Anyone in these fields able to speak to how they like it or expectations vs reality? More specifically Red Team InfoSec or a Full Stack Dev.

At a fork in my career and want to pursuer one or the other.  Have two degrees but not in an IT or Computer Science field.

From my research here is a brief summary of what I see:

CyberSec

• Make more money early on
• Easier entry level job opportunity
• May get stuck in Help Desk Hell
• Certifications lead to interview

WebDev

• Saturated market makes it hard to get entry job
• Layoffs are prominent as a junior
• Projects may take 10 turns in 10 different directions before finished
• Remote work is popular
• Need a personal portfolio for interview

Looking for actual experience. PM me if necessary.

Thanks!

I currently do full stack (Angular/.NET Core).

Not sure where you're getting the "saturated market makes it hard to get an entry job" from. No one is coming out of school with full stack knowledge unless they have their own portfolio which makes it very easy to stand out in interviews. School curriculum hasn't caught up to the new, commonly used tech stacks.

Cyber security is an incredibly complex profession. Most "cyber security" roles are really just glorified IT positions. Actual cyber security requires not only a degree but an in depth knowledge of systems (more often than not UNIX) as well as a fuck ton of math. If you can get the certs you're basically guaranteed a position but enjoy getting woken up at 3 AM on a Saturday to drive on site for shit pay.

I always recommend people that want to get into an IT profession (and even ones who are already in it) get into DevOps.

2 hours ago, Swizzbeat said:

get into DevOps.

^ 

I work in major incident management and a few of my friends are DevOps engineers, does sound like a dream compared to what I do! 

As Swizz said, if you decide to go into CyberSec it's a matter of getting certificates. I'd recommend signing up at https://linuxacademy.com/ for either DevOps or Sec, great platform 

 

2 hours ago, Swizzbeat said:

Not sure where you're getting the "saturated market makes it hard to get an entry job" from. No one is coming out of school with full stack knowledge unless they have their own portfolio which makes it very easy to stand out in interviews. School curriculum hasn't caught up to the new, commonly used tech stacks.

Most everywhere I read/see has said what I said.  Seems to be a lot of entry level personnel that is easily replaceable which makes it hard to stay somewhere and get years of exp under the belt.  I like your point on school curriculum being behind, that makes sense.

 

32 minutes ago, D9BLADEE said:

As Swizz said, if you decide to go into CyberSec it's a matter of getting certificates.

Yeah I would follow a pretty standard approach to getting all certs and then take my shot.  I understand I would have to deal with some help desk/network admin stuff for a bit but would not want to stay permanent.

DevOps is something I had not looked into so I will start to do so.  Having my degrees not related to this is a pretty big kick in the nuts, but that is why I was leaning towards getting all the certs to get into the industry of Sec or work up some portfolio magic and prove I can be a good Dev to a company.