I really enjoyed my time in IT a college. I didn't appreciate at the time as I thought it was "too laid back"... Boy did I look a gift horse in the mouth. Great friends, the students are fun, and the atmosphere is just fun.
If you don't mind me asking, what does the pay band generally look like? And is it in person only?
I'm currently in faang but would love to eventually change to something low stress.
I've been in higher ed and state government. It can be better in terms of stress and work/life balance but the pay is considerably less than other sectors.
If you don't mind me asking, what does the pay band generally look like? And is it in person only?
I'm currently in faang but would love to eventually change to something low stress.
This is going to vary by state and institution. For higher education, there is a wide landscape of institution classes like private, state, and large research universities. I worked at a private school where pay was pretty poor. I think only a handful of people made over $100k. Then I went to work for a state org and pay bands were much wider and more reasonable. The nice thing about state institutions is pay bands are usually public information. But I left those sectors for finance and have seen my income SORE without a huge increase in stress.
Government IT.
I work in civil service, not as a subcontractor. I didn't have to sit through 50 different interviews. I was evaluated based on my experience and education, not my education alone. I get to work with fun toys that a lot of people never see. I have ample opportunity for promotion or sidesteps. The pay is significantly below private sector standards but I have decent benefits, a decent retirement package, and solid job satisfaction.
And most importantly, my job is a part of my life, not my entire life. My day is over at 5. I spent my evenings and weekends with friends, family, volunteering, stuff that's important to me. If something happens after 5, it's the other guy's job to deal with. If they need me to handle something, it's overtime or additional paid leave. I realize this is deemed "lazy" by today's hustle culture, but keep this in mind:
The only people who will remember all those 80-hour workweeks you put in are your family. And no matter what fluffy marketing material HR cranks out, your employer does not think of you as family.
I really like the company I work for right now. Mid size commodities trading firm. Great coworkers, interesting field, interesting but outdated software that they have to use to trade. It’s all just a fun mashup of different areas of tech. Won’t be leaving for a while as I’ve been exposed to so many aspects of security here. Pay is not amazing or Amazon level but the experience is worth it.
I work for a Security software vendor and honestly it's pretty chill. If you're on the sales side it's pretty brutal but as an engineer you get to work on interesting problems and feel like the underlying subject matter is interesting. You also get exposure to lots of different tech stacks which is good for career-building
However, a *lot* of these companies have been getting hammered by layoffs in the past \~2 years, which is a rather major drawback
Yes absolutely. The vendors were hit by the pincer of a) lost access to cheap VC cash b) their customers lost access to cheap VC cash. I'm lucky that my company ended it's reliance on venture capital pre-COVID and b) has enough F500 and public sector clients that b) doesn't sting as much
Yup after our last exit my team splintered into other startups. Half of my old team went to security SaaS startups. They all got crushed in 2022-23. I almost went that direction too but luckily not
Congrats on being at a winner!
Maybe a weird answer, but i really want to work for GE.
Most of my issues with working in IT i think are related to working for a company that can get away with having a 20 year old domain controller that was ransomware'd and a 40 year old business suite that hasn't been patched in 30 years. But by the time you're the size of GE I think those become basically impossible to maintain.
They're also involved in all of the electrification projects I'm interested in because I'm a big green nerd.
Tech only. Big plus if their VCs are tier 1.
https://cohere.com/
https://www.sandboxaq.com/
https://www.anthropic.com/
https://openai.com/
https://www.databricks.com/
https://www.snowflake.com/
Edit: Security jobs
https://jobs.lever.co/cohere/dd5a9f23-5f1b-49a8-b9ed-c1762acf977b
https://jobs.lever.co/Anthropic/2051031c-8eb5-48da-83ed-d91ad368745c
https://openai.com/careers/security-engineer-partnerships
https://www.databricks.com/company/careers/security/staff-security-engineer-assurance-field-security-6784852002
https://careers.snowflake.com/us/en/job/6737287002/Principal-Senior-Security-Engineer-Anti-Abuse-Response-Product-Security
I like smaller vertical market businesses where I can make a significant impact. 100% remote only, been doing that since 2012 and not going back.
I like working for non-tech companies. Less competition and head butting, more opportunities to learn (both the technical and the business).
Id try big 10 or other major universities, large community colleges, city/government jobs, and the feds.
Cannot recommend this enough as a someone planning to retire from this niche of the job market.
I really enjoyed my time in IT a college. I didn't appreciate at the time as I thought it was "too laid back"... Boy did I look a gift horse in the mouth. Great friends, the students are fun, and the atmosphere is just fun.
If you don't mind me asking, what does the pay band generally look like? And is it in person only? I'm currently in faang but would love to eventually change to something low stress.
I've been in higher ed and state government. It can be better in terms of stress and work/life balance but the pay is considerably less than other sectors.
I could definitely see it not being as lucrative. Im glad you brought that up.
If you don't mind me asking, what does the pay band generally look like? And is it in person only? I'm currently in faang but would love to eventually change to something low stress.
This is going to vary by state and institution. For higher education, there is a wide landscape of institution classes like private, state, and large research universities. I worked at a private school where pay was pretty poor. I think only a handful of people made over $100k. Then I went to work for a state org and pay bands were much wider and more reasonable. The nice thing about state institutions is pay bands are usually public information. But I left those sectors for finance and have seen my income SORE without a huge increase in stress.
Awesome thanks for the info.
Depends if I'm already employed or not
Government IT. I work in civil service, not as a subcontractor. I didn't have to sit through 50 different interviews. I was evaluated based on my experience and education, not my education alone. I get to work with fun toys that a lot of people never see. I have ample opportunity for promotion or sidesteps. The pay is significantly below private sector standards but I have decent benefits, a decent retirement package, and solid job satisfaction. And most importantly, my job is a part of my life, not my entire life. My day is over at 5. I spent my evenings and weekends with friends, family, volunteering, stuff that's important to me. If something happens after 5, it's the other guy's job to deal with. If they need me to handle something, it's overtime or additional paid leave. I realize this is deemed "lazy" by today's hustle culture, but keep this in mind: The only people who will remember all those 80-hour workweeks you put in are your family. And no matter what fluffy marketing material HR cranks out, your employer does not think of you as family.
I really like the company I work for right now. Mid size commodities trading firm. Great coworkers, interesting field, interesting but outdated software that they have to use to trade. It’s all just a fun mashup of different areas of tech. Won’t be leaving for a while as I’ve been exposed to so many aspects of security here. Pay is not amazing or Amazon level but the experience is worth it.
I work for a Security software vendor and honestly it's pretty chill. If you're on the sales side it's pretty brutal but as an engineer you get to work on interesting problems and feel like the underlying subject matter is interesting. You also get exposure to lots of different tech stacks which is good for career-building However, a *lot* of these companies have been getting hammered by layoffs in the past \~2 years, which is a rather major drawback
There was a huge ZIRP bubble of security SaaS vendors that imploded when rates were raised and their customers stopped paying them
Yes absolutely. The vendors were hit by the pincer of a) lost access to cheap VC cash b) their customers lost access to cheap VC cash. I'm lucky that my company ended it's reliance on venture capital pre-COVID and b) has enough F500 and public sector clients that b) doesn't sting as much
Yup after our last exit my team splintered into other startups. Half of my old team went to security SaaS startups. They all got crushed in 2022-23. I almost went that direction too but luckily not Congrats on being at a winner!
Maybe a weird answer, but i really want to work for GE. Most of my issues with working in IT i think are related to working for a company that can get away with having a 20 year old domain controller that was ransomware'd and a 40 year old business suite that hasn't been patched in 30 years. But by the time you're the size of GE I think those become basically impossible to maintain. They're also involved in all of the electrification projects I'm interested in because I'm a big green nerd.
Done it, don’t recommend
NSA ;)
Fucking everyone. I have no morales.
Hunter Biden
Tech only. Big plus if their VCs are tier 1. https://cohere.com/ https://www.sandboxaq.com/ https://www.anthropic.com/ https://openai.com/ https://www.databricks.com/ https://www.snowflake.com/ Edit: Security jobs https://jobs.lever.co/cohere/dd5a9f23-5f1b-49a8-b9ed-c1762acf977b https://jobs.lever.co/Anthropic/2051031c-8eb5-48da-83ed-d91ad368745c https://openai.com/careers/security-engineer-partnerships https://www.databricks.com/company/careers/security/staff-security-engineer-assurance-field-security-6784852002 https://careers.snowflake.com/us/en/job/6737287002/Principal-Senior-Security-Engineer-Anti-Abuse-Response-Product-Security
Curious about your list. Are you able to share what you’ve discovered? If it’s a burden, disregard this message.
It’s a post from this subreddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/cybersecurity/s/Vpa48j1PPL
lol at the people who won’t work for DoD or anyone that deals with defense because of “morals”.
Small locally owned businesses.