Ask HN: Is total compensation for Cyber Security in the high $300's?

3 pointsgamechangr2 comments

I have three friends that switched from programming to Cyber Security because of higher total compensation.

One has been developer for 10 years and has regularly made about $150k and claims that he will make more when he gets to 2 years experience in CS.

That seems high to me, but I thought I would ask rather than trusting some salary reporting website.

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I have a friend in NYC who's two years out of school and seems to be close to this as an application security engineer at a biotech company in manhattan. Personally, I hate security work like pentesting etc, its the worst parts of DevOps with the most business risk possible duct-taped to it.

Granted, he makes more than I do as a product eng / core dev.

For reference, I don't know exact numbers but he didn't seem too phased paying $3400/mo. for an apt in midtown. Assuming this is maybe 1/3 of his post-tax take-home. For privacy reasons can't go into too much more detail.

I think you have to be even more of a sadomasochist to be a cybersecurity person than you do to be a helpdesker. Rare to find someone who actually wants to do it and is also competent.

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