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Comment by introvertmac | Hacker News Reader

Bug bounty literally changed my life.

In 2013 Facebook paid me $5000, because of it I was able to pay my education loan(in India) and avoided all those compound interest.

I started way before when it was popular and actually got my current job from this thread “list of YC companies I’ve worked with(Hacked)” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10463286

Bug bounty is really hard these days, you are competing with the whole world - whoever report first, wins(even when you have put equal efforts)

It’s good for side hustle but you can’t do it full-time these days.

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I'm still doing bug bounty as my full time job these days and planning to invest some of my bounty for a business in the future :)

Are you in the US?

It seems like it may be possible to live on the bug bounty rewards in places with cheaper cost of living, but you would need to get, like, 10 $5,000 bounties a year to survive in the US wouldn't you?

There are still folks doing it full time in expensive cities.

The main aim of the game is to have extensive infrastructure and code to do asset identification & delta. When Facebook puts a new host live without ACLs, you’ve gotta wake at 3am and hit it.

And when at 3.15am the ACLs kick-in, they’ll end up closing your report as “can’t repro”.

Which is trivially remedied by taking screenshot/directory listings as evidence

In US, workers making minimum wage with full-time schedule make around $15,000 a year. Many people have fewer hours or lower hourly rate. They survive. It's not a great standard of living, though.

On the plus side, the bug hunter would have the advantages of being their own boss. On negative side, their finance and tax situation might be worse or at least more complicated. Probably also better to save money in case they have a stretch where bug finds or payouts drop. Someone doing that would need even lower cost of living.

> you would need to get, like, 10 $5,000 bounties a year to survive in the US wouldn't you?

More like 2 $5k bounties a year for me. Where I live in the U.S., I could rent a house for $500/mo ($6,000 a year), and I eat about $200 of food per month ($2,400 a year). So the cost of living per year is $8,400.

But yes, it entirely depends on where you live. For me, I specifically chose this place so that I could live comfortably on bug bounty income

Assuming you don't need to pay for health insurance and can handle financial ruin if you break your leg.

Assuming you don't need to pay for electricity, water, trash service, internet, phone service, medicine, toilet paper, detergent, need to leave your house ever, buy a computer to actually work with.

I mean, i had lady brag to me that she was in a super nice apartment for $375/mo in my area. That leaves a lot of room for toilet paper and detergent.

So you a pseudonymous stranger have heard from an anon stranger that somewhere there is an apartment for rent with undefined qualities and location that is "super nice" for near 1/3 the median rent. A rate that wont rent a yurt in most places.

you're right, i didn't include that stuff. I was trying to price it out for someone who is renting a house/apt, but neglected the utilities bit. I actually bought a house here for $20k (in cash from bug bounties) so all I pay for is utilities. This place has an acre of forest and FIOS internet, 3 br and next to the lake. I pay about $300 a month for the services you mentioned, save health care, which I don't pay for at all at the moment.

Nope, I'm from a small province here in the Philippines.

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