week. For me this means I don’t find the work boring, I work with nice people, I mostly don’t have to do things I HATE (e.g. client presentations), and I’m not doing anything that conflicts with my values (e.g. I wouldn’t work on blockchain, or law enforcement projects).
I’ve been in tech for 30 years now and this is the really key advice. I’ve know several people who were very good developers but fundamentally do not like the process of software development. And they are completely miserable because of that. It’s great if you can find a job you love working at but that requires a lot of luck. Having a job you generally enjoy and it gives you enough money to do the hobbies that you really love then you are doing great.
On what degree to get, most of the time, outside of your first or second job, if a company cares about your degree more than your work experience then they are probably not somewhere you want to work.
All that said, anything security related will stay relevant as will as cloud system admins/engineers/architects. If you want a tech role that will last, doing something that is about designing and maintaining systems rather low-level implementation will server you a lot better.
Also, @[email protected] what are you talking about? Blockchain is super useful for money laundering and blackmail and committing fraud and bribery and and… ok maybe not the best area to try and build a career in.
I know someone who’s company were dealing in payments and they were being targeted by persistent DDoS attacks, hacking attempts, and even supply chain attacks (received modified hardware).
No ransom were made. If you read the articles about the biggest DDoS attacks CloudFlare had mitigated last year? That was them.
The attackers had found when they took down their services banks would go to a fallback solution and not require 3D-secure. When they were down - they could buy bitcoins with stolen credit cards.
And this was their day-job. Attacks occurred basically for 8 hours a day, five days a week. They would take holidays, both seasonal and four to five weeks of summer holidays.
So clearly, fully possible to build a career in.
I should note that when the objective was understood they talked to their bank clients, explained the MO and they all shut down their fallback solutions.
I’m older, so I’m not looking to love my job or make a lot of money. I want something that I can be proud of and just like you, I will not sacrifice my values for money. Did that and I hated myself for it. I’m just looking for something that won’t take 10 years to have a good work/ life balance but also doesn’t have me suck dick behind the 7-11 to make rent.
I appreciate your comment, and I think it may be oversimplifying.
For example, it’s pretty universal that MSP’s should be avoided. And to be wary of businesses that push a “culture.”
I’d recommend looking at businesses that have a flexible WFH policy, or that are at the very least not pushing remote workers back into the office.
Agree 100% about Blockchain/crypto. I’m tempted to add AI to that list. It’s basically the new crypto-bro scam.
AI is at least useful in situations, unlike crypto. Though I am skeptical of how much more it will be able to do in the current form. Once it has more integrations into things other than chat and pictures I’ll be more interested. A way to find an optimal path through some work quickly should be the goal.
AI is the study of tasks where humans still outperform computers.
Once computers get better it’s just an algorithm.
People mistake LLM for general intelligence, but AI is such a buzzword.
Recently had a meeting outlining our business units current five year plan with our top executives (C-level). The amount of times AI was mentioned was ridiculous. The CEO even managed to suggest that “six years ago there was no AI”.
This is a company with a billion euro revenue, and you can play bullshit bingo in the executive meetings.
I do think that “AI” applications has much greater potential now than before, but that’s in part because of the availability of LLM’s and in part because of awareness of the field that ChatGPT has created.
It means we can now get funding to actually do a research project with an unknown outcome because the potential upside is 10x.
But using “AI” in business is certainly not new. The business intelligence people have been doing it for a good while, over a decade.
Not who you replied to, but could I know what "MSP"s are?
Managed Service Providers. Basically third party/outsourced IT for a corporation. Its where everyone involved sees IT as a cost to be eliminated likes its a necessary evil or something.
Oh where to begin?!
Okay. Find out what you love doing and learn it. Every career is going to have some kind of need for tech workers.
I have a bachelor’s and master’s in computer science and a master’s in anthropology. Having something that you really enjoy allows you to gain domain knowledge. If you’re passionate about this and about tech, then you’ll learn a ton of stuff on your own through sheer love of the topics.
Depending on your age, you may also want to do some introspection. I started my undergraduate studies in physics and realized I had way more fun writing the simulation software than with the actual subject. But I had no idea what I actually wanted to do until I was around 23 and had gained enough experience as to what to expect for each field.
Degree programs in computer science are intense. There’s a ton of math, though every day I’m happy that I paid attention in linear algebra. And the electrical engineering courses are still invaluable for my hobbyist projects.
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Degree: Anything in engineering is ideal. Computer science is also fantastic if you think you can handle the course load. I’ve seen amazing systems architects with degrees in Russian literature and shitty programmers with degrees in CS.
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Fields: These are nebulous. Infosec is probably the most misunderstood. There are very few hoodies and Guy Fawkes masks. There is, however, more paperwork for a major pen test than there is for a mortgage. DevOps is where I landed and couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Network admins are the drummers of the IT world; nobody is sure what they do, but we know that they’re important.
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Avoidance: The gaming industry. Long hours, insane deadlines, and middling pay. The financial sector is soul crushing. (I quit a job there without a landing spot simply because I couldn’t deal with how badly we were fucking over consumers).
More opinionated: AI is a bubble that will pop. Getting a job in that field is easy right now. But the knowledge required to advance in that field is an order of magnitude higher than most people expect. And the math involved is not something that most people can “pick up” on the job.
Edit:
Learn, master, and love Linux. For people trying to get into the tech field there is no better advice. The world runs on Linux. If you want to do pen testing, operations, server administration, etc. then skills here are not optional. Even environments that are nominally Windows will almost always use Linux systems on their edges.
Python is a great general purpose language to learn. Vi(m) is also good to learn. Not for text editing, but Vim dueling is our version of a street fight.
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How does one find one of these 130k+ jobs without having the parasitic relationship that seems to be necessary to acquire it?
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Oh whoops, I have about 10 years of industry experience with a cs degree. I literally just don’t know how to job search because I was fortunate enough to get hired into my college co-op job. I want the blessed 6 digit salary but I can’t get a call back. It seems like the only way forward is through recruiters who are going to skim more money than moving is worth.
But maybe I’m just too comfortable here. Maybe I just don’t actually want to leave badly enough. Idk (I seem to be rambling at you to process my own thoughts, my apologies if this is annoying).
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Would you say that these coding boot camps are a scam?
Yes. You can’t become competent from a boot camp. 3-5 years is what it takes to get a good baseline and then after a few years of the right experience you might start becoming competent.
No guarantee though. Some people just don’t have it in them.
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It all depends on where you want to go. I used to work in an IT department where most of my coworkers had non-tech degrees. Heck I only have a 2 year degree in software development. I also know people with computer science degrees that can’t find jobs in the field. There really isn’t a best path here. Heck, a lot of folks in low level IT support roles are just people without much training, but an interest in computers.
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It all depends on you. If you aren’t sure about something, maybe watch a few videos on a platform like PluralSight or Lynda.com. There are often labs or projects for you to start getting your hands dirty. Depending on where you live there might be places like FreeGeek that take volunteers to do support work, which in and of itself could get you a foot in the door of the tech industry. There are also a number of games on Steam that give you a rough idea of the work that each field entails.
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Again, it depends on you. At this point in my life I’d avoid working for a FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google) style company or a start-up. However, that’s not because there is anything inherently wrong with working for those types of companies, I just value my time outside of work.
The most important advice I can give is to try to meet people in the field. Locally you will likely have events called User Groups (you can look on Facebook or Meetup.com) where people who are interested in different technologies will share what they know. Get to know people. Ask questions even if you think they’re obvious or dumb. Tech skills will help you keep a job, soft skills will help you get a job.
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For me, I went to school for computer information technology (System administration) and computer sciences (software engineering). I am now 10 years into being a game developer. I made fun of a lot of people who got into comp sci just to be a game developer because I believed if you didn’t love coding itself then making a game was going to be a huge pain. And all of those people dropped out of comp sci before our final class.
My first job, was at ThePlatform For Media, Inc. (Comcast Subsidiary that did all the VoD streaming) as an Application Support Engineer. Basically, I told real developers how to use the API and tools we had our engineers set up. I was an engineer middle-man. I went from that to T-Mobile HQ as a Product Realization Engineer. Basically, I matched the technology we had with the market and resources we had to build tools that helped us… Yawn… sorry I… Anyways, I built software to help bill customers easier. Fucking BORING.
This is why I got into games. Games aren’t boring. They bring meaning to the code I write. I know why I am writing the code. There is strong reasoning behind it. I work with designers to make systems that have meaning and impact on the artwork we are making and delivering. That’s very motivating.
So find something you like doing, find a field that gives you a strong reason to do what you like to do.
What should you avoid? Avoid not using pieces of technology because someone you don’t like contributes or benefits from them. An example of this could be something like Twitter or Windows or such. You might want to say “Well I shouldn’t use X because Y person sucks and I don’t want to give them money.” While this is typically smart and what I would agree with, it usually comes with an issue. “The alternative is terrible and slows down my productivity but at least I am not giving money to people I hate.” This is the wrong mindset. Be as productive as you can be first. Only switch to something when you feel you can make that sacrifice in being productive. At the end of the day, we still live in a capitalistic society and there is no ethical consumption under capitalism at this point. The ethical thing is to actually be productive as possible then cut time out to be unproductive as you switch, potentially raising awareness as you do so because you’ve been able to be productive. So know what you are losing by switching to an alternative that makes you less productive.
Do it because you love it. Not just for the money. Takes a lot of work and more then 40 hour weeks. Good money but not easy money.
First thing I would do is try to figure out what you enjoy doing. Bit-fiddling and getting really low level? Web dev (and breaking that one down, front end, back end, dev ops, etc.)?
For cyber security, a lot of others here have mentioned it, but definitely wanna echo: learning Linux is key. Also get familiar with networking, routing, switching, etc. Understanding databases is really good because it’ll help you understand how they can be exploited in various applications.
Degree:
It used to be it HAD to be CS and nothing else. But these days, it seems like most jobs are happy with any tech-adjacent degree as long as you can prove your stuff.
But along the way, start building small projects on the side as you’re learning. Build up to more complex ones. Course work alone won’t teach you enough. Most degrees will have some sort of senior capstone project that will be good for experience as well.
If you’re doing cyber security/infosec there’s various options. Some schools will have dedicated infosec degrees, where others you can pick to major in CS or IT.
But after your first couple of jobs and getting a few years of experience, the degree you have shouldn’t matter to employers anymore.
Field:
Depends on what you want to do, really.
Avoid:
Games: It’s a nightmare, and no matter how much you love the work, the industry will chew you up and spit you out.
Fintech: It’s shitty and exploitative of it’s customers.
AI/ML/Crypto/Blockchain/etc: These are full of empty buzzwords with either vaporware, or products that cause far more harm than good.
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- A good GitHub/GitLab code project portfolio will get you a job in software without paying for a degree. My degrees are in biological sciences and I’ve worked with people who haven’t gone to university or have liberal arts degrees (esp English and philosophy)
- The first gig is the hardest step. Companies hate hiring folks without professional software experience. Sometimes you gotta take that shitty, short, and low-paying contract
- IMHO the best advice from boot camps is to attend local tech meetups, ask for informational interviews, and assemble a portfolio of personal projects
- A good recruiter is gold; unfortunately, most are a combination of confabulation, idiocy, and chicanery
- if you’re driven and sharp, QA/support can be good entry points to engineering
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