Understand that questions that anyone reading HN can answer are largely filled with answers and votes that are what the average HN commenter thinks. The average HN commenter makes an average wage.
Find people that sold businesses or make high six digit incomes and ask them.
That said, my two cents[0] is that you should run towards the hard stuff, not away from it. Seems hard? Seems ill-defined? Top dollar.
AI, Rust over C, Ember over JQuery, complex ETL jobs, OS programming, ASICs, FPGAs, space circuits, military gear, OS simulators, codebase analysis tools for red team, nano second computing for wall st, etc.
My only proviso is that you should probably stay away from learning about cryptographic algorithms unless you're also interested in learning about quantum computing. Crypto right now is pretty easy and cheap for the 99.999% of entities that need it; and unless you're really good you're probably not going to break modern algos without quantum and even if you do there are a very small number of actors that will pay for your genius. MITM attacks that involve breaking crytpo algos are mostly state actors and huge criminal gangs.
[0] I guess I've sold a company, but some people working at Google have made more than I did so I don't really feel like I fit the category of people you should be asking.
Maybe. I think there are lucrative opportunities in serving the military industrial complex but they are best exploited by insiders with experience and connections in that space. You need to know the lingo and need to know the right people. You also, probably, need clearance, which you can usually only get by being former military or formerly in the defense industry.
I'm open to hearing perspectives if you have personal experience or friends with experience here, but that has not been what I've found to be true.
My int / mil friends got in quite easily once they possessed the skills. They were all white, non-muslim, non-Russian and born in Canada or the US, but other than that even people with dual citizenships got S or TS clearance and worked on some crazy ass shit.
Did they get their TS clearance without being sponsored by a company who was already doing business with the government? It's my understanding that you need to get your start working for an existing government contractor and then you can branch out on your own. I don't know of anyone who went straight from, say, college into getting TS and starting a military contracting company. Also there are a ton of rules when dealing with the military that often require experience with those sorts of arrangements. Even my company, with extensive experience in that area, received a substantial fine because we bid on work which we no longer qualified for.
Oh, this is where we have different experience. I went to Waterloo, which is generally where a ton of our top CS and Engineering grads come from. Many (both Canadian and American citizens) went straight into spookware or military gear with no prior connections.
Find people that sold businesses or make high six digit incomes and ask them.
That said, my two cents[0] is that you should run towards the hard stuff, not away from it. Seems hard? Seems ill-defined? Top dollar.
AI, Rust over C, Ember over JQuery, complex ETL jobs, OS programming, ASICs, FPGAs, space circuits, military gear, OS simulators, codebase analysis tools for red team, nano second computing for wall st, etc.
My only proviso is that you should probably stay away from learning about cryptographic algorithms unless you're also interested in learning about quantum computing. Crypto right now is pretty easy and cheap for the 99.999% of entities that need it; and unless you're really good you're probably not going to break modern algos without quantum and even if you do there are a very small number of actors that will pay for your genius. MITM attacks that involve breaking crytpo algos are mostly state actors and huge criminal gangs.
[0] I guess I've sold a company, but some people working at Google have made more than I did so I don't really feel like I fit the category of people you should be asking.