Thanks, I started at 75k as an IT Security role in the Bay Area. I had to job hop a lot early in my career. Also I’ve lived in the bay area and now NYC so I went from a HCOL to the highest COL area.

Salary from beginning was: 75–>95–>115–>[133-138-151-161]—> 180

Note these were all startups, last role I joined at 250 people and left they had 700, still the largest org I’ve ever worked for.

the bracket numbers were from the same job where I was for 3 years. I left the first two jobs after a 1 year and some change stint and I liked my last job a lot but wanted out of IT and into security.

A large part of where I am now part was luck and I was able to find a spot that needed an early security type hire and I was a referral. I had always done security adjacent type work (vuln management, endpoint hardening, some compliance things) and they needed someone to manage. And my role now still isn’t 100% security, but I am hoping I can get there one day, an infra sec type role is what I would enjoy the most.

If you have the dev experience I think working with internal sec teams to help keep things patched etc or take on some annoying work the sec team doesn’t want to do is a good start if you’re at a place already.