[g0v]

When I was in high school I was always fascinated by the stories I'd hear about hackers, I was just a lowly gamer back then. I always told myself something along the lines of "these people have been doing this since they were kids, it's too late for me, I could never be good at that stuff."

A little over a decade later after finishing my time in the military I made a conscious decision to study and get into information security. I guess I was more confident by then. I've only been at it a few years, learning fundamentals, coding, actually not a ton of security stuff yet since that in itself is an advanced topic and I thought if I was going to aim for infosec I wanted get there the right way.

Now I'm working a contract job for a local guy, making him tools to automate his business and have been pestering a security company about a job as well (for the past few years in fact). My most recent correspondence with the technical lead at the security company yielded me a "maybe later this year".

I know I'm far behind many of my peers in knowledge but I've just taken that simply as more reason to work harder at it than them. I'm starting to see results I honestly never thought I would, and I am starting to get the impression that I can be good at this.

I was lucky enough to be born in a country where the biggest obstacle to my success is myself. Keep that in mind when you're doubting yourself.

[exelius]

The benefit of technology is that if you have the energy to learn, history doesn't matter much. All this shit is obsolete in 10 years. Experience gets you knowledge of patterns and methods, but the content changes so often that you can catch up relatively quickly (at least in the context of a career).

Security, unlike many things, can be freelanced in your spare time: many companies offer bounties. So just go in and figure out how things work, and try to break them. If you find something, submit a bug report, and who knows, you may pick up a few grand on a security bounty. Land a few of those, and getting an interview for a full time job should be relatively easy.