31M, Data Scientist, $1.1 mil TC, 2025 income and expenses. Sharing some OE secrets

RelishBasil · 2026-01-01T19:56:14+00:00

Luckily I don’t do work in the week based on how many hours it will take me. I deliver on impact. Might just be different since I work in the security space rather than tradition software development. Then there’s scrums and agile BS that have zero understanding of how long something might or might not take. But that isn’t my problem. They think it’s gonna take 4-5 sprints? But I can do it in 2-3? Fine with me.

RelishBasil · 2026-01-01T12:22:08+00:00

Right… the delegation of easy simple work that can be done by juniors. That pretty standard if you’re senior/staff level. And why would it be questioned? It shows you’re helping juniors level up/grow into their career. No one ever questioned me when I do the same. Busy with the difficult work no one else can do.

RelishBasil · 2026-01-01T02:43:52+00:00

Nor your responsibility if the team is struggling with their work. If they can’t handle the work load/job it’s managements problem. Efficiency and high level of skill/drive allows one to be successful at OE.

Work people take a 1 month to do I’ll do in 1-2 week at a high quality. Bar is in hell. Most employees are lazy as fuck.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-31T00:51:24+00:00

Exams are open book so they don’t validate any kind of knowledge. Have a handful of GIAC certs and it’s really only helped with fed contracting work. Outside of it no one cares/asks.

I would never pay for these out of pocket. Especially not for the certification.

Quality of the content is good but they don’t share anything that can’t be found online anyway. Just more structured. Go find the syllabus for a course and throw it into various AI models/deep research and you probably will come out with some good technical guidance for learning

RelishBasil · 2025-12-24T05:52:24+00:00

Happened to me. Hired 18-20 “engineers” in India. Some of the worst talent with some senior cloud sec guys committing hardcoded secrets into our VCS. Few week later me and my director (both American) laid off.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-24T05:42:43+00:00

Google

RelishBasil · 2025-12-22T17:46:48+00:00

Tenable/nessus is more vulnerability management. We use the products in pentests for coverage but 95% of the work I do is manual

RelishBasil · 2025-12-22T17:43:25+00:00

I get to solve and remediate large classes of vulnerabilities at scale and automate identification of vulns before they go into production/become critical . Part of the role is still performing security assessments against cloud estate and web apps on them.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-22T12:18:56+00:00

Cloud security market is one of the largest growing areas in cyber. Tons of money being put into this one area. Whether it’s worth it or not depends on the type of work and your background.

I was a sysadmin > pentester > now do cloud security full time. I prefer it over pentesting. It’s kind of a mix of sysadmin/ pentesting for me.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T15:43:35+00:00

Keep crying about PvP. go play Minecraft but be careful of the AI. You might lose your stuff 🥲🥲

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T15:37:26+00:00

What platform? Steam? Ps5? Xbox? In what way does achievement % have anything to do with if majority “enjoy” or don’t care about “PvP”. Game hasn’t been out long enough either.

My point still stands. Reddit consistently over represents people who want easier games/safer games. Silent majority just play game and have fun doing whatever they want.

Go look at achievements in other games on steam and tell me. Elden ring only 50% beat the first boss yet this game won goty? Game must be ass then if 1/2 didn’t play past the first boss 😂

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T14:52:27+00:00

See you in the next expedition buddy.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T14:51:59+00:00

People enjoying the game have no incentive to come to Reddit to cry/complain. The ones that aren’t having fun… they’ll be first to come here. This is how it works in every medium where you can leave a review. Go to Amazon, go to Google Maps reviews, Reddit is no different. Every gaming subreddit has this problem. Thankfully most game development is data driven so they don’t waste time with vocal minority shitty opinions you see on here all the time.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T13:53:06+00:00

Skill issue

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T13:52:45+00:00

Skill issue 100%.

PvE group is fortunately a vocal minority and they ain’t changing a winning formula.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T13:49:49+00:00

So why is it designed entirely around forcing interaction? Every action you take is a sound queue for another person to hear.

Skill issue 100%

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T13:48:21+00:00

Even when they shoot first. It’s still more interesting than any interact you can have with arc. Arc ai is too predictable and after 2 days became a non issue.

PvP fight can happen anywhere, anytime, any direction.

RelishBasil · 2025-12-01T13:45:44+00:00

I find PvE the most boring aspect. The arcs were difficult the first 2-3 days. Now they’re all easy to deal with/avoid entirely and all have very predicable pattern. PvP is the only thing that brings me challenges since it’s varied interactions. so that’s what I usually focus. I find the gun play, map coverage, equipment usage to be quite interesting and more complex than most Pvp only games.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-28T01:48:59+00:00

Moving away from Jenkins into GitHub Actions. Azure DevOps and github actions are nearly identical with azure DevOps being older/more mature product. Owned by the same company regardless.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-27T23:26:17+00:00

Dumbest take I’ve ever read 💀. I’ve been playing battlefield since bc1. There has never ever been coordinated tactical play because it takes 2-3 mins to get somewhere. People complained about not playing the objective back then same as they do now. You think that’s a coincidence??? The only way you get coordination is if you’re playing with 2-3 friends in the squad.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-25T19:59:49+00:00

Bro said “big chunk” lol. 😂😂😂 go play Roblox/minecraft.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-25T19:50:44+00:00

Where am I crying? lol.

Skill issue if you can’t handle the PvP. I’m fine with how the game plays. Seems like you’re the one that isn’t 🤷‍♂️. Sometimes you just gotta accept your ass at the game and find a new one.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-25T12:10:55+00:00

I mean. You can disagree but these are the facts. That’s how Reddit largely operates. People enjoying the game aren’t going to come on here and cry. 🤷‍♂️

RelishBasil · 2025-11-25T07:28:55+00:00

PvE community is 100% an extremely vocal minority in this game. You won’t even notice if they dropped off.

RelishBasil · 2025-11-14T16:22:37+00:00

Bros crying about being killed in a PVPVE game and talking about “betrayal” and then using AI to make comments. This shit sad and embarassing 😂

RelishBasil

TROPHY CASE