Tech & Cybersecurity folks: What is your long-term plan given the AI explosion? Feeling burnt out and demotivated.
I wanted to start an honest discussion about where our industry is heading and get a reality check from people currently in cybersecurity and software engineering.
To give some context: I’ve been unemployed for a year now, keeping myself afloat with occasional freelance gigs. My original goal was to deepen my penetration testing skills by building custom tooling from scratch. I was planning to go deep into C (for low-level mechanics/exploit dev) and Go (for fast, concurrent tool development).
However, watching the explosion of AI and LLMs lately has completely wiped out my motivation. On platforms like X (Twitter), I constantly see people doing high-level "vibe coding"—rewriting Adobe software using AI-assisted reverse engineering, running iOS on Android devices, or pumping out commercial apps in days without deep background knowledge.
Seeing AI generate functional code, write scripts, and parse logic in seconds makes me ask: Is it even worth spending hundreds of hours mastering low-level languages and building custom tools anymore?
11 replies
AI is "good" at making quick and bad things. Things that look good at first glance, but fall apart when you actually use them. Those AI Photoshop rewrites seem great, but then some basic functionality doesn't work. Which could be fixed, but will it actually be maintained? I don't think so.
I think there's still value in having a deep understanding of the systems involved and producing good quality software.
Pentesting might be slightly different, since you can just throw tokens at a problem and AI will (maybe) stumble upon a solution. And it can test ideas more quickly than humans alone. But it still needs guidance and having knowledge that can point it in the right direction will be valuable.
And I think that makes cybersecurity just more important. If it's easier for an attacker to find vulnerabilities, then there's more pressure to not introduce any of them in the first place.
So, overall, I dont feel "threatened" by AI. I think it's overhyped, even if there's some value in it, and eventually it will quiet down. But it might be rough sailing until then.
This, exactly. I think the bill will come due for AI in the tech industry - literally and figuratively - and its influence will wane significantly, but until then everything will feel pretty awful. Even for a while after, we'll probably be stuck with the miserable task of sweeping up the mess.
But I do think change will come.
Those craft apps are still getting daily updates, so assuming that continues they will reach the 99% featured parity... They are at 40%-60% so far, depending on the app.
Spending the next decade or so fixing or replacing undocumented slop & legacy dumpster fires for increasingly higher rates
Thinking seriously about leaving the industry entirely and growing roses, or making dollhouses.
Idk where things are headed but I know LLMs and the ai industry as a whole are doing things that aren't compatible with my principles so I'm looking to learn a different skill set. Currently applying to schools but who knows how any of this will go.
Non-profit sector. You won't be making bank, but you will be putting your expertise to use in a way that is useful instead of just making as much money as possible at every turn. I work for a small member org and I get to write all the policies around everything tech. We have literally no use case for AI especially considering our imperative is to protect member data. Its wonderful. I am paid enough and know that my efforts go to protecting workers not extorting them. Also, my job is not at risk at all. I found a niche that I think many of us would be happy in but you have to drop the ego. Im not making 300k, but im not a cog in a horrible corpo machine. Worth it.
House in the woods near running water with plenty of game
No, of course it’s not worth spending hundreds of hours mastering low-level languages and building custom tools anymore.
Your existing knowledge will serve you well if you are willing to learn how to use ai to do shit. Being able to immediately clock a loose end that needs focus is useful now.
I read or watched somewhere an analogy, which proposed three options for interfacing with LLMs. The analogy was something like riding a horse, but essentially: Move ahead, ride on top, or move to the side. That was useful framing for me. To what is the current job market subjugating we workers and if I need to pay for food. After a while, I found a job somewhere in between the second and third thing. Still assimilating the first thing.
My plan is to make as half as much money being a mailman.