How I made 20k/mo for 6 months doing Cybersecurity | Crippling Anxiety Edition (Viewer Q&A)

hey everybody it's josh here today we're going to be doing another viewer q a session and today's question is about kind of my skills and peak income in my career our question comes from shane probably and he says at the peak of your income what qualifications did you have that boosted your income so at the very peak of my income to give like a really short answer i was making about twenty thousand dollars a month uh before tax after tax like i don't know what it was probably around like 14 or 15k like after tax and as far as my skills went um primarily i had like pretty average skills and security like information security and i had like pretty deep i.t skills maybe seven years of it experience at the time and also like kind of like entry level uh software engineering slash like web development skills so it's kind of like a tri effect of like security i.t and then software development but this requires like quite a bit of explanation so let me just get into that i feel kind of awkward talking about the story because i i don't feel it was like done i don't feel like i made money in like that cool of a way like for example i had two and a half jobs like two full-time jobs and like a part-time teaching job and it i don't know it's just it's just like really weird but i as i was thinking about answering it i was like thinking about all the stuff i kind of did that like led up to that situation i thought there would be um some pretty good takeaways so if you watch anything in this video just like skip to this timeline and and watch those takeaways and also i just want to say before i get started i don't really recommend doing what i did at all there's like better ways to use your time so with that being said let's kind of get started so back in 2018 uh late 2018 early 2019 i was working for kind of a local government i was working at king county like the same place i work now but it was a different job i was doing security engineering there and i was getting paid about like 118k or something for the type of like security engineering i was doing i was just doing like a lot of project reviews that pretty much entailed reviewing county initiatives and making sure they have like the necessary security controls in place and i didn't really like it uh in fact i really didn't like it because there was like a lot of meetings a lot of paperwork and a lot of kind of like coordinating with like too many people and like that's all fine but it's not really something that i want to do and the manager at the time was like okay i want you to be our like you know pci smee and like get all these like pci certs and i i tried really hard to like get in that mindset to do it um pci is like payment card industry it's like uh the body that governs like card holder data she's like i want you to be our pcs me and i i just like couldn't do it i was just like no i need to like get out of here i'm so sorry and i just ended up quitting um so i quit in like july of 2018 and i was like all right like i'm done with security i'm gonna i'm gonna go be a software engineer i'm not gonna work in security anymore so i was like all right so i was jobless in 2018 like july and then i i just started teaching myself like node.js and react and mongodb like those kind of nosql databases i taught myself elasticsearch and i started building this this web app this like kind of language translation dictionary type app thing that kind of you could type a phrase in english and if something like was close to it that matched in japanese it would like come back to you and there would be like a a voice like saying it kind of like kind of like google translate but it had like kind of predetermined phrases and words so i was kind of like creating this app in my in my spare time and i was planning to use this to kind of put in my portfolio to get a job in like software engineering because i didn't want to do like like i.t and security anymore so a couple months goes by until like september or something and um my i feel my software development skills are like enough to where i can start applying for a junior development job so i'm kind of doing that a little bit and then kind of relaxing enjoying my like unemployedness and then suddenly like a recruiter just like calls me one day and she's like hey like what do you think about working at microsoft as a security analyst and i was like oh my god like security but and then i was like uh but it's at microsoft so they probably have like a lot of cool stuff there which which they do so i was like all right just like maybe tell me tell me a little bit more about it so she like kind of like talked to me a little bit and i was like all right well just like i wasn't i'm not sure if i mute those qualifications but just go ahead and like send me the send me the job description and i'll and i'll look at it so she was like all right and then we hung up the phone and then she sends the job description over and this this part is really really really important so i want everyone to pay attention to this part because it's one of the the takeaways that i wanted to include in this so basically like she sends the job description over and i i kind of color coded everything on here like if it's red it means i have no idea like what that is or i've never used it if it's orange it means like maybe i've kind of used it before but i don't really know or i don't quite meet the requirements and if it's green it means like i'm pretty good at that and i i know like how to do it so she sends this like job requirement this job description over and i don't like i don't know what any of the stuff is to be honest like i know these words are like cloud security benchmark various security control owners like i know what these words are but i feel like like what do you mean by this exactly like what do you mean um work with folks from cis this is like cis center for internet security it's like a big organization who designs security controls and like security checklists that you can do to like kind of secure whatever environment you're running they have a lot of documents by the way they're pretty big create an update docker in kubernetes i have never used docker kubernetes before to be honest i know what those things are but i just i just haven't used them before so i have zero experience with that for cloud and published first and third party consumption i know what these words are again but i'm like okay i have no idea what this means i i still almost don't know work with compliance and v team like i don't know i don't really know what i need i don't know what any of this means you you kind of get what i'm getting at here identify and track settings needed to reduce misconfigured again i know what those words are but i'm like what and then the requirements i had like maybe about two and a half years of security like an actual security job at this time so i didn't i didn't meet this requirement i didn't meet this requirement like from what the web app i was making like to get my engineering experience i was using azure i was using like azure app service cosmos db and like some other things but i i don't really have i don't have azure experience like in a workplace and this is this key by the way so i didn't have this two to three years experience of azure and um i don't i don't even know like what this is to be honest and then the rest of this you can you can kind of just eyeball it basically the point is like i didn't meet the requirements to this like even halfway even like 25 like i didn't meet the requirements for this job so basically i just kind of looked over this and i i was like okay well i'll just tell her i'll just tell her like what i have done and then see if they still want to hire me or you know at least interview me or something so so basically i sent an email back and you'll kind of recognize these this like red all this red is all the requirements that i didn't meet in the the previous screen like in the job description so i didn't meet any of these but i'm like i don't mean this but i have done this stuff that's kind of relevant so this is this is kind of what i i'm always like kind of harping on in the video of like you can make your own experience and then use it then use it on your resume or use it to get jobs so this is like exactly what i did here right three to five years in security i i only had like this was 2000 um was it 2000 this is 2019 this was 2019 at the time around september so basically i my first real security job i started in 2000 like the very end of 2017 so i had about maybe like two and a half two and a half years or something or two years but anyway i didn't have enough security experience but i'm like i've done this stuff like i have security plus i have cissp and some people like you can host cssp on the ceo five years of security you only need like five years and three of the domains which which i had so i was able to get cssp and i've done like this stuff which is kind of security i wrote some fake ransomware which there's actually a video about on this channel i wrote like a key logger which shows a video about on this channel and then i i developed this you know i did all this stuff i created these i gave these lectures in person to my class with like password cracking there's a video on this and then i i made this kind of uh i made this secure api with this like web app which is here which this doesn't exist anymore by the way and then the the azure i just kind of explained like i don't have two three two three years experience in azure but um this is like the app that i was making that i talked about i used like azure app service i used cosmos db which is an azure service to kind of store user state and some other stuff that the app used um i've practiced using azure the powershell the azure module and powershell to kind of do stuff in azure a little bit and i gave like a link to my github which is important by the way you should kind of all the stuff like make it tangible so like just saying this is one thing right i'm like use powershell and practice the azure module but like actually having a link to the github which which shows your code you know is is is something else and i doubt she's gonna comb through this but maybe she'll like see it and be like okay this this makes enough sense that he he has at least some idea like what he's doing right so and i i won't read out all of this but you can kind of get the idea i just kind of explained all the areas that i i didn't really meet to the requirement for and the areas that i did i just kind of explained and tried to tell the recruiter like what i have done that's you know that's similar or that can be applicable because you never know they could just be like no or they could be like all right this looks good enough like let's just try to have an interview with you and long story short i ended up having a phone interview really nice manager and then they were like okay he's good enough let's bring him on for like a in-person interview so i came to the office and like the redmond office at microsoft and i had an in-person interview and then i did like a little bit of whiteboarding with like azure architecture like security stuff just like a little bit and then she asked me like this is like the other funny part like she asked me like a lot of questions like have you ever have you ever worked with you know what azure services have you worked with and coincidentally i you know i used azure app service and cosmos db and a couple other things in azure to make my web app and i just kind of told her what i used in azure and i used it for like a real thing and she's like are you familiar with json syntax which is like um javascript object object notation it's just kind of a way to represent data that's like really efficient and i was like coincidentally like the api i built exclusively json to like transmit data which is kind of common for web apps these days though so i'm like i'm really i'm really good at using json because like my whole app is like based off it that i built she's like well have you used azure policy and like what have you done with it i'm like i haven't used it but before i came here i kind of researched it and sandboxed it a little bit because i saw it on the job description and she's like whoa that's really good and basically like it went really well like oddly enough like all the stars aligned because i like i quit my previous security job so i kind of had like a decent amount of security experience and then i i practiced like software development and i just happened so happened to use azure to do it so i kind of had like all these skills put together and i could i could speak you know at least at an average level and i at this point i didn't really care about speaking to you know exact level people like maybe you don't want me to do it because like i just don't care anymore but it comes off as like i don't really get nervous and i can usually articulate myself pretty well and i dress nice as i could right um so everything that kind of worked out and they they just ended up hiring me or giving me an offer for the job and i ended up accepting it and by the way this job paid about it was like about 120k or slightly less it's like 119.5k so i get hired and i'm working and fast forward like four months or so and the job is really nice um it's kind of like a weird mixture of security analysts mixed with document writer mixed with like program manager like all in one it's a really odd combination but it really it worked pretty well for my personality i guess and my my work style um so i'm working this job and having an okay time made some friends and stuff and then meanwhile my old job at king county the senior leadership kind of got shifted around a little bit and then there was like a new ciso came on and then he he wanted to kind of keep building the security program or kind of like rebuild it and he he knew that i used to work there and it's really hard to get well i don't know if i should get into these details too much but it's it's hard to bring like new people uh to the county because it's usually not what they expect and he knew that i already worked there so he's like he like called me or texted me i think one day and he's like what do you think about like coming back to the county as you know as a contractor just to like help help me get this one section of the security program off the ground and i never really had um i never really had someone like ask for me like specifically to do something like important for them it was kind of the first time that happened to me so i was like oh i better like you know it sounds alright let's like try it so i was like all right yeah let me let me try to do that but i'm working at microsoft right now do you mind if i try to do like both jobs like i'll do microsoft like really early in the morning then i'll dedicate the rest of the day to king county and he was like he's like yeah that that sounds good for now because i was just like a contractor at that time remember this there's probably rules that prevent me from doing this if i'm like a ft but contractor and so i was like sweet okay let me let me go and ask microsoft if i can do the same thing so i was like microsoft manager like king county contacted me like the sizzle and he wants me to like help him do this stuff do you mind if i do both jobs and i kind of laid out my plan for them to kind of work dedicate my time early in the morning to microsoft and then dedicate like an hour a day separate from that to do like a sync with them so we can kind of keep on track and then they're they're pretty apprehensive about it but like they ended up saying like okay like let's let's give it a try so i was like sweet like dual income which is a not a good idea by the way looking back but yeah so starting in it was like december maybe so december i i finally started working it at king county and i had my microsoft job still and i was working in king county and actually i had a third job like it was like a part-time i was teaching an online class at a community college nearby my house it was just like a server class it was pretty easy and i had my my my wife was helping me grade the papers i don't know if i'm allowed to do that but um i had like two and a half jobs so i i would get up like really early and drive to microsoft and i would work from like maybe like four or five in the morning to like uh nine or something well i forget no well it doesn't matter i worked i worked at king county actually like four days out of the week but i'd go like really early and work on microsoft stuff and then you know i'd have the meeting and do the rest of my day at king county and then one day a week i would go to microsoft and i would just like stay there and like just like work you know all day so it was pretty good i was making like a lot of a lot of cash like it was like way more money than i've ever you know made before i was like you know like i said like 20k gross a month it might have been slightly more than that even it was really cool and i i felt like i was maintaining it like really well actually and i i checked in with microsoft i'm like how am i doing am i like you know meeting my my requirement for a performance and like yeah you're doing great so i was like sweet let me just keep doing this but then you know 2020 you know we're getting into you know i started this and remember in like december of 2019 2020 rolls around and then it's we started getting into the pandemic and then around like april or something i started getting like really bad anxiety i didn't know it was anxiety at the time but i was having these like really strange symptoms like i like um you know like typical anxiety symptoms like my chest was tight and i felt like i couldn't breathe and i would have like these heart attack symptoms you know like pain here and like like kind of lightheadedness and i was like oh i'm dying so basically like long story short i i ended up developing like really bad anxiety because i was already stretching myself like really thin with all the working and then um the pandemic hit and it kind of like turned everyone's life upside down like including mine and it just became like way too much for me to manage so i i endured that for probably about six months in total from december until about may or something i was i was getting uh gross of 20k a month and then rolls around and i was like just about dead by then um so i had to quit one of the jobs and microsoft was way more intense the workload is like way more intense and there's like really fast pace with pace which is really good usually like i really like that usually um but my my brain was just like gone it was like gone at this point so i i was like i'm so sorry you guys like i i have to quit i love my managers there so much they're both so nice um but i had to quit one of them and my my brain like wasn't there anymore to do the microsoft work so i just ended up quitting it and then i just stuck with the king county job and then my quarter ended at the community college teaching so i just didn't renew that so i just kept the king county job and i i just have that today oh the king county job by the way is like about 130k so i had like 120k jobs 130k job and then the the teaching job which was like it was about a thousand dollars a month for the part-time teaching job so i quit all everything except for king county and that's kind of still what i'm doing today which is why uh this video that talks about my salary and career that's why you see that that big ass spike for 250k because that's when i was working like all those jobs at once and in that video i didn't even talk about the teaching job because it's like you know i guess it doesn't really count but yeah so since i would be wondering this and maybe you guys are wondering it too like what do you do with all the money you made during that time period so basically like um i did kind of three things with it like the first thing i i invested a decent chunk of it into um into index funds just normal investing i forget i forget how much i put it it probably wasn't that much maybe about like 10 or 20k or something and then i i refinanced to my house with about 40k or something like this and then i ended up i bought a new performance model 3 tesla which ironically like i don't drive anymore because we're in the pandemic and um i just don't have to drive because i work from home and i bought that because i was driving so much and i was like man this sucks i want my life to get better so i bought a tesla and used autopilot and it was really great actually but now my wife just uses it to go to work and i just like sit at home all day so yeah refinance house investments and then i bought tesla so kind of the takeaways that i want to talk about in this video like these are these are really important and i wish i could better ingrain it into anyone who's watching this but the first thing like everything you do in life compounds like not just not just money like compound interest but that kind of principle applies to like every everything else in life so for example how it applies to me in my story is at king county um i must have done something right for the sizzle to ask me to come back to king county i tend to try to treat people like really well and make other people's lives around me and the workplace as easy as possible and i don't like if someone wants to like change something i don't give them like a hard time i i try to like listen to them and help adopt the change instead of like pushing back on it and i i try to um just treat everyone like kind of how i want to be treated there's a lot of weird people in the workplace who try to like like hoard their knowledge and they don't want to like give it away or whatever but i kind of do the opposite of that to try to because we're all on the same team right i try to like give it i guess as much back as i can with while maintaining my kind of mental stability but i try to make everyone's life as easy as possible i try to do my job like as well as i can you know for the most part and i'm guessing part of that had a reason to do why this is so like asked me to come back because if i was like if i behaved you know in a mediocre standard like i wasn't too bad or wasn't too good or if i was a jackass or something he probably he probably wouldn't have you know asked me to come back so everything compounds in life like the way you treat people the way you conduct yourself like everything you do in the workplace if you're if you you know you have a career of 10 years and if you're really nice wherever you go and you do a lot of good work wherever you go like all that what kind of like compound like when people talk about you they'll they'll say like positive things right and you don't want you don't want negative compound interest rate in life because everyone will just think you're a douche bag and like no one will want to deal with you so it's kind of hard because it it won't really you won't really see it happening it's like one of those things that you don't see that's paying off until it's like way down the line you know until it's like too late so just you know just do your best and yeah that's pretty much all i want to say like everything in life compounds not just money like everything so just try to think about that in your day-to-day life and kind of the second thing i want to talk about this kind of it's kind of similar to the first thing but um the more you do the more you'll be able to do if that makes sense so for example when i quit my job in king county and i i quit and i started instead of like sitting around and only watching netflix netflix is fine but instead of only doing that try to do something that is good for your personal development or your career development or something because the more you do now the more you'll be able to do later and this happens like so many times with me in my life it wasn't just this time with like the learning like react and node.js and like web development and then suddenly a job comes and matches this has happened like so many times to me so the more you do the more you'll be able to do like in the future and opportunities will come will come by and you'll be like wow good thing that i i did this like what are the chances but it seems weird but it happens to me all the time like i'll study something and i'll i'll kind of learn something a little bit and get kind of good at it and then some opportunity will come by and i'm like holy i'm glad that i you know studied this thing over here because now i can do this it just it happens like happens all the time so if you find yourself with like too much idle time i would recommend to try to do something like if you want to get into tech or i.t or security or development or something just try to like maybe do a little project on the side like don't like burn yourself out because we all have like a finite amount of energy and like you know that kind of stuff but just try to do something like on the side a little bit because it will probably pay off in the future one way or another and the third huge thing is job descriptions are just wish lists of the employer they're just total wish lists as you can see from you know as you can see from this job description for the microsoft job i don't know what any of this stuff is like like 75 of it i don't know what it is but because i did other stuff you know the last point the more stuff you do the more stuff you'll be able to do because i did all the other crap like i i worked with the powershell or with the azure powershell module i used azure and built all this stuff i i made all these other like random tools right and i i had like proof of it like like look at my my github and everything but based on the fact that i did that stuff they they hired me to do this job because they're thinking is like okay he obviously knows how to do this stuff and he learned all this crap like on his own he learned all the stuff on his own he must be able to like learn this this stuff too and like do it pretty well and like oh he articulates his words pretty well well he's probably able to you know talk with the control owners and like the managers and the other pms and all the stuff to do this to do this job so just keep in mind like the job descriptions are they're just wish lists and if you can if you can do a lot of stuff on your own and show like proof that you did it you can take that and then you can go and get a cool job with it somewhere else the someone will hire you say you want to be in development and you you get really good at you know the whole javascript stack like react and node.js and on all this good stuff and you make like a an awesome web app with it just because you did that doesn't mean you can't apply to like a job that uses you know like angular or like python with django on the back end or something if you make an a stellar app you know with react and node.js like if it's that good someone's probably going to hire you to to work with another stack just because they know that you can adopt it and do well with it the same thing kind of works like across like a lot of disciplines in it you can be like really really good at something or at least have relative relatively you know decent experience in something even if it's your own project and someone will hire you to do something else because they can see the work that you did here and know that you'll be able to do this work so don't get like too caught up on learning like certain technologies and learning languages just get like really good at one and show that you you can learn it and do good at it and someone will like you know take you and hire you to do something else this is really really important and a lot of people don't realize this and they'll look at you know this job description be like three years of azure experience like i don't have that and they just won't even apply to it people always do this and you don't need to do it right just get some get some skills you know any skills and make it tangible and just apply to jobs and you'll probably you'll probably get hired eventually like for sure you will kind of the fourth takeaway is no amount of money is really worth sacrificing your health over because when you're healthy and you it seems like it doesn't matter like you'd be like i'd do anything for like 400k like i'd you know i'd work like 20 hours a day for 400k but like you will for a while for like a couple months until your your body shuts down and i don't mean in a way that's like man i'm getting tired i want to stop working i mean like you're the part of your body that you can't control like revolts on you and when that happens like you you don't really care about money you don't really care about like anything at that point so try not to get to that point and try to like take care of yourself and don't don't work like too many hours like if you want to make a lot of money and you want to you know do something you want to make more than like 130k or 140k don't get like two jobs or don't get a job that requires you to work like 18 hours like that's very bad like don't do it it's not good for you and it's not good for like your family or anyone around you like what i would recommend it's just get you know a decent job that maybe requires you to work like eight hours and then use that job if you really want to make more money like use that job to fuel like other hobbies and other endeavors that you have like maybe you want to make courses for people or maybe you want to make a youtube or something maybe you want to have a blog i don't know some something like if you want to make more money just use your job the income from that job to like fuel another endeavor don't get like two jobs like two salary jobs that's like the worst so yeah just basically you know take care of yourself because in the end if you're messed up like nothing your money like doesn't matter because you're you're just like boned and you you can't really enjoy it right if i hope i hope that makes sense it it won't hit it probably won't really hit hard unless you're one of those people who who really like screwed yourself and like you know take a nose and in the health department from like too much work yeah just take care of yourself that's pretty much all i wanted to say i i hope that i answered your question i knew a question was like one sentence and i gave you like a book worth of answer but i wanted to answer it in like the most comprehensive way as possible instead of being like 250k because like software engineering and like security like there's more to it than that and i i did it in a really bad way don't do what i'm doing like ever so yeah that's all that's all i want to say i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please consider liking and subscribing it really helps my channel a lot and we will see you next time bye now

Channel: Josh Madakor

Views: 5,555

Keywords: The Cyber Mentor, I.T. Career Questions, Linus Tech Tips, white hat hacking, ethical hacking, cybersecurity, joshua fluke, cybersecurity salary cyber security salary, how much can you make in cyber security, 20k per month, information security salary, information security salaries, what if I don't qualify, how to apply to jobs, how to get a job without experience, information security, infosec, cyber security careers, how to make a lot of money in IT, high salary jobs

Id: BdnZyk9mKyM

Length: 25min 41sec (1541 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/joshsmad]

somewhat lit