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Ask HN: How to start a netsec career from scratch, after depression and at 30?
After spending a few years unemployed treating my depression, and finally finishing my degree last fall (BA in geography), now it's time to get a job - problem is, I've never had a full-time job and I have no recent work experience or portfolio.
I would like to get into the cyber security / netsec field. My most recent part-time job was at college, making forms in Drupal and updating websites - very basic stuff that I wasn't interested in. I've been programming and using computers, though, for 20+ years. Fizzbuzz is simple, I've set up routers to break into with Metasploit for fun, I can easily throw together a LAMP stack... but I feel woefully unprepared for a career or even a technical interview (eg. recently I've worked a few side gigs installing printers or setting up filters in Outlook). Reading about sample interviews just makes me feel like I know next to nothing, and my long period of unemployment doesn't help.
What would be the best steps for me to take to get some sort of junior-level job? Should I focus on a sample application, a personal website? I'm located in the Atlanta area and would relocate to New York. Thank you for any and all advice!
- kjksf 8y agoFirst, forget about netsec or cyber security. It's too niche of a field and usually it's usually seasoned programmers that transition to security. There's little for junior people. If you think you have aptitude, sign up with https://www.hackerone.com/start-hacking https://www.hackerone.com/start-hacking, start finding vulnerabilities, get paid for them. After finding a few vulnerabilities, it'll be so much easier to get a job. But if you want a high probability of getting a job as a programmer, do https://lambdaschool.com/ https://lambdaschool.com/. It's an intensive, 6 month, full-time programming education. The best part: you don't pay unless you get a programming job that pays $50k or more.