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Almost ten years ago I worked on a reverse engineering project. It was very tedious work. Is it worth it to be good at reverse engineering, I mean are there goo

Almost ten years ago I worked on a reverse engineering project. It was very tedious work. Is it worth it to be good at reverse engineering, I mean are there good paying jobs for it now? I often have trouble explaining reverse engineering to people without raising eyebrows. People think its hacking

borplk 9y ago
I think you can make decent money in it. However like a lot of other similar jobs you will fairly quickly hit a ceiling in terms of career progression at which point the only way up is becoming a manager of sorts.
umanwizard 9y ago
It's surprising to me how often reverse engineering turns out to be useful even in normal programming jobs. Even if it only happens once or twice a year, if you're the only person on your team who can figure out how to work around some framework or OS bug, people will think you're a magician. Stuff like that can make performance review cycles all by itself. It really depends on the type of work you're doing, though. Most people got into reverse engineering because they find it fun. If you hate it, there is probably other stuff you can spend your time on more productively.
rhexs 9y ago
Decent paying, yes, but very rare compared to standard software engineering jobs. A lot are in defense. Top companies have a few on hire but unless you're the best of the best, it's tough to match the salary you can get as a standard software dev in a top 10 company.
bri3d 9y ago
Any job with legacy software involved highly values RE, in my experience. Either you have the source to the legacy application, in which case the reverse-engineering thought process is still present while debugging, or you don't, in which case you've got a real RE job on your hands. For example, I worked at a company with a giant set of business processes running inside a minicomputer emulator, with no clear path to migrate the data. By reversing the database file format we were able to extract the data and build additional tools in a gradual-migration fashion, without disruption, data-loss, or the classic "rewriting software" problems.
PopsiclePete 9y ago
>It was very tedious work. Is it worth it to be good at reverse engineering, I mean are there good paying jobs for it now? Malware analysis. Limited job opportunities and companies, very specialized skill set, but good pay, challenging, and exciting. You can't be a hack who programs through Stack Overflow - either you know your shit or you don't - few people can help you if it's something nobody has ever seen.

borplk 9y ago

I think you can make decent money in it. However like a lot of other similar jobs you will fairly quickly hit a ceiling in terms of career progression at which point the only way up is becoming a manager of sorts.

umanwizard 9y ago

It's surprising to me how often reverse engineering turns out to be useful even in normal programming jobs. Even if it only happens once or twice a year, if you're the only person on your team who can figure out how to work around some framework or OS bug, people will think you're a magician. Stuff like that can make performance review cycles all by itself. It really depends on the type of work you're doing, though. Most people got into reverse engineering because they find it fun. If you hate it, there is probably other stuff you can spend your time on more productively.

rhexs 9y ago

Decent paying, yes, but very rare compared to standard software engineering jobs. A lot are in defense. Top companies have a few on hire but unless you're the best of the best, it's tough to match the salary you can get as a standard software dev in a top 10 company.

bri3d 9y ago

Any job with legacy software involved highly values RE, in my experience. Either you have the source to the legacy application, in which case the reverse-engineering thought process is still present while debugging, or you don't, in which case you've got a real RE job on your hands. For example, I worked at a company with a giant set of business processes running inside a minicomputer emulator, with no clear path to migrate the data. By reversing the database file format we were able to extract the data and build additional tools in a gradual-migration fashion, without disruption, data-loss, or the classic "rewriting software" problems.

PopsiclePete 9y ago

>It was very tedious work. Is it worth it to be good at reverse engineering, I mean are there good paying jobs for it now? Malware analysis. Limited job opportunities and companies, very specialized skill set, but good pay, challenging, and exciting. You can't be a hack who programs through Stack Overflow - either you know your shit or you don't - few people can help you if it's something nobody has ever seen.