I am currently a Computer Science student in university who really loves Linux and FOSS software, hates it when governments and corporations spy on people, and would probably rather have a job that brings meaning and benefits society than one that has a high paycheck (although I do recognize that I also need to have enough money for food, housing, .etc). I also watch Scammer Payback and Jim Browning and I love what they’re doing, but I don’t know if I could turn that into a real job.
I’ve thought of doing pen testing (later on in my career), but I’ve come to realize that it is better if users just started using privacy-respecting FOSS software like Signal, because if you give a hacker enough time, patience, and the right resources, they could hack into anything. Although for something like banks, I’d maybe be ok working there, as everybody still needs them and they’re not going away any time soon.
I also need something that I could get into fresh out of university or even as an internship or co-op.
Am I being too pessimistic? What would you suggest me to do? Feel free to challenge my views on life.
Real talk, you don’t have the luxury of being an idealist right out of university. Your goal is to get a job. When you’re in that job you will likely not have the luxury of being an idealist either.
When you have enough experience making practical, reasoned decisions, then you can stand on principals.
For context, I have been in this business for nearly 20 years. The people I have personally worked with who have resisted things on philosophical grounds ALWAYS get left behind. I’ve seen it with systemd, the cloud, and now I’m seeing it again with kubernetes. You cannot escape the collective inertia of an entire industry.
Obviously there are still thresholds… I would never work for someone like Raytheon. You have to draw lines somewhere but saying you aren’t going to work for a company that does user behavior tracking is short sighted and impractical.
Curious. Are you seeing those resisting k8s provide an alternative option for large scale orchestration of containers?
I’ve thought of doing pen testing (later on in my career), but I’ve come to realize that it is better if users just started using privacy-respecting FOSS software like Signal, because if you give a hacker enough time, patience, and the right resources, they could hack into anything.
Your idea of pentesting is so far from what it looks like in reality that it’s probably not a path for you, at least not now. Let me explain: how am I going to protect my banking app using Signal? How will I know if our JSON unmarshalling library used by transaction service isn’t vulnerable or exploitable? What FOSS software shows me live dashboards of deployed software in container and their security risk?
everybody still needs them and they’re not going away any time soon.
Bank is a civilization old concept, it has always been here and will be. Banks are so durable, they will run after our civilization ends.
Most jobs that work with FOSS are at the most privacy violating companies unless you go to (eg.) ARM to be a compiler engineer.
Other than that, your best bet is meta, google etc. as they have the resources to pay to write code for other people.
I spent 20 years working for my local newspaper. It was a ton of fun and I constantly got to do new things. I did everything from making a palm pilot game to accompany our coverage of the Sydney Olympics, to an Apache module for a custom cms to iPhone and Android apps.
Now I can’t say that working for a news company is a good idea in 2023, but the point is there’s probably a company local to you that needs a wide variety of programming and isn’t a “tech giant”.
Hey high five, also a local newspaper guy! I bumbled into it maybe 7 years ago. It doesn’t pay well (it’s pretty rural) but it totally aligns with my principles. It’s rough in the newspaper industry these days but it’s also an interesting challenge. Your competition is basically Facebook and Google.
I totally agree though. Certain small businesses are happy to have a skilled programmer. My boss gives me a lot of leeway to follow my principals when it comes to user privacy and stuff.
