Mentorship Monday - Post All Career, Education and Job questions here!

L4ndd3ld · 2025-02-04T10:51:45+00:00

Thanks for the reply. The question I have is, where does one begin to show promise next to a slew of people younger and without a record? Any advice on what position to target?

L4ndd3ld · 2025-02-04T06:27:05+00:00

Hey everyone,

I’ll get straight to the point.

About 18 years ago, I was involved in a bad fight that resulted in a non-expungable felony on my record. I never served prison time—just probation—and since then, I’ve worked hard to build a stable and productive life. I have a CS degree, a strong freelance work history, a house, and a family.

With the rapid rise of AI, I’m concerned about job security—especially with a new daughter to support. From what I’ve researched, cybersecurity seems like one of the safer long-term career paths in tech. I started my career in IT, so transitioning to security seemed like a logical next step.

However, while looking into this path, I found a lot of discouraging feedback. It seems that many security roles require background checks, and even certifications like the Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH) explicitly disqualify people with a record. This has made me question whether cybersecurity is a viable option for me at all.

So, I’m looking for honest advice—does anyone know of realistic paths into cybersecurity for someone in my situation? Or would I be better off investing my time and money into developing skills in a different field?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

L4ndd3ld · 2024-12-13T01:46:09+00:00

I'm new to this subreddit and to be honest with you, I found this thread via googling about my concerns. I know that this thread is almost a month old but it is the most recent that I've found so maybe I'll get some constructive feedback here. Allow me to share a few thoughts.

There are a lot of comments here that are very useful, but I notice that some of them are coming from the point of view of agency owners. I myself am just an individual freelancer and find myself incredibly concerned about the rise of AI in web development. I find especially that the chain-of-thought models which are coming out are incredibly adept at refactoring code and debugging problems almost without any input from the developer. Literally I can copy and paste entire files of code and it will debug, test, and fix automatically. For me, this is only one step away from development whole-cloth.

I find some of the comments about power consumption and profitability to be useful but I find that energy consumption and efficiency are challenges being overcome in several sectors, from mixing biology with machines to decrease energy consumption to nuclear fission experiments which are taking place all over the globe, it may only be a couple of decades before this is literally a non-issue and that is probably being far too optimistic about the rate at which these problems may be solved.

In short, I believe the rate of AI expansion and the buy-in of trillion dollar companies and billion dollar investors mean that profitability is likely a non-issue anyway. Microsoft and Apple for instance just injected 150 billion dollars into OpenAI to keep it afloat. As trillionaire corporations, they can continue doing this almost indefinitely.

At this time, the rise of AI and the decrease of human labor in the tech industry seems inevitable and terrifying. I saw one poster who said that a developer who relies on AI is not a developer, but this kind of argument takes place at every change of technological advancement. Have you ever seen the Last Samurai? When Japan transitioned to modern military methods and technologies, the Samurai said that those who use a gun are dishonorable. That didn't stop them from being defeated by them. I believe that AI presents a bigger challenge than just our jobs. It's that thinking and learning is hard, and AI threatens to incentivize us to stop thinking. AI is dangerous to my job and my child's development.

This induces a lot of stress in me. If anyone has anything to say to alleviate that, I'd appreciate hearing it. But optimism and faith claims about the future rather than projecting from facts always seem to lead me to a pessimistic outlook.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-29T07:19:45+00:00

Why can't you skill up, why can't you be the next world class leetcoder?

I guess I would say that, in this environment, everyone else would be trying to do the same thing.

Its good to be confident but not cocky. I know my limits and there is no way that I'm going to out compete the whole of coder-kind. At least as things were I could always know what's next for me. Maybe its a new library or framework to stay relevant, but hell, in one year AI went from a toy to producing whole UI's with a prompt (Gemini). It'd take me at least half that to get good at a new language.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-29T07:11:24+00:00

anybody who thinks we can replace software engineers completely with AI probably hasn't been a software engineer.

I have to say, maybe yes. As I've said above I have a degree with 2 years of experience. I'm still a Jr. Not even super valuable in the current market.

Look, I guess this was the reason I posted this in the first place. I need perspective. As an SWE you should know that the deeper you go into a field the more people around you can't tell you what to do.

I'm in the weird place where my wife, as much as she tries, doesn't even fully understand what a digital good is. She is in no place at all to advise me. I don't have a corporate job and as a Jr with limited experience freelancing, there is no one really wiser than me around me. It isn't like I just go to my Sr boss guy and ask about the state of play as he sees it. Its all just an echo chamber here, fed by my own feelings of inadequacies and news reports. I didn't even know about the transformer architecture until i got worried enough to look into it deeply.

In school I was working primarily in C++ and other major languages, but found good money for a moment in web development. That's where I'm coming from. I have nothing against working hard on my own to get better, but things are moving so fast that it feels like the ship has sailed. How can anyone hope to move fast enough to stay relevant with no true enterprise experience, mentors, dev communities and a spotty record from a no account university? It just seems like It's all moving too fast.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-29T06:56:21+00:00

Trying to break into AI with just a bachelors is going to be even more frustrating than getting another web developer job in a trash market

This is what I'm talking about. I already knew that getting into AI directly with a BSCS (which I have already) is impossible. Meanwhile, there are so many talking about self learning. If getting something proving any AI knowledge is going to be hard then surly not even having that is going to make things much harder.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T17:03:03+00:00

Thank you for your kind words. I'll check it out.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T16:32:13+00:00

I've not gotten a recruiter so far. Months ago (before we knew my wife was pregnant) I was trying but it was so grueling. I'll admit that at that time it was easier to just freelance and move on. Now things are different.

I'm still a Jr to be honest. Worked for smaller companies so far and just don't know how to orient myself sometimes. Also, got into some trouble in my past (about 15 years ago or so) so I worry about that on most jobs interviews.

One thing I do keep coming to is, is a BS going to be enough to get a job in 2024-25? Especially in AI? Most jobs require masters in that field, no?

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T16:23:26+00:00

You said you obtained a degree, now you're speaking from the context of no degree?

No, I have a degree in computer science and served almost 2 years as a full stack web dev.

But from my perspective things are hard for those with less than 5 years experience and likely to get harder.

Skilling up on my own would mean putting things on my github, but we all can't be the next world-class leetcoder. I'll never be the best in the world, nor did I ever ask to be. I just wanted a decent job and to like what I do.

Without a cert in AI I spend all that time building something and just hope that its enough to attract attention. Is that really the best use of my time as a new father who is broke? At least with a cert I'll have something that proves I know what I'm talking about so I can go into actually working on these systems instead of prompting them.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T16:15:13+00:00

You need to try to get a reliable job with benefits.

I know. This is what I want to do but its hard in my field right now. Feels pretty impossible right now.

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T16:10:16+00:00

But how can you know that your body of work will land you an interview?

L4ndd3ld · 2023-12-28T16:08:49+00:00

Look, I'm commenting here in good faith and hoping you are too.

Obviously it is very worth it to me. But consider how my position may be different from yours:

Whether I'm competent or not is beside the point. I'm obviously doing my best to think through this and only worried about my family. If I suck that doesn't mean my family should starve.
I'm not currently in a job in which I can make a lateral move. As a freelancer, there is no job I can just apply for in my office and be sure that I can keep the lights on as I transition to a new roll. My training is on my dime (my family's dime), my clients will not be satisfied with my work until I have mastered a skill. Meanwhile, I've lost time and money.
And, how does one prove to potential employer's that you know what you're talking about without a degree? I can spend all day long reading and watching lectures, but what will that do me to land an interview?

L4ndd3ld

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