What do you do that you earn six figures?

[u/fidgit86]

It seems like a lot of people make a lot of money and it seems like I’m missing out on something. So those of you that do, whats your occupation that pays so well?

[u/mxo130330]

I do IT security work now. I did computer forensics, Malware analysis, and Incident response for about 5 yrs. Now I focus on AWS security. The only time I was able to marry the two disciplines was when I did IT audit work of financial systems. Now I never use my accounting background.

Our entry level SOC analyst start at about $90k. A senior level Analyst can make around $200k.

[u/tommyboy6787 → u/mxo130330]

Where are you that an senior analyst doing SOC reports is making $200k? I'm a senior associate at a public accounting firm, with 3.5 years of SOC experience and am at $81k. Are you all hiring?

[u/mxo130330 → u/tommyboy6787]

Sorry senior incident responder/ cloud security pays $200k. You gotta combine multiple disciplines to get to the upper income levels. The entry level positions are the SOC analysts.

I work for a large finance company. The salary is standard at the large banks and tech companies.

[u/HerschelRoy → u/mxo130330]

I may have missed this - how are your hours now? I'm in a corporate finance role, & interested in an IT switch later for reduced hours (either business analytics or security - leaning towards security even though I have an idea of what I'm doing on analytics).

[u/mxo130330 → u/HerschelRoy]

The hours are reasonable. Most weeks I work 40 hours. If there is a large incident I could work a 60 hour week, but then get credit for time off later. This varies by company. It is def important to ask during the interview process what kind of hours the team is working.

[u/HerschelRoy → u/mxo130330]

Got it, thanks. Most likely less hours, but ultimately depends on the company (which can be said for a lot of roles!)