__dave__

From the outside looking in that's pretty much what I guessed: Lots of report-writing and little if any programming, but a lot of very talented and interesting people.

It seems like with the proliferation of bug-bounty platforms today, there's a fairly clear way to prove yourself and get in the door while picking up a little cash on the side. Heck, maybe just dabbling in bounty programs is enough to scratch the itch.

Nice. I've worked for awhile in backend dev and infrastructure/cloudops, and thought about trying to transition to pentesting to try something new. What did you like about it? What did you not like? What made you decide to leave the domain for ML?

I saw this exact same thing when studying CS in the early 2000s. A bunch of people said they only wanted to write code for a couple of years then get an MBA and become managers. Sounded crazy to me!