Choosing the Best Tech Career for You: How to Choose a Career in Tech, What to Consider, Pay, Skills

Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. This is Sandra and today's video is going to be all about how to choose the best career in tech for you. And in case you haven't noticed, there is a new background we are filming in. Okay, so I separated this video into different timestamps, so feel free to jump around if you want to. But the first topic I wanna touch on is probably the most basic one for anyone who is looking to get into technology, and that is whether or not you want to code and how much coding you want to do in your day-to-day job. So there's a lot of people I know who get into tech and maybe all they wanna do is coding, and then there's also a lot of people who come into tech and don't want to do any coding at all. Or maybe there's some in between and they wanna do some coding or some scripting, and the rest of the time they wanna do other things, which is completely fine. There are many jobs out there that are in cybersecurity, data science, software engineering, DevOps, site reliability, and all these things have various amounts of coding involved depending on what you're looking for. So that is definitely something to keep in mind. No matter how much coding you want to do, there is definitely gonna be a job out there for you. It's just up to you to look for it and really try to dig deep into different areas that you may not expect to go into. So of course, if you're someone who wants to do heavy coding and you're interested in being a software engineer, that's probably the main role that you would be applying to if you're doing scripting in DevOps or if you're just doing front-end or back-end. Yeah, it really depends on what kind of person you are, but I personally prefer back-end just because I'm not that great at CSS, but there's some people who are really good at that. So I really think trying out all these things will help you determine how much coding and what kind of coding you want to do. And then if you're someone who wants to do a little bit of coding or no coding at all, then those are all things that you want to know in the jobs that you're applying to. For example, if you don't want to do coding, a lot of beginner or entry-level roles are typically for analyst-type roles. If you're not going into engineering, so a data analyst, a business analyst, a cyber intelligence analyst, these are all roles that are still entry-level and beginner, but they're still very much involved in that technology or software development process, just in a different way compared to software developers. All right, the next thing that you want to consider is how you want to work with people. So of course, every job that you go into, you're going to be working with people no matter what, whether it's your manager, your teammates, your stakeholders or clients, might be other teams in your company or external to your company. And you're always going to be basically working with people. But the key is really just how much you want to work with people. That's really going to make a difference in what you want to do. For example, software developers, they may be more heads-down coding and spending more time individual, but then they'll still have their daily stand-ups, their sprint planning, meeting with scrum masters, or just one-on-ones with your manager. There's still meetings on the calendar, even if you're a developer. So definitely don't think that you're just going to be heads-down coding. But a lot of the time, of course, you do want that heavy focus time for your work. But for someone who is a program manager or a project manager, you're really going to be spending a lot of your time working with people, planning out different projects, understanding what the scope is, and really just a lot of planning and documentation or keeping track of the progress that the team is making. So depending on what kind of person you are and what kind of work you find the most fulfilling and interesting, specifically around the people that you work with. For example, if you're someone who really thrives in connecting with others and working with people and always having someone bounce ideas off of or pair programming or using someone as a rubber ducky and being able to talk to them about your ideas, then that's something to keep in mind because different teams work differently. I've worked in teams where you're kind of thrown in there and no one really talks to you unless you have a question and you reach out. Or there are teams where everyone's immersed in a community and people talk together, even if we're working remote or in different locations. So both of those environments are good in a way, and it really just depends on what you prefer. Some people like not being bothered and getting their work done on their own and reaching out when they have an issue or something to talk to someone about. And there are other people who really thrive on that energy, working with other people, maybe getting on like a Zoom call together and everyone's just working in a group remotely. Some people really like that. So, you know, it all depends on the team culture and what you want to do. So definitely keep that in mind when you're looking for roles. And if you're someone who is interested in cybersecurity, then that's also great because there are both roles in cybersecurity that are kind of independent where you're doing your own pen testing assessments and then maybe get together at the end with your team to talk about your findings and your report. And then there's things like cyber intelligence where you may be spending a lot of your time and sharing information that you learned with your team, with your manager, with other teams in your company that may need to know this information to detect any vulnerabilities or check to see if any potential hacks may impact your company. Okay, so number three on this list is transferable skills and just skills in general. So if you guys have been watching my channel for a while, you know that I'm someone who's interested in many different topics and I can't seem to just stick to one specific area even if it's in cybersecurity. I've tried pen testing, IT governance, cyber strategy, just being a software developer or a security engineer and all the things I have enjoyed, but I do think that I'm just very open to trying different things. So one of the things I really care about is what transferable skills can I take from each job that I do and be able to use those in a different role or a different company, maybe just doing something completely different in general. For example, the skills I learned as a pen tester using Burp Suite or Nmap or Metasploit, those things are not going to apply mostly if I go back to software development, which was something that I really considered when I was switching jobs. And I have more about that in a video link below if you guys wanna check that out. But even though I can't take those specific tooling skills with me to my next job, if I'm not gonna stay in pen testing, I can still take the skills of problem solving and being able to write reports because honestly, a lot of pen testing, even though it sounds like super cool and hackerish, a lot of it is just writing out the report and the documentation and the step-by-step screenshots, explaining in detail what you did so that the development team or some other stakeholder can repeat those steps and be able to see the problem that you're seeing and then try to fix it. And then you have to validate that those fixes are made. Sorry, there's the perks of living in the city now. But yeah, the amount of time I spent writing 30, 40 page reports and documenting and screenshotting different vulnerabilities that you find, it's honestly a lot, but it also teaches you a lot because now if I see someone else's pen testing assessment, I kind of know what to expect already since in my current team, I'm not a pen tester, but there's always gonna be pen testing assessments in whatever company that you join, hopefully, and being able to understand them and knowing how to read them is important, especially now because I've seen both sides of creating them and now consuming them or reading them, I guess. And then going back to the part about problem solving as a pen tester, just being able to understand what you need to do to break into something. And then if something doesn't work, you try another way and you pivot. And if that doesn't work, you try a different way and you pivot again. Those are all skills that you can take with you to other jobs that you do in the future. And honestly, a lot of it is really just patience because a lot of pen testing is kind of about patience, especially if you're trying to get into the red team and you're doing capture the flags for practice. Those specifically are all about pivoting and knowing what to do next when something doesn't work. All right, the next thing on this list is the growth potential for whatever role that you're going into. So the tech sector in general is a very broad area that you can obviously find a lot of opportunities in, but still there are obviously going to be roles in tech that are always going to outpace in terms of growth compared to other jobs. And that just is natural. It depends on that skill level and the skillset that you need for the job. For example, many roles in data science will probably require a master's or a PhD degree. And honestly, that's just kind of how it is. And you may not be able to grow as quickly in your career if you don't have one of those degrees or a certain certification, or maybe in general, there's just a growth cap or a salary cap that you kind of hit. And after that, there's really not that much growth after a certain extent or a certain number of years of experience. Now, I do think that the role in tech that kind of transcends all of this is the software engineer or the software developer role because let's face it, in general, software developers are kind of the core of the tech sector. And if you start as a software engineer, you really can go to any area in tech because your skills are always going to be transferable in some way and knowing how to code and being able to talk to developers is gonna be helpful no matter what you're doing in tech, which is another reason why roles like a technical product manager is really, really popular and probably one of the most highest paid because companies want to hire technical people who still enjoy that people side or that business side of things. And since this is a cybersecurity channel, obviously, I am gonna touch on some of the cybersecurity things in terms of career growth. And I did make a video on the pentesting career path that I can link down below as well. But essentially, I do think that the cybersecurity career path can be very straightforward if you want it to be, but it can also be winding and you can try out a bunch of different things and that can also be good as well. A lot of the leaders that I know in cybersecurity also tend to have very colorful backgrounds in terms of maybe they didn't even start in cybersecurity, maybe they came from finance or maybe they had a psychology background. All these things are kind of welcome in that cybersecurity sphere. So you could have a very colorful, different winding background, or you could also come from a pretty direct background if you already know you wanna go into Red Team. But I do think that after you reach Red Team, there really isn't a way up after that, unless you wanna go into management. But a lot of Red Team members that I know personally don't want to go into management because they want to do the work. The reason they're on the Red Team is because they enjoy being on the Red Team and not managing people. Because once you kind of head into that leadership or management role, then it's basically a career change because you're really managing people and their careers and long-term projects and products. So that's definitely something to keep in mind if you're also picturing that kind of career shift and really just planning your career out in general, just to see where you're going and if you're headed in the right direction to make sure that every role that you go into is purposeful and not just you going with the flow. And that's something that is really key here because you don't want to spend your whole career going with the flow for five to 10 years and then eventually wake up one day and realize, hey, I'm not where I want to be. This isn't even what I want to do. And you just want to keep that in mind while you're going about your career. And that's why I think drawing out your career path and knowing roughly where you want to go or having kind of like a North Star compass is going to be important. So the next thing I want to go into is how easy it is to start that career. So like I mentioned in my previous reason, if you want to go into data science, you likely will need a master's or a PhD and that could just be the cutoff point for certain roles. So for a role like that, it definitely may not be the easiest to start or get into without already having those credentials and already having multiple degrees under your belt and then eventually starting your career. But of course, most of the roles in tech do have fairly low to medium barriers of entry, depending on what you want to do. Of course, the typical paths are getting a college degree, essentially an associate's or a bachelor's degree or graduating from a bootcamp, which I also recently made videos on cybersecurity bootcamps, if you guys are interested in checking that out. Or maybe you're someone who really just bootstrapped themselves and just got experience on your own as well as certifications on your own. And that is another way you can go about it. And lots of roles in tech are open to all of those ways of breaking into the field, especially if you're going into development or cybersecurity. There are lots of popular bootcamps for both of those things, as well as entry-level certifications. So you always want to keep in mind how easy it is to break into the field before you kind of go straight in and say you want to go into data science, because if you know that you don't want to go for an advanced degree, then I wouldn't say to let that keep you from going into that field. But I do think it's something to keep in mind when you're weighing out all your options. All right, the last thing on this list is specifically around salary. So I'm sure no one would argue with me that a career in tech is probably one of the highest paid, most lucrative places that you can get a high salary, especially out of college or out of a bootcamp. You likely will already be making more than the U.S. median household income, especially if you're someone who has highly sought-after skills that companies are looking for, like coding, cybersecurity, anything related to data. And it also depends which areas in technology are really popular or trending at the time. So those are all things to keep in mind. But I have previously made videos on the highest paid roles in cybersecurity as well as technology in general. So I can link those below, so I don't regurgitate everything that I've said in those videos. But let's just say that there are rankings in terms of salaries, or not really rankings, but just different scales of salaries for different roles that you're in. For example, on a range, software engineers may be able to get paid up to a higher number compared to a data analyst or someone working in malware prevention. All things to keep in mind. Of course, always do your research on Glassdoor or wordlevels.fyi or any other website that you can check salaries, or even better, if the company is able to share the salary range, I guess more of the world is just becoming more open-minded in terms of salaries. And location for the ability to be remote. All right, so that's it for this video. I hope you guys found it helpful. Let me know in the comments below if there's any questions that you have for me. And if there's also anything that you'd like to add or remove from this list, depending on your experience. Thank you guys so much for watching. I post videos every Wednesdays and Sundays at 12 p.m. EST. And if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up and subscribe and turn on post notifications. And hopefully I'll see you guys in my next video. Bye.